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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
In A.D. 1483 Abu Abdullah [Abdilla] Muhamad, better known to us under his Spanish name of ‘Boabdil’, who, as the head of a faction, shortly before had proclaimed himself king of Granada, attempted an attack on Medina Lucena. His attempt, ill conceived and badly conducted, failed; he was taken and, conforming to the usage of his time, yielded his arms to his Christian captors. Amongst those arms was a sword, still preserved, whose golden mounts are of rare beauty, those of both hilt and scabbard being adorned with little plaques of delicate cloisonné enamel, individually framed in stout metal, set in fields formed of tiny pellets of gold (see pl. XLII, a, reproducing a part, magnified, a little above the blade, of the hilt; similar work is on the scabbard and its accessories). A number of other swords, similarly ornamented with work of the same kind, but of less value and importance, have survived, as well as some isolated specimens of such work no longer in place on the sword (or swords) for which they were made. The hilt of Boabdil's sword is of gold, enriched with enamels of blue, white, and red; but the mounts of at least some of the other similarly ornamented swords are of gilded copper studded with little panels of delicate silver-cloisonné enamel. Besides the swords mentioned above there is, in the British Museum, a splendid head-stall, of gilded copper, composed of small framed panels of cloisonné enamel alternating with similar panels of granulated work (one corner of this is reproduced in pl. XLII, b), which has been described by O. M. Dalton, and a pair of stirrups in the Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, at Madrid.
page 211 note 1 A photograph of the whole hilt is reproduced in Marc Rosenberg's Granulation, Frankfurt a. M., 1918, fig. 275; and a portion of the hilt, magnified about 1½ times, in his fig. 276 (cf. brief text in ibid., 152 seq.). A small-scale photograph of the sword and its scabbard, and a large-scale one of the hilt and the upper part of the scabbard, are reproduced in pl. LXI and double-plate LXII–LXIII respectively of Las joyas de la Exposición Histórico-Europea de Madrid 1892, Madrid, 1893Google Scholar.
page 211 note 2 Cf. Laking, G., A Record of European Armour and Arms, ii, London, 1920, 282–6, with figs. 661–4Google Scholar.
page 211 note 3 Cf. Riaño, J. F., Spanish Industrial Arts, London (South Kensington Museum Handbook), 1890, 84Google Scholarseqq., where is given a detailed description of the sword, illustrated by line-drawings, and translations of the numerous pious inscriptions in the mounts. Gayangos, P. de, in ‘Las armas de Boabdil’, in the periodical El arte en España, 1861, 228Google Scholar, says that the hilt is of silver. On Boabdil's arms, cf. also Williams, L., The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, London, 1907, i, 230seqqGoogle Scholar.
page 211 note 4 By courtesy of Mr. T. D. Kendrick, F.S.A., and of the British Museum.
page 211 note 5 Cf. Proc. Soc. Antiquaries, 2 Ser., xxi (1907), 376–80Google Scholar; a small-scale reproduction of the whole head-stall is given, together with a line-drawing of a section of part of it. There are fragments of a similar head-stall in the Carrand Collection, in the Museo Nazionale, at Florence (cf. ibid.; and Mann, J. G., ‘Notes on the Armour worn in Spain from the tenth to the fifteenth century’, in Archaeologia, lxxxiii [1933], 301)Google Scholar.
page 212 note 1 Line-drawing of a part of one given by Dalton, loc. cit., as on the British Museum's head-stall, the enamelled panels and those without enamel are set staggered. On the pair (nos. 53–4 in the Institute's collection), cf. Arizcun, J. M. Florit y and Cantón, F. J. S´nchez, Cat´logo de las Armas del Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, Madrid, 1927, 46Google Scholarseqq., including half-tone reproductions of a side of one (showing, somewhat indistinctly, the one [out of the originally four decorated outer faces] outer face retaining its panelled decoration) and of the pierced and damascened underside of one. The Cat´logo gives the colours as white, blue, green, red, and ‘rosado’, and describes the work as ‘Arab, but degenerate and indicating African manufacture’ and the period as ‘dificil de precisar, habr´ de colocarse en el siglo XVII’.
page 212 note 2 Examples dating from the fourteenth century may be seen at Granada, on the door of the ‘Hall of the Two Sisters’, in the Alhambra (cf. Kühnel, E., Maurische Kunst, Berlin, 1924, pl. 54Google Scholar), and at Seville, on doors of the Alcazar and the Sacristy of the Cathedral (ibid., pls. 93, 94; Las joyas de la Expositión … 1892, pls. viii, ix).
page 212 note 3 e.g. Egypt, a typical example of whose work of the kind is a disc, now in the Vienna Museum of Art and Industry, made in Cairo in 1296 (cf. Die Ausstellung von Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst in München, 1910, by Sarre, F. and Martin, F. R., Munich, 1912, pl. 249Google Scholar). Some fifteenth-century examples are reproduced in G. Migeon's Exposition des arts musulmans au Musée des Arts Décoratifs (1903), pls. 2, 3. One could cite many other surviving examples.
page 212 note 4 For a discussion of presumable connexions of enamelling, in medieval Spain, with Moslem and with Jewish craftsmen, cf. Hildburgh, W. L., Medieval Spanish Enamels, Oxford, 1936, chap. ivGoogle Scholar.
page 213 note 1 In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a silver-gilt ciborium (no. 135–1879), bearing the mark of Cordova and attributed to about A.D. 1490, adorned with small panels of delicate cloisonné enamel like those on the objects above cited.
page 213 note 2 From my negative, made by courtesy of the Musée Th. Dobrée. I believe that the object has not previously been reproduced, excepting on one of the museum's postcards—where, in company with a number of other objects, it is on a scale far too small for study.
page 213 note 3 These colours appear to be the same as those on Boabdil's sword, but with green added. Blue, white, red, and green are the colours of the enamels of the necklace from the Morgan Collection (cf. pp. 216 seqq. infra). The present enamels being on copper are, as is normal in those directly on that (contemporaneously usually impure) metal, opaque.
page 213 note 4 Reproduced by courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For reproduction of a side of one, on a larger scale, see Day, L. F., Enamelling, London, 1907, 89Google Scholar.
page 213 note 5 These stirrups were formerly in the collection of the Marquis of Castrillo; their enamels are in part opaque, in part translucent. There is another pair of stirrups, lent by Major A. H. Browne to the Burlington Fine Arts Club's ‘Exhibition of European Enamels’ (cf. Illustrated Catalogue of European Enamels, London [B.F.A. Club], 1897, pl. LXIV reproducing no. 217)Google Scholar, and later in the possession of Lady Ludlow (cf. Laking, of. cit. ii, 22 with fig. 358). They are of iron with decoration of niello and of ‘gold cloisonné of extreme delicacy’. They are of a Moslem type, and with ornamentation which appears to me (so far as, not having seen the originals, I may judge from the photographic reproductions), although not pure Hispanomoresque, to have a strong Moslem flavour. I am inclined to think that they might well have been made in Italy, under strong Moslem influence, rather than in Spain, and therefore should not be assigned to the particular group we have been discussing.
page 214 note 1 Cf. Mann, op. cit., pl. xc (two views) with description on 301; Laking, op. cit. ii, 21 (with fig. 356), 15, 17 seq.
page 214 note 2 Cf. Dalton, op. cit. 378, reproducing relevant detail of the picture.
page 214 note 3 Cf. Condé, J. A., History of the Dominion of the Arabs in Spain, London, 1913, iii, 353Google Scholarn.
page 215 note 1 The hilt and scabbard of a sword, clearly of the same period and from the same region as Boabdil's sword, in the Grand Ducal Collection at Cassel, are ornamented with small vertically-elongated lobed panels of cloisonne enamel set chequer-wise with similar golden panels which contain each a number of tiny wire rings isolated from each other and set round a central and somewhat larger ring enclosing white enamel (cf. Sarre and Martin, op. cit., pl. 245, in colours; Kühnel, op. cit., pl. 122). The effect, brilliant though it is, falls short of the effect produced by the contrast between the panels of enamel and the granulation of the objects of the ‘Boabdil’ group. It is interesting to observe that the shape and the setting—but not the internal patterns—of the panels on the sword at Cassel are precisely paralleled by those of the stucco ornamentation, above the arches, of the Eastern Kiosk, on one side of the Patio de los Leones, in the Alhambra.
page 216 note 1 Reproduced, by courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, from a photograph showing the whole necklace. The necklace consists of the central medallion here shown, four pendants (the one here shown and three others), four large cylindrical beads, and a small cylindrical bead. The necklace has been reproduced by Rosenberg, op. cit., as a whole on a small scale in fig. 280, and as to its separate elements in double their actual sizes in figs. 277 (a cylindrical bead), 278 (a handshaped piece), and 279 (the pendant).
page 216 note 2 According to a label accompanying the necklace when it entered the museum. Mr. J. J. Rorimer has informed me that this label is the museum's sole record concerning the provenance of the object; we shall see, infra, that there is much reason to believe it to be essentially correct. The late Señor G. J. de Osma, a learned and careful scholar in close touch with Spanish antiquarian matters, has, however, referred to the necklace (but possibly, I think, through having confused it with certain other objects) as found in Granada and as at one time the property of Canon Sierra (cf. Catálogo de Jzabaches Compostelanos, Madrid, 1916, 7Google Scholarseq., n.).
page 216 note 3 Although conventionalization has gone far in these pendants, what seems to be a clear trace of their origin remains in the V-form line—corresponding precisely to the similar and similarly placed lines on unquestionable hand-amulets for Moslem use—of largish grains below the ‘wrist’.
page 216 note 4 Cf. Westermarck, E., Ritual and Belief in Morocco, London, 1926, i, 449Google Scholarseqq.
page 216 note 5 Ibid. 451 seqq. In this connexion a certain majolica tile, made at Manises in the second half of the fifteenth century, is of some interest; it shows a highly conventionalized open-hand on which is an equal-armed four-petalled symbol (cf. de Osma, op. cit. 18, n.).
page 217 note 1 Cf. Westermarck, op. cit. i, 459.
page 217 note 2 It occurs thus, irregularly divided into groups of letters, on the enamelled decorative little applied plaques of many Castilian copper processional crosses, apparently mostly of the fifteenth century but perhaps in some cases of the fourteenth (cf. Hildburgh, op. cit. 124 seq.); and it is to be seen elsewhere in Spanish art, some perhaps even earlier than the fourteenth century. As a motive, it seems not improbably inspired by the Spanish Moslem use of inscriptions as elements of decoration. A very curious misapplication of it, engraved on a Spanish small copper processional cross belonging to Dr. Philip Nelson, consists of its two opening words, inscribed in reverse, on a scroll held by the symbolic Eagle of St. John (cf. Nelson, P., in Antiq. Journ. xix [1939], 327)Google Scholar.
page 217 note 3 I disagree completely with Rosenberg's dating (Joe. cit.), attributing the pieces to about the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century.
page 218 note 1 On the expulsion of the Moriscos, and on their taking with them their jewellery, etc., cf. Williams, op. cit. i, 80 seq.; he expresses the opinion that most of the things in question went to northern Africa. In view of the relations which appear to have existed between Spain and south Russia at a somewhat earlier period it seems to me quite probable that many of the Moriscos—who had been expelled because of their Moslem connexions—may have gone to that region.
page 218 note 2 Cf. P. M. de Artíñano, Cat´logo de la Expositión de Orfebreria Civil Española, of the Sociedad Española de Amigos del Arte, Madrid, 1925, with half-tone reproductions on a small scale in the (unnumbered) seventeenth plate. Reproduced also, but in an indistinct half-tone in the text, in Kondakov's, N. P.Russkie Kladui (‘Russian Treasures’), St. Petersburg, 1896, fig. 37, on p. 59Google Scholar. Some of the elements have been reproduced, but not very clearly, by Williams, op. tit. i, pl. xiv.
page 218 note 3 Cf. Rossi, F., Il Museo Nazionale di Firenze, Rome, 1932, 66Google Scholar. The half-tone reproduction of these is on a scale so small as to make uncertain the presence of either granulation or enamelling.
page 219 note 1 Since which time it has been on loan in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
page 219 note 2 After the capture of Boabdil, in 1483, the Sultana Zoraya, his mother, sent to the King of Castile ‘a vast amount of treasure’ for the payment of ransom for her son; cf. Condé, op. cit. iii, 3 56.
page 219 note 3 This ornament resembles, but in inverted form, battlementing to be seen on the town-walls of Avila, on the gateways of Valencia, and elsewhere in Spain; battlementing similar, but with a greater number of steplets, is on the walls of the Mosque at Cordova. An almost identical form of ornament occurs, just below the upper edge of the receptacle, on a box in the shape of an octagonal prism, constructed of wood and ivory and bone, of Moslem or of Mudéjar workmanship and ascribed to the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, at Madrid (cf. Ferrandis, J., Marfiles y azabaches españoles, Madrid, 1928, pl. xxxiii and p. 112Google Scholar); the stalactitic ornament in this is moulded like that of our casket, and its only essential difference from the latter is in each step of its ‘stalactites’ having a re-entran angle at either end, instead of a vertical edge.
page 220 note 1 Cf. Rosenberg, op cit. 96 with fig. 167.
page 221 note 1 Examples of his reproductions may be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
page 221 note 2 Cf. p. 210, n. 1, supra. In its sections I, II, and III are recorded, respectively, methods for producing the grains, for attaching them to the recipient, and for arranging them in the situations wherein they are to be fixed.
page 221 note 3 Reproduced from Kondakov, op. cit., fig. 40 (relevant text on 72 seq.). A small reproduction and some text are given by Mourier, J., L'Art au Caucase, Brussels, 1912, 166Google Scholar.
page 221 note 4 Cf. Rosenberg, op. cit., fig. 184a, for a detail greatly magnified.
page 222 note 1 Cf. de Artíñano, op. cit., no. 333. The box was at that time the property of D. Juan Lafora, of Madrid. The Cat´logo reproduces, in its (unnumbered) eighteenth plate, both front and back, on a good scale but somewhat indistinctly.
page 221 note 2 Cf. Weber, P., Der Domschatz. zu Trier, Cologne, 1928, 16Google Scholar and pl. xi (fig. 15); Palustre, L. and Montault, X. Barbier de, Le Trisor de Treves, Paris, 1886, 29Google Scholarseq. and pl. xv (a view from a slightly different angle of that in our pl. XLVIII); Weerth, E. Aus'm, Kunstdenkmaler des christlichen Mittelalters in dent Rheinland, Leipzig, 1857–68Google Scholar, 82 and pl. LVI of ‘Atlas’ (fig. 1, front, and fig. Ia, bottom; both in linedrawing which, although fairly exact in form, has not the same spirit as the actual ornamentation of the casket); Rosenberg, op. cit., figs. 181 (front view) and 183 (enlarged detail), with text on the technique on p. 101; Migeon, G., Manuel d'art musulman: Arts plastiques et industriels, ii, Paris, 1927, 18Google Scholarseq. (very slight text) and fig. 221 (very small half-tone).
page 221 note 3 It is about 11 in. long, 7½ in. wide, and 10 in. high, according to Aus'm Weerth's drawings, which are stated to be full-size.
page 223 note 1 Similar designs may be seen on the enamelled copper ornament in the Nantes Museum (see pl. XLIII, a) and on the Metropolitan Museum's stirrups (pl. XLIII, 6). How necessary it is to exercise caution in attempts to trace cultural connexions by the aid of parallelisms in designs is well exemplified by the presence—presumably due to traditionalism—on Tibetan metal-work of fairly recent manufacture of both the interlace (of an endless cord forming a square with twisted corners, with two endless cords crossing it) to be seen at the corners of the panels of the front of the Treves casket, and a border formed of just such X-shaped flowers as form the edgings of that casket (cf. The Studio, xxxi [1904], 300Google Scholar).
page 223 note 2 Cf. Weber, loc. cit.
page 223 note 3 A number of typical examples, ranging in date from the tenth century to about the fifteenth, have been reproduced by Ferrandis, op. cit., pls. vi, xiv, xvi, xix, xxii–XXV, XXVIII–XXXI.
page 224 note 1 Cf. Kiihnel, op. cit., pl. 83.
page 224 note 2 Cf. ibid., pls. 80, 81. Such spirals are, however, as we shall see, by no means peculiar to fourteenth-century Mudéjar art; I cite them here merely as corroborative testimony.
page 224 note 3 Cf. Bertaux, É., L'Exposition Rétrospective d'Art 1908, Saragossa, 1910, pl. 64Google Scholar (front and top), with text on p. 211; Lasjoyas de la Exposition Histórico-Europea de Madrid 1892, pls. xxxxvi (front) and xxxxvii (top); Kühnel, op. cit., pl. 117 (front and top); Ferrandis. op. cit., pl. xxvi, with text on pp. 105 seq.
page 224 note 4 Las joy as … 1892 speaks of these bands as in part enamelled; I do not know whether correctly or in error.
page 224 note 5 Cf. Bertaux, loc. cit.
page 224 note 6 The pair of links appears, but without the little corner-projections, also in the band on the front of the Saragossa box.
page 225 note 1 Reproduced by Migeon, G., in Exposition des arts musulmans an Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1903, pl. 7Google Scholar; and by Ferrandis, op. cit., pl. xxvn. This box carries the name of a Moslem sovereign, who possibly was of Spain (cf. Ferrandis, op. cit. 106). Its metal mounts are not of interest to us here.
page 225 note 2 Several other boxes of this kind (including one in Toledo Cathedral) are known (cf. Bertaux, he. cit.; Ferrandis, op. cit. 107). Although one of them carries an inscription containing the name of a certain Mameluke Sultan of Egypt and is in consequence datable about 1351–4 (cf. Bertaux, and Ferrandis, loc cit.), the weight of evidence seems to favour a Spanish origin for at least the Saragossa and Peytel examples; for indeed the name of a Mameluke Sultan on one of the boxes of the kind need by no means indicate a general Egyptian origin for the group, since a box bearing his name might well have been sent to him from Moslem Spain—then in close touch with Egypt—or might have been carved in Egypt in imitation of a Spanish box, or (if the type originated in Egypt and not in Spain) a similar box might have served as model for the presumably Spanish ones.
page 225 note 3 Cf. Vasselot, J.-J. Marquet de, ‘Le Trésor de l'Abbaye de Roncesvaux’, in Gaz. des Beaux-Arts, 3 sér. xviii (1897), 206Google Scholarseq. (with small half-tone reproduction on 207). In the Victoria and Albert Museum are good photographs, of front and of one end (nos. 5139-and 5140–1921).
page 226 note 1 Cf. The Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Granada'.
page 227 note 1 Ibid., loc. cit. Granada fell on 2nd January 1492 and the edict was signed on 31st March 1492.
page 227 note 2 Ibid., s.v. ‘Caucasus'.
page 227 note 3 Id.
page 227 note 4 For some Spanish examples of this diagram, cf. Vasconcellos, J. Leite de, Signum Salornonis, Lisbon, 1918Google Scholar (reprinted from O Archeologo Português, xxiii [1918], nos. 1–12Google Scholar), pl. vi, figs. 77, 78, and pl. vii, figs. 80, 81.
page 227 note 5 On these matters, cf. Hildburgh, op. cit. 48.
page 227 note 6 Reproduced by Kondakov, op. cit., pl.xx(in gilt and colours); and by Rosenberg, op. cit., fig. 180 (with enlarged detail in fig. 182), with text citing various references to it.
page 227 note 7 From Kondakov, loc. cit., enlarged.
page 228 note 1 The ‘Tróitzko-Sérgiyevskaya Lavra’ (the ‘Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius'), about 44 miles from Moscow. Founded in 1340, it is ‘the richest, the most distinguished, and historically the most important convent in Russia', with the exception of ‘the old and famous Lavra at Kiev’ (cf. Baedeker's Russia, 1914, 325).
page 228 note 2 Photograph no. 57.137, in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
page 228 note 3 Several are in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
page 228 note 4 Cf. Stern, E. von, Theodosia und seine Keramik, Odessa (and Frankfurt a.M.), 1906Google Scholar, pl. ix, nos. 91, 93, 98. I am indebted for this reference to our fellow Mr. A. Van de Put.
page 229 note 1 Photographs nos. 57.207 and 57.159, in the V. and A. Museum.
page 229 note 2 V. and A. Museum photograph no. 57.147.
page 229 note 3 By Yu. A. Olsufev; text in Russian, with ‘List of Plates’ in French.
page 229 note 4 Reproduced from V. and A. Museum photograph no. 57.201.
page 230 note 1 Cf. Jewish Encyclopedia, x, 518, s.v. ‘Russia'.
page 230 note 2 Cf. ibid, vi, 80, s.v. ‘Granada'.
page 230 note 3 Ibid. x, 519.
page 230 note 4 Cf. Pope, A. U. and Ackerman, P., A Survey of Persian Art, Oxford University Press, 1939, vi, pl. 1348Google Scholar. The salver is in the Boston (U.S.A.) Museum of Fine Arts.
page 230 note 5 Ibid., pl. 1369. The bowl is in one of the Berlin museums.
page 230 note 6 Id., pl. 1384. Object is in the City Art Museum, St. Louis.