Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe


Book Description

Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe offers a critical examination of the reception of Ibero-Islamic architecture in medieval Iberia and 19th-century Europe. Taking selected case studies as a starting point, the volume challenges prevalent readings of interconnected cultural and artistic phenomena.




À l’orientale: Collecting, Displaying and Appropriating Islamic Art and Architecture in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries


Book Description

The present volume offers an overview of collecting and displaying Islamic art during the long nineteenth century. A section of the volume focuses on the figure of the Swiss collector Henri Moser Charlottenfels. Special attention is given to little-known collections in Eastern Europe and beyond. L’ouvrage fournit un panorama du collectionnisme d’art islamique au cours du long XIXe siècle, en mettant l’accent sur la figure d’Henri Moser Charlottenfels et des collections méconnues situées en Europe central, et au-delà.




The Religious and Cultural Landscape of Ottoman Manastır


Book Description

In this ground-breaking work on the Ottoman town of Manastir (Bitola), Robert Mihajlovski, provides a detailed account of the development of Islamic, Christian and Sephardic religious architecture and culture as it manifested in the town and precincts.




Jews and Muslims Made Visible in Christian Iberia and Beyond, 14th to 18th Centuries


Book Description

This volume aims to show through various case studies how the interrelations between Jews, Muslims and Christians in Iberia were negotiated in the field of images, objects and architecture during the Later Middle Ages and Early Modernity.




Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300-800 C.E.


Book Description

Following the failure of the Bar-Kokhba revolt in the second century, the majority of the Jewish population of Palestine migrated northward away from Jerusalem to join the communities of Jews in Galilee and the Golan Heights. Although rabbinic sources indicate that from the second century onward the demographic center of Jewish Palestine was in Galilee, archaeological evidence of Jewish communities is found in the southern part of the country as well. In The Ancient Synagogues of Southern Palestine, 300-800 C.E., Steve Werlin considers ten synagogues uncovered in southern Palestine. Through an in-depth analysis of the art, architecture, epigraphy, and stratigraphy, the author demonstrates how monumental, religious structures provide critical insight into the lives of those who were strangers among Christians and Muslims in their ancestral homeland.




Taking the Alhambra to St. Petersburg


Book Description

Ein wenig bekanntes Phänomen innerhalb des sogenannten Maurischen Revivals ist die intensive Auseinandersetzung russischer Architekten mit der ibero-islamischen Architektur, insbesondere mit den mittelalterlichen Nasridenpalästen der Alhambra in Granada. Die materialreiche Studie analysiert orientalisierende Bauwerke und Interieurs des 19. Jahrhunderts in St. Petersburg und zeichnet die Transferwege nach, über die das Formenvokabular der Alhambra von Spanien nach Russland gelangte. Sie bezieht wesentliche Aspekte der russischen Kulturgeschichte und der europäischen Orient-Vorstellungen des 19. Jahrhunderts mit ein und zeigt, dass russische Architekten und die Kaiserliche Akademie der Künste zu den Pionieren des Maurischen Revivals gehörten. Erstmalige Betrachtung der orientalisierenden Architektur St. Petersburgs im gesamteuropäischen Kontext Russische Architekten als Pioniere des Maurischen Revivals




Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000-1150


Book Description

In Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000-1150, Karen Rose Mathews analyzes the relationship between war, trade, and the use of spolia (appropriated objects from past and foreign cultures) as architectural decoration in the public monuments of the Italian maritime republics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This comparative study addressing five urban centers argues that the multivalence of spolia and their openness to new interpretations made them the ideal visual form to define a distinct Mediterranean identity for the inhabitants of these cities, celebrating the wealth and prestige that resulted from the paired endeavors of war and commerce while referencing the cultures across the sea that inspired the greatest hostility, fear, or admiration.




Russian Orientalism in a global context


Book Description

This volume features new research on Russia’s historic relationship with Asia and the ways it was mediated and represented in the fine, decorative and performing arts and architecture from the mid-eighteenth century to the first two decades of Soviet rule. It interrogates how Russia’s perception of its position on the periphery of the west and its simultaneous self-consciousness as a colonial power shaped its artistic, cultural and national identity as a heterogenous, multi-ethnic empire. It also explores the extent to which cultural practitioners participated in the discursive matrices that advanced Russia’s colonial machinery on the one hand and critiqued and challenged it on the other, especially in territories that were themselves on the fault lines between the east and the west.




Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds


Book Description

Honouring Erica Cruikshank Dodd, Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds analyzes aspects of the constructed narratives and reconstructed realities of the visual-material record of diverse Mediterranean faith communities from medieval into contemporary times.




Illuminating in Micrography


Book Description

In Illuminating in Micrography, Dalia-Ruth Halperin analyzes the Catalan Micrography Maḥzor, a fourteenth-century Barcelonan manuscript in Israel’s National Library. Decorated with micrography, the Jewish scribal art typical of Bible manuscripts, this maḥzor, which includes a rich full-page panel micrography cycle, is unique. Along with the codicological and paleographical analysis, essential for understanding the scribe’s thought and working processes, the author’s meticulous reading of the micrography text reveals the scribe’s textual editing and manipulations. Decoding his writing flow and sequences revealed a close association between the penned text and the images formed, which reflect a Jewish theosophical-theurgical cycle. Evidence of the scribe’s association with the renowned Bassa atelier enhances our knowledge of the cultural, economic, and ethnic realities of the time.