Hello, my name is Maria Feliciano.
I am an art historian and textile expert.
And today we're going to be talking about textiles, commerce
and consumption in the Iberian Peninsula
using a mediterranean context.
Traditionally, the approach to the study of textiles
in the Iberian Peninsula has followed a binary system of oppositions
Muslin versus Christian, us versus them, in
in a progressive pattern of
conquest and submission.
Textiles have generally been studied as evidence of war booty
and engagements
of belic kind.
Today we're going to be telling a much more complex story.
And this story
expands into the Mediterranean and outwards into Central Asia
in order to illustrate the wide flow of goods
and the circulation of luxury goods in and out of the Iberian Peninsula.
Among the
earliest textiles that we have been able to document
is located presently at the treasury of San Isidoro of Leon,
an 11th century foundation in Castile.
The textile on the right that you see is the lining
of the famous reliquary of Saint Isidore of Seville,
which arrived in 1062 at the collegiate church.
Recently, Carbon 14 dating
has given us a new perspective on how to study this object.
The early date 9 to 10 century of this textile
predates the famous gift that Queen Sancha
and King Ferdinand of Leon gave to the collegiate church.
We also know that this is a Central Asian object
that arrived from Far East into present day
Uzbekistan, or the zone that we call Transoxiana.
A very interesting
aspect of early textile commerce and movement is that initially
during the early medieval period, it followed an east-west axis.
They flowed from the eastern Mediterranean
through different kinds of stops along ports in North Africa,
into the Iberian Peninsula, using the trade winds
and then flowing eastwards back out into the eastern Mediterranean,
carrying, of course, goods of various kinds from the Iberian Peninsula
to the rest of the Mediterranean basin.
Here, the presence,
the strong political and geopolitical presence
of the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt is key.
There is
ample evidence of very early fatimid pieces in the Iberian Peninsula,
and in fact they seem to be part of the of the foundation of the taste
for a very particular kind of luxury good
that carries on for centuries.
The idea of producing textiles
in a combination of linen and silk,
also in combination with metal thread
is a foundation,
one can say, of Iberian taste.
Here on the left you will see a textile fragment
from San Pedro Arlanza, one of the most important
foundational churches
and monasteries of Castile.
And on the right, a recently discovered Almaizar
or veil from Palencia Cathedral, which has been carbon
dated to the years 1025 to 1159,
coinciding, of course, with the foundation
of the Cathedral of San Antolin in Palencia,
both items seem to have been closely related to the foundation
of very important establishment ecclesiastical establishments
in Central Castile.
The textile on the
left has the added detail that it was removed
from a little reliquary box,
which you see in the background of that image
and inserted into the the stonewall near the altarpiece of the church,
meaning that it was considered to be a relic
and an evidence of the antiquity of the church itself
by the time that it went in.
The objects such as these carried
on their influence for centuries,
and the image that you are seeing right now attests to this.
It is a textile that was produced very likely in the Iberian Peninsula
in imitation of goods that were fashioned
in the eastern Mediterranean. Here
in particular, we see pseudo-Coptic inscriptions
adorning the the textile.
Coptic, of course, being the language of Christians
in Egypt during the late antique and early medieval period.
Here, of course, they say nothing.
They have no content.
But the the alphabet is still used as a sign of status
and ahopefully perhaps deceiving the
person purchasing these objects into making them
believe that this might maybe be an Egyptian work.
In the 12th century, there is
a realignment of the commercial map of the Mediterranean base.
And with the advent of the Maghrebi or Moroccan dynasties,
we see that the flow of goods is really determined
by their ability to trade, but to control the flow of goods
in their realms, which included, of course, the Iberian Peninsula.
So from going east west, we are now, really marking trade
and control of goods and flow of ships
north to south.
This coincides
with a period of great expansion in the naval commercial powerhouses
that were the Genovese and the Pisans.
So now in cahoots or in with the
the good allowance of the Moroccans,
the Genovese and the Pisans could trade at a scale
that that was unseen up until this point.
Their trade arm expanded and extended well into the depths of Central
Asia and carried out into northern Europe
through a system of both local transmission
and then, of course, of their own fleet of ships
that moved all of these goods all over.
The Genoese had an immense interest in the Iberian Peninsula,
and they, along with other maritime
empires, had trading houses in Seville, in Malaga,
in Almeria and in other port cities of the Iberian Peninsula.
They had an enormous impact,
in fact, in shipping and moving Nasrid,
goods from the Kingdom of Granada beginning in the 13th century
and carrying on well into the 15th.
Very good example of this is the Terno of San Valero
or the ecclesiastical vestments associated with the cult
to the saint Valerius in Roda
de Isábena in Aragon.
This is a set of ecclesiastical vestments
that we know were purchased in Tarragona,
that textiles were purchased in Tarragona.
And then this then brings us also to consider the importance
of Catalan and Valencian and seafarers in the transmission
and in the movement of goods from the Kingdom of Granada
into the northern realms of the Iberian
Peninsula.
Evidence
also of the importance of the weaving workshops
of the Nasrids expanse into Castile as well.
The famous chasuble of Sancho of Aragon, Archbishop of Toledo,
is a textile that is
magnificently conserved today in the Cathedral of Toledo,
that it's made in a tapestry technique
of incredibly rich raw materials that is connected to the techniques
of the Terno de San Valero and a series of other textiles as well.
We have been able to identify a fragment
of exactly the same technique and materials today
at the Centre de Documentació i Museu Tèxtil in Terrassa in Catalonia.
And it bears an inscription with the Nasrid logo or motto wa-lā gāliba
illà Allāh
There is no victor but God.
So we can really technically
and also through inscriptions
and epigraphic inscriptions tie these goods to Nasrid
Imperial workshops.
And this is really what they were trading
in, intensely refined techniques,
very high quality raw material.
This is silk wrapped in gold of the finest order.
And I think this is really the key to understanding
the whole phenomenon is to think
that it's been calculated that about 20% of
Mediterranean industry during the medieval period
had something to do with the textile, trade and commerce
being dying, being raising silkworms,
weaving, spinning the threads, etc.
All of it amounted to an incredibly high percentage
of industrial output during the medieval period.
Textiles that we can connect
much more closely with the Nasrid world
are the textiles that emerged in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Textiles that we can in fact also connect to the famous walls
of Alhambra the palace. The Nasrids developed
a very distinctive style that was
commercialized very effectively by the Genoese in particular,
but also the Catalan and the Valencian and seafarers.
These examples that I'm bringing you here
are basically the same textile pattern and technique
woven in different moments and in different scales.
So what we have our workshops producing
meters upon meters upon meters of textile
made for commercial trade,
meaning for other markets in the Iberian Peninsula,
but also in the rest of the Mediterranean.
The same can be said of this type of textile here
where we find them in collections and we find them in
cathedral treasuries all over the Iberian Peninsula.
But they were woven using different
chromatic combinations.
Once these looms were set,
they were just made to produce en masse
and if there was any change detected in the markets,
simply the colors were switched and the objects
recommercialized, very effectively.
We're really
talking about a grand scale that is brought to a capitalistic
basically in its foundation. The Nasrids protected
the production aspect of it and the Genoese, the Valencians
and the Catalans made sure that it got moved
very effectively.
Lastly, it is a good idea not to forget that
these objects moved along with other types of goods as well.
One of the most favored and favorite items
that that were traded along the textiles were
goods
for performance and festival performances
in northern Spain in particular swords
and anything that had to do with the juego de cañas
or these horsemanship tourneys,
that that lasted well into the 17th century.
Documentation tells us, in fact, that they were highly desired,
expertly sourced by the the Northern kingdoms,
and that in fact helped to establish a taste, a very aristocratic taste
for theatrical performance rooted
in fact on these luxury goods that were flowing from the South.
Thank you very much.