A Western Passion

The Alhambra, the celebrated palatial structure of the Nasrid dynasty located in the last Arab capital of the Iberian Peninsula, Granada, was (re)discovered during the first half of the nineteenth century. Let us immediately note that this discovery was essentially Western: French, British and, later, German. Its genealogy is complex and convoluted, but it is marked by milestones consisting of texts and images produced by authors who have greatly contributed to the construction of one of the major myths of romanticism. Already in the last decade of the eighteenth century, Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–1794) introduced his Gonzalve de Cordoue ou Grenade reconquise (Gonzalo of Cordoba, or Granada Reconquered) with a ‘historical summary on the Moors of Spain’, a section of which was devoted to a ‘description of the Alhambra’. In it, the author described the contrast between the palace's chaotic exterior and its lavish apartments, dwelling at length on the Court of the Lions – the famous patio de los Leones – and its alabaster fountain. In a guidebook for travellers dated 1805, more than half of the description of Granada was devoted to the Alhambra, ‘one of the most complete and most magnificent edifices built by the Moors in Spain’. Between 1807 and 1818, Count Alexandre de Laborde (1773–1842) published his monumental Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Espagne (Picturesque and Historical Travels to Spain). True to the passion for the ‘picturesque’ that had invaded travel literature during the past few decades, Laborde's work included lavish plates of the palace, its main halls and courts, inscriptions and other decorative elements, and a section on the Court of the Lions.

And yet, although it is true that the French and the British figured prominently in this discovery in the first decades of the nineteenth century, one needs to do justice to the role the Spaniards played in this process, most notably through the realisation of a major project involving the drawing and documentation of the monument as early as the mid-eighteenth century.