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ABSTRACT
This article examines Royall Tyler’s reorientation of Hispanic studies, from Moorish Andalusia to medieval Christian Spain. Drawing on archival material, the article traces this young American art historian’s visits to the Iberian Peninsula that culminated in the publication of Spain: A Study of her Life and Arts (1909). This unaccountably neglected text was pioneering in its exploration of the art of Romanesque Spain, describing, for the first time, uncharted monuments that did not feature on the cultural map of Spain. Part travel guide and part scholarly account, Spain: A Study of her Life and Arts represents a significant missing link between the type of impressionistic vistas of Spain produced by the early romantics and later nineteenth-century travellers and the work of the more thoroughly academic art scholars Georgiana Goddard King and Arthur Kingsley Porter, who followed in Tyler’s wake after the First World War.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Mildred Barnes, art collector and cofounder, with Robert Woods Bliss, of the Dumbarton Oaks Collections, was a life-long friend of Royall Tyler. He seems to have been in love with her when he visited Spain for the first time in 1903, but after Mildred’s marriage to Robert Woods Bliss, they kept up their friendship. Their correspondence reveals the important role Tyler would play in the formation of the Byzantine art collection of Dumbarton Oaks, advising the Blisses and often serving as their agent in acquisitions (see Nelson Citation2010).
2 Letter of December 1909. Hereafter, all quotations from Tyler’s correspondence to Mildred Barnes are from Papers of Royall Tyler, 1902–1979. HUGFP 38.xx, Harvard University Archives. They appear courtesy of the Harvard University Archives.
3 Royall Tyler’s incomplete “Autobiography” in three sections is held at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Walter Muir Whitehill Papers. I am very grateful to this institution for having allowed me access to this material and for permission to cite it.
4 A historic region, in north-central Spain, with different territorial definitions along the centuries. By the time Tyler visited Spain, this denomination comprised the provinces of Ávila, Burgos, León, Palencia, Salamanca, Segovia, Soria, Valladolid, and Zamora. Tyler used the term “Castile” as coterminous with “Old Castile”, without including “New Castile”, which is separated from Old Castile by the Sistema Central mountains. Today, these provinces are part of the Autonomous community of Castile and León.
5 I use the term “northern Spain” in a broad sense to refer to the regions Tyler visited most assiduously, north of the Sistema Central mountains, which extend from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean: Aragón, Asturias, Catalonia, Galicia, and Old Castile.
6 Royall Tyler’s letters to Unamuno are preserved at the Casa Museo de Unamuno, at the University of Salamanca, T-34-36. Sadly, none of Unamuno’s letters to Tyler seems to have survived.
7 Tyler’s comment in his memoirs that Unamuno “could not pronounce English” (Citationn.d.-d. section III, 19) settles the question of the writer’s real competence in that language. For further details, see Santoyo (Citation1998).
8 In The Soul of Spain Havelock Ellis makes a very similar remark: “When I first entered Spain I said to myself that there was a land where the manners and customs of medieval Europe still survive” (Citation1908, 12). Janice Mann also notes that Georgiana G. King and Arthur K. Porter romantically perceived Spain as “timeless and quaint, albeit on the verge of corruption by modernity” (Mann Citation2009, 24).
9 From hence on, all references to Tyler’s correspondence to Unamuno are from Casa Museo Unamuno. I am very grateful to this institution for having granted me access to this archival material and permission to cite it.
10 There are several routes to reach Santiago de Compostela, but the Primitive Way, which crosses the landscape of Asturias, was the oldest and the most commonly followed by the pilgrims in the Middle Ages.
11 Elizabeth Boone asserts that “love of El Greco began in Catalonia” (Citation2007, 178), precisely in the circle in which Tyler was moving.
12 From here on, all quotations from Tyler’s correspondence to Joan Maragall are from Fons personal de Joan Maragall i Gorina, ca. 1880–1911, the Biblioteca de Catalunya. I am very grateful to this institution for granting me access to this archival material and permission to cite it.
13 The first Baedeker Spain and Portugal, Handbook for Travellers appeared in 1898, and would go through three subsequent revisions in 1901, 1908, and 1913. In the travel guide available in 1907, for instance, important monuments of the calibre of the Monastery of Ripoll are only mentioned in passing.
14 I am very grateful to Professor Maureen E. Montgomery of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, for having communicated this information.
15 Spanish medieval architecture reflects the historical upheavals that the country experienced during that period. The Visigoths dominated the Iberian Peninsula between the early sixth century and the Moorish invasion of 711 CE. The term “Mozarabic architecture” (in Spanish “Mozárabe”) refers to the building style of Christians who remained in Spain under Muslim rule. It is characterised by the assimilation of Islamic motifs and forms such as the horseshoe-shaped arc and the ribbed dome. The Asturian churches Tyler refers to are Pre-Romanesque buildings in Asturias, dating from the ninth century. These churches, like Santa María del Naranco and San Miguel de Lillo, bear witness to the central role Christianity played in the tiny kingdom of Asturias, the only region of Spain that was never conquered by the Arabs.
16 Alba del Pozo García also observes that Georgiana Goddard King’s The Way of Saint James is at the intersection between travel writing and the scholarly account, although her claim that “it could be considered closer to a travel book than to an academic essay” (Citation2020, 48) is questionable.
17 Even the Baedeker in its 1908 edition echoed these francocentric views, by stating that “the church of Santiago de Compostela […] is a modified copy of St. Sernin at Toulouse” (Justi Citation1908, xlvi).
18 Tyler claimed to dislike museums. See his letters to Mildred Barnes of 4 June 1905 and 14 July 1905.