Amid the rugged natural beauty of southern Spain's Sierra Nevada mountain range stands the Alhambra, one of the world's great architectural gems. The grand medieval palace arose in the fourteenth century, and it remains a peerless example of Moorish art that developed in a European setting, apart from direct Byzantine influence. This splendid volume ventures inside the stone walls, gates, and towers for a lavishly illustrated survey of the castle's hidden treasures—the majestic decorations within its grand halls, corridors, patios, and balconies. This unequaled collection was assembled by the influential Victorian artist and architect Owen Jones, who introduced his contemporaries to a thrilling range of interior designs from around the world. Jones' full-color plates expertly reproduce the intricate, elegant patterns of the palace's windows, ceilings, wall panels, door arches, and porticos. Unique and affordable, this volume offers a magnificent source of inspiration for art and architectural designs.

The Nasrid builders of the Alhambra âe" the best-preserved medieval Muslim palatial city âe" were so exacting that some of their work could not be fully explained until the invention of fractal geometry. Their design principles have been obscured, however, by the loss of all archival material. This book resolves that impasse by investigating the neglected, interdisciplinary contexts of medieval poetics and optics and through comparative study of Islamic court ceremonials. This reframing enables the reconstruction of the underlying, integrated aesthetic, focusing on the harmonious interrelationship between diverse artistic media âe"architecture, poetry and textiles âe" in the experience of the beholder, resulting in a new understanding of the Alhambra.

Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe offers a critical examination of the reception of Ibero-Islamic architecture in medieval Iberia and 19th-century Europe. Taking selected case studies as a starting point, the volume challenges prevalent readings of interconnected cultural and artistic phenomena.

Based on many years of painstaking research and covering eleven centuries of medieval, modern and contemporary history, The Alhambra represents a major contribution to world scholarship. During his research for the book, the author has made some very exciting discoveries. He has, for example, resolved one of the great enigmas of Nasrid art by discovering the geometric proportional system on which the entire Alhambra architecture and decoration are based. The designs are at times so intricate that they baffle even professional mathematicians: Professor Fernaacute;ndez-Puertas has cracked the geometric code and discovered that the marvels of the Alhambra are built on a proportional system that is essentially incommensurable and not based on fixed units like metres or inches. This has involved making hundreds of analytical figures, many of which will be included in the book. Professor Fernaacute;ndez-Puertas is also the first to discover the chronological order in which the Alhambra palaces were built. He has collated much fragmentary information in order to reconstruct a picture of court life within the Alhambra and the personalities of its sultans and poet-viziers. The book thus contains the heart of three centuries of Nasrid art, as well as providing a history of the palatine city from the ninth century to the present day: the pre-Nasrid Alhambra, the Nasrid Alhambra and the Christian Alhambra. Based on many years of painstaking research and covering eleven centuries of medieval, modern and contemporary history, The Alhambra will be the most comprehensive scientific work yet issued on the subject--a work of this order is unlikely to be published again within our lifetime.

Added title page in colors, with ornamental border.

Surface decoration has always played a fundamental role in Islamic architecture. As human representation is forbidden in Islamic religious monuments, designers employed mosaics, stucco, brickwork and ceramics, and the vigorous use of brilliant colour to reach unparalleled heights of expression. It is this ornamental dimension of Islamic architecture that is explored in this magnificent volume. Rather than limiting itself to an exclusively historical or chronological perspective, Ornament and Decoration in Islamic Architecture presents four successive approaches to its subject. The first part offers an overview of Islamic architecture, discussing the great diversity it contains. Dealing exclusively with techniques, the second part considers the materials most often used as well as the expertise of the builders and Muslim decorative artists, and the third part explores themes in Islamic ornamentation. Section four discusses aesthetics, and studies the relationship between the buildings - the structures or their architectonic components - and their ornamental coverings. Each of these topics is presented through a number of outstanding examples and then through comparable monuments from all over the Islamic world. For anyone in thrall to such great wonders as the Taj Mahal and the Alhambra, and for everyone interested in the world of Islam, this lavish publication will be indispensable

How ornamentation enables a direct and immediate encounter between viewers and art objects Based on universal motifs, ornamentation occurs in many artistic traditions, though it reaches its most expressive, tangible, and unique form in the art of the Islamic world. The Mediation of Ornament shares a veteran art historian’s love for the sheer sensuality of Islamic ornamentation, but also uses this art to show how ornament serves as a consistent intermediary between viewers and artistic works from all cultures and periods. Oleg Grabar analyzes early and medieval Islamic objects, ranging from frontispieces in Yemen to tilework in the Alhambra, and compares them to Western examples, treating all pieces as testimony of the work, life, thought, and emotion experienced in one society. The Mediation of Ornament is essential reading for admirers of Islamic art and anyone interested in the ways of perceiving and understanding the arts more broadly.