The Renaissance Reception of the Alhambra: the Letters of Andrea Navagero and the Palace of Charles V

CAMMYBROTHERS THE RENAISSANCE RECEPTION OF THE ALHAMBRA: THE LETTERS OF ANDREA NAVAGERO AND THE PALACE OF CHARLES V For sixteenth-eentury European visitors to Granada, the the reflections of a discerning, well-educated humanist. Alhambra presented a splendid, intact monument of a When Ferdinand and Isabella provided for the preserva culture that was otherwise foreign. When Andrea Navag tion and maintenance of the Alhambra by designating it ero, the Venetian ambassador to the imperial court and a casa real, or royal residence, their conquest was a living a humanist, poet, and expert gardener, visited the city in memory and the Alhambra could serve as a symbol of 1526, he found a largely Moorish population and few the triumph ofChristian Spain over the Muslim ernpire." signs of the Christian reconquest of 1492: In letters to But by the time Charles V arrived in Granada, the city his friend Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Navagero recorded was Christian and imperial in name only. He chose to his impressions of the palace and city prior to the trans build a palace adjacent to the Alhambra not only for the formation that Charles V began in the same year," First lovely views, lush vegetation, and abundant water supply, published in 1556 as part ofa collection ofletters by illus but also for the opportunity the site afforded to appro trious men, and then in 1563 as a full volume, Il uiaggio priate the aura ofthe Alhambra while inscribing it with a fatto in Spagna e in Francia dal magnifico M. Andrea Nava symbol ofhis domination (fig. 1). giero, the letters are often cited for their factual content, Although the palace of Charles V at Granada has but have rarely been given the attention they deserve as received a fair amount ofscholarly attention, it has con- Fig. 1. Granada. Palace ofCharles V and the Alhambra. View from the east . (Photo: courtesy of MAS, Barcelona, Spain) 80 CAMMY BROTHERS sistently been considered in th e stylistic context of the and cities , but none received the attention he lavished ltalian Renaissance, rather than the physical one of the on the AIhambra. He saw the AIhambra in terms of AIhambra, Granada, and Spain. The degree to which the ancient villas and gardens as they were described in clas palace has been isolated from its immediate context by sical literature. After making some general observati ons recent studies" is particularly unfortunate given the abo ut its situation and th e materials with which it was attention to site that characterizes Charles's architectu built, he begins a room-by-room elaboration of its out ral patronage in Spain. At C6rdoba, and Seville he patro standing features.Certain elements - the rich materi nized projects which carved out imperial spaces within als, the fine craftsmanship, and th e elaborate wat er sys the fabric ofmedieval Umayyad and Alrnohad buildings, tems - attract his attention; others, for example the adapting local building styles to suit his functional Islamic inscriptions which ado rn almost every room, he needs. Considering why Charles chose to build his pal ignores entirely. He begins: ace adjacent to the AIhambra in an ltalianate style and comparing the project to others at C6rdoba and Seville The Alhambra is surrounded by walls and it is like a castle make possible an analysis of the palace within the con se parated from the rest of th e city, which it almost entirely text of Spain's Islamic heritage and the ideology of dominates. Inside there are a good number of houses but the most space is occupied by a beautiful palace th at empire. Together, Andrea Navagero and Charles V pro belonged to the Moorish kings; in truth it is very beautiful vide the anchors for a discussion which can illuminate and extremely sumptuous in its fine marbles and in all broader issues such as architectural exchanges between othe r things. The marble, however, is not on th e walls but Italy and Spain and the multifaceted, historically layered on the floor. There is a large court, orspace, in the Spani sh style, very beautiful and gra nd, surrounde d by buildings, relation of the Islamic to the classical. but in one pa rt it has a beautiful and unique tower that is called the Tor de Com arez, in whic h there are a few rooms ANDREA NAVAGERO'S DESCRIPTION and very good private ro om s, with th e windows made in a OF THE ALHAMBRA delicate and ple asing way, with excellent Moorish crafts manship, both in th e walls and in th e ceiling of the rooms. The crafted parts are in pIaster with gold and part of ivory Andrea Navagero, in addition to being the author of a with gold; in truth it is all very beautiful, and most of all th e his tory of Venic e, a sch olar, and a diplomat, was an ceiling of th e room below and all th e walls. The court is informed student of ancient architecture, an am ateur tiled with extreme ly fin e white marble, some pieces of which are very large. In th e middle th ere is a channel full poet, " horticulturalist, and a These latter occupations, as of water running fro m a fountain ; it begins in the palace shall be seen, gave hirn the tools to analyze the AIhambra and co nducts th e water everywhere, ending in the room s. in an informed and perceptive way. He was friends with Along both sides ofthis cha nne l is a grove of beautiful myr Fra Giocondo, the Venetian author ofthe first illustrated tle and some orange trees.'" edition of Vitruvius, and while in Spain requested that Ramusio send hirn the book. He was also friends with The use of large quantities of marble in building would Raphael, Baldassare Castigli one, and Pietro Bembo. In a have been familiar to Navagero from his native eity of letter of 3 April 1516, Bembo writes of their plan to visit Venice, although he notes, "The marble, however, is not Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli together; Bembo had already in the walls, but on the floor." Navagero makes other dis be en there, but says that th ey are going to please Navag tin ctions, noting the "Spanish style" court and the Moor ero before he leaves for Venice." In Venice Navagero ish craftsmanship of the walls and ceilings. kept two gardens, at Murano and Selva, to which he fre The gardens ofthe AIhambra, lacking the particularity qu ently refers in his letters and which rec eived th e lavish of materials and craftsmanship of th e architecture, pre praise ofvisitors." His particul arizing descriptions of the sented Navagero with the greatest opportunity to exer varie ties of species of flora he encounters in Spain and eise his rhetoric and his historical imagination, as weil as his ability to name them dem onstrate that he was not his horticultural expertise. His letters often begin with sim ply an enthusiast but an expert." In addition , he was expressions of his longing to be in his own gardens of th e author of Lusus, a volume of Latin pastoral poetry Murano and Selva and include instructions conceming first published in Venice in 1530 and based on the imita th eir care , which he had entrus ted to Ramusio. In a let tion ofVirgil's Georgics' ter of 5 May 1525, he writes fro m Barcelona that Spain is Navagero's letters contain many de scriptions of sites a land "of the most beautiful garden s that I can imagine.

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