Spanish Art - Muslim and Mozarab Spain

Muslim and Mozarab Spain

The extraordinary palace-city of Medina Azahara near Córdoba was built in the 10th century for the Ummayad Caliphs of Córdoba, intended as the capital of Islamic Andaluz, and is still being excavated. A considerable amount of the highly sophisticated decoration of the main buildings has survived, showing the enormous wealth of this very centralized state. The palace at Aljafería is later, from after Islamic Spain split into a number of kingdoms. Famous examples of Islamic architecture and its decoration are the Cathedral–Mosque of Córdoba, whose Islamic elements were added in stages between 784 and 987, and the Alhambra and Generalife palaces in Granada from the final periods of Muslim Spain.

The Pisa Griffin is the largest known Islamic sculpture of an animal, and the most spectacular of a group of such figures from Al-Andaluz, many made to hold up the basins of fountains (as at the Alhambra), or in smaller cases as perfume-burners and the like.

The Christian population of Muslim Spain developed a style of Mozarabic art whose best known survivals are a series of illuminated manuscripts, several of the commentaries on the Book of Revelations by the Asturian Saint Beatus of Liébana (c. 730 – c. 800), which gave subject matter that allowed the brightly coloured primitivist style full scope to demonstrate its qualities in manuscripts of the 10th century like the Morgan Beatus, probably the earliest, the Gerona Beatus (illuminated by a female artist Ende), Escorial Beatus and the Saint-Sever Beatus, which was actually produced some distance from Muslim rule in France. Mozarabic elements, including a background of brightly coloured strips, can be seen in some later Romanesque frescos.

Hispano-Moresque ware pottery began in the south, presumably mainly for local markets, but Muslim potters were later encouraged to migrate to the Valencia region, where the Christian lords marketed their luxury lustrewares to elites all over Christian Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries, including the Popes and the English court. Spanish Islamic ivory carving and textiles were also very fine; the continuing industries producing tiles and carpets in the peninsula owe their origins largely to the Islamic kingdoms.

After the expulsion of the Islamic rulers during the Reconquista, considerable Muslim populations, and Christian craftsmen trained in Muslim styles, remained in Spain, and Mudéjar is the term for work in art and architecture produced by such people. The Mudéjar Architecture of Aragon is recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the 14th century Patio de las Doncellas built for Peter of Castile in the Alcázar of Seville is another outstanding example. The style could harmonize well with Christian European medieval and Renaissance styles, for example in elaborate wood and stucco ceilings, and Mudéjar work often continued to be produced for some centuries after an area passed to Christian rule.

• Ivory pyxis of al-Mughira, Medina Azahara, 968

• The Pisa Griffin

• Page from the Morgan Beatus

• Hispano-Moresque ware jug with the Medici arms, 1450-1460