Architecture and Artistic Practices in Fourteenth Century Castile: The visual Memory of Alfonso XI and Pedro I under the first Trastamaran Kings
Elena Paulino Montero uned.academia.edu
In 1369 the Castilian Civil War came to an end when Pedro I was murdered by his stepbrother, Enrique II, the first king of the Trastámara dynasty. The importance of the artistic patronage of Pedro I and his courtesans is well known, but 1369 seems to
Between 1347 and 1378 Charles IV in the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire, at the same time as Pedro I in the Kingdom of Castile developed architectonic and urban projects in order to exalt their authority. These projects responded to very different artistic styles. Meanwhile Pedro I used the Islamic architecture deeply rooted in the visual culture of the Cas-tilian Kingdom, Charles IV opted for the avant-garde Rayonnant Gothic style coming from the south of France. However, both architectures share some common resources that boosted the mysticism, propaganda, authority and power of the promotors. We are going to analyze in this paper the common points on their political ideals and the common sources that they will adopt in their architecture in order to extol their political image.

http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503574486-1 The 'Old Cathedral’ at Salamanca survives as a flagship of late Romanesque in the kingdom of Leon. The following article considers its architectural sculpture, executed between 1152 and 1230, in order to reflect on the factors that defined the material culture of the period. In particular, it will focus on the coexistence of pre-existing workshops, models and recognised plans on the one hand, and the novel dispositions of the sculpture on the other. Such coexistence might seem contradictory, but is a more general attribute of a period characterised by a tension between continuity and innovation. This can be seen at other cathedral ensembles, most notably Santiago de Compostela.

The middle of the 10th century was a high point for manuscript illumination in northern Spain when named scribes and illuminators created cycles of dynamic images for exegetical texts and bibles. Evidence gathered over recent decades through building archaeology has proposed a re-dating of buildings and sculpture previously considered Visigothic to the 9th or 10th centuries, thereby enlarging the corpus of Mozarabic architecture. This paper begins to assess the implications of considering the corpus of illumination alongside this expanded corpus of architecture and sculpture. The manuscripts are associated with two main centres: Tábara in southern León and Valeránica in southern Castile; the church of San Pedro de la Nave is situated near Tábara, and the church of Santa María at Quintanilla de las Viñas near to Valeránica. Records of gifts, as well as stylistic and iconographic comparisons, suggest a network of monastic amicitia across which manuscripts and scribal expertise were ex...

Fourteenth-century Iberia was a complicated and intricate place of intertwining cultural and religious entities; this mingling is particularly evident in the architecture of the Kingdom of Castile. In 1364, Pedro of Castile began a new renovation on the Real Alcázar in Seville that included the addition of the famous Courtyard of the Maidens. More than a hundred years after the fall of Muslim Seville to the Christian Castilians, Pedro chose to emulate an architectural style commonly attributed to the Islamic aesthetics of the Nasrid Kingdom. Pedro’s allusions to the Alhambra are not only visible in the form of stylistic references; he cites the Alhambra enigmatically as well. One example is the Arabic incantation found on the walls of the Alcázar of Seville: Wa la ghalib ill Allah—“There is no conqueror but God.” This same incantation is repeated countlessly on the walls of Muhammad V’s Alhambra, as it is the Nasrid motto. This project investigates the overt references by Pedro to the aesthetics of the Nasrid Kingdom; it also explores the Alcázar as a microcosm of political commerce and power in fourteenth-century Seville. More specifically, it challenges previous assumptions that Pedro’s designs were “influenced” by Muhammad V’s contemporary renovations of the Alhambra. Through an analysis of primary visual and secondary textual material, this project elucidates how the design and construction of the Alcázar reflect the cultural and religious climate of fourteenth-century Seville. Finally, I aim to unravel the intricate and tangled alliance between Muhammad V and Pedro of Castile in order to reveal connections between the stylistic commerce in their renovations and the political commerce present in their alliance.

This study aims to show through various textual and iconographic examples how kings from the 13th to the 15th centuries were able to exploit public ceremonies and works of art for propaganda purposes. At the same time, it will also demonstrate the extent to which some medieval kings based their legitimacy on the memory of their predecessors through textual and iconographical initiatives. Furthermore, the study will show that out of all the various Christian kingdoms in the medieval Iberian Peninsula, one of the richest and most exemplary in this regard was the Crown of Aragon under the rule of Peter IV (1336-1387), also known as the Ceremonious. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo mostrar los distintos mecanismos que utilizó la monarquía para visualizar y legitimar su poder. Dentro de los distintos reinos peninsulares, uno de los más ricos y ejemplares en este sentido fue el protagonizado, en la Corona de Aragón, por Pedro IV que ha pasado a la historia con el merecido sobrenombre de el Ceremonioso (1336-1387). Este artículo tiene como objeto poner de manifiesto, a través de distintos ejemplos textuales e iconográficos, hasta qué punto el rey Pedro el Ceremonioso supo rentabilizar sus actuaciones públicas y promociones artísticas con un claro objetivo propagandístico, especialmente en los momentos de mayor dificultad, o de inflexión, de su dilatado reinado. Se evidencia también hasta qué punto parte de su legitimación está basada en la memoria de uno de sus más admirados antecesores, Jaime I el Conquistador (1213-1276), fascinación que puede rastrearse, más o menos veladamente, en todas sus iniciativas, tanto en las de carácter textual como en las iconográficas.

This is an overview of the process of transformation of the architecture, sculpture and painting of Catalonia during the Renaissance. It attempts to reconstruct the fundamental era of changes when the late Gothic models were replaced by the new Renaissance paradigm gestated in Italy, thus ushering in the modern cycle of arts in the country. Despite the relative dearth of a Catalan historiographic tradition that studies and explains the cultural heritage from this period – which was decimated by the massive destruction in the 19th and 20th centuries, which particularly targeted religious works – we begin to trace the major outlines of the process of assimilating the Renaissance which got underway in the 16th century and did not culminate until well into the 17th century. What emerges is the notable volume of artistic output undertaken, the main agents and factors in the transformation, the slow yet steady pace of the incorporation of changes, the long phase of hybridisation and the uneven acceptance of Renaissance features depending on the different parameters of architecture or figurative arts considered.

Despite the fact of close religious, political, and institutional ties between Cluny and the Castilian crown dating from the time of Ferdinand I († 1065), it was not until the middle of the 12th century that Castilian sculpture began to show clear signs of the influence of plastic forms from Burgundy, as can be seen both in the cloister and the entry to the chapterhouse in the Cardeña monastery and in the frontal of the Oña refectory. However, the arrival of Burgundy’s influence in the heart of the Iberian Peninsula went hand in hand with the work of a group of masters who were active in the 1160s in Silos, Ávila, Carrión de los Condes, and Aguilar de Campoo and who were responsible for a radical renewal of Castilian Romanesque sculpture during the latter half of that century. What unified all these works was a striking naturalism informed by classical antiquity.