Mudéjar Plasterwork and Mural Paintings in the Palace of Galiana in Toledo

Abstract

Abstract

The Palace of Galiana in Toledo stands within the former royal suburban estate, or almunia, of al-Maʾmūn, ruler of the taifa of Toledo. Following the Christian conquest of the city in 1085, the estate passed to Alfonso VI and subsequently became known as the Huerta del Rey. The surviving residential hall has been attributed to the eleventh-century taifa period on typological and historical grounds, although this attribution still awaits archaeological and fabric-based analysis. This article examines the Mudéjar plasterwork and mural paintings added to the building under Christian rule in order to clarify their chronology, stylistic context, and visual function. The study combines formal and iconographic analysis, parallels with Andalusi and Mudéjar precedents, available technical evidence, and heraldic and documentary sources. The ground-floor plasterwork can be dated more securely to the late fourteenth century, probably around or shortly after 1397, on the basis of converging stylistic, heraldic, and documentary evidence. The painted dados on the upper floor present a more complex chronological problem: the available technical evidence does not provide an independent absolute date, while stylistic and stratigraphic evidence favors a broad chronology within the Christian period, probably between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and suggests that the surviving fragments may represent more than one decorative phase. The spatial distribution of the decoration also reveals a close relationship between ornament, views, water, and landscape. Galiana thus offers a significant example of the ways in which Andalusi and Christian artistic traditions were combined and transformed in the Christian-period redecoration of an earlier palatial setting of probable Andalusi origin.