Islamic Objects in the Material Culture of the Castilian Nobility: Trophies and the Negotiation of Hybridity

Chapter 8 Islamic Objects in the Material Culture of the Castilian Nobility: Trophies and the Negotiation of Hybridity

Antonio Urquízar-Herrera

Inventories of the possessions belonging to noble families in early modern Spain contain numerous references to objects classified as “Morisco” goods.* Scholarly literature has usually approached this subject in relation to the de- bates on maurophilia and hybridization.1 Many of these objects were spoils of war, such as weapons and rich clothes. Most of them remained as part the family estates and were considered permanent symbols of the lineages. Indeed, some of them were exhibited in the galleries of the noble residences from the 16th up to the 19th and 20th centuries, as part of different decorative arrange- ments and historical narratives. The trousseau of King Boabdil (now at the Museo del Ejército of Toledo) is a good example of the common trend in the exhibition of the spoils of war by Castilian families (Fig. 8.1). It was preserved over several generations by the Marquises of Comares as a source of memory about the origin of the family’s title of nobility in the conquest of Granada. Far less frequent but equally interesting as a counterpoint is the case of the Granada Venegas family. They were Muslims and relatives of the Nasrid royal family who converted to Christianity and switched sides to join the troops of Isabella and Ferdinand before the 1492 capture of Granada. In the 17th century they were given a Castilian title of nobility while retaining their social authority over the Morisco population. Their inventories of goods reflect the controversial history of the family.

* This paper was prepared using funding from the Research Project of the Spanish Ministry of Economy HAR2015-66311-P “Políticas en tránsito para la legitimación nobiliaria: memoria e historia del coleccionismo y las escenografías domésticas de la nobleza española (1788–1931)” (PI: Antonio Urquízar-Herrera). Many thanks to Nicola Stapleton and María Fernández for their partial translation and revision of the text. 1 Among many others, see Peter Burke, Cultural Hybridity (Cambridge, UK, 2009), p. 14. On the medieval interpretation of these objects, see: Avinoam Shalem, Islam Christianized – Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Church Treasuries of the Latin West (Frankfurt, 1996, 2nd re- vised edition 1998); by the same author, The Oliphant: Islamic Objects in Historical Context (Leiden, 2004); and Rosser-Owen, “Islamic Objects.”

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In order to broaden current perspectives on how Islam figured in the house- holds of the noble families in the Early Modern Period in Spain, some new questions need to be asked. What was more significant in the interpretation of these objects by their owners: their Moorish materiality or their history? What kind of relationship did these Islamic objects have with other items in the collections in the palaces of the nobility? Finally, as an out-of-period counterpoint, how did the fact that Orientalism emerged simultaneously with the historicist reorganization of noble estates in the 19th century affect these objects?

1 The Spoils of Conquest

In my opinion, humanist theory on noble insignia provides a good starting point for analysing the material culture of the nobility in the Early Modern Period. This is an issue I have been writing about in recent years and one for which I think it important to make certain observations.2 Social theory and history texts found in the libraries of the nobility offer numerous clues as to how the objects in the houses were interpreted. This horizon of expectation is particularly relevant for understanding the position of Islamic objects in this context. In addition, many of the Islamic objects preserved (and recognized as such) among the property of the Spanish nobility were military spoils. Reflection on military conquest, spoils of war, social emblems of noble estates, and the memorialization of noble lineages goes back at least as far as the Roman historians Livy and Plutarch, as well as other authors such as Pliny the Elder. “Memory” is, as we shall see, fundamental in this regard. The humanist recovery of Latin texts emphasized these references, and many 15th-, 16th-, and 17th-century authors thought carefully about the value of war booty and its connection to portraits and coats of arms. In particular, spoils were valued for its capacity to build family identity, to transmit cultural values, and even to assist in the ideological integration of new members of the nobility. This view was common all over Europe. Among many other authors, the French- men André Tiraqueau (1549) and François de L’Alouëte (1597) and the Italian Giambattista Nenna (1542) should be mentioned. In Spain, where the topic

2 See Antonio Urquízar-Herrera, “Teoría de la magnificencia y teoría de las señales en el pensa- miento nobiliario español del siglo xvi,” Ars Longa, 23 (2014), 93–111; and Antonio Urquízar- Herrera, “‘Making Invisible Things Visible and Palpable’: Visual Marks of Nobility in Early Modern French Social Theory and the Embodiment of Social Estates in Collections, 1550– 1650,” Word & Image 31-3 (2015), 386–97.