Marginal ornament : poetics, mimesis, and devotion in the Palace of the Lions

• Published in: Muqarnas pp. 187 - 214
• Main Author: Robinson, Cynthia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.01.2008
• ISSN: 2211-8985

Although Oleg Grabar himself has frequently been heard to disparage the importance of his 1978 study of the Alhambra, claiming that al-Andalus really isn't "his area," this work has inspired research for several generations. Following its publication, both American and Spanish scholars began to look past the endless repetitions of ornamental compositions in the pattern books of Owen Jones and to peer beneath the exotic veil woven by Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra, to discover--thanks to Grabar's study--a complex of palaces that was a key component in the historical trajectory of a category of architecture that scholarship has agreed to designate "Islamic." Particularly com pelling were Grabar's "iconographic" readings of both the Palace of Comares and the Palace of the Lions. Though some of the most recent scholarship on the Alhambra has called certain of these readings into question, I believe, as I will argue in the pages to follow, that it is precisely Grabar's concept of an "iconography"--a set of images, both architectural and ornamental, to which both patrons and public attached signifi cance, and which were always understood through the interpretive lens offered by the verses inscribed on the walls--that serves to unlock the multiple layers of meaning in these buildings. [Publication Abstract]