A comprehensive introduction and historical framework to the rich, diverse artistic, architectural, and cultural legacy of Andalucía, Spain's most southerly region, produced between about 750 and 1550 CE, but with reference to its more ancient history, which was repeatedly drawn on and referred back to during those 800 years.
Andalucía's complex cultural past, with its periods of religious conflict and co-existence of the three Abrahamic religions, and multiple, cross-cultural, artistic influences (including the Maghreb, the Near Middle East, and other parts of the Mediterranean Basin), have left its major cities of Córdoba, Granada, and Seville with many iconic, beguilingly beautiful buildings and artefacts. This course will critically engage with the art, architecture, and cultural history of each of dynasties that ruled the region, then known as al-Andalus, from the eighth to the mid-sixteenth century. These dynasties include the Umayyad, who originally came from Damascus in Syria, the Almoravid and Almohad, who came from the Maghreb (in what is modern-day Morocco, Algiers, and Tunisia), and the Nasrid, whose origins are more obscure, but whose art and architecture developed the styles and decorative motifs of their predecessors in al-Andalus, leaving us with what is today Spain’s most visited monument, the Alhambra in Granada. The intriguing art and architecture of Andalucía produced in the period from the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, taking control of Granada in 1492 to the death of Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain) in 1558, will also be explored. Also studied will be the complex, at times problematic, and oft-repeated, but frequently little understood, terms: Mudéjar, Convivencia, and Reconquista.
The course will study in detail the great Mesquita in Córdoba, the palatine cities of Madinat al-Zahra' (lost for centuries and only in recent years giving up its treasures), and the famous Alhambra palaces and Generalife gardens in Granada, and, in Seville, the Real Alcázar (still the official residence of Spain’s monarchs) and the so-called Casa de Pilatos (the city’s best-preserved Mudéjar palace), as well as highlighting lesser known sites, such as Baeza, Úbeda, and La Calahorra. Each week’s lectures will be extremely well illustrated, and will make wide-ranging use of literature as near contemporaneous as possible with each of the periods considered, the tutor’s extensive archival and on-site research, and many significant scholarly works, including the very latest academic studies (all quotes and excerpts used will be translated into English).