Dissolving the Boundaries

Religious Arts of the Medieval Mediterranean An online exhibition for Culture and Belief 51: "Making the Middle Ages" Curated by Marina Molarsky-Beck BROWSE BY SECTION Mirrored Forms: Cross-Cultural Influence on Artistic Production Use and Reuse: The Appropriation of Objects across Contexts Uncertain Origins: Objects at the Margins of Cultures

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Curatorial Statement

 The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilization and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.

—Edward Saïd, Orientalism

The understanding of East and West as dichotomous is old and deeply ingrained in contemporary culture. This binary often takes on a religious significance, for it coincides with the distinction between Christendom and the Islamic world. Modern political rhetoric in the United States often mobilizes these archaic ideas, just as it justified nineteenth-century colonialism and the Crusades of the Middle Ages. And, in fact, the Middle Ages often seem the point of origin for today’s concept of the East/West divide. However, surviving objects from the medieval Mediterranean suggest a vastly different story, one of permeable boundaries and cultural transfusion. This exhibition seeks to show the profound ways in which the artistic traditions of Islam and Christianity shaped each other in the Middle Ages. 

The decorative arts and architectures of the Middle Ages exemplify fluid cultural borrowing and appropriation. A wall painting from the Spanish hermitage of San Baudelio de Berlanga includes a depiction of a camel—a motif introduced by Islamic artists that made its way into Christian painting. A floor tile from the Moorish palace in Granada, the Alhambra, includes not only classically Islamic vegetal designs, but also a central armorial shield, an element taken wholesale from the art of feudal Europe. Such cultural transfer occurred not only in Muslim-conquered Spain, but also in areas with bustling trading systems, like Venice. A sixteenth-century Venetian glass pilgrim’s flask bears striking similarly to a thirteen- or fourteenth-century Mamluk vase from Yemen, suggesting an assimilation of Islamic forms into the Christian art of Europe. Thirteenth-century beakers from Syria incorporate both Arabic calligraphy and Christian motifs, apparently based on images of saints and of Christ entering Jerusalem. 

As this collection of objects demonstrates, even segregating the cultural products of Islam and Christianity or West and East is often a fool’s errand. Many artists worked in dual traditions, as in the case of the Muslim weavers living in late fifteen- or early sixteenth-century Granada who produced the Moorish textile exhibited here. Although these weavers lived under Christian-Spanish rule, they continued an artistic practice that predates the Reconquista and remains firmly Islamic. These weavers, then, cannot be easily severed from either identity: as Spanish subjects of Christian monarchy, or as Muslim artisans carrying on Islamic weaving practices. The lusterware basin from Manises, in Valencia, creates a similar productive confusion about its origins: it was made in Christian Valencia, but in the “Malaga work” style perfected by Islamic potters. In the Iberian peninsula, a thriving Jewish visual culture further obfuscated boundaries between faiths and cultures.

Through the juxtaposition and comparison of medieval objects from around the Mediterranean, made over a period of several centuries, this exhibition works towards a new vision of historical accuracy, one less harmfully mediated by politicized contemporary ideas. The objects exhibited here make visible a Middle Ages of not only religious and cultural conflicts, but also much more complex and ambiguous patterns of influence. These influences are not always positive—on the contrary, questions of power and control are often bound up in artistic appropriation. However, each of these objects pushes against the firm boundaries between religious traditions. As a collection, they suggest an ever-evolving dialogue of religious art and ideology in the Middle Ages.

BROWSE BY SECTION

Mirrored Forms: Cross-Cultural Influence on Artistic Production

Use and Reuse: The Appropriation of Objects across Contexts

Uncertain Origins: Objects at the Margins of Cultures

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Creator: Northern Spanish

Title: Hanukkah Lamp

Dimensions: unknown

Media: Cast bronze

Date of creation: 13th-14th c.

Owner: Musée national du Moyen Age, Thermes de Cluny, Paris

Accession number: Cl. 12248

Cast Hanukkah lamps like this one were widely produced in Spain, Italy, France, and Germany in the High Middle Ages. The lamp bares the distinct form of a Gothic gable with tracery, demonstrating influence from Northern European architectural forms. At the center of the lamp are cutouts that resemble a rose window and arcade, both characteristic of Gothic style. Such a pairing of micro-architectural forms was common in French and German decorative arts of the time. This example, though, is attributed to Northern Spain, suggesting a proliferation of these Northern modes of representation and decoration in medieval Iberia. This Hanukkah lamp is a distinctly Jewish object that take stye form of a distinctly Christian architecture, the Gothic cathedral. If its design seems torn between two faiths, it is furthermore complexly situated between Iberian culture and that of Northern Europe. Given the plentitude of similar lamps across the medieval Mediterranean, there is some question as to the original place of construction of this example.

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Creator: Spanish (Catalonia)

Title: Altar frontal called the “Witches’ Cloth” from the monastery of Sant Joan de les Abadesses (Ripollès)

Dimensions: 238 x 108 cm

Media: Weft-faced compound twill, three lats. Two yellow silk warps and three (red, drack green, and alternating yellow and white) silk wefts

Date of creation: Taifa or Almoravid period, 11th or first half of 12th c.

Owner: Museu Episcopal de Vic, Barcelona

Accession number: MEV 557

This textile can be considered Hispano-Islamic, for its precise origins are unclear. The color, technique, and depiction of animals suggest that this cloth was woven in the later part of the eleventh century in Catalonia. The iconography suggests eastern influence, perhaps descending from Persian and Mesopotamian visual culture. However, it is impossible to know whether the cloth was originally made by Islamic weavers, or Christian weavers working in a style inspired by the Islamic tradition—and whether the cloth came from the Iberian peninsula, or was imported from elsewhere. The difficulty of drawing this distinction suggests that such classification may be somewhat facile, given the complicated relationships between Islamic and Christian population in Iberia at this time. However, the cloth certainly became Christianized, if it was not already: it was used as an altar frontal in the monastery of Sant Joan de les Abadesses in Ripollès. It is possible that this textile was originally produced as an imitation of an eastern model and then later appropriated for a Christian context.

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Creator: Venetian

Title: Pilgrim flask

Dimensions: H. 31.4 cm 

Media: Free-blown glass, enameled and gilded

Date of creation: ca. 1500-1525

Owner: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Accession number: 1975.1.1167

Pilgrim flasks seem, at face value, to belong singularly to Christian material culture. This Venetian flask is an example of inghistere fracade (“flat-sided bottles”), which, in fact, was inspired heavily in design by Islamic glass vessels. Both the shape and ornamentation of this particular flask are suggestive of Islamic influence. The enamel and gilt decorations stop short of including Arabic calligraphy, but they do use vegetal forms that seem highly derivative of Islamic glass designs. In this case, the name of “pilgrim flask” is deceptive. It seems formally derived from glass drinking vessels likely sold as souvenirs at or around pilgrimage sites in the Middle East, produced by Islamic artisans. This flask, though, was made in Venice and likely remained there, as such glasswares were often made in celebration of marriages. Medieval Venice became rich and powerful through a rich culture of trade, much of it with the Islamic world, and thus the appropriation of Islamic artistic traditions was widespread, pervading both architecture and decorative arts.

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Creator: Syrian or Egyptian

Title: Bottle Made for the Rasulid Sultan Hizabr al-Din in Yemen

Dimensions: 37.47 x 19.70 cm

Media: Glass, gold, enamel

Date of creation: 1296-1321

Owner: Detroit Institute of Arts

Accession number: 30.416 

This elegant glass bottle is decorated with elaborate calligraphy and vegetal designs within a geometric scheme. Glasswares like this bottle served as the visual inspiration for Venetian pilgrim flasks, such as the one in this exhibition. Although this particular bottle does not have a traceable link to Venice, portable goods had an enormous influence on Venetian visual culture as a result of a bustling trade economy throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Islamic glasswares did not only serve to influence the rich history of Venetian glass; many objects from the Middle East were displayed in Venetian homes as luxury objects or given as diplomatic gifts. Bottles like this one were small and light enough to be easily transportable, and thus carried with them not only their material presence, but also a wealth of artistic knowledge embedded in that matter. For it was through the observation of spoils, souvenirs, and other goods that many Venetian artisans came to understand and borrow from Islamic arts.

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Creator: Spanish (al-Andalus)

Title: Frieze from Aljafería Palace, Saragossa, Spain

Dimensions: 162 x 151 cm

Media: Carved polychromatic plaster

Date of creation: Taifa period, 1046–81

Owner: National Archaeological Museum Madrid, Spain

Accession number: 50440

This plaster frieze. once located in the north hall of the Aljafería Palace in Saragossa (Zaragoza), displays elements of both Christian and Muslim architectural traditions. Its overall design is distinctively Islamic, characterized by the vegetal forms and arabesques—since Islamic tradition forbids figuration, these abstracted designs dominate its art. Traces of a kufic inscription are visible in the polychromy above the depicted arcade. However, this traditional formal program is combined with a micro-architecture of columns and arches. The columns themselves take the shape of Corinthian columns, the ubiquitous acanthus leaf designs of classical architecture, which are so characteristic of Romanesque and Gothic church architecture. These columns, despite their suggestion of Christian visual culture, support horseshoe architecture, a firmly Arabic design element. Thus, this frieze freely draws upon both Christian and Islamic artistic traditions. Such borrowing was hardly unusual—the Great Mosque at Córdoba used spoliated Roman capitals, and would later be re-appropriated into a Catholic cathedral after reconquista.

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Creator: Spanish (Catalonia)

Title: Capital from Sant Serni de Tavèrnoles

Dimensions: 385 x 375 x 385 cm

Media: Carved granite

Date of creation: Second quarter of 12th c.

Owner: Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya - MNAC, Barcelona

Accession number: 206248-000

This capital probably originally belonged to the monastery of Sant Serni de Tavèrnoles. Its design is a Romanesque Christian elaboration on a classical architectural element, the Corinthian capital, which can be found in architecture across the Mediterranean. In the context of twelfth-century Catalonia, the incorporation of a Corinthian capital into a monastery design would have been utterly commonplace, as both Romanesque and Gothic Christian architectures heavily relied upon columns, capped almost invariably with Corinthian capitals. Here, though, the capital design is significantly modified from a classical Corinthian column, with the acanthus leaves simplified to almost fully abstract scrollwork that serves to accent the central human figure. The cultural associations of such a design are complex. It would have been immediately accepted as a Christian design, given its origins in the architecture of the Roman empire, and the inclusion of a human figure marks it as distinct from Islamic architecture. However, in medieval Iberia, columns were heavily used in Islamic architecture, particular in palaces, like the Alhambra, and mosques, like the Great Mosque at Córdoba. The Corinthian capital, then, now so firmly associated with the Christian world of design and its classical pedigree, seems in the Spanish context to have straddled the lines between religious traditions.

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Creator: Syrian

Title: Two Beakers

Dimensions: 18.5 x 12.1 cm and 17 x 11.1 cm

Media: Glass with gilt and enamel

Date of creation: Crusader period, ca. 1260

Owner: The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Accession number: 47.17 and 47.18

These two glass beakers may have been made as a set, for although their sizes are slightly different, their decorative schemes are strikingly similar. Both beakers constitute a hybrid art form that draws upon Christian and Islamic pictorial traditions. The Arabic calligraphy on the two beakers marks them immediately as Islamic glasswares. The medium of glass with gilt and enamel, too, belongs to the Islamic glassmaking tradition of the 13th century. However, these beakers, which originate in Syria, were made during the Crusader period, when the area was populated by both large Muslim and Christian communities, due to the influx of invading Christian armies from across Western Europe. These particular beakers hint at this mixing of cultures through Christian themes. One beaker depicts a figure riding on a donkey, which may either be a literal depiction of Christ entering Jerusalem, or a borrowing of this common Christian motif to tell another story. The other beaker features figures within domed architectural structures, which may represent saints within monastic communities. The specific details of these representations elude easy classification, but certainly both beakers seem to display the influence of Christian artistic traditions upon Islamic art making.

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Creator: Spanish

Title: Wall Painting of a Camel

Dimensions: 165.1 x 340.3 cm

Media: Fresco transferred to canvas

Date of creation: perhaps 1129-34

Owner: Metropolitan Musuem of Art, The Cloisters Collection

Accession number: 61.219

This wall painting comes from a cycle of such paintings that were added to the hermitage of San Baudelio de Berlanga 150 years after its initial construction. This hermitage was situated in the modern province of Soria, in Castile and Léon, which was, in the early eleventh century, along the frontier of Islamic and Christian lands of the Iberian peninsula. In 1124, shortly before this image was painted, Christian forces led by Alfonso VII took control of Berlanga, which had previously been under Muslim domination. However, the inclusion of this camel in the Berlanga wall paintings suggests that the shift from Islamic to Christian rule was culturally complex. Camels were common in Umayyad art under the Taifa monarchies of Islamic Iberia in the Middle Ages, and the camel itself was often used as a symbol of Islam within Christian iconographies. The inclusion of the camel is not, though, an isolated instance of borrowing from Islamic art in Berlanga. The entire wall painting cycle, in fact, derives from other artworks produced by Muslim artisans. Although Berlanga was a site of religious and political contestation, this painting indicates a complex relationship between Islam and Christianity that infiltrated the visual culture of the area. 

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Creator: Spanish (Kingdom of Granada)

Title: Moorish Textile called of the Harpies

Dimensions: 53 x 40 cm

Media: Textile

Date of creation: 1475-1525

Owner: Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid

Accession number: Unknown

This textile, like the altar frontal from Ripollès, confuses the idea of distinct origins along a Christian/Islamic binary. The cloth is a Nasrid design made in the Kingdom of Granada, probably in Almería, depicting a topic of Sassanid origin, and was most likely made by Muslim weavers under Christian domination. The design includes lions, pomegranates—the symbol of Granada, acanthus leaves, and palms. These elements are fitted within a schema of Nasrid emblems, and thus the design asserts the power of that government. However, this work was probably created after the Nasrids lost control of the Kingdom of Granada with the reconquista. Muslim weavers such as those who created this textile continued to produce work in a similar style into the 15th and even the 16th century, long . It is difficult, then, to pin down this textile as either Islamic or Christian. This work seems instead an example of an object that belongs dually to Islamic and Christian artistic traditions. 

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Creator: Spanish (Manises, Valencia)

Title: Lustreware basin with muhammadan style decoration

Dimensions: 5.50 x 38 cm

Media: Hand-painted earthenware with tin glaze

Date of creation: 1376-1425

Owner: Museo Nacional de Cerámica y Artes Suntuarias González Martí

Accession number: CE1/16800

This lusterwear basin comes from Manises in Valencia, and was produced between 1376 and 1427, under Christian rule. However, the basin is made in the “muhammadan style,” featuring hand-painted vegetal elements and a tin glaze over an earthenware surface. Such basins were common in the Christian world of the 14th century, and a codex belonging to Mary of Burgundy, mother of Philip the Fair, shows a similar basin hanging on the wall. However, the basin’s making derives from the “Malaga work” style of lusterwear pottery produced under Nasrid rule. The basin, then, while almost certainly a Christian-made object circulated in a Christian-ruled society, is a visual artifact of Islamic presence in the Iberian Peninsula. Consequently, labeling this object as solely Christian and Spanish seems to limit the cultural position of this basin.

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Creator: Spanish (Kingdom of Granada)

Title: Jarra or Alhambra Vase

Dimensions: H. 1550 cm

Media: Faïence glazed pottery

Date of creation: 14th c.

Owner: Nationalmuseum, Sweden

Accession number: Unknown

The Alhambra featured many large, decorative vases like this one, made in the faïence method that is characteristic of medieval Iberian pottery. This particular vase may never have stood in the Alhambra, but its form, materials, and distinctive wing-shaped handles all tie to it other vases from that site. Regardless of its exact origins, the vase’s formal qualities are characteristic of Islamic pottery production of fourteenth-century Málaga, and the Arabic calligraphy confirms this provenance. However, this vase left the Iberian peninsula shortly after its production, and was apparently revered as a relic in Cyprus. The vase changed hands several times, and by 1649 it arrived in Stockholm as war booty from Prague, having acquired the mythical origin story of an artifact present at the Biblical wedding at Cana. In the eighteenth century, the bronze dragon was added to take the place of a broken handle, and the base, made from Swedish marble, also postdates the vase’s Iberian creation. This so-called Alhambra vase preserves diverse cultural legacies in one object, shuttled across national boundaries, which retained its value, if not its original meaning.

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Creator: Spanish (Málaga or Granda)

Title: Floor tile (from the Alhambra)

Dimensions: 19 cm x 2.8 cm

Media: Tin-glazed earthenware, painted in cobalt blue and lustre

Date of creation: 1350-1400

Owner: Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Accession number: CER 382-1894

The Alhambra was the sprawling fortified palace of the Nasrid dynasty, the last Muslim emirs to rule in the Iberian peninsula. The palace, which overlooks the city of Granada, was built over many centuries, and underwent many major renovations, including several by Christian monarchs after the reconquista of 1492. This floor tile, though, dates to the second half of the fourteenth century, when the Alhambra was still inhabited by the Nasrids. The Alhambra’s design is in the Mudéjar style, meaning it is a fusion of Islamic and Christian elements. This floor tile is a striking example of this synthesis: the arabesques around the perimeter of the tile are distinctively Islamic, but the armorial shield at its center is a European device typically associated with Christian monarchies. Stucco decoration from the Alhambra similarly feature armorial shields inscribed with Arabic calligraphy and entwined within vegetal decorative elements. This shield depicted on this tile, like those carved from stucco, bares the inscription: wa la ghalib ills allah, “and there is no victor but God.” Scholars have described these decorations as belonging to a visual rhetoric of victory, declaring superiority over the infidel. So, curiously, it appears that the armorial shield is here appropriated to proclaim Nasrid—and Islamic—domination over Christianity.