Edwin Lutyens in Spain: the Palace of El Guadalperal

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 303-339
Author(s):  
Íñigo Basarrate
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Country House ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
South West ◽  
Spanish Archives

ABSTRACTAlthough the work of Edwin Lutyens has received careful scholarly study since the 1980s, his projects in Spain remain very little known. Unfortunately, Lutyens was unable to complete his Spanish commissions, mostly because of the deterioration of country's economy and social order in the 1930s, and this has played a major role in keeping these projects in the dark. Furthermore the devastation caused by the Civil War obliterated most of the evidence once held in Spanish archives.This paper focuses on Lutyens's main commission in Spain, the palace of El Guadalperal, designed for the eighteenth Duke of Peñaranda as a country house on his estate in south west Spain. This decades-long commission, lasting from 1915 to 1934, represents a very significant and original work in Lutyens's output. The first version for the palace shows his capacity to adapt his architecture to the local climate and architectural traditions, while the second would have been, if built, his largest country house, approaching the grandeur and magnificence of the Viceroy's House in Delhi.

The Spanish Reception of Le Sacre du Printemps (1913–1936)

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-66
Author(s):  
Idoia Murga Castro
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Silver Age ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
Rite Of Spring ◽  
Le Sacre Du Printemps ◽  
Cultural Expansion

Centenary celebrations are being held between 2016 and 2018 to mark the first consecutive tours of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Spain. This study analyses the Spanish reception of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) (1913), one of its most avant-garde pieces. Although the original work was never performed in Spain as a complete ballet, its influence was felt deeply in the work of certain Spanish choreographers, composers, painters and intellectuals during the so-called Silver Age, the period of modernisation and cultural expansion which extended from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

Review of periodical articles

Urban History ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-335
Author(s):  
JELLE HAEMERS ◽  
GERRIT VERHOEVEN ◽  
JEROEN PUTTEVILS ◽  
PETER JONES
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Urban Elites ◽  
Patrilineal Descent ◽  
North Western

One of the key concepts of Max Weber's writings on cities was that in north-western Europe, the landed nobility and urban elites were clearly distinguished. For Weber, this was indeed a main reason to locate the occidental city in the north rather than in the Mediterranean. Christof Rolker tackles this question in his ‘Heraldische Orgien und Sozialer Aufstieg. Oder: Wo ist eigentlich “oben” in der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt?’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung, 52 (2015), 191–224. The in-depth analysis of one of the largest and at the same time most widespread armorials in the late medieval Holy Empire, namely that of Konrad Grünenberg (d. 1494), demonstrates that in Konstanz (where Grünenberg lived) guilds (and not the nobility) first insisted on patrilineal descent as a proof of status. Traditionally, Grünenberg is seen as a paradigmatic social climber, as he left his guild to join the society of the local nobility (called ‘Zur Katz’). Yet his sumptuous armorial, containing over 2,000 coat of arms mainly from the south-west of the Empire, does not mention any single member of this noble society. Instead, it praises the tournament societies of which Grünenberg was not a member, and highlights chivalric events in which he never participated. This, Rolker argues, indicates that armorials were not only about status already gained or to be gained, but also a manual for contemporaries to discuss the social order in a more abstract way. In his ‘Wappenbuch’, Grünenberg constantly explains why he could not join the noble societies he praised, while at the same time he ignored the ‘Zur Katz’ association of which he was a member. Therefore, Rolker concludes that it was not only members (or would-be members) of the respective social groups who knew and reproduced social codes. So the boundary between noble and urban elites was more blurred than Weber claimed – though Rolker is of course not the first to criticize Weber on this. Clearly, Grünenberg's armorial was part and parcel of a wider discussion of origins and kinship, namely patrilineal kinship that took place in several social milieux, rather than simply a book which displayed inherited status.

Material Culture: From Arts to Coins

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver H. Creighton ◽  
Duncan W. Wright ◽  
Michael Fradley ◽  
Steven Trick
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
South West ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Parish Churches ◽  
Post War ◽  
South West England

This chapter examines the material culture of the twelfth century and assesses evidence for change as a result of the civil war. The period’s pottery shows a myriad of regionally distinctive patterns although towards the end of the twelfth century we see the growth of markets and commercialisation of the industry in a post-war boom. In the sphere of the arts there is no evidence whatsoever of any hiatus nor of declining standards during Stephen’s reign, and instead the period witnessed achievement and innovation in several different areas. While it is difficult to isolate developments in the 1130s, 40s and 50s from longer-term trends, it does seem clear that sculpture in parish churches shows particularly high levels of experimentation, while grave slabs were a modish means of commemoration and expressing identity for emerging parish elites. Coinage provides our best means of mapping the fluid geopolitics of the civil war on the ground. An ever-expanding dataset is highlighting the existence of a short-lived Angevin proto-state in south-west England during the 1140s, but we should also be cautious in assuming that all ‘rival’ coin issues during the period provide straightforward evidence for opposition to Stephen’s rule.

The Hewer Memorial at Clapham: A Reflection of Bernini

1974 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-267
Author(s):  
R. J. Ninnis
Keyword(s):  
Original Work ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
South West ◽  
Gian Lorenzo Bernini ◽  
Samuel Pepys

SummaryThis article draws attention to the presence in south-west London of what might be regarded as a monument by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It is not from Bernini's hand and it is not quite a replica, but is an adaptation of the master's Raggi monument in Rome, and in a large degree preserves the High Baroque spirit of the original work. Although many examples of Bernini's influence can be found in the commemorative art of Britain in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, no other monument represents so faithfully the original Bernini design.The Hewer monument is not signed and, as yet, no documentary evidence can be produced to throw light on the means of inspiration for the English sculptor; it is, however, most likely to have been associated with John Jackson's purchases in Rome for the library of his uncle, Samuel Pepys.

Four Demons of Valentin Kataev

Slavic Review ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 647-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dodona Kiziria
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Soviet Literature ◽  
New Social Order ◽  
The Revolution

“Revolution itself commanded men's lives in those days.”Valentin Kataev, The Grass of OblivionThe Grass of Oblivion, a novel by Valentin Kataev, is a tribute to the Russian writers who were forced to choose their path during the revolution and the civil war. The theme may seem outdated, but the approach to the theme and its literary treatment are amazingly original and modern. In all of Soviet literature it would be difficult to find tragic images comparable to the two poets in this narrative (Bunin and Maiakovskii) who are compelled, finally and irrevocably, either to accept or reject the role offered to them by the new social order. Yet these images are outlined with such grace and elegance, and so tempered with irony, that an ambivalence, an almost diabolic duality is etched into the characters and events. Even the character of the narrator appears split, further complicating the multileveled narrative structure of the novel in which reality is so densely interwoven with fantasy that a third, synthesizing plane of meaning emerges.

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