The Iberian peninsula is replete with myths. In the north, pilgrims crossed remote mountains, and followed a sacred topography populated by pious hermits and holy bishops. Prodigious monuments bore witness to a glorious Visigothic past, which inspired a tiny band of crusaders to fight for repossession of the land for over half a millennium. In the northeast, Catalonia sat apart, linked politically and artistically to Europe. A barren no-man’s land occupied the centre until the arrival of Christian settlers. In the south, al-Andalus was a paradise of luxury and tolerance, where Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived together in harmony (convivencia)....

This chapter will set out the geography and geology of Hispania, as these are fundamental to any understanding of its history and art history.¹ It will use the framework of the Roman roads to engage with the landscape, with the resources, and with the communication routes. Coasts and rivers brought life to the varied terrain, cutting through the barriers formed by the mountain ranges, and the major Roman roads often followed them.² Frequently based on tracks that linked earlier settlements, the roads facilitated the movement of troops and equipment in a long process of occupation. Once territory was secured, a...

From AD 379 to the middle of the fifth century a Spanish dynasty ran the Roman Empire. These emperors ruled from Constantinople, the new capital in the East established c. 330 by Emperor Constantine,¹ and there is little to show that they took any special interest in the country of their origin.² Emperor Theodosius I (r. 379-395) had an estate at Cauca (Coca), roughly midway between Segovia and Valladolid, but he had spent his formative years on campaign with his father, also called Theodosius, who was one of the previous emperor’s most successful generals. Consequently, as Neil McLynn has suggested,...

Were the Visigoths exceptional builders and goldsmiths in the seventh century, or did they occupy pre-existing structures and acquire much of their metalwork? Did the Hispano-Romans preserve an unbroken Roman building tradition that set them apart from the other successor states of the empire? The range of answers that can be given to these questions will affect the rest of this book, because this problem bears patinas of ideological mystification that began in the eighth century and continue into the present. As Jerrilynn Dodds set out in her influential 1990 study, Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain, such questions...

Studies of eighth- and ninth-century Christian art in the Spanish peninsula have traditionally used the label ‘Asturian art’ and treated it as an isolated phenomenon born of an incipient reconquista ideology. This chapter will argue that it was, on the contrary, far from isolated geographically, and that the rhythms of its production responded to those in the outside world, both north and south. The myth of the brave little kingdom that began the reconquista has to give way to another story. When Asturias exhibited military prowess, it could be directed at the Vikings as well as against al-Andalus. The rulers...

The tenth century was a period of great artistic invention, most evidently in the Byzantine Empire under Constantine Porphyrogenitus (r. 913-959), but also in ‛Abbāsid Samarra, Fatimid Cairo, Ottonian Trier, and Umayyad Córdoba.¹ Each of these dynastic kingdoms looked to Byzantium for enrichment of their own visual cultures, and all had direct dealings with Constantinople through envoys, trade or marriage.² The caliphs of Córdoba drew on the technical expertise of Byzantium and often attributed fine work to Byzantine craftsmen, even when it was executed by local artists.³ The Christian kingdoms in the north of the peninsula also gazed towards Byzantium,...

In 1003 Ramon Borrell, count of Barcelona, raided the Muslim city of Balaguer, northeast of Zaragoza. In response ‛Abd al-Malik, son of al-Mansur, left Córdoba on campaign. Ibn Idhārī said that ‘he departed through the Gate of Victory, the eastern gate of the gates of Madīnat al-Zāhira … in a new coat of mail and an octagonal iron helmet shining with gilding’.¹ His army rode through Toledo, Guadalajara, and at Medinaceli met up with additional forces supplied by León and Castile in accordance with a treaty of mutual defence.² They headed towards Montserrat and Manresa in the lands of Ramon...

Throughout the mid-eleventh century the Muslim taifa kingdoms remained the source of gold, silver, ivory, and silk, the defining materials of status, which increasingly adorned the buildings and bodies of the Christian rulers in the peninsula.¹ Meanwhile the taifa rulers fostered a culture of music, mathematics, and poetry, which expressed a longing for the glories of Córdoba.² These ‘Party Kings’ were closely associated through marriage and trade, and they surrounded themselves with a group of organized Malikī scholars. As all derived their legitimacy from Córdoba, there was a detectable taifa identity in the art and architecture of their cities, but...

Three events dominated the 1080s in the peninsula: the formal introduction of the Roman liturgy to León and Castile in 1080; Alfonso VI’s occupation of Toledo in 1085; and the victory of the Almoravids at Zalaca (Sagrajas) over the same king in the following year.¹ The first of these was the tangible result of closer contact with the papacy. The second gave unprecedented access to taifa culture and those who made it. The third event was to put an end to Alfonso VI’s expansionist plans and would in the long term seriously exacerbate relations between Christians and Muslims within the...

This book has brought together material from a wide chronological range and many different approaches to researching it, but there have been certain continuities, and some helpful cross-fertilisation. The reworking of classical art and the use of spolia have been recurring themes. The physical infrastructure laid down by the second century AD provided not only a substrate, but also much of the material used in later buildings. Reinforced by an awareness of Byzantium, classical visual vocabularies were claimed and constantly reinvented over these centuries. In the Visigothic period, occasional pockets of artistic activity, linked to trade across the Mediterranean, enlivened...