ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE IN SPAIN

Islamic and Mudejar Architecture in Spain--New Digital Collection
University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center

The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center is pleased to announce the creation of the Casselman Archive of Islamic and Mudejar Architecture in Spain. Made public on September 5th, 2007, this freely searchable collection contains over four thousand *color slides and black and white photographs of medieval Spain taken by the late Eugene Casselman (1912-1996) during his thirty years of travel throughout the Iberian peninsula. The images span over one thousand years of architectural history, from the seventh to the seventeenth century. The majority of the slides focus on the Mudejar style, an ornate court style largely inspired by Spanish Islamic architecture that was shared among Islamic, Jewish, and Christian cultures during the later Middle Ages in Spain. Eugene Casselman exhibited some of the photographs from this collection in 1983 at the then Elvehjem Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin. The slides and photographs were donated to the Department of Art History by Eugene Casselman’s widow, Frances, and his children.

The collection is at http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Arts.CasselmanImage

One of the collection’s greatest strengths is its breadth, which enables the viewer to see the deep-rooted influence of Islamic art and architecture in Spain. There are pre-defined searches and the images can be searched by location, listed as Autonomous Community--Province--City, and style, divided into Visigothic, Asturian, Islamic, Mozarabic, Romanesque, Gothic, Mudejar, Renaissance, and Baroque, as well as date, subject and title.

To learn more about our collections visit our homepage at http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/