Diana Darke's book 'Islamesque' explores the surprising and often overlooked influence of Islamic art on European Romanesque architecture. Through detailed research and stunning illustrations, Darke reveals how elements of design, materials, and even craftsmanship were borrowed and adapted from the Muslim world.
From Cairo to Istanbul, the ancient cities of the eastern Mediterranean tell a story of conquest, trade, and coexistence written in stone. Jerusalem’s seventh-century Dome of the Rock and its surroundings are dotted with, along with choice fragments from churches. In Damascus, the eighth-century Umayyad Mosque features intricately carved capitals from a Roman temple and relics of St John the Baptist transferred from the church it replaced.
The cross-pollination extended from design and materials to people – the shimmering gold mosaics that cover the interiors of both buildings are attributed to the Byzantine master craftsmen whose forerunners decorated the churches of Constantinople and Ravenna. This sun-drenched historical patchwork could seem a long way from the gloom of early medieval Europe. But in Islamesque, cultural historian Diana Darke sets out to show Islamic art’s influence on Europe’s Romanesque monasteries, churches, and castles, via a very similar story of surprising borrowings and occasional thefts. It is a companion to Darke’s previous book, which argued that European masterpieces from Notre-Dame to St Paul’s took inspiration from the Muslim world, and whose eye-catching examples included Big Ben’s resemblance to the Islamesque begins with equally sweeping claims of a “controversial, revolutionary” thesis: that Islamic influence has been less “forgotten” than deliberately suppressed by chauvinists and culture warriors. But the true focus of the book lies at the other end of the scale, in the micro-details of. To research it, Darke covered a staggering amount of ground, visiting “hundreds of Romanesque buildings scattered across England, Wales, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Sicily, not to mention scores of sites across North Africa, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey” – many of them shown in 150 beautiful colour illustrations
ISLAMIC ART ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE HISTORY EUROPEAN CULTURE MUSLIM INFLUENCE
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