Oblong stucco and glass window showing a tree with nine symmetrically arranged sprouting branches within a blue frame. Apart from the central lily in red, it is not possible to identify the specific species of the other flowers. The trunk, backed with green glass, shows a geometric subdivision. A six-petalled blossom marks the transition from the trunk to the branches. Two flower stems with yellow blossoms spring from the lower corners and flank the trunk. The tree is worked out in relief against a perforated background, which is slightly recessed.

The latticework is painted with a dark-brown colour and possibly also a brown varnish (see Research).

The window has been restored and is preserved without its original wooden frame (see Technique and Research). The window is reinforced with a layer of textile inserted between the stucco grille and the plaster layer on the back of the panel in which the pieces of glass are embedded (see State of Preservation and Restorations).

Gypsum plaster; colourless glass; coloured glass (green, blue, dark yellow; two shades of flashed red); brown paint; varnish, textile (cotton fabric)

The stucco and glass window is in good condition: the plaster lattice is intact, there are only very small losses on the front of the latticework. The glass does not show any losses or defects.

According to the results of an in-depth examination of the stucco and glass windows in the Delort de Gléon Collection carried out in 2008, all the windows have been restored five times since their acquisition in Cairo, involving the reinforcement of the fragile plaster lattice with textile, cotton fabric in most cases (Bailly et al., 2008, pp. 16–25, 32). The fabric, which is perforated according to the design, was inserted between the back of the latticework and the glass and fixed to the panel with glue. In the process, the original plaster layer fixing the pieces of glass to the back of the panel was completely removed – together with the pieces of glass – and replaced with a new plaster embedding layer for the pieces of glass. There are no remains of the original plaster layer.

The most recent restoration was carried out after this detailed examination, in around 2009 (Fellinger et al., 2022).

This stucco and glass window corresponds iconographically and technically to one of the standard types of qamariyya widespread in Egypt during the Ottoman period. The representation of the Tree of Life has a long tradition across time and cultures and can also be found in the Islamic world, where the tree that flourishes in paradise, called ṣidrat al-muntahā or ṭūbā, alludes to the Tree of Immortality described in the Qurʾan (20:120). Representations in various media, including ceramics, textiles, mosaics, murals, and stone or wood carvings, emphasize the widespread use of the motif in the Islamic realm.

The Louvre window discussed here differs from other windows of the same type because of its elongated shape, which indicates its use as a framing element for a central glass and stucco panel. Its composition is almost identical to that of stucco and glass window OA 7466/8 (IG_8), also held at the Musée du Louvre, which was most probably made at the same workshop. In addition to these two windows, seven other qamariyyāt within the collection of the Musée du Louvre show the Tree of Life motif (see for instance IG_6, IG_16, IG_21, IG_28). Among them, several pairs of windows can be distinguished. The colours and material properties of the glass and the stucco latticework – although heavily restored – suggest that the window dates to the late 19th century. This assumption is supported by the results of an analytical study of glass from two stucco and glass windows from the Louvre collection (OA 7466/7, OA 7466/25) conducted by a team from the Musée du Louvre (Fellinger et al., 2022).

As to its provenance, the window is one of 39 qamariyyāt supposedly bought in Cairo by the architect Ambroise Baudry (1883–1906) for the French civil mining engineer and art collector Baron Alphonse Delort de Gléon (1843–1899) (Bailly et al., 2008, pp. 16–24). They adorned the Ottoman salon of Delort de Gléon’s hôtel particulier, purchased in 1883, at rue Vézelay 18 in Paris (Volait, 2005, pp. 131–134; Volait, 2009, pp. 99–104, 130–135). This is confirmed by several historical photographs preserved at the Département des Arts de l’Islam (DAI) of the Musée du Louvre, which show the windows inserted in the upper parts of wooden mashrabiyyāt (see Linked Objects and Images). The salon was designed by the baron himself in collaboration with the French architect Jules Bourgoin (1838–1908). The creation of orientalizing interiors, composed of original architectural elements and furnishings as well as replicas of the same, was a widespread practice among Western art collectors at the time (Giese, 2016; Volait, 2016; Giese, 2019).

Based on the photographs mentioned and the presumed date of the windows, one may assume that the windows were created especially for Delort de Gléon’s Arab-style interior and had never been part of a historical building in Cairo. The complete history of these windows however, including possible multiple reuses and several restorations, is difficult to reconstruct. Based on the unpublished study by Bailly et al. (2008) and our own observations, it seems that most of the windows have been cut from their wooden frames. Extensive repairs to the stucco grille, as well as the complete replacement of the thin plaster layer for embedding the pieces of glass at the back of the panel, are proof of several restoration campaigns. It is likely that the brown paint on the stucco lattice is not original, but was applied during restoration, with the intention of adapting the windows to new surroundings. The brown varnish is probably also the result of a restoration campaign, possibly before the Louvre exhibition in 1977, and may have been applied to match the colour of the wooden mashrabiyya in which the windows were displayed.

After the collector’s death, the stucco and glass window passed to his wife Marie Augustine Angélina Delort de Gléon, who bequeathed it as part of Delort de Gléon’s collection of Islamic art to the Musée du Louvre in 1912 (Delort de Gléon, 1914).