A rare underglaze-painted pottery tile from the Portuguese Convent of Santa Monica in Goa (built 1627)
North India, Probably Sindh, 16th Century
of rectangular form, decorated in cobalt blue and turquoise on a white ground with a pomegranate tree with hatched trunk, three pomegranates and two large flowers, simple border, in wood frame with handwritten note pasted to reverse dated 27 November 1956 describing the history of the tile
the tile 19.5 x 21.5 cm.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Collection of Robert R. Lewis, according to the handwritten note dated 1956, to the reverse.
Private UK collection, acquired in London in the early 1980s and thence by descent.

The Convent of Santa Monica was constructed in 1627 and rebuilt after a fire in the mid 17th Century. Whilst Portuguese tiles were imported, Indian tiles were also used in the colonial buildings of Goa, and the group of tiles to which the present lot belongs were most likely produced in Sindh the century before they were installed in the convent.

For further discussion and comparable examples of tiles from the Convent of Santa Monica, including a panel of tiles in situ, see Arthur Milner, Indian Tiles, London 2021, pp. 163-165, Figs. 4.40, 4.41, and 4.42. Another similar tile is in the National Tile Museum, Lisbon.