"CS.086 Gateway of Charles V" by Denis Baly
 

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Creator

Denis Baly

Creation Year

1963

Image ID

CS.086

Alternate Identifier

B49.267

Subcollection

CS: Granada

Abstract

Entranceway to the palace of Charles V in the Alhambra.

Description

When Granada finally fell to Isabella and Ferdinand in 1492, the Alhambra was designated a royal palace for the Christian royalty—a status that it was to retain until 1868. When Charles V assumed kingship, he commissioned the architect Pedro Machuca to build a Renaissance style palace for him in the Alhambra in 1526. The work however was abandoned after several fruitless attempts at completion. It was only in the twentieth century that the work commissioned by Charles was completed. Due to its location in the middle of the Alhambra, the palace has traditionally been disparaged and criticized. However, in the words of Robert Irwin: “In fact it is a fine, imposing building, but on the wrong site.” The Alhambra as a whole is one of the most fantasized monuments of Islamic Architecture, captivating the imagination of a vast number of writers and artists, including Washington Irving and the French author Chateaubriand, to name just a couple. Indeed, some parts of the Alhambra, such as the Court of the Lions, are commonly written about examples of the most beautiful architecture in the world. The palace-complex as it stands today was built mostly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries under the Nasrid dynasty (1238-1492), in particular by Yusuf I (1333-54) and his son Muhammad V (1354-59, 1362-1391). Out of six royal palaces, only two survive (the Comares palace and the Palace of the Lions). A summer palace called the Generalife (from the Arabic jannat al-arif, ‘the garden of the architect’) is also extant. – SK

Image Notes

Photograph created 1963. Photograph processed September 1963. Formerly catalogued as B49.267, BV.017. Notes written on the slide or index: Gateway of Charles V.

Image Format

35 mm slide

Geographic Reference

Granada, Spain

Keywords

Moorish, Muslim, Fourteenth Century, Palace, Reconstructed, Sixteenth Century, Stone, Masonry, Gate

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Rights Statement

In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted
 
 
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