History in the making: the ornament of the Alhambra and the past-facing present

Abstract

This article examines the impact of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European perspectives on the development of Alhambra scholarship. An Islamic palatine fortress built near the city of Granada during the Nasrid period (1232-1492), the monument has undergone substantial transformations under Christian occupation, and through its ‘rediscovery’ by foreign visitors in the nineteenth century. The fragmentation of its surfaces through a variety of Romantic and modernizing frameworks served to dislocate its decorative forms from their historical and architectural contexts, leading many historians to discuss its designs in relation to previous periods and traditions. The pervasive view of the Nasrid period and its art as ‘past-facing’ would postpone a critical consideration of the ornament of the Alhambra on its own formal and ideological terms. Only in recent decades has this position been challenged and the monument discussed in terms of its regional specificity and its multiple periods of production and reception.

Keywords

• Alhambra
• Nasrid ornament
• Al-Andalus
• Romanticism
• design reform
• Owen Jones
• International Exhibition