In this colorfully illustrated book, Rose Walker surveys Spanish and Portuguese art and architecture from the time of the Roman conquest to the early twelfth century. For generations, scholarly discussions of such art have been complicated by a focus on maps of the pilgrimage roads and images of the Reconquista. Walker contextualizes these aspects by bringing together an exceptionally diverse range of academic studies, including work previously familiar only to Hispanophone audiences. By breaking down chronological, regional, and disciplinary divides that have limited scholarship on the subject for decades, this book enriches the wider English-language literature on early medieval art.

This book explores how the Spanish kingdoms were highly influenced by the arrival of the Dominican and Franciscan friars in the thirteenth century.

This book addresses the reception of Islamic visual culture by the northern Iberian kingdoms, by systematically comparing works of art from both sides and fleshing out their historical context. This study includes figurative and iconographic motifs, architectural forms, and even the spolia from constructions and Arabic inscriptions that were embedded in Christian buildings. The Islamic visual culture of al-Andalus was often transformed as it was recreated by Christian hands, bringing to the fore various nuances in the relationship between the two religious communities. Artistic transfer was conditioned by social coexistence between Christians and Muslims—both in the caliphate al-Andalus and in the northern realms—and military conflict. To approach the different ways in which Andalusi visual culture was received in the northern kingdoms, while embracing the vast diversity of case studies available, this book is divided into three thematic sections: Reinterpretation, Appropriation, and Artistic Transfers. This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, and medieval studies.

"The sixteen papers collected in this volume explore points of contact across the Latin, Greek and Islamic worlds between c. 1000 and c. 1250. They arise from a conference organized by the British Archaeological Association in Palermo in 2012, and reflect its interest in patterns of cultural exchange across the Mediterranean, ranging from the importation of artefacts - textiles, ceramics, ivories and metalwork for the most part - to a specific desire to recruit eastern artists or emulate eastern Mediterranean buildings. The individual essays cover a wide range of topics and media: from the ways in which the Cappella Palatina in Palermo fostered contacts between Muslim artists and Christian models, the importance of dress and textiles in the wider world of Mediterranean design, and the possible use of Muslim-trained sculptors in the emergent architectural sculpture of late-11th-century northern Spain, to the significance of western saints in the development of Bethlehem as a pilgrimage centre and of eastern painters and techniques in the proliferation of panel painting in Catalonia around 1200. There are studies of buildings and the ideological purpose behind them at Canosa (Apulia), Feldebro (Hungary) and Charroux (Aquitaine), comparative studies of the domed churches of western France, significant reappraisals of the porphyry tombs in Palermo cathedral, the pictorial programme adopted in the Baptistery at Parma, and of the chapter-house paintings at Sigena, and wide-ranging papers on the migration of images of exotic creatures across the Mediterranean and on that most elusive and apparently Mediteranean of objects - the Oliphant. The volume concludes with a study of the emergence of a supra-regional style of architectural sculpture in the western Mediterranean and evident in Barcelona, Tarragona and Provence. It is a third volume, based on the British Archaeological Association's 2014 Conference in Barcelona, will explore Romanesque Patrons and Processes."

A volume that introduces new sources and offers fresh perspectives on a key era of transition, this book is of value to art historians and historians alike. From the dissolution of the Carolingian empire to the onset of the so-called 12th-century Renaissance, the transformative 10th–11th centuries witnessed the production of a significant number of illuminated manuscripts from present-day France, Belgium, Spain, and Italy, alongside the better-known works from Anglo-Saxon England and the Holy Roman Empire. While the hybrid styles evident in book painting reflect the movement and re-organization of people and codices, many of the manuscripts also display a highly creative engagement with the art of the past. Likewise, their handling of subject matter—whether common or new for book illumination—attests to vibrant artistic energy and innovation. On the basis of rarely studied scientific, religious, and literary manuscripts, the contributions in this volume address a range of issues, including the engagement of 10th–11th century bookmakers with their Carolingian and Antique legacies, the interwoven geographies of book production, and matters of modern politics and historiography that have shaped the study of this complex period. .

The twenty-five papers in this volume arise from a conference jointly organised by the British Archaeological Association and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. They explore the making of art and architecture in Latin Europe and the Mediterranean between c. 1000 and c. 1250, with a particular focus on questions of patronage, design and instrumentality. No previous studies of patterns of artistic production during the Romanesque period rival the breadth of coverage encompassed by this volume – both in terms of geographical origin and media, and in terms of historical approach. Topics range from case studies on Santiago de Compostela, the Armenian Cathedral in Jerusalem and the Winchester Bible to reflections on textuality and donor literacy, the culture of abbatial patronage at Saint-Michel de Cuxa and the re-invention of slab relief sculpture around 1100. The volume also includes papers that attempt to recover the procedures that coloured interaction between artists and patrons – a serious theme in a collection that opens with ‘Function, condition and process in eleventh-century Anglo-Norman church architecture’ and ends with a consideration of ‘The death of the patron’.

One of the only guides to the prehistoric archaeology of the Iberian Peninsula that engages with key anthropological and archaeological debates.