History of mediæval art . tly have fallen into the hands of the Saracens. Ibn Khaldun,one of the most intelligent and trustworthy of Arabic writers, assertsthat the Mohammedans of Andalusia had adopted the custom ofdecorating their houses and palaces with paintings in consequence 200 MOHAMMEDAN ART. of their intimate intercourse with the Christians. We have ac-counts of pictorial representations on walls in the Palace of AlMotamed in Seville, and on ceilings of a castle of Al Mansour inBagia; while in the Alhambra there are still three well-preservedpaintings on leather, which were affixed to
History of mediæval art . tly have fallen into the hands of the Saracens. Ibn Khaldun,one of the most intelligent and trustworthy of Arabic writers, assertsthat the Mohammedans of Andalusia had adopted the custom ofdecorating their houses and palaces with paintings in consequence 200 MOHAMMEDAN ART. of their intimate intercourse with the Christians. We have ac-counts of pictorial representations on walls in the Palace of AlMotamed in Seville, and on ceilings of a castle of Al Mansour inBagia; while in the Alhambra there are still three well-preservedpaintings on leather, which were affixed to the ceilings of the threeniches in the so-called Hall of Judgment. One of these latter, withthe figures of ten kings of Granada, is decidedly of an Oriental char-acter, and mention is made by Moorish writers of works of portrait-ure of this kind. The subjects, the composition, and the details ofthe two other paintings leave no doubt that they are products ofOccidental art, and are referable to the Gothic period {Figs. 105. Fig. 106.—Painting from the Hall of Judgment in the Alhambra. and 106). The hunts, chivalric encounters, and episodes of knight-ly love, even the architecture represented in them, are so foreign toArabic conceptions that they must be ascribed to Christian paintersor renegades. The methods of textile art, which were so important in deter-mining the characteristics of Arabian architecture, tended also tolimit the provinces of sculpture and painting. Subjects which werenot adapted to representations in weaving and embroidery were butrarely modelled or drawn. The intricate repetitions of tapestry pat-terns were almost exclusively employed as models, serving for thedecorations of walls in arabesques of relief or color, as well as in PAINTING. 201 woven hangings. There was thus no field for independent crea-tions in the imitative arts. While the Moslems delighted and ex-celled in poetical accounts of human charms and deeds, and in themusical expression of the fe
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