The Power of Symbols

Francine giese, ariane varela braga (eds.)

The Power
of Symbols

THE ALHAMBRA IN
A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

PETER LANG

Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • New York • Oxford • Warszawa • Wien

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Cover: Alhambra, Court of Lions, detail of arcade. © Bildarchiv Foto Marburg / Thomas Scheidt and Christian Stein

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About the editors

FRANCINE GIESE is SNSF professor at the University of Zurich. Within her current research project «Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe» she has organized various international conferences and exhibitions dealing with the appropriation of Hispano-Islamic architecture in medieval Iberian and 19^th-century Europe. Her research interests are art and architecture of the Islamic World, exchange and transfer processes in the Middle Ages, reception of Islamic aesthetics in the 19th century, heritage preservation in the Islamic World, and Islamic art and the museum. Recent publications: Bauen und Erhalten in al-Andalus (Peter Lang, 2016) and The Myth of the Orient (Peter Lang, 2016) co-edited with Ariane Varela Braga.

ARIANE VARELA BRAGA is SNSF assistant at the University of Zurich, in the project «Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe», directed by Francine Giese. She has taught at John Cabot University and has been a fellow of the Swiss Institute in Rome. Among her interests are the theory of ornamentation, the transfer of decorative and architectural models in the 19th century, and the relation between text and image. Recent publications : Une théorie universelle au milieu du XIXe siècle. La Grammar of Ornament d’Owen Jones (Campisano Editore, 2017) and A Fashionable Style. Carl von Diebitsch und das maurische Revival (Peter Lang, 2017) co-edited with Francine Giese.

About the book

This volume intends to foster a re-interpretation of the Nasrid architecture of the Alhambra in Granada and its post-Islamic appropriation and global diffusion. Taking into account the current debates on otherness, cultural exchange and artistic transfer, hybridization, stylistic renewal and national identity building, this collection of essays explores the significance of the Alhambra from the Nasrid period to the present time. Built as a military fortress and gradually enlarged to a multi-functional palace city, by the 19th century the Alhambra became a symbol of exoticism and reverie. As one of the most important legacies of the Islamic heritage of al-Andalus, its role as a mediator between East and West is more important than ever.

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Acknowledgements

The conference and proceedings were conceived within the framework of the SNSF-project Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe. The editors are grateful to Michael A. Conrad and Nathalie Herrmann for their precious collaboration in the preparation of this volume.←5 | 6→ ←6 | 7→

Acknowledgements

Luis Calvo Merino

Preface

Introduction

Francine Giese and Ariane Varela Braga

The Power of Symbols. The Alhambra in a Global Perspective

The Islamic Alhambra

Carmen Rallo Gruss

“…En el mundo nosotros debemos nuestra fortuna a nuestras espada”, Muhammad V promotor de las pinturas de la Sala de los Reyes en la Alhambra

Sarah Keller

Slivers of Light: Stained Glass in Al-Andalus

Fernando Valdés Fernández

Arqueología y melancolía. Algunas observaciones a la biografía de don Leopoldo Torres Balbás

The Alhambra in a Cross-Cultural Perspective

Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza

El Palacio de los Leones de la Alhambra: espacio de virtud del príncipe

Manuel Parada López de Corselas

Jan van Eyck and the Alhambra of Granada in Context←7 | 8→

Edhem Eldem

The Ottomans and the Alhambra: Inspiration or Ignorance?

The Alhambra and the Synagogue

Helena Lahoz Kopiske

Eine monumentale Synagoge für Sepharad. Die Synagoge des Samuel ha-Levi in Toledo

Fani Gargova

The Alhambra and the Dream of Sepharad

Barbara von Orelli-Messerli

Gottfried Semper’s Dresden Synagogue Revised: An Echo of the Alhambra?

Hildegard Frübis

Die Neue Synagoge in Berlin (1866) und die Alhambra. Die Adaption maurischer Stilelemente und die Re-Orientalisierung des europäischen Judentums

The Alhambra in 19th-century Spain

Asun González Pérez

Rafael Contreras and the Re-Shaping of the Alhambra in the 19th Century

Rafael Cómez Ramos

Alhambra de Granada versus Alcázar de Sevilla

Laura Castro Royo

La inserción del pasado islámico en la identidad nacional española a través de la arquitectura revival: el caso del Palacio de Laredo

The Alhambra Reception in Germany

Henrik Karge

Zwischen Imagination und Formanalyse. Die Alhambra in der frühen deutschen Kunstgeschichtsschreibung←8 | 9→

Francine Giese

An Inclination for the Moorish Style. Architects and Networks in 19th-Century Germany

Josephin Heller

Die Alhambra-Rezeption in Dresden. Carl von Diebitschs Maurisches Bad auf Schloss Albrechtsberg

The Imaginary Alhambra

Pedro Antonio Galera Andreu

La Alhambra y el orientalismo islámico: la visión de artistas y viajeros románticos

Sarah Tabbal

Marià Fortunys Die Ermordung der Abencerragen. Zur Alhambra als Projektionsfläche und Symbolträgerin imaginierter Vergangenheit in der Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts

Ariane Varela Braga

Building a Dream: the Alhambra in the Villa of Sammezzano

The Alhambra in Tsarist Russia

Nadezhda Stanulevich

The Photographs of the Alhambra at the Russian Academy of Fine Arts Museum

Ludmila Kondratenko and Ekaterina Saviona

The History of the Alhambra Models Collection in Russia

Katrin Kaufmann

Building “Moorish Wonders”: Alhambrism in Tsarist Russia

The Internationalization of the Alhambra

Ieva Kalnača

El alhambrismo en tierras de Letonia durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y primer tercio del siglo XX

Maria Antonieta Emparán Fernández

Palacio de la Alhambra: un orientalismo chileno del siglo XIX←9 | 10→

Davy Depelchin

Orientalism Challenged. The Spanish Pavilion at the 1910 Brussels International Exhibition

Author’s Biographies←10 | 11→

Preface

Luis Calvo Merino

Un patrimonio transcultural

Con gran interés estoy siguiendo, desde el año 2014, las actividades del Departamento de Historia del Arte de la Universidad de Zúrich, realizadas en el marco del proyecto de investigación “Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe”, financiado por el Fondo Nacional Suizo, que no solo contribuyen a una mayor colaboración entre España y Suiza en este ámbito, sino que atestiguan también la importancia del legado artístico de Al-­Ándalus, tanto dentro como fuera de la Península Ibérica.

Como manifestaciones de una de las épocas más fascinantes de la Historia de España, los edificios islámicos y mudéjares ejemplifican el intercambio continuo entre las tres religiones: el cristianismo, el islam y el judaísmo. El diálogo, a través de fronteras culturales y territoriales, fue una fuente de inspiración para la música, la poesía y el arte y, por tanto, representa un modelo que, hoy en día, debería también servir como ejemplo. A pesar de las diferentes religiones, lenguas y visiones del mundo de entonces, podemos sentir en edificios como la Mezquita-­Catedral de Córdoba, el Alcázar de Sevilla, las sinagogas de Toledo o la Alhambra de Granada, el espíritu unificador que llegó a ser la marca de la España medieval. La revalorización del patrimonio andalusí en el siglo XIX provocó una maurofilia mundial que hace patente su potencial como proyección de nostalgias e imaginaciones modernas. Así lo demuestran los numerosos poemas, cuadros, patios y salas evocando la Alhambra nazarí.

Tuve el honor y el placer de inaugurar la Jornada en el otoño de 2016 en la Universidad de Zúrich y estas Actas demuestran, como allí se trató, las múltiples lecturas posibles de la Alhambra, desde sus principios islámicos, pasando por su conversión cristiana, hasta su revitalización y globalización en los siglos XIX y XX.

Deseo sinceramente que este magnífico estudio sobre la Alhambra nos permita tener nuevas perspectivas de nuestras propias raíces culturales.

Zúrich, Enero de 2018

Luis Calvo Merino

Cónsul General de España en Zúrich←11 | 12→ ←12 | 13→

Introduction

←13 | 14→ ←14 | 15→

The Power of Symbols. The Alhambra in a Global Perspective

Francine Giese and Ariane Varela Braga

This publication presents the outcome of the international conference “The Power of Symbols. The Alhambra in a Global Context” held at the University of Zurich in September 2016. Conceived in the framework of the SNSF project “Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe” (2014–2019), the aim of the conference was to place the Alhambra of Granada in the very centre of current debates on transcultural exchange and transfer processes, otherness, national identity building, the appropriation of Islamic aesthetics in the West, and transnational approaches. In recent years, the global turn has opened new possibilities for understanding and interpreting the entangled heritage of contact zones such as the Iberian Peninsula¹. As one of the best preserved palace cities of medieval Islam, the Alhambra not only testifies to the perpetuation of an urbanistic model that goes back to the foundation of Samarra by the Abbasid Caliph al-­Mu‘tasim in 836², but also to the intense exchange between the Nasrids (r. 1232–1492), the Marinid dynasty of Morocco (r. 1244–1465) and the Christian court of Pedro I of Castile and León (r. 1350–1369) during the 14th century³. Thus, the Iberian court architecture conserved in the Alhambra and Pedro’s palaces in Astudillo, Tordesillas, or Seville attest to the ongoing flow of concepts, ideas, and artistic languages across cultural frontiers⁴. Integrated in a pan-­Iberian vision of identity, the Alhambra can today be perceived as a cultural unifier of two worlds⁵. As such, it became a global symbol and reminiscence of one of the most productive cultural centres of the Middle Ages, which in the course of the 18th century reappeared on the international stage as one of the protagonists of European Historicism⁶. In tales, paintings and books, the past glories of the Nasrid←15 | 16→ palace city were retold7, while its ‘decorative skin’ was renewed through controversial interventions⁸.