Panelling of the Aleppo Room

The Aleppo Room is one of the highlights of the exhibition; as an ensemble from a residential house it provides a glimpse of one type of Syrian domestic culture in the early seventeenth century. From the inscription it is known that the painted wooden wall panelling comes from the reception room of the house of the Armenian merchant Isa ibn Butrus (Jesus, son of Peter) in die Syrian city of Aleppo, and that the master of the workshop responsible for its production was Halab Shah ibn Isa. Isa ibn Butrus, whose house still stands in the Christian quarter of Aleppo, commissioned the finest artists of the day to decorate his reception room with Christian subjects such as the Virgin with Child and the Last Supper. Alongside these, he had scenes from Persian book illustration, lively depictions of nature and also poems and quotations from the Psalms.