Anna McSweeney
I am an art historian with a research focus on the art and architecture of the Islamic world, particularly of al-Andalus and the medieval western Mediterranean. My book From Granada to Berlin: the Alhambra Cupola, on the medieval Alhambra cupola, a carved Nasrid ceiling now in the Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin, was published by Verlag Kettler in 2020. I was co-investigator on the BA/Leverhulme funded project Crafting Medieval Spain 2021-23.
I am a lecturer in the history of art and architecture at Trinity College, Dublin and director of the MPhil programme. From 2018-2020 I was lecturer in art history at the University of Sussex, UK.
2015-18 I was a research fellow at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study in London in the research group 'Bilderfahrzeuge: Aby Warburg's Legacy and the Future of Iconology', funded by the Max Weber Stiftung.
I was a Senior Teaching Fellow in Islamic art history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. I have lectured at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Institute of Ismaili Studies and on the Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Studies at SOAS. I hold a PhD in Islamic art history from SOAS (2012) - the focus of my PhD thesis was the ceramics made in 14th-century Paterna in Spain.
I am a lecturer in the history of art and architecture at Trinity College, Dublin and director of the MPhil programme. From 2018-2020 I was lecturer in art history at the University of Sussex, UK.
2015-18 I was a research fellow at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study in London in the research group 'Bilderfahrzeuge: Aby Warburg's Legacy and the Future of Iconology', funded by the Max Weber Stiftung.
I was a Senior Teaching Fellow in Islamic art history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. I have lectured at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Institute of Ismaili Studies and on the Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Studies at SOAS. I hold a PhD in Islamic art history from SOAS (2012) - the focus of my PhD thesis was the ceramics made in 14th-century Paterna in Spain.
less
InterestsView All (40)
Uploads
Books
This book is the story of an extraordinary survivor from the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain: the Alhambra cupola, which is now in the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin. The cupola, a domed ceiling crafted from carved and painted wood, was made in the 14th century to crown an exquisite mirador in one of the earliest palace buildings of the Alhambra.
The book is the cupola’s biography from its medieval construction to its imminent redisplay in Berlin. Through the prism of the cupola, it is possible to trace the long history of the Alhambra for the first time, from the Muslim craftsmen who built it, to how it adapted to new administrations including the fall of Granada in 1492, to periods of neglect and the arrival of tourism. The cupola was sketched by artists from across Europe who fell for its beauty before it was dismantled by a German financier and taken to Berlin, where it witnessed the dramatic events in Germany of the 20th century.
In recent decades, the new visibility of the cupola to the wider public in the Museum has prompted questions about the object and its movement from Granada to Berlin. Its loss from the Alhambra and the complex reasons behind this loss are central to this biography. Through a focused study on this unique object and the societies through which it moved, this book cuts across academic disciplines and geographic boundaries to reveal a new perspective on the legacy of Islamic art in Europe and its continuing relevance today.
Published by the Max-Planck-Institut, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
Lethaby Gallery
10 Jan—3 Feb 2018
An exhibition organised by the International Research Group “Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology” in collaboration with Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.
This peer-reviewed special issue resulted from a panel at the AAH 2016 that examined Spain's relationship with its Islamic history, through the painting, photography, design and architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries. Paying particular attention to Spain's complex relations with contemporary Morocco, to the rise of nationalist sentiments in the 19th century, and to the emergence of methods of reproduction and copying that allowed Islamic monuments to be reproduced and translated, the resulting articles explore Spain's response to its own 'Orient' through a broad range of media. Includes an editorial and a select bibliography.
Contents:
Anna McSweeney and Claudia Hopkins Editorial: Spain and Orientalism
Ariane Varela Braga The Arab Room of the Palacio de Cerralbo
Asun González Pérez Reconstructing the Alhambra: Rafael Contreras and the Architectural Models of the Alhambra in the Nineteenth Century
Anna McSweeney Mudéjar and the Alhambresque: Spanish Pavilions at the Universal Expositions and the Invention of a National Style
Oscar E. Vázquez Vision, Lamentation and Nineteenth-Century Representations of the End of al-Andalus
David Sánchez Cano Allende el Estrecho (Beyond the Straits): The Photographic Gaze on the Orient in Andalusia and Morocco
Elisabeth Bolorinos Allard Visualizing 'Moorish' Traces within Spain: Orientalism and Medievalist Nostalgia in Spanish Colonial Photojournalism 1909-33
Claudia Hopkins The Politics of Spanish Orientalism: Distance and Proximity in Tapiró and Bertuchi
McSweeney and Hopkins Select Bibliography: Spain and Orientalism
Projects
The project will engage in a detailed study of the V&A's Torrijos ceiling while it undergoes conservation to prepare for redisplay, and through conversations and collaborations with specialists in different aspects of these ceilings' materiality and historical context. It aims to investigate the Torrijos ceilings as a group for the first time since their dispersal, and to engage in an international and cross-disciplinary dialogue about such ceilings and other objects produced at a turning point in European history, when Muslim rule in Spain came to an end in 1492.
Papers
The Burlington Magazine. Vol. 165 No. 1449 Spanish art. December 2023
Art in Translation, 9:1, 1-6
But exotic was not the only meaning of the nineteenth-century Alhambresque. In this paper I look at how the Alhambresque was used to express different ideas about identity and culture in the nineteenth century, focusing on examples in the Ottoman Islamic world. Using specific examples I show the variety of complex meanings that came to be expressed through the many different versions of this medieval Islamic palace.
Recent Awards
This book is the story of an extraordinary survivor from the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain: the Alhambra cupola, which is now in the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin. The cupola, a domed ceiling crafted from carved and painted wood, was made in the 14th century to crown an exquisite mirador in one of the earliest palace buildings of the Alhambra.
The book is the cupola’s biography from its medieval construction to its imminent redisplay in Berlin. Through the prism of the cupola, it is possible to trace the long history of the Alhambra for the first time, from the Muslim craftsmen who built it, to how it adapted to new administrations including the fall of Granada in 1492, to periods of neglect and the arrival of tourism. The cupola was sketched by artists from across Europe who fell for its beauty before it was dismantled by a German financier and taken to Berlin, where it witnessed the dramatic events in Germany of the 20th century.
In recent decades, the new visibility of the cupola to the wider public in the Museum has prompted questions about the object and its movement from Granada to Berlin. Its loss from the Alhambra and the complex reasons behind this loss are central to this biography. Through a focused study on this unique object and the societies through which it moved, this book cuts across academic disciplines and geographic boundaries to reveal a new perspective on the legacy of Islamic art in Europe and its continuing relevance today.
Published by the Max-Planck-Institut, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.
Lethaby Gallery
10 Jan—3 Feb 2018
An exhibition organised by the International Research Group “Bilderfahrzeuge. Aby Warburg’s Legacy and the Future of Iconology” in collaboration with Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.
This peer-reviewed special issue resulted from a panel at the AAH 2016 that examined Spain's relationship with its Islamic history, through the painting, photography, design and architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries. Paying particular attention to Spain's complex relations with contemporary Morocco, to the rise of nationalist sentiments in the 19th century, and to the emergence of methods of reproduction and copying that allowed Islamic monuments to be reproduced and translated, the resulting articles explore Spain's response to its own 'Orient' through a broad range of media. Includes an editorial and a select bibliography.
Contents:
Anna McSweeney and Claudia Hopkins Editorial: Spain and Orientalism
Ariane Varela Braga The Arab Room of the Palacio de Cerralbo
Asun González Pérez Reconstructing the Alhambra: Rafael Contreras and the Architectural Models of the Alhambra in the Nineteenth Century
Anna McSweeney Mudéjar and the Alhambresque: Spanish Pavilions at the Universal Expositions and the Invention of a National Style
Oscar E. Vázquez Vision, Lamentation and Nineteenth-Century Representations of the End of al-Andalus
David Sánchez Cano Allende el Estrecho (Beyond the Straits): The Photographic Gaze on the Orient in Andalusia and Morocco
Elisabeth Bolorinos Allard Visualizing 'Moorish' Traces within Spain: Orientalism and Medievalist Nostalgia in Spanish Colonial Photojournalism 1909-33
Claudia Hopkins The Politics of Spanish Orientalism: Distance and Proximity in Tapiró and Bertuchi
McSweeney and Hopkins Select Bibliography: Spain and Orientalism
The project will engage in a detailed study of the V&A's Torrijos ceiling while it undergoes conservation to prepare for redisplay, and through conversations and collaborations with specialists in different aspects of these ceilings' materiality and historical context. It aims to investigate the Torrijos ceilings as a group for the first time since their dispersal, and to engage in an international and cross-disciplinary dialogue about such ceilings and other objects produced at a turning point in European history, when Muslim rule in Spain came to an end in 1492.
The Burlington Magazine. Vol. 165 No. 1449 Spanish art. December 2023
Art in Translation, 9:1, 1-6
But exotic was not the only meaning of the nineteenth-century Alhambresque. In this paper I look at how the Alhambresque was used to express different ideas about identity and culture in the nineteenth century, focusing on examples in the Ottoman Islamic world. Using specific examples I show the variety of complex meanings that came to be expressed through the many different versions of this medieval Islamic palace.
This lecture considers the movement of monuments and the architectural fragment as object. From marble spolia in the medieval Maghreb to a carved Nasrid ceiling in Berlin, I will examine how objects have been made portable and re-charged with meaning despite their material limitations, and discuss whether 'in-betweenness' might be a productive framework within which to think about these wandering things.
The Partal was a pavilion with a mirador and wide views of the city and palace, with an enormous pool of water in front of it that turned it into an illusionistic palace floating on water. It was situated between the new mosque and the palace residence, as a stopping-off point in the formal palace gardens. This lecture on one of the earliest and most neglected palaces of the Alhambra, reveals the Partal as part of a long tradition of water pavilions in the Islamic palace architecture of the western Mediterranean. It draws from my recent research on the Alhambra that will be published in a monograph in early 2019.
IAS Common Ground, UCL, Wilkins Building, South Wing WC1E 6BT London
A workshop for early-career scholars sponsored by the British Academy’s Rising Star Engagement Award
From medieval Islamic Spain to modern-day Berlin.
Recent years have seen a proliferation of histories written about objects, from 'A History of the World in 100 Objects' at the British Museum to the autobiographical history of a netsuke collection in The Hare with the Amber Eyes by the potter Edmund de Waal. This new concern for the materiality of things and their potential agency represents an exciting new turn in the fields of anthropology, history and the history of art.
But what does such a biographical approach offer when we are looking at the history of buildings and their details? In this lecture I want to explore the possibilities of using the biographical approach to tell the story of a carved and painted ceiling from the Alhambra palace, Granada. Probably the most well-known and visited Islamic palace in the world, the long history of the Alhambra palace remains obscured by nineteenth-century romantic tales of western travellers and the revisionist histories of recent times. Through a close reading of one of its most exquisite and oldest decorative ceilings, I will trace the history of the Partal cupola from its 'birth' in early fourteenth-century, Nasrid Granada, to its life-changing move from Granada to Berlin in the 1890s. This biographical approach that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries, allows for a more complete and longer history to be told, one that places equal weight on the moment of production alongside the longer contextual history of the Alhambra's decline in the early modern period, its rediscovery by the romantics and current position as Spain's number one tourist destination.
November 2016
Hosted by the Barenboim Said Academy, Berlin
Over 21 papers were given over 3 days at a highly successful conference in the Barenboim-Said Akademie, Berlin. Over the coming months Gingko will be releasing podcasts of selected lectures.
The first in this series concerns the magnificent Alhambra Cupola, one of the jewels of the Museum fur Islamische Kunst in Berlin, and was delivered by Dr Anna McSweeney of the Warburg Institute. The particular focus of her talk was the poetry, which forms an integral part of this fourteenth-century wooden ceiling that once was part of the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain.
To listen to a podcast of Dr McSweeney's lecture please click here
http://www.gingkolibrary.com/
From al-Andalus to Rome: Hadith Bayad wa Riyad
The Hadith Bayad wa Riyad (Vat.ar.368) is one of the only survivors of the 'mass extinction' of illustrated Arabic manuscripts from al-Andalus. It represents a long history of painting in Islamic Spain, within a tradition of figural imagery that is also exemplified by contemporary decorated ceramics, wall painting and textiles. The manuscript bears physical evidence of having been in the hands of Italian merchants in the fifteenth century, before it entered into the collection of the Vatican Library in the early sixteenth century. This combined study of the manuscript will offer both visual and textual analyses of this manuscript. We will examine not only the history of the manuscript's production and the tradition in which it was formed, but also the long biography of the manuscript and its journey from Spain to Italy. The circumstances of its acquisition and the role it played in Arab studies in Italian scholarship of the nineteenth century will form part of a comprehensive new study of this important medieval manuscript.
This session builds on recent research by historians of art, literature and culture, whose work has revealed that the European discourse on the Islamic world is much more polyphonic than traditional postcolonial theory assumed. The session invites papers that examine 19th- and 20-century visual responses to Spain’s Islamic past and Spain’s nearest ‘Orient’, Morocco, by both Spanish and non-Spanish artists across all media (architecture, fine art, illustrated books, photography, film, fashion etc.). How did artists translate Spain’s Islamic world into visual formats? How was such imagery produced, viewed, and marketed? What were the artistic, ideological, political, and social positions on which visual responses were grounded? How important were they in the formation of broader attitudes to the Islamic world?
Email proposals for papers to the convenors Claudia Hopkins and Anna McSweeney by 9 November 2015. You can download a paper proposal form at http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/sessions2016/session21
The Alhambra as a source of inspiration for Western architects in the nineteenth century is well known and has been thoroughly documented. But 'alhambresque' style was not just an Orientalist exoticism in the West – it was also used in Muslim contexts, where the style was considered suitable for public buildings. In Cairo for example, an Alhambra-style palace was built on Gezirah island to house European monarchs attending the Suez Canal opening celebrations in 1869. Meanwhile in Istanbul, Sultan Abdülaziz patronised buildings such as the entrance to the former Ministry of Defense that were decorated in the alhambresque style. This paper explores the use of the alhambresque style in non-Western contexts in the nineteenth century, where 'alhambresque' came to mean something more than simply fashionable exoticism. It examines how the alhambresque style was used to express different and emerging ideas about identity and culture in the Ottoman world, and reveals how a variety of complex meanings came to be expressed through the many different versions of this medieval Islamic palace.
Wavering between the neo-Renaissance and Islamic styles, at the Paris 1889 Expo its official pavilion was in a Castilian Renaissance style. But at the same event Spain also officially backed a staging by the entrepreneur Roseyro of the ultimate Moorish reenactment fantasy in Andalousie au temps des maures, complete with Alhambra backdrop, gypsy dancers and present-day North Africans reenacting 'Moros y Cristianos' legends in full historical costume.
At other expositions a new 'mudéjar' style triumphed, identified as 'our own characteristic style' by the pavilion commissioner Emilio de los Santos in 1878, a style which drew inspiration from Spain's own Islamic monuments as well as from the 19th century global Alhambresque. At the 1878 Expo in Paris, Spain' s pavilion on the Rue des Nations, designed by Ortiz de Villajos, showcased a facade that mixed the Lion's Court of the Alhambra with elements from the Cathedral/Mosque of Cordoba.
This paper explores the tensions evident in how Spain represented itself on a world stage, on the one hand indulging in the sentimental Moorish fantasies that were the height of European fashion, while on the other attempting to express something more serious through experimentation with the mudéjar as a national style.
23.10.2015 – 24.01.2016
This year the Berlin Museum of Islamic Art is celebrating the 150th birthday of Friedrich Sarre (1865-1945), the first director of the Museum and a formative figure in the field of Islamic art. For this reason the museum will stage an exhibition entitled: 'Wie die islamische Kunst nach Berlin kam. Der Sammler und Museumsdirektor Friedrich Sarre' [How Islamic art came to Berlin: collector and museum director Friedrich Sarre], which will be accompanied by the publication of a book of the same title, co-edited by Julia Gonnella and Jens Kröger.
We will also be hosting a one-day symposium on Friday 23rd October 2015 in which we will explore Sarre's role as collector and museum director, his political connections in Turkey and Persia and the collections of his significant contemporaries. Speakers include Prof. Edhem Eldem (Istanbul), Dr. Gabriele Mietke (Berlin), Dr. Patricia Blessing (Stanford University), Dr. Joachim Gierlichs (Doha), Dr. Angelika Kaltenbach (Potsdam), Dr. Anna McSweeney (London), Dr. Malte Fuhrmann (Bochum/Berlin), Dr. Irina Khoshoridze (Tiflis), Dr. Veit Veltzke (Wesel), Dr. Eva Troelenberg (Florence). Members of the public are very welcome to attend.
Place: Friday, 23 October 2015 at the “Archäologisches Zentrum” of the Staatliche Museen, Geschwister-Schollstr. 6, at the Brugsch Pascha Saal (4th floor, above the premises of the museum’s offices), starting at 9.30am and finishing at 5.30pm.
This session builds on recent research by historians of art, literature and culture, whose work has revealed that the European discourse on the Islamic world is much more polyphonic than traditional postcolonial theory assumed. The session invites papers that examine 19th- and 20-century visual responses to Spain’s Islamic past and Spain’s nearest ‘Orient’, Morocco, by both Spanish and non-Spanish artists across all media (architecture, fine art, illustrated books, photography, film, fashion etc.). How did artists translate Spain’s Islamic world into visual formats? How was such imagery produced, viewed, and marketed? What were the artistic, ideological, political, and social positions on which visual responses were grounded? How important were they in the formation of broader attitudes to the Islamic world?
Email proposals for papers to the convenors Anna McSweeney or Claudia Hopkins by 9 November 2015. You can download a paper proposal form at http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/sessions2016/session21.
However, despite a lack of objects, some references suggest that a tradition of ivory carving may have existed in the eastern Islamic world. A Fatimid ivory casket bears the craftsman’s name ‘al-Khurasani’, while in the thirteenth century al-Qazwini wrote that in Tarq in Iran there were skilled makers of objects in ivory and ebony.
This paper presents a carved ivory plaque in a private UK collection that seems to fill this eastern gap. Its distinctive figure of an archer and bird carved in relief within a frame, are stylistically comparable with miniature painting and textile decoration from the 14th century Ilkhanid period. The particular headgear and hairstyle of the archer may even suggest a Seljuk provenance.
In the context of this colloquium on ivory trade and exchange in late Antiquity and early Islam, a carved ivory plaque possibly from the 13th century may not seem particularly extraordinary. But alongside the 8th century ivory plaques excavated at Jordan, they suggest the existence of a tradition of ivory carving in the eastern reaches of the Islamic world, which has hitherto remained untold.
This paper will examine the spread of this distinctive ware across the western Mediterranean, focusing on the movement of the tin glazing technique alongside the use of green and brown pigments for decorative motifs. In particular, it will attempt to unravel the transfer of techniques, aesthetics and motifs among the ceramics made in Tunisia and Sicily during the early medieval period.
The potters used techniques which had been invented, developed and perfected by Islamic potters for centuries. In Paterna, they brought tin glazing to new technical levels and painted their tableware with copper green and manganese brown pigments, to make colourful ceramics the like of which had not been seen in the Christian world.
However, a closer examination reveals a more complex and ambiguous story. The potters were mudéjares, Muslims who lived a rather compromised existence under the restrictions of the new Christian rulers. As Islamic Spain had shrunk dramatically by the end of the thirteenth century, the market for the ceramics made in this small town outside of Valencia was largely a Christian one. This had a profound impact on the types of ceramics made by the potters, as they catered for the new requirements and customs of a Christian clientele.
Stylistically too, the iconography found on the ceramics cannot be explained purely within the Islamic tradition. Images of dancing figures and coats of arms rub alongside fantastical beasts, swirling arabesques and pseudo Arabic writing. The lively and spontaneous imagery is typical of the style of painting which was also found in the wooden painted ceilings made by mudéjar artists in the kingdoms of Valencia and Aragon, with their inextricable mix of Islamic and Gothic Christian iconography. These mudéjar artists, who may have been responsible for both the painted ceilings and the decoration of Paterna ceramics, drew inspiration for their motifs from lyrical traditions of courtly love which were popular in the region during the fourteenth century, as well as from other media including textiles, carved stone cloister capitals and painted wooden altarpieces.
The Paterna ceramics were created within the blurred boundaries between two worlds, where Islamic and Christian cultures were forced to interact, and from which a unique culture arose. The mudéjar potters who made Paterna ware were not simply working within established traditions and reusing traditional imagery, but developed a whole new iconographical language to express this hybrid, border culture.
http://iconology.hypotheses.org/1864#more-1864
Looks at the technique of papier mache and 'wet paper' moulding of archaeological and architectural surfaces in the 19th century, with a particular focus on the work of Owen Jones and Carl von Diebitsch at the Alhambra in Granada, and of Alfred Maudslay in Mexico. Presented at Central Saint Martins college at the University of the Arts London in collaboration with the Bilderfahrzeuge Project of the Warburg Institute, London (March 2016). Part of an ongoing collaboration between the Bilderfahrzeuge Project and staff at Central Saint Martins, London.
Source: International Journal of Islamic Architecture . Mar2024, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p274-276. 3p.
Author(s): Slingluff, Sarah
Abstract: Review of: From Granada to Berlin: The Alhambra Cupola, Anna McSweeney (2020) Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 193 pp., 77 colour illus., ISBN: 978-3-86206-831-9, £
The potters who made them were mostly mudéjares, Muslims working under Christian rule in the Crown of Aragon; the use of the term mudéjar and the notion of convivencia are explored in the theoretical framework.
Far from being a small, local production site, this thesis reveals a sophisticated and complex ceramics industry through its exploration of the history and production of these ceramics. The Paterna potters were part of a western Mediterranean movement in tin-glazed ceramics, which exploited new connections in international trade in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They used Islamic production techniques, but adapted their typologies to include a range of forms that were new to ceramics in the region. The iconographical study demonstrates that the potters drew on a wide variety of sources, from both west and east, to create the motifs that decorate the ceramics.
The corpus of material which forms the basis for this study is illustrated in the Catalogue, as a separate volume which, for the first time, brings together images of all the ceramics of this type.
This dissertation was presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MA History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS, University of London, for which it was awarded a first class mark and the annual taught MA best thesis award. It is accompanied by a volume of images (not uploaded).