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| Edouard Gerhardt |
The most visited monument in Spain is The Alhambra. It was a palace, a
fortress and a citadel, as well as the residence of the Nasrid Sultans and top
government officials, court servants and the royal guard.
The name Alhambra comes from an
Arabic root which means "red castle", perhaps due to the towers and
walls that surround the entire hill which by starlight is silver but by
sunlight is transformed into gold. Though there is another more poetic version,
evoked by the Moslem analysts who speak of the construction of the Alhambra fortress
"by the light of torches", the reflections of which gave the walls
their particular coloration.
There is no
reference to the Alhambra
as being a residence of kings until the 13th century, even though the fortress
had existed since the 9th century. The first kings of Granada, the Zirites, had their castles and
palaces on the hill of the Albaicin, and nothing remains of them.
The Nasrid
ruler Ibn al-Ahmar made Granada
his capital. Within the walls he began a palace, which he supplied with running
water by diverting the River Darro nearly 8 km to the foot of the hill; water is an
integral part of the Alhambra
and this engineering feat was Ibn al-Ahmar's greatest contribution.
The founder
of the dynasty, Muhammed Al-Ahmar, began with the restoration of the old
fortress. His work was completed by his son Muhammed II, whose immediate
successors continued with the repairs. The construction of the palaces (called
Casa Real Vieja, "old Royal House or Palace") dates back to the 14th
century and is the work of two great kings: Yusuf I and Muhammed V. To the
first we owe, among others, the "Cuarto de Comares" (Chamber of
Comares), the "Puerta de la Justicia" (Gate of Justice), the Baths
and some towers. His son, Muhammed V, completed the beautification of the
palaces with the "Cuarto de los Leones" (Chamber of the
Lions), as well as other rooms and fortifications.
The Alhambra became a Christian court in 1492 when the
Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand and Isabel) conquered the city of Granada. After their
conquest of the city, the Reyes Católicos lived for a while in the Alhambra. They
restored some rooms and converted the mosque but left the palace structure
unaltered. As at Córdoba and Sevilla, it was Emperor Carlos V, their grandson,
who wreaked the most insensitive destruction, demolishing a whole wing of rooms
in order to build a Renaissance palace. The remaining Austrian kings did not forget the
monument and have left their own more discreet impressions on it.
In 1812 it
was taken and occupied by Napoleon's forces. Two decades later the Alhambra's
"rediscovery" began, given impetus by the American writer Washington
Irving, who set up his study in the empty palace rooms and began to write his
marvellously romantic “Tales of the Alhambra” (on sale all over Granada – and
good reading amid the gardens and courts). Shortly after its
publication, the Spaniards made the Alhambra a national monument and set aside
funds for its restoration. This continues to the present day and is now a
highly sophisticated project.
During the
18th century and part of the 19th, the Alhambra
fell into neglect until 1870 when the Alhambra
was declared a national monument. Travellers and romantic artists of all
countries had railed against those who scorned the most beautiful of their
monuments. Since that date and up to now, the Alhambra, protected, restored,
cared for and even improved, has been preserved for the pleasure and admiration
of all.
It is
currently an artistic-historical monumental group with four clearly
distinguishable zones: the Palaces, the military zone or Alcazaba, the city or Medina and the villa of
the Generalife, all of them surrounded by woods, trees, gardens, parks and
vegetable gardens.
And here you are some samples of how different painters have inspired on this work of art in the course of time.
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| Mariano Fortuny |
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| Henri Matisse |
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| Gustavo Simoni |
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| Edouard Gerhardt |
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| Santiago Rusiñol |
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| Edouard Gerhardt |
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| Joaquin Sorolla |
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| Ernst Rudolf |
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| Joaquin Sorolla |
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| Santiago Rusiñol |
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| Adolf Seel |
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| John Singer Sargent |
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| Henri Matisse |
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| Wilhelm Gail |
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| Joaquin Sorolla |
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| Jan Calderwood |
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| Veena Waziri |
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| Childe Hassam |
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| Margaret Murray Cookesley |
And I am sure this amazing and stunning monument will keep on inspiring many more artists or no artists as time goes by, don't you agree?
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