In the final pages of the ‘General Summary’ that concludes Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain, the British scholar and architect, George Edmund Street, remarked on the combination of imitation and invention that characterises so much medieval architecture across Europe, Spain included:
Just as we obtained a French architect for our Canterbury, as the people of Milan obtained one from Germany for their cathedral, as the architect of S. Mark at Venice borrowed from the East, as he of Perigueux from S. Mark, as he of Cologne from Amiens or Beauvais, so Spain profited, no doubt, from time to time, by the example of her French neighbours. But at the same time she formed a true branch of art for herself, and one so vigorous, so noble, and so worthy of study, that I shall be disappointed indeed if her buildings are not ere long far more familiar than they now are to English Ecclesiologists.[1]
Street would indeed be disappointed, for there has been no major scholarly survey of Spanish Gothic architecture in English since Some Account was published in 1865.[2] Gothic Architecture in Spain: Invention and Imitation—the fruit of a workshop, symposium and three lectures held at The Courtauld Institute of Art from 2015 to 2017—is in no sense intended to be a substitute for Street’s magnificent study. But it is hoped that for Anglophone scholars and students—and indeed those working in any language—this essay collection may draw attention to the quality and vitality of recent scholarship on Gothic architecture in Spain, and encourage further research on the tremendous variety and interest of Gothic buildings in the Iberian Peninsula. In this Introduction I will briefly set out some of the key themes of the essay collection, exploring the architectural and rhetorical significance of invention and imitation, and then unpicking some of the issues raised by the idea of ‘Gothic architecture in Spain’. I conclude with a sketch of some of the early historiography of Gothic architecture in Spain (especially in the English-speaking world), followed by short summaries of individual essays. Extensive bibliographic references in the notes will, I hope, provide useful orientation for those new to this field.
Invention and Imitation
In modern English, invention and imitation stand at opposite poles of creativity. For the Oxford English Dictionary, to imitate is to ‘take or follow as a model’; to invent is to ‘create or design something (something that has not existed before); be the originator of’. But in Latin rhetorical theory and throughout most of the Middle Ages, imitatio and inventio were much closer in meaning, albeit rarely applied to architecture before the sixteenth century.[3] For Cicero and his many medieval followers, invention meant ‘finding’, or the selective gathering up of ideas: ‘If we reconsider the origin of the word, what else does it sound like if not that “to invent” (invenire) is to “come upon” (in + venire) that which is sought for?’ asks St Isidore.[4] Imitatio, meanwhile, was a creative act, referring to the adaptation of well-chosen models, and a pre-condition for inventio.[5] As José Antonio Maravall brilliantly demonstrated, this definition of inventio and celebration of imitatio in no sense imply that modernity or novelty were not prized in medieval and Renaissance Spain, but in architectural contexts terms such as ars, ingenium and opus approximate more closely to the modern sense of invention.[6] To speak of imitation, meanwhile, is to recognise the agency of patrons and artists, who were very far from being the passive recipients of the ‘influence’—French, German, Flemish, Italian, Byzantine, Jewish, Islamic or other—that has so often been discerned in Spain’s ‘aluvial’ art.[7] In their medieval senses, imitatio and inventio instead combine to produce something rather similar to Richard Krautheimer’s famously fluid definition of the medieval copy.[8] The essays in this collection consider ideas of inventio and imitatio as well as invention and imitation in their modern senses.
One way to identify invention and imitation in relation to Gothic architecture in Spain is to consider structures that were intended or said to be built ‘ad modum et formam’ as another.[9] This formula and its variations were widely and loosely employed, but in a Spanish context it is used especially tellingly in two letters sent by James II of Aragon regarding the tomb he intended to share with his late wife, Blanche of France, in the Cistercian Abbey of Santes Creus near Tarragona. Dated 16 January 1313, the near-identical letters to Pere, abbot of Santes Creus, and Pere de Prenafeta, the mason in charge of the tomb, insist that the canopy of Blanche’s tomb be made ‘of the same mode and form and measurements according to which the canopy of the tomb of the aforesaid king Peter, our father, is made and constructed’.[10] As built, the canopy over Blanche’s tomb is indeed generally similar to that beneath which James’s father, Peter III of Aragon, had been buried in 1302 (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2).[11] Deliberate similarity was a feature of several dynastic pantheons in thirteenth-century Europe and in this case was particularly desirable as James was Peter’s second son, long absent in Sicily. But there are also differences between the canopies: Blanche and James’s is taller, it has generous sprays rather than nobbly capitals, and the tracery motifs are sharpened and owe more to the new work at Saint-Nazaire de Carcassonne than to the structures in Troyes or Toulouse with which the tracery of Peter’s tomb-canopy is most closely affiliated.[12] It is clear then that James’s prescriptions left space for discreet inventio on the part of his masons, and a subtle critique and updating of the style and forms of Peter’s tomb.
Peter’s and Blanche’s tombs, located within a few metres of one another in the same church, could be easily compared by King James, his masons and others. The same applies for the chapel of sent Joan Batiste (Saint John the Baptist) in Valencia Cathedral, begun in 1414, and its recorded model, the chapel of Santa Anna in the same cathedral.[13] But as Krautheimer showed, numbers and measurements could be transmitted across much greater distances with relative ease, enabling a form of numerical imitatio.[14] Spanish medieval examples of this phenomenon include the Codex Calixtinus’s record of dimensions and enumeration of architectural elements in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela; the early fourteenth-century annotations to the Anales toledanos (III), giving measurements of several Roman churches and monuments; the recreation of Jerusalem’s topography just outside Córdoba, coordinated by the Dominican friar, Álvaro de Córdoba (d. 1430), with distances between chapels very close to those in Jerusalem; or the ‘Record of the sizes of the church and offices of Toledo, Seville and León cathedrals’, collected in Segovia in the sixteenth century.[15]
Other features were not so readily imitated from afar, and their transmission depended on memory, verbal or written descriptions, or drawings. Evidence for the latter can be found in documents related to Bernat Dalguaire’s journey to Avignon in 1346, made shortly after he was hired to begin construction on Tortosa’s new Gothic cathedral. Along the way he made several drawings, and on his return spent seven days preparing a new project to show to the bishop and chapter, working with planks, nails and three assistants on what may have been a three-dimensional model or a full-scale plan.[16] Such drawings or models, in turn, assumed an authority of their own, as Encarna Montero discusses in her essay in this collection. Thus, in September 1424 it was agreed that the upper section of the bell tower of Valencia Cathedral should be made ‘according to the form and manner of the drawing (mostra) made by him (Martí Llobet, master of Valencia Cathedral) and given to the said chapter and traced out (traçada) by him in the garden of Pere Daries’.[17]
Other forms of architectural copying, sometimes at the recorded request of the patron, are discussed in other essays in this collection, especially those by Costanza Beltrami and Nicolás Menéndez. But I will conclude this section with one more example that demonstrates both imitatio and inventio at a relatively modest scale. In July 1420, Juan Rodríguez de Lebrija and Martín Martínez signed a contract to make the portal for the church of San Juan de la Palma in Seville, ‘following and in the manner that the portal of the church of San Esteban in this city is made and worked’.[18] They also agreed to make a bell tower ‘like that which is made in the church of Santa Ana de Triana’.[19] The original towers do not survive at either church, but the portals are clearly alike, and are typical of a dozen or so parish churches in medieval Seville (Figs. 1.3 and 1.4).[20] In both portals eight shafts rise in each jamb and carry eight orders of relatively plain mouldings, all beneath a hood moulding ornamented with large dog-tooth ornament. There is no tympanum. Two small image niches are set in the spandrels above, with another central niche and a horizontal corbel table higher up. At San Esteban the corbel table and central niche were altered in the seventeenth century, but even without these changes, a number of small differences between the medieval portals can nonetheless be discerned. Unlike the canopies at Santes Creus, these modifications do not obviously speak to artistic invention, but serve to underline the point that imitatio in the Middle Ages was never exact. More significantly, perhaps, the ‘pick and mix’ selection of elements at San Juan—its tower based on Sant’Ana de Triana and its portal modelled on San Esteban’s—sits well with the rhetorical definition of inventio as the gathering up of suitable models, like Zeuxis’s painting of Helen, based on five beautiful maidens from Croton, cited in Cicero’s De inventione.[21] It may also suggest that the conformity of so many parish churches in Seville, Córdoba and elsewhere was led by patrons, not masons.
Gothic Architecture in Spain
These essays are intended to be a point of entry into the study of Gothic architecture in Spain, not a survey. Essays range from the early thirteenth century to the mid-sixteenth century, from Palma de Mallorca to León and Seville, but readers might reasonably quibble with all sorts of omissions: what about early Gothic architecture in Galicia and León, fourteenth-century Catalonia or Navarre, late-medieval Andalusia or Aragon, or even sixteenth-century Mexico, amongst many others?[22] And while the essays cover a wide variety of building types, including chapels, parish and monastic churches, colleges, palaces and cathedrals, treatment is inevitably uneven. Cathedrals arguably receive disproportionate treatment, while there is no consideration of mendicant architecture, and relatively little on secular buildings. If Gothic architecture were defined simply by the use of the pointed arch, then the new shipyards begun in Seville in 1252 and covering over fifteen thousand square metres would surely qualify as one of the most ambitious Gothic projects anywhere in Europe (Fig. 1.5).[23] Moreover, Guillem Sagrera’s designs for the Llonja in Palma or the late-medieval additions to the Aljafería in Zaragoza testify to the extraordinary inventiveness of Gothic architecture in mercantile and palatial contexts in medieval Iberia (Figs 1.8 and 1.9).[24] It is hoped that readers will be encouraged to investigate these lacunae for themselves.
No less problematic, perhaps, is the decision to focus on Spain and exclude Portugal.[25] Felipe Pereda has drawn attention to a series of octagonal funerary chapels in late medieval Portugal that can only be properly understood through reference to Spanish precedents, for example.[26] The Cantabrian origins of one of the most prolific architects of Manueline Portugal, João de Castilho (Juan de Castillo), also testifies to the movement of architects across the border between Spain and Portugal, while clergy and royal brides also frequently traversed the frontier.[27] Yet with the exception of one brief, contested interlude in the 1380s, Portugal was an independent kingdom throughout the period covered by these essays, and for this reason Gothic architecture in Portugal is not discussed in these essays, though it certainly deserves a study of its own. Moreover, architects and patrons also travelled regularly between Spain, France, England, Burgundy, the Holy Roman Empire and the Italian states, so in some respects any history of art that is premised on modern national boundaries is flawed. Can we then really speak of ‘Spain’ in the Middle Ages? It is true, of course, that Spain itself did not become a political reality until 1516, and, even then, it could hardly be considered united. But the idea of España or Hispania certainly was recognized throughout the period covered by these essays, and ‘Spain’ (rather than ‘Iberia’, which was almost never used in the Middle Ages) has the advantage of being concise and recognisable, without seeking to paper over the contested politics of the modern nation state that is home to many of the scholars cited in this essay collection.[28]
So should it be Gothic Architecture in Spain, or Spanish Gothic Architecture? Some years ago Fernando Marías drew attention to a small number of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sources that apparently refer to a distinct Spanish style: Hieronymous Monetarius’ description of the roof of the cloister of Zamora Cathedral, gilded ‘ad ritum [sic] Hispanorum’ (1495); Antonio de Lalaing’s description of new houses in Granada, which were to be built ‘à la fachon des maisons d’Espaigne’ (1502); a 1502 contract for a painting in Rome ‘ad modum Yspaniae’; and a contract for capitals ‘al modo che core in Spagna’ for the Casa de Pilatos (1529).[29] Despite Marías’s cautionary comments, scholars have since enthusiastically adopted the idea of architecture ‘ad modum Hispaniae’.[30] It should be noted, however, that none of the texts cited above refers to Gothic architecture (most seem to refer instead to domestic, possibly Mudéjar contexts), and although in this collection Henrik Karge and Begoña Alonso both highlight distinctive features of Gothic architecture in Spain at particular moments, any attempt to define a ‘Spanish style’ for the whole of the Gothic period would simply flatten the tremendous variety of architecture to which these essays collectively bear witness. In the section that follows I will trace the earliest uses of the term ‘Gothic’ in the Spanish context, before briefly sketching some of the early historiography of Gothic architecture in Spain.
From Modern to Gothic
As Marías has highlighted, one of the earliest Spanish uses of the term ‘Gothic’ in reference to architecture can be found in Juan Bravo de Acuña’s unpublished ‘Libro de la fundación de la sancta yglesia de Toledo’, dated 1604, in which a plan of Toledo Cathedral is accompanied by a caption that reads, ‘Its style (modo) of architecture is Gothic, which vulgarly is called modern to differentiate it from the Greek and Latin’.[31] This terminology almost certainly derived from Vasari, whose Vite were well known in in late sixteenth-century Toledo (and who himself collected plans of several Spanish Gothic churches).[32] De Acuña was by no means the first person in Spain to distinguish a ‘Gothic’ style, however. Medieval Spanish texts frequently refer to Gothic laws, Gothic Gaul or Gothic script, as in the Crónica de San Isidoro of c.1385, in which ‘letras goticas’ are differentiated from ‘letras griegas’.[33] But it was not until the sixteenth century that exposure to Italian ideas helped to introduce a new vocabulary of stylistic discrimination in relation to art and architecture in Spain.
A key role in the introduction of Italian forms and ideas was played by Íñigo López de Mendoza, the second Count of Tendilla (1442–1515), who spent time in Rome as a teenager, and again as an ambassador in the 1480s. He was closely associated with many of the earliest Italian Renaissance tombs in Spain, but also oversaw construction of Granada’s royal chapel in a late Gothic idiom (indeed, he condemned the chapel’s original plan as too dark, narrow and short, ‘una amarga cosa’).[34] In 1505 Íñigo wrote to Alonso Rodríguez, maestro mayor of Seville Cathedral, regarding the tomb of Íñigo’s brother, Cardinal Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, asking for a drawing showing the ‘form and manner’ (forma y manera) of the tomb and insisting that ‘nothing French, German or Moorish shall be mixed with the work, but that it should all be Roman’.[35] Although this suggests a rather modern definition of style based on national or confessional characteristics, Patrick Lenaghan has cautioned that the Count of Tendilla seems to have understood this Roman style as ‘no more than superficial decorative features grafted onto a Gothic structure’, easily learnt or adopted by a master who was more familiar with Gothic architectural traditions.[36] The same is implied by the city ordinances of Seville (1512), which required that those responsible for plaster decoration could work ‘in diverse manners (de diversas maneras), whether in the Roman or geometrical styles (de lazo)’.[37]
In late sixteenth-century Spain, ‘modern’ or ‘German’ was still preferred to ‘Gothic’ to describe architecture, especially in opposition to the ‘Roman’ style. For example, in his translation of Vitruvius, drafted in Granada in 1577, Lázaro de Velasco wrote that ‘there are several types (maneras) of churches suitable for Christian use, which are either the Roman style (modo Romano) that has been used in Spain, or the Teutonic style (modo tudesco) or of Germany, which they call modern (al Moderno), or the Roman use (uso Romano), which is employed now’.[38] Meanwhile, in the brief history of the arts in his widely circulated Varia commensuración para la escultura y arquitectura (1585), the goldsmith Juan de Arfe described how a new style of architecture was introduced following the Gothic invasions and collapse of Rome. This, he explained, was ‘barbaric work (obra barbara), known as masonry work or cresting (llamada maçoneria o cresteria), or according to others, modern work (obra moderna), with which they built the cathedrals of Toledo, León, Salamanca, Burgos, Palencia, Ávila, Segovia and Seville’.[39]
By the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ‘Gothic’ was widely used in Spain and elsewhere to describe medieval architecture, albeit not without confusion. For example, in 1669, the diplomat and cleric François Bertaut, educated in Spain, opined that Seville Cathedral had been built ‘more by the Goths than by the Moors’.[40] Modern scholars would most likely describe the tower of La Magdalena in Zaragoza as ‘Mudéjar’, but in his Discursos practicables del nobilísimo arte de la pintura of c. 1675, Jusepe Martínez described the tower as ‘á manera gótica’, and distinguished between ‘Gothic’ and ‘modern’ (Renaissance) styles.[41] Meanwhile, Madame d’Aulnoy’s widely read Relation du Voyage d’Espagne (1691) offered a back-handed compliment to Burgos Cathedral, where ‘the Architecture is so exquisitely wrought, that it may pass amongst the Gothick Buildings for a Master-Piece of Art: and this is so much the more remarkable, in that they build very sorrily in Spain’.[42]
Vasari’s association of Gothic architecture with Goths and Visigoths had been clarified for French readers as early as 1687, when Jean-François Félibien distinguished between the solid, ancient Gothic style of architecture (what we might now call pre-Romanesque) and the delicate effects of ‘modern’ Gothic (equivalent to the modern sense of the word)—a clarification that found its way into Spanish via a translation of Charles Rollin’s Histoire ancienne, published in Antwerp in 1745.[43] By this point the merits of Gothic architecture had been recognised by a small but important minority of French and English scholars who also offered alternatives models for its origins. As Matilde Mateo Seville has argued, the idea that Gothic architecture derived from Islamic architecture can be traced in France to 1679 and in England to 1713, and, early in the second decade of the eighteenth century, the French theologian and philosopher René-Joseph Tournemine formulated the notion that Gothic architecture had been invented in Spain by Christian architects who imitated their Muslim neighbours.[44] Ideas about Gothic architecture’s ‘Sarracenic’ origins were not, however, widely disseminated until publication of Christopher Wren’s Parentalia in 1750 and Diderot’s Encyclopédie the following year.[45]
This is not the place to explore fully the attitudes to Spain’s Gothic buildings among seventeenth- and eighteenth-century travellers from abroad, and most anyway largely passed from brief praise of architecture to marvel at the riches of church treasuries or peculiarities of local rituals.[46] But it should be noted that British scholars and their correspondents played an important and early role in the appreciation of Gothic architecture in Spain. In the 1740s Horace Walpole’s Austrian friend, Johann Heinrich Müntz, travelled to Valencia and Zaragoza and made sketches of Gothic or Mudéjar churches.[47] Several drawings of Gothic and Islamic buildings also survive from Thomas Pitt the Younger’s detailed notes on his tour of Spain and Portugal in 1760—notes and drawings that apparently circulated relatively widely in Enlightenment England.[48]
These scholars and travellers helped to lay the foundation for a comprehensive reassessment of Gothic art and architecture in Spain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century amongst a circle of influential Spanish scholars that includes Diego de Villanueva, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, Antonio de Capmany, Eugenio de Llaguno, Isidoro Bosarte, and especially Antonio Ponz.[49] In the very first volume of the Viaje de España (1772), Ponz applauded the proportions, solidity and elegance of Toledo Cathedral’s Gothic architecture, citing Vasari’s arguments for its German origins.[50] For Ponz it was the proposed neo-classical designs for Toledo Cathedral that were ‘barbarous’, and his intervention may have swayed the Toledan chapter the following year when they decided to restore the cathedral’s west façade ‘in the same Gothic as the original church’ (Fig. 1.6).[51] But it is in his account of León Cathedral in volume eleven of the Viaje de España, published in 1783, that Ponz’s most eloquent celebration of Gothic architecture is found (Fig. 1.7). Praising its delicacy and the elegance of its ornament, he concluded that ‘the plan and elevations of the church are those habitual to the Gothic style or, to speak properly, of the German (style), for that is what we vulgarly call Gothic’.[52] Meanwhile, the Baroque remodelling of León Cathedral’s presbytery prompted Ponz to deplore ‘how little the Gothic period has been valued for most of our century’.[53]
The subsequent historiography of Gothic architecture in Spain has been well-studied by Matilde Mateo and others, and the number of scholars and publications is anyway too copious to consider properly in this Introduction.[54] But a brief roll call of the most important scholars of Gothic architecture in Spain would include Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, José Caveda, George Edmund Street, Vicente Lampérez, Élie Lambert, and Leopoldo Torres Balbás, amongst many others.[55] Special mention should also be made of the archaeologist and literary historian, José Amador de los Ríos (1816–78), who in 1859 first formulated the idea of ‘Mudéjar’ architecture, a term that has since been widely employed to describe art or buildings made for Christian patrons but that refer to Andalusi visual and artistic traditions.[56] Although the essays in this collection only occasionally touch on overlaps between Gothic and Mudéjar traditions, the question of Islamic ‘influence’ or ‘assimilation’ has been a constant of all scholarship on Spanish medieval art since the nineteenth century.[57]
Scholarship on cross-confessional encounters and artistic pluralism has, indeed, been especially robust in the Anglophone world, especially since the quincentennial celebrations of 1992 and the renewed reflection prompted by 9/11 and the Madrid bombings of 2004.[58] So given that scholars in the US and UK have long maintained interests in Romanesque art and architecture and the Spanish Golden Age, it might reasonably be asked why so few Anglophone scholars since G. E. Street have seriously engaged with Gothic architecture in Spain.[59] This can be partly explained by the excellence of Street’s study and its multiple editions, by long-standing perceptions of French and Italian cultural superiority (now increasingly challenged by the rise of Hispanic culture in the US), by British scholars’ focus on Gothic architecture in Britain after World War II, by the endurance of the ‘Black Legend’, by the legendary inaccessibility of Spanish archives, and by the teaching and scholarship of a few influential individuals in other areas of Spanish art history (notably John Williams and Jonathan Brown in recent years).[60] But with regards to the study of Gothic architecture in Spain the exception perhaps proves the rule, at least in the UK, for the only major twentieth-century publication in English since Street’s is John Harvey’s The Cathedrals of Spain (1957).[61] Harvey was one of the leading scholars of English Gothic architecture in post-war England and his book contains a number of original observations, even if it is set out like a guide book.[62] But Harvey’s conservatism made him an unpopular figure for many in England’s liberal post-war universities, and in 2008 Graham Macklin revealed that Harvey had in fact been closely linked with the Fascist movement in the 1930s and 1940s.[63] It is unclear to what extent Harvey’s political connections extended into Franquist Spain, and his prejudices do not surface clearly in The Cathedrals of Spain, but medievalists who knew Harvey nonetheless confirm anecdotally that many were deterred from working on Spanish Gothic architecture because of its association with Harvey and with Franco’s regime.[64]
In Spain itself, Gothic architecture has traditionally played second fiddle to Romanesque. Compare the twenty-seven volumes of Catalunya románica, published with the support of the autonomous Catalan government between 1984 and 1998, and the ten volumes of L’Art gotic a Catalunya, begun only in 2002. The government of Navarre demonstrated similar priorities, supporting publication of the lavishly illustrated El arte románico en Navarra in 2004, followed by El arte gótico en Navarra in 2015. But the clearest example of Spain’s preference for the Romanesque is the massive Enciclopedia del Románico, so far published in fifty-two volumes by the Fundación Santa María la Real in Aguilar de Campoo (Palencia) and covering all of Spain and Portugal.[65] There is simply no equivalent for Gothic architecture.
Despite these reservations, and the long-term consequences of the economic crash in 2008 (not least the paucity of jobs for post-doctoral students and of research leave for academics), this seems like a golden moment in the study of Gothic architecture in Spain. This is particularly noticeable in the flurry of recent conferences and publications on architecture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and in the publication of newly discovered written and graphic sources.[66] The professional lives of several prominent late Gothic architects have also been studied, and the vexed question of the relationships between Sondergotik and ‘Catalan Gothic’ has received new scrutiny.[67] Beginning with Henrik Karge’s seminal study of Burgos Cathedral (1989), early Gothic architecture in the peninsula has also been newly studied, especially in the last twenty years.[68] Eduardo Carrero and others have done much to revitalise the study of relationships between Gothic architecture, ceremony and urbanism,[69] while holistic studies of art and architecture have been attempted for some regions and buildings.[70]
Besides many other achievements, these recent studies have done much to draw attention to the inventiveness of Gothic architecture in Spain—often prompted by imitation of one kind or another.[71] Amongst other examples, we might cite the rib vaults of the Pórtico de la Gloria at Santiago de Compostela, transformed into a vision of the Apocalypse (Fig. 1.10).[72] Or the carefully downsized replica of Notre-Dame in Paris at the collegiate church at Roncesvalles (Fig. 1.11).[73] Or the presbytery at Toledo Cathedral, where the triforium offers a Gothic translation of Andalusi designs, and the vaults employ additional decorative ribs some years before the earliest lierne vaults in England (Fig. 1.12).[74] Or the twisting Solomonic columns employed in churches and markets in the Crown of Aragon, inspired by Solomon’s Temple, and stereotomically complex (see Fig. 1.8).[75] Or the tremendous variety of tracery designs in the great cloisters at Lleida and Vic Cathedrals (Fig. 1.13).[76] Or the unusual plan of Pamplona Cathedral, with an irregular pentagonal eastern bay, and four huge and hexagonal vaults that unite the ambulatory and radiating chapels (Fig. 1.14).[77] Or the unprecedented width of the nave vaults of Gerona Cathedral (Fig. 1.15).[78] Or the precocious popularity of hall churches right across the peninsula.[79] It is impossible to do justice here to the creativity of Gothic architecture across Spain, but these examples, chosen more or less at random, offer some hint of the potential for further study. In the final section of this Introduction I will summarise the contribution of the essays in this collection to this burgeoning field.
The Essays
The nine essays are arranged in approximately chronological order. In the first essay, ‘The “Sumptuous Style”: Richly-Decorated Gothic Churches in the Reign of Alfonso the Learned’, Henrik Karge examines the abundant vegetal ornament in Rayonnant architecture in the Crown of Castile. Karge’s pioneering monograph on Burgos Cathedral (1989) and subsequent studies of Las Huelgas and León Cathedral helped to set a new standard for the rigorous scrutiny of building archaeology, written sources, and architectural contexts. Beginning with a careful study of the cloister of Burgos Cathedral, Karge here argues for the existence of distinct workshops of figural and decorative sculptors in Gothic building lodges. From Burgos he moves to Las Huelgas, Cañas, León, Cuenca and Toledo, and links the ‘sumptuous style’ he identifies in these buildings to the court of King Alfonso X of Castile and his imperial ambitions. Invention and imitation in Rayonnant buildings in Castile must be understood, he suggests, in relation to well-established traditions of ornament in the Iberian Peninsula, but also in the context of the networks of architects and patrons that stretched across the peninsula and into France and the Holy Roman Empire.
Javier Martínez de Aguirre’s research and publications encompass both Romanesque and Gothic traditions and range impressively widely across the Spanish kingdoms. His essay, ‘The King, the Architects and the Philosopher: Invention in Mallorcan Architecture around 1300’ explores the design and early construction history of two extraordinary architectural projects in Mallorca: the cathedral of Palma, initiated in 1306, and Bellver Castle, begun at similar date. The geometry, numerology and orientation of Palma Cathedral’s unusual east end are considered in relation to devotion to the Incarnation and to the Trinity, and thence to the contemporary Mallorcan scholar Raymond Llull, especially his Liber de Trinitate et Encarnatione and Liber de geometria nova et compendiosa. Ultimately Martínez concludes that innovation at Bellver and Palma occurred in their planning stages, and that both projects may reveal a distant awareness of Llull’s ideas, with King James II as patron and possible intermediary.
In ‘Architectural Practice in Spain 1370–1450: Documents and Drawings’, Encarna Montero offers the first summary in English—albeit here focused on architecture, and expanded with new evidence and ideas—of her important PhD and subsequent book on the transmission of artistic knowledge in Spain between 1370 and 1450. She draws on new evidence from across the peninsula, and especially from the rich archival holdings in Tortosa and Valencia that have been explored with renewed energy in recent years. With detailed study of apprenticeships and architectural drawings, she considers how innovation or imitation might have been encouraged by or despite long apprenticeships, and the role of architectural drawings in transmitting ideas and establishing new forms of architectural authority. Her recent discoveries in Valencia, Tortosa and elsewhere underline how much Spain has to offer historians of Gothic architecture more widely.
The fourth essay in the collection is by Amadeo Serra Desfilis, who has in many ways spearheaded the recent resurgence of medieval art history in Valencia, and done much to clarify artistic relationships between Italy and Spain in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. ‘Patterns of intention: Royal Chapels in the Crown of Aragon (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries) and the Capilla de los Reyes in the Convent of Saint Dominic, Valencia’ focuses on the remarkable royal chapel in the convent of Saint Dominic of Valencia, built between 1439 and 1463. Comparisons with the British Library’s Psalter and Hours of Alfonso V, and with royal chapels in the crowns of Aragon and Castile, make possible a series of observations about the chapel’s function and institutional structure. The chapel’s spare grey walls and extraordinary diamond vaults are linked to the Dominican ideal of intense spirituality promoted by Saint Vincent Ferrer, and contrast with the rich settings of the relics that were kept and perhaps displayed in the chapel. Although it corresponds broadly to a wider typology of royal chapels in the Crown of Aragon, the royal chapel at the convent of Saint Dominic incorporates a number of innovations that can be understood as a response to the Mediterranean ambitions of Alfonso V and of the city of Valencia.
In ‘Inventio and Imitatio: the Appropriation of Valois Style by a Converso Contador Mayor’, Nicola Jennings takes a holistic look at the funerary chapel of Fernán López de Saldaña in the convent of Santa Clara de Tordesillas, begun in 1430. Jennings’s research explores relationships between Spain and northern Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries across a range of media, and here she focuses on an ensemble in which ‘maestre Guillén de Rohán’ (probably from Rouen) and Isambart (documented in Picardy in 1399 and subsequently associated with a number of Spanish lodges) seem to have played an important role. Reconstructing the chapel’s original design, she argues that the patron’s choice of Norman and Flemish masons, stone-carvers and sculptors resulted in a mix of invention and imitation of Valois style which can be linked to Saldaña’s dynastic ambitions and fluctuating political fortunes.
Diana Olivares Martínez shifts attention to collegiate architecture in the sixth essay, ‘New Functions, New Typologies: Inventio in Valladolid’s College of San Gregorio’. Olivares completed her doctoral study of the college in 2018 and has been extremely active in publishing on aspects of late medieval architecture and patronage, organising symposia and conference sessions, and editing an important volume of essays on art and architecture circa 1200. Her essay focuses on the College of San Gregorio in Valladolid, founded in 1487 by Alonso de Burgos and built by an anonymous but extremely creative architect. She examines the college’s layout in relation to earlier traditions of colleges in Spain and beyond, as well as domestic and monastic complexes, and connects the prominent heraldry and varied and inventive designs of the college’s courtyard, chapel and portal to Alonso’s concerns to assert his status and express architectural magnificence.
Essay seven, ‘Imitating a Model, Establishing an Identity: Copying San Juan de los Reyes at San Andrés, Toledo’, shows how patrons sought the prestigious associations of San Juan de los Reyes by imitating its distinctive architectural idiom in the chapels they commissioned. Costanza Beltrami recently completed her PhD at The Courtauld and has published on aspects of late medieval architecture in Rouen. Her thesis seeks to re-examine the artistic identity of Juan Guas, one of the most celebrated architects of late medieval Spain. In this essay she focuses particularly on the capilla mayor of the Toledan parish church of San Andrés and its little-known clever adaptation of Guas’s designs for San Juan. This should be understood, she argues, not only as the casual consequence of shared (and undocumented) master masons, but also in relation to the career and family of San Andrés’s chief patron, Francisco de Rojas.
Turning to another eminent late Gothic architect and dynasty, Nicolás Menéndez González considers modifications to the design of the church of the royal Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, near Burgos, after Simón de Colonia assumed control of the project begun in the 1460s by his father Juan. ‘Redesigning Miraflores: Simón de Colonia’s Architectural Perception’ teases out the church’s relationship with Santa María de las Cuevas in Seville, on which the church of Miraflores was explicitly modelled, and relates the church’s enrichment under Simón to the patronage of Queen Isabella. Innovative details of the church’s façade and vault design are related to its setting and function as a royal funerary chapel, and reveal Simón’s careful reflection on the designs of his father. The essay thus forms part of Menéndez’s wider assessment of the Colonia dynasty, the subject of his doctoral thesis and recent book.
Begoña Alonso Ruiz contributes the collection’s final essay, which appropriately includes a number of reflections on the historiography of Gothic architecture in Spain. Through multiple publications, conferences and edited volumes, Alonso has played a key role in establishing the vibrancy of the field of late Gothic architecture in Spain in recent years. ‘Hallenkirchen and Spanish Gothic Architecture: Historiographic Invention and Architectural Imitation’ revisits the subject of hall churches across Spain, from the thirteenth century through to the sixteenth. Alonso explores the wider European context for the development of hall churches, and the ways in which Spanish examples have been understood in relation to German Hallenkirchen. The success of the type can be linked to a number of key architects and workshops, she suggests, but also depends on the relative economy with which impressive architectural effects could be created in parish churches.
Together these essays offer new and multiple visions of Gothic architecture in Spain, and explore the dynamic relationships between invention and imitation, architects and patrons, production and reception. Inventive in their own right, the essays nonetheless draw on the work of scholars old and new, and it is hoped that they will persuade readers of the interest of these buildings, and that Gothic architecture in Spain—no less than the broader artistic culture—deserves and rewards further study.
Citations
[1] George Edmund Street, Some account of Gothic architecture in Spain (London: John Murray, 1865), p. 446.
[2] Some Account was, however, reprinted in 1869, 1914, 1969, 1980 and 2016, with Spanish translations in 1926 and 2015.
[3] Paul Binski, ‘Notes on Artistic Invention in Gothic Europe’, Intellectual History Review (2014): pp. 1-14, here p. 2; James S. Ackerman, ‘Imitation’, in Ackerman (ed.), Origins, imitation, conventions: representation in the visual arts (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 125-141, here p. 126; José Antonio Maravall, Antiguos y modernos: visión de la historia e idea de progreso hasta el Renacimiento (Madrid: Alianza, 1986), pp. 299-317; Hans-Joachim Schmidt (ed.), Tradition, Innovation, Invention: Fortschrittsverweigerung und Fortschrittsbewusstsein im Mittelalter (Berlin; New York: Université de Fribourg. Institut des études médiévales, 2005), esp. pp. 7-49. In the context of Gothic architecture in Spain, see Henrik Karge, ‘De Santiago de Compostela a León: modelos de innovación en la arquitectura medieval española. Un intento historiográfico más allá de los conceptos de estilo’, Anales de Historia del Arte (Ejemplar dedicado a: Cien años de investigación sobre arquitectura medieval española) 1 Extra (2009): pp. 165-196; Amadeo Serra Desfilis, ‘Promotores, tradiciones e innovación en la arquitectura valenciana del siglo XV’, Goya: Revista de arte 334 (2011): pp. 58-73. Inventio and imitatio were used in relation to imaginary architecture, however: Mary J. Carruthers, ‘The Poet as Master Builder: Composition and Locational Memory in the Middle Ages’, New Literary History 24: 4 (1993): pp. 881-904.
[4] Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae as The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen Barney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), Book X, section 122, p. 220. For a Spanish medieval theory of rhetorical invention, see Martinus Cordubensis, Breve compendium artis rethorice (sic), Ms 9309, fols 132-133v, Biblioteca Nacional de España.
[5] Jan Ziolkowski, ‘The Highest Form of Compliment: Imitatio in Medieval Latin Culture’, in Marenbon (ed.), Poetry and philosophy in the Middle Ages: a festschrift for Peter Dronke (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2001), pp. 293-307. Also see Alina Alexandra Payne, ‘Architects and Academies: Architectural Theories of imitatio and the Debates on Language and Style’, in Clarke and Crossley (eds.), Architecture and language: constructing identity in European architecture, c.1000-c.1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 195-202; Mario Carpo, ‘How Do You Imitate a Building That You Have Never Seen? Printed Images, Ancient Models, and Handmade Drawings in Renaissance Architectural Theory’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 64: 2 (2001): pp. 223-233; Christian Freigang, ‘Imitatio in Gothic Architecture: Forms versus Procedures’, in Opačić and Timmerman (eds.), Architecture, Liturgy, and Identity. Album Amicorum Paul Crossley (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 297-313.
[6] Maravall, Antiguos y modernos, pp. 25-71; Alexandra Gajewski, ‘The Choir of Auxerre Cathedral and the Question of a Burgundian Gothic Architecture’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 171: 1 (2018): pp. 34-60, here pp. 41-2 (and bibliography therein); Binski, ‘Notes on Artistic Invention’, pp. 2, 7-9.
[7] See, for example, Fernando Chueca Goitia, ‘Invención y asimilación en el arte español’, in Rumeu de Armas, Domínguez Ortiz, Seco Serrano and Benito Ruano (eds.), España: reflexiones sobre el ser de España (Madrid: Real Academia de Historia, 1997), pp. 535-546, here p. 538.
[8] Richard Krautheimer, ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture”‘, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): pp. 1-33 and Paul Crossley, ‘Medieval architecture and meaning: the limits of iconography’, Burlington magazine 130: 1019 (1988): pp. 116-122.
[9] The phrase had been used in architectural contexts since at least the early eleventh century. See Victor Mortet and Paul Deschamps, Recueil de textes relatifs à l’histoire de l’architecture et à la condition des architectes en France au moyen âge. XI-XII siècles (Paris: A. Picard, 1911), p. 29. For its use in Spain see, for example, Peter the Ceremonious’s request in July 1338 for ‘unum mapam mundi ad modum seu formam alterius illorum qui sunt in domo episcopi Valentie subtilibus figurati’ in Francisco M. Gimeno Blay, ‘”Si necessitat s’esdevenia a escriure”. Escritura y gobierno en la Corona de Aragón (siglo XIV)’, in Sarasa Sánchez (ed.), Monarquía, crónicas, archivos y cancillerías en los reinos hispano-cristianos: siglos XIII-XV (Zaragoza: Institución “Fernando el Católico”, 2014), pp. 185-222, here p. 215n117.
[10] ‘ad modum et formam et de easdem mensuras quibus tabernaculum sepulture dicti domini regis Petri, patris nostri, factum est et constructum’. In September 1312, James had written to Bertran Riquier, master of works on Barcelona’s royal palace, asking him to measure Peter’s tomb and begin preparations for a new tomb, ‘similis illi in quo sepultum est corpus illustrissimi domini regis Petri’. These documents are now helpfully collected at http://santescreus.mhcat.cat/ca/el-projecte/apendix-documental-documentacio-medieval (accessed 1 February 2019), here docs. 83, 88 and 89.
[11] For the date of the translation see http://santescreus.mhcat.cat/ca/el-projecte/apendix-documental-documentacio-medieval (accessed 1 February 2019), doc. 34.
[12] Tom Nickson, ‘The royal tombs of Santes Creus. Negotiating the royal image in medieval Iberia’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 72: 1 (2009): pp. 1-14, here pp. 8-9.
[13] ‘Primerament que lo dit en Pere Torregrosa sia tengut fer e fara una capella bella e notable, en lo loch de la capella de sent Joan Batiste, dins la seu, de la altitud amplea e forma de la de Sta Anna en la dita seu’. See Encarna Montero Tortajada, La transmisión del conocimiento en los oficios artísticos: Valencia 1370-1450 (València: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 2015), p. 123; José Sanchis Sivera, ‘La escultura valenciana en la Edad Media, notas para su historia’, Archivo de arte valenciano 10 (1924): pp. 3-29, here p. 29.
[14] Krautheimer, ‘Introduction’, pp. 10-13.
[15] Paula Gerson, ‘De qualitate aecclesiae: Architectural Description in the Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela’, in Nicolai and Rheidt (eds.), Santiago de Compostela: Pilgerarchitektur und bildliche Repräsentation in neuer Perspektive (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015), pp. 31-41, here pp. 37-40; Antonio C. Floriano, ‘Anales Toledanos III’, Cuadernos de Historia de España 43-44 (1967): pp. 154-187, here pp. 178-9; Felipe Pereda, ‘Measuring Jerusalem: The Marquis of Tarifa’s Pilgrimage in 1520 and its Urban Consequences’, Città e Storia 7 (2012): pp. 77-102, here p. 94; María Teresa Cortón de las Heras, La Construcción de la Catedral de Segovia (1523-1607) (Segovia: Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Segovia, 1997), p. 52.
[16] María Victòria Almuni i Balada, La Catedral de Tortosa als segles del Gòtic (Barcelona: Fundació Noguera, 2007), 1: pp. 72-73. A slightly later drawing, marked ‘en Antoni Guarc: mostra a portar’, shows a plan for the new cathedral that differs from the extant structure, and in 1375, Andreu Julià, master mason at Tortosa and Valencia Cathedrals, was sent to visit several cities, and made a drawing of the bell tower of Lérida Cathedral. See Almuni i Balada, La Catedral de Tortosa, 1: pp. 104-6, 117, 455-6.
[17] ‘segons la forma e manera de la mostra per ell (Llobet) feta e donada al dit capitol e traçada per ell mateix en l’ort den Pere Daries’. See Arturo Zaragozá and A. García, ‘El dibujo de proyecto en época medieval según la documentación archivística: el episodio gótico valenciano’, in Docci (ed.), Il disegno di progetto dalle origini al XVIII secolo (Rome: Gangemi, 1993), pp. 41-44, here pp. 42-43.
[18] ‘segund e en la manera que está fecha e obrada la portada de la eglesia de Sant Esteuan desta dicha Çibdat’. See I. Ríos Collantes de Terán and Antonio Sánchez de Mora, ‘El mudéjar en la iglesia parroquial de San Juan Bautista, vulgo de la Palma: a propósito de un documento’, Laboratorio de Arte: Revista del Departamento de Historia del Arte 11 (1998): pp. 405-420, here p. 412.
[19] ‘tal commo el que está fecho en la esglesia de Santa Agna de Triana’. See Ríos Collantes de Terán and Sánchez de Mora, ‘El mudéjar’, p. 412.
[20] For this group see Alfredo J. Morales, ‘Los inicios de la arquitectura mudéjar en Sevilla’, in Morales (ed.), Metropolis totius hispaniae. 750 aniversario de la incorporación de Sevilla a la corona castellana (Seville: Ayuntamiento de Sevilla, 1998), pp. 91-106.
[21] Cicero, De inventione (Book II, part 1, i), discussed in Binski, ‘Notes on Artistic Invention’, p. 1. Compare Gabriel Byng, ‘The Dynamic of Design: ‘Source’ Buildings and Contract Making in England in the Later Middle Ages’, Architectural History 59 (2016): pp. 123-148, here pp. 134-35.
[22] For Gothic architecture in Mexico, see, for example, Ana María Lara Gutiérrez, ‘La Arquitectura gótica de la nueva España’, in Jiménez Martín (ed.), La piedra postrera. V centenario de la conclusión de la Catedral de Sevilla. Ponencias (Seville: Tvrris Fortissima, 2007), pp. 281-303.
[23] Leopoldo Torres Balbás, ‘Atarazanas hispanomusulmanas’, al-Andalus 11 (1946): pp. 175-209, here pp. 196-203.
[24] Joan Domenge i Mesquida, ‘Guillem Sagrera et “lo modern de son temps”‘, Revue de l’art 166: 4 (2009): pp. 77-90, here p. 86; Carmen Gómez Urdáñez, ‘El palacio de los Reyes Católicos. Descripción artística’, in Cabañero Subiza (ed.), La Aljafería (Zaragoza: Cortes de Aragón, 1998), pp. 229-287.
[25] For an attempt at a pan-Iberian bibliography of medieval art and architecture see Tom Nickson, ‘Art of Medieval Iberia’, in Oxford Bibliographies Online, DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199920105-0140 (accessed 5 November 2019).
[26] Felipe Pereda, ‘Entre Portugal y Castilla: la secuencia formal de las capillas ochavadas de cabecera en el siglo XV’, in Guillaume (ed.), Demeures d’éternité: églises et chapelles funéraires aux XVe et XVIe siècles. Actes du colloque tenu à Tours du 11 au 14 juin 1996 (Paris: Picard, 2005), pp. 49-64.
[27] María Ealo de Sá and Alberto Luna, El arquitecto Juan de Castillo: el constructor del mundo (Santander: Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Cantabria, 2009). See, for example, Ana Maria S.A. Rodrigues, ‘The Treasures and Foundations of Isabel, Beatriz, Elisenda, and Leonor: The Art Patronage of Four Iberian Queens in the Fourteenth Century’, in Martín (ed.), Reassessing the Roles of Women as Makers of Medieval Art and Architecture (Brepols: Brill, 2012), pp. 903-934; María Victoria Herráez and María Dolores Teijeira, ‘Entre Castilla y Portugal. El patronazgo de Vasco Fernández de Toledo (†1362)’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 10: 3 (2018): pp. 341-363.
[28] José Antonio Maravall, El concepto de España en la Edad Media (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos, 1964).
[29] Fernando Marías Franco, El largo siglo XVI: los usos artísticos del renancimiento español (Madrid: Taurus, 1989), pp. 98-99; Ludwig Pfandl, ‘Itinerarium Hispanicum Hieronymi Monetarii, 1494-1495’, Revue Hispanique 48 (1920): pp. 1-179, here p. 101; Louis Gachard, Collection des voyages des souverains des Pays-Bas (Brussels: F. Hayez, 1876), vol. 1, p. 205; Fernando Marías Franco, ‘La magnificencia del mármol. La escultura genovesa y la arquitectura española (siglos XV-XVI)’, in Boccardo, Colomer and Di Fabio (eds.), España y Génova obras, artistas y coleccionistas (Madrid: Fernando Villaverde Ediciones Centro de Estudios Hispánicos e Iberoamericanos, 2004), pp. 55-68, here p. 62.
[30] For a recent (and otherwise excellent) example, see Palma Martínez-Burgos García, ‘El mecenazgo artístico de Cisneros: gusto y manera “ad modum Yspaniae”‘, in Sánchez Gamero (ed.), Cisneros: arquetipo de virtudes, espejo de prelados (Toledo: Cabildo Primado, Catedral de Toledo, 2017), pp. 147-163.
[31] Fernando Marías Franco, ‘La memoria de la catedral de Toledo desde 1604: la descripción de Juan Bravo de Acuña y la planta y dibujos ceremoniales de Nicolás de Vergara el Mozo’, Anuario del Departamento de Historia y Teoría del Arte 21 (2009): pp. 105-120, here p. 119n30, implies that this term had already been employed in the ‘Epístola al Lector’ in M. Vitruvio Pollion, De architectura dividido en diez libros (Alcala de Henares: Juan Gracian, 1582), fol. 4v, but I can find no such reference.
[32] See Xavier de Salas and Fernando Marías, El Greco y el arte de su tiempo: Las notas de El Greco a Vasari (Madrid: Real Fundación de Toledo, 1992); Giorgio Vasari and Virginia Stefanelli, La città ideale: Piante di chiese [palazzi e ville] di Toscana e d’Italia (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1970); José María Guerrero Vega, ‘El plano de Vasari de la catedral de Sevilla’, in Álvarez Márquez (ed.), La catedral gótica Magna Hispalensis: los primeros años (Seville: Aula Hernán Ruiz, 2008), pp. 89-121.
[33] Regina Af Geijerstam and Cyntia M. Wasick (eds.), Crónica de San Isidoro. Estocolmo D 1272a (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1995), fol. 117r, accessed 9 February 2019, http://www.hispanicseminary.org/t&c/cro/icr/text.icr1.htm.
[34] Emilio Meneses Garcia (ed.), Correspondencia del Conde de Tendilla (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1974), 1: p. 570; Patrick Lenaghan ‘”It shall all be Roman”: early patrons of Italian Renaissance tombs in Spain’, in Schroth (ed.), Art in Spain and the Hispanic world: Essays in honor of Jonathan Brown (London: Paul Holberton, 2010), pp. 213-234, esp. p. 220.
[35] Lenaghan ‘It shall all be Roman’, p. 232n2. See also Begoña Alonso’s essay in this collection.
[36] Lenaghan ‘It shall all be Roman’, pp. 218-21.
[37] Ordenanças de Seuilla (1512): recopilacion de las ordenanças dela muy noble [et] muy leal cibdad de Seuilla (Seville: Juan Varela de Salamanca, 1527), fol. 151.
[38] Earl E. Rosenthal, The Cathedral of Granada. A study in the Spanish Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 192, doc. 145; Antonio Urquízar Herrera and Alicia Cámara Muñoz, Renacimiento (Madrid: Editorial Universitaria Ramón Areces, 2017), pp. 44-5. The difference here between uso and modo is not clear.
[39] Juan de Arfe y Villafañe, Varia commensuración para la escultura y arquitectura (Seville: Andrea Percioni y Juan de León, 1585), Book 4, fols 2r-v. Juan de Arfe’s words carried a particular autobiographical relevance, for his grandfather, Enrique de Arfe, had in the early sixteenth century migrated to Castile from German lands, and the metalwork custodias and sceptres he made for Sahagún, León, Córdoba, Toledo and Oviedo constitute some of the most spectacular creations of late-Gothic microarchitecture in all of Europe. Juan’s vocabulary was in turn echoed in his brief biography by the artist and theorist Antonio Palomino, published in 1723, in which Palomino credited Juan’s father, Antonio, for abandoning this ‘arquitectura bárbara gótica’ in favour of a Roman style. See Antonio Palomino de Castro y Velasco, El museo pictorico y escala optica (Madrid: Lucas Antonio de Bedmar, 1723), p. 393.
[40] François Bertaut, Journal du voyage d’Espagne (Paris: Claude Barbin, 1669), p. 142.
[41] Jusepe Martínez and Valentín Carderera, Discursos del nobilísimo arte de la pintura (Madrid: Manuel Tello, 1866), pp. 170 and 179.
[42] Madame d’Aulnoy, Relation du voyage d’Espagne (Paris: Claude Barbin, 1691), 1: p. 212. The translation is taken from Madame d’Aulnoy, The Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the Lady-(Marie Catherine, Baroness [or rather Countess] of Aulnoy) Travels into Spain … The second edition (London: Samuel Crouch, 1692), p. 50. Whence the judgement that Burgos cathedral ‘is justly reckoned, among the most elegant Pieces of Gothic Architecture’: Udal Ap Rhys, An Account of the Most Remarkable Places and Curiosities in Spain and Portugal (London: J. Osborn et al, 1749), p. 31.
[43] Jean-François Félibien, Recueil historique de la vie et des ouvrages des plus célèbres architectes (Paris: Widow of Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy, 1687), preface; Charles Rollin, Rolin abreviado, ô compendio de la historia antigua (Antwerp: Marc Miguel Bousquet, 1745), 6: pp. 86-7. Martín Sarmiento, Viaje a Galicia (1745) (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad, 1975), p. 61, describes semi-circular arches in the Torre de Oeste in Catoira (Galicia), ‘which, as they are not ‘modern’, must predate the Gothic structure or order (la fábrica o orden gótico)’.
[44] Jean-Louis de Cordemoy, Nouveau traité de toute l’architecture, ou l’Art de bastir; … Avec un dictionnaire des termes d’architecture, &c (Paris: Chez Jean-Baptiste Coignard, 1714), pp. 241-3; Matilde Mateo Sevilla, ‘The Making of the Sarracenic Style: the Crusades and Medieval Architecture in the British Imagination of the 18th and 19th centuries’, in Semaan (ed.), The Crusades: other experiences, alternate perspectives (Binghamton, N.Y.: Global Academic Pub., 2003), pp. 115-140.
[45] Matilde Mateo Sevilla, ‘In Search of the Origin of the Gothic: Thomas Pitt´s Travel in Spain in 1760’, Journal of Art Historiography 15 (2016): pp. 1-22, especially pp. 9-11.
[46] See, in general, José García Mercadal, Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal (Madrid: Aguilar, 1952-62), and, for British travellers, Ian Robertson, Los Curiosos impertinentes. Viajeros ingleses por España, 1760-1855 (Madrid: Serbal, 1988).
[47] Mateo Sevilla, ‘In Search’, p. 11.
[48] Mateo Sevilla, ‘In Search’, pp. 15-18.
[49] See Ignacio Luis Henares Cuéllar, ‘Arqueología e historia del arte islámico en el Siglo de las Luces. El informe de Jovellanos sobre los monumentos árabes de Granada y Córdoba’, Revista del Centro de Estudios Históricos de Granada y su Reino 2 (1988): pp. 165-176, here p. 175; Nieves Panadero Peropadre, ‘Teorías sobre el origen de la arquitectura gótica en la historiografía ilustrada y romántica española’, Anales de Historia del Art (Homenaje al profesor Dr. D. José María de Azcárate y Ristori) 4 (1993-1994): pp. 203-211; José Enrique García Melero, Literatura española sobre artes plásticas (Madrid: Encuentro, 2002); Ramon Grau i Fernández and Marina López i Guallar, ‘Origen de la revaloració del gòtic a Barcelona: Capmany, 1792’, Barcelona quaderns d’història 8 (2003): pp. 143-177; Karge, ‘De Santiago de Compostela a León’, p. 169; Daniel Crespo Delgado, Un viaje para la Ilustración: el “Viaje de España” (1772-1794) de Antonio Ponz (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2012), pp. 233-41.
[50] Antonio Ponz, Viage de España ó Cartas en que se da noticia de las cosas mas apreciables, y dignas de saberse que hay en ella (Madrid: D. Joachin Ibarra, 1772), pp. 36-7.
[51] Ponz, Viage, pp. 44-5; Juan Luis Blanco Mozo, ‘La restauración como problema: el arzobispo Francisco Antonio Lorenzana y Ventura Rodríguez ante las reformas de la catedral de Toledo (1774-1775)’, Anuario del Departamento de Historia y Teoría del Arte, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid 12 (2000): pp. 111-130, here p. 120.
[52] Antonio Ponz, Viage de España (Madrid: Ibarra, 1783), pp. 219-20. See Crespo Delgado, Un viaje para la Ilustración, pp. 225-42. The echo (and inversion) of Christopher Wren’s famous statement that ‘what we now vulgarly call Gothic ought properly and truly be named Saracenic architecture’ (Christopher Wren, Parentalia (London: T. Osborne, 1750), p. 297) is striking. This must have been written before Ponz’s journey to England in 1783, but had he already encountered Wren’s writings? See Mónica Bolufer Peruga, ‘Visiones de Europa en el Siglo de las Luces: El “Viaje fuera de España” (1785) de Antonio Ponz’, Estudis: Revista de historia moderna 28 (2002): pp. 167-204.
[53] Ponz, Viage de España, p. 220. See, more broadly, José Enrique García Melero, Las catedrales góticas en la España de la Ilustración: La incidencia del neoclasicismo en el gótico (Madrid: Encuentro, 2002).
[54] See, most recently, Matilde Mateo Sevilla, ‘The Moorish-Gothic Cathedral: Invention, Reality, or Weapon?’, in Glaser (ed.), The Idea of the Gothic cathedral: interdisciplinary perspectives on the meanings of the medieval edifice in the modern period (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2018), pp. 47-80. See also Eduardo Carrero Santamaría, ‘Teoría y método en la Historia de la arquitectura medieval. Algunas reflexiones’, in Rosselló Bordoy (ed.), Seminari d’estudis històrics 2007: Arqueologia de l’arquitectura (Palma de Mallorca: Societat Arqueològica Lul·liana, 2008), pp. 5-27; Geneviève Barbé-Coquelin de Lisle, ‘El arte medieval español visto por los historiadores del arte franceses en el siglo XX’, in Cabañas Bravo (ed.), El arte español fuera de España (Madrid: CSIC, 2003), pp. 453-458; Philippe Araguas, ‘La arquitectura medieval española vista por los <> franceses’, Anales de Historia del Arte supplementary volume (2009): pp. 9-26; Iñigo Basarrate, ‘The British discovery of Spanish Gothic architecture’, Journal of Art Historiography 19 (2018): pp. 1-30.
[55] See, in particular, Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, Descripción artística de la Catedral de Sevilla (Seville: La viuda de Hidalgo y sobrino, 1804), pp. 17-18; Eugenio de Llaguno y Amírola, Noticias de los Arquitectos y Arquitectura de España desde su Restauración (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1829), 1: xxxi and pp. 34-168; José Caveda, Ensayo histórico sobre los diversos géneros de arquitectura empleados en España desde la dominacion Romana hasta nuestros dias (Madrid: Saintiago Saunaque, 1849), pp. 249-417; Street, Some account; Vicente Lampérez y Romea, Historia de la arquitectura cristiana española en la edad media, según el estudio de los elementos y los monumentos, etc. (Madrid: José Blass y Cía, 1908); Vicente Lampérez y Romea and España Comisaría Regia del Turismo, La Catedral de Burgos (Barcelona: H. de J. Thomas, 1911); Vicente Lampérez y Romea, Los grandes monasterios españoles (Madrid: Saturnino Calleja, 1920); Vicente Lampérez y Romea, Arquitectura civil española de los siglos I al XVIII (Madrid: Saturnino Calleja, 1922); Élie Lambert, L’Art gothique en Espagne aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Paris: Henri Laurens, 1931); Élie Lambert, Études médiévales (Toulouse: Privat-Didier 1956-7); Leopoldo Torres Balbás, Arquitectura gótica (Madrid: Editorial Plus-Ultra, 1952); Leopoldo Torres Balbás, Obra dispersa (Madrid: Instituto de España, 1981-5) http://oa.upm.es/view/creators/Torres_Balb=E1s=3ALeopoldo=3A=3A.html.
[56] See especially José Amador de los Ríos, Sevilla pintoresca o descripción de sus más célebres monumentos artísticos (Seville: Francisco Álvarez y Cª, 1844); José Amador de los Rios, Toledo pintoresca (Madrid: Ignacio Boix, 1845); José Amador de los Ríos, El estilo mudéjar en la arquitectura discurso del Ilmo. Sr. D. José Amador de los Ríos: leido en junta pública de 19 de junio de 1859 (Madrid: José Rodríguez, 1859); and scattered essays in Museo Español de Antigüedades (published in eleven volumes between 1872 and 1880) and Monumentos Arquitectonicos de España (published in series, between 1859 and 1895). See Antonio Urquízar Herrera, ‘La caracterización política del concepto mudéjar en España durante el siglo XIX’, Espacio, tiempo y forma. Serie VII, Historia del arte 22-23 (2009-10): pp. 201-216.
[57] See, among other studies, María Judith Feliciano and Leyla Rouhi, ‘Introduction: Interrogating Iberian Frontiers’, Medieval Encounters 12: 3 (2006): pp. 317-328; Philippe Araguas, Brique et architecture dans l’Espagne médiévale: XIIe-XVe siècles (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2003), pp. 137-41. At the conference from which this collection of essays is drawn, Elena Paulino Montero gave a paper on ‘Architecture and aesthetic practices in fourteenth-century Castile’, subsequently published as Elena Paulino Montero, ‘Architecture and Artistic Practices in Fourteenth Century Castile: The visual memory of Alfonso XI and Pedro I under the first Trastamaran kings’, La corónica 45: 2 (2017): pp. 133-163.
[58] See, for example, Maya Soifer, ‘Beyond convivencia: critical reflections on the historiography of interfaith relations in Christian Spain’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 1: 1 (2009): pp. 19-35.
[59] No major study has been published by French scholars since Lambert, L’Art gothique (1931). For Romanesque studies by Anglophone scholars, see, for example, Arthur Kingsley Porter, Romanesque sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads (Boston: Hacker Art Bks., 1965); Walter Muir Whitehill, Spanish Romanesque Architecture of the Eleventh Century (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1941); Charles Little (ed.), The Art of medieval Spain, A.D. 500-1200 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New York, 1993); Rose Walker, Art in Spain and Portugal from the Romans to the Early Middle Ages. Routes and Myths (Amsterdan: Amsterdam University Press, 2016).
[60] See Matilde Mateo Sevilla, ‘Breaking the Myth: Toledo Cathedral on the International Stage, a Review’, Journal of Art Historiography 17 (2017): pp. : pp. 2-5. For Spanish archives, see the preface to Peter Linehan, The Spanish Church and the papacy in the thirteenth century (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971).
[61] John Harvey, The Cathedrals of Spain (London: B. T. Batsford, 1957).
[62] His most important work is arguably John Harvey, English mediaeval architects: a biographical dictionary down to 1550 (Gloucester: Sutton, 1984).
[63] Graham Macklin, ‘The two lives of John Hooper Harvey’, Patterns of Prejudice 42: 2 (2008): pp. 167-190: esp. pp. 185-6, in which Macklin points to Harvey’s celebration of Edward I’s expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 and the period of ‘enlightened nationalism’ that followed.
[64] Harvey’s acknowledgements also reveal a network of friends with strong ties to Franco’s regime.
[65] Romanesque architecture is also especially well-served by numerous websites, of varying levels of academic reliability.
[66] See especially the publications listed by the research group, http://tardogotico.net (accessed 15 February 2019), including Alfonso Jiménez Martín (ed.), La piedra postrera. V centenario de la conclusión de la Catedral de Sevilla (Seville: Tvrris Fortissima, 2007); Begoña Alonso Ruiz (ed.), Los últimos arquitectos del gótico (Madrid: Marta Fernández-Rañada, 2010); Begoña Alonso Ruiz (ed.), La arquitectura tardogótica castellana entre Europa y América (Madrid: Silex, 2011); Begoña Alonso and Fernando Villaseñor Sebastián (eds.), Arquitectura tardogótica en la corona de Castilla: trayectorias e intercambios (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2014); Begoña Alonso Ruiz and Juan Clemente Rodríguez Estévez (eds.), 1514: arquitectos tardogóticos en la encrucijada (Seville: Editorial Universidad de Sevilla, 2016). For new graphic and documentary sources, or reappraisals of old ones, see, for example, Joan Domenge i Mesquida, ‘Guillem Morey a la seu de Girona (1375-1397). Seguiment documental’, Lambard 9 (1996): pp. 105-131; Joan Domenge i Mesquida, ‘Le portail du mirador de la cathédrale de Majorque: du document au monument’, in Bernardi, Hartmann-Virnich and Vingtain (eds.), Texte et archéologie monumentale: approches de l’architecture médiévale (Montagnac: M. Mergoil, 2005), pp. 10-26; Almuni i Balada, La Catedral de Tortosa; Begoña Alonso Ruiz and Alfonso Jiménez Martín, La traça de la Iglesia de Sevilla (Seville: Biblioteca autores sevillanos, 2009);Encarna Montero Tortajada, La transmisión del conocimiento en los oficios artísticos: Valencia 1370-1450; María Victoria Herráez Ortega and Santiago Domínguez Sánchez (eds.), La actividad artística en la Catedral de Toledo en 1418: el Libro de obra y fábrica OF 761 (León: Universidad de León, Instituto de Estudios Medievales, 2017); Enrique Rabasa Díaz, Ana López Mozo and Miguel Ángel Alonso Rodríguez (eds.), Obra congrua: Estudios sobre la construcción gótica, elaborados con motivo del 600 aniversario de la reunión de maestros convocada en 1416 para la consulta sobre la continuación de las obras de la catedral de Girona (Madrid: Instituto Juan de Herrera, 2017).
[67] John D. Hoag, Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón: gótico y renacimiento en la arquitectura española del siglo XVI (Madrid: Xarait, 1985); Joan Domenge i Mesquida, ‘Guillem Sagrera, maître d’oeuvre se la cathédrale de Majorque’, Histoire & mesure 16: 3/4 (2001): pp. 373-403; Begoña Alonso Ruiz, Arquitectura tardogótica en Castilla: los Rasines (Santander: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cantabria, 2003); Arturo Zaragozá Catalán, Mercedes Gómez-Ferrer Lozano and Joaquín Bérchez, Pere Compte: arquitecto (Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana: Ajuntament de València, 2007); Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza and Antonio García Flores, ‘Ysambart y la renovación del gótico final en Castilla: Palencia, la Capilla del Contador Saldaña en Tordesilla y Sevilla. Hipótesis para el debate’, Anales de Historia del Arte 19 (2009): pp. 43-76; German Andreu Chiva Maroto, ‘Francesc Baldomar. Maestro de obra de la Seo: Geometria e inspiracion biblica’ (PhD diss., Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, 2014). Costanza Beltrami, Juan Guas and Gothic Architecture in Late Medieval Spain: Collaborations, Networks and Geographies (unpublished PhD dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2020). On Sondergotik, see, for example, Joan Domenge i Mesquida, ‘Santa Maria del Mar i la historiografia del gotic meridional’, Barcelona quaderns d’historia 8 (2003): pp. 179-200.
[68] Henrik Karge, Die Kathedrale von Burgos und die spanische Architektur des 13. Jahrhunderts: französische Hochgotik in Kastilien und León (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1989); Gema Palomo Fernández, La catedral de Cuenca en el contexto de las grandes canterías catedralicias castellanas en la Baja Edad Media (Cuenca: Diputación de Cuenca, 2002); Arturo Zaragozá Catalán and Eduard Mira (eds.), Una arquitectura gótica mediterránea (Valencia: Conselleria de Cultura i Educació, Subsecretaria de Promoció Cultural, 2003); Henrik Karge, ‘La arquitectura de la catedral de León en el contexto del gótico europeo’, in Yarza Luaces, Herráez Ortega and Boto Varela (eds.), La catedral de León en la Edad Media (Leon: Universidad de León, 2004), pp. 113-144; Arturo Zaragozá Catalán, Arquitectura gótica valenciana: siglos XIII-XV (Valencia: Conselleria de Cultura, 2004); James D’Emilio, ‘The Royal Convent of Las Huelgas: Dynastic Politics, Religious Reform and Artistic Change in Medieval Castile’, in Lillich (ed.), Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture (Dublin: Columba Press, 2005), pp. 189-280; Arturo Zaragozá Catalán and Vicent Gil Vicent (eds.), Jaime I (1208-2008): arquitectura año cero (Castelló: Museu de Belles Arts de Castello, 2008); Tom Nickson, Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2015); Gerardo Boto Varela, ‘Morphogenesis and Spatial Organisation of Tarragona Cathedral (1150‒1225)’, in Boto Varela and Kroesen (eds.), Romanesque cathedrals in Mediterranean Europe: architecture, ritual and urban context (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 85-105; Diana Olivares Martínez and Maria Poza Yagüe (eds.), Alfonso VIII y Leonor de Inglaterra: confluencias artísticas en el entorno de 1200 (Madrid: Ediciones Complutenses, 2017).
[69] See, e.g., Eduardo Carrero Santamaría, Las catedrales de Galicia durante la Edad Media: claustros y entorno urbano (La Coruña: 2005); Javier Miguel Martínez de Aguirre Aldaz, ‘El componente artístico de las ceremonias de coronación y exequias en tiempos de Carlos II y Carlos III de Navarra’, in Ramírez Vaquero (ed.), Ceremonial de la coronación, unción y exequias de los reyes de Inglaterra (Pamplona: Gobierno de Navarra, 2008), pp. 229-250; Eduardo Carrero Santamaría (ed.), Arquitectura y liturgia: el contexto artístico de las consuetas catedralicias en la Corona de Aragón (Palma, Mallorca: Objeto Perdido, 2014); Sonia Dauksis Ortolá (ed.), Historia de la ciudad (Valencia: Instituto para la Comunicación, Asesoría, 2000-2015); Eduardo Carrero Santamaría, La catedral habitada. Historia viva de un espacio arquitectónico (Barcelona: Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2019).
[70] Javier Martínez de Aguirre, Arte y monarquía en Navarra, 1328-1425 (Pamplona: Institución Príncipe de Viana, 1987); Francesca Español Bertrán, El Gòtic Català (Barcelona: Angle Editorial, 2002); Nickson, Toledo Cathedral.
[71] See, for example, Rafael Cómez Ramos, ‘Tradición e Innovación Artística en Castilla en el Siglo XIII’, Alcanate. Revista de estudios alfonsíes 3 (2003): pp. 135-163; Domenge i Mesquida, ‘Guillem Sagrera et “lo modern de son temps”‘; Serra Desfilis, ‘Promotores, tradiciones e innovación’.
[72] Rocío Sánchez Ameijeiras, ‘Dreams of Kings and Buildings: Visual and Literary Culture in Galicia (1157–1230)’, in D’Emilio (ed.), Culture and society in medieval Galicia: A cultural crossroads at the edge of Europe (Brepols: Brill, 2015), pp. 695-764, here pp. 708-25. The author offered an extended version of this idea at the conference from which these papers derive, but unfortunately it was not possible for her to submit a paper of her own.
[73] Javier Martínez de Aguirre Aldaz, Leopoldo Gil Cornet and M. Orbe Sivatte, Roncesvalles. Hospital y santuario en el Camino de Santiago (Pamplona: Fundación para la Conservación del Patrimonio Histórico de Navarra, 2012), pp. 38-48.
[74] Nickson, Toledo Cathedral, pp. 81-94.
[75] Arturo Zaragozá Catalán, ‘Inspiración bíblica y presencia de la antigüedad en el episodio tardogótico valenciano’, in Dauksis Ortolá and Taberner (eds.), Historia de la ciudad II: Territorio, sociedad y patrimonio (Valencia: Instituto para la Comunicación, Asesoría, 2000), pp. 166-183.
[76] See Francesca Español Bertrán, ‘El claustro gótico de la catedral de Lérida: forma y función’, in Klein (ed.), Der Mittelalterliche Kreuzgang: Architektur, Funktion und Programm (Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner, 2003), pp. 352-367.
[77] Leopoldo Torres Balbás, ‘Filiación arquitectónica de la Catedral de Pamplona’, Príncipe de Viana 7: 24 (1946): pp. 471-508, here pp. 487-502.
[78] Rabasa Díaz, López Mozo and Alonso Rodríguez, Obra congrua.
[79] Julio P. Polo, ‘El Modelo ‘hallenkirchen’ en Castilla’, in Alonso Ruiz (ed.), La arquitectura tardogótica castellana entre Europa y AméricaSilex, 2011), pp. 281-311. See also Begoña Alonso’s essay in this collection.
DOI: 10.33999/2019.45