Lecture: ‘Foreignness and Architecture in late fifteenth-century Castile’ with Dr Costanza Beltrami, The Murray Seminars at Birkbeck, 5 December 2023, 5pm (GMT)

What did it mean to be a foreigner in fifteenth-century Castile? How was local architecture shaped by broader phenomena of migration, and how was international exchange transformed by local contexts? The history of fifteenth-century Spanish architecture has often been told as a history of travelling artists. Following a first ‘wave’ of French ‘pioneers,’ around mid-century, Northern European artists settled in the kingdom of Castile, obtaining leading positions in important cathedral lodges where they trained ‘second-generation’ migrants like Juan Guas (active 1453–1496), the leading architect of his time. In his will, Guas evokes his distant French origins, but also his position as Royal Master Mason. The foreign craftsmen who settled in Castile in the late-fifteenth century have been credited with establishing a new status for architects at the Gothic-to-Renaissance transition. Unusually, their names are recorded next to those of patrons on some contemporary buildings. Exploring the dynamics of artistic migration, this lecture will interrogate the meanings of architecture in fifteenth-century Castile.  

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Click here to book the livestreamed seminar via Eventbrite

Birkbeck are happy to say that the Murray Seminars on Medieval and Renaissance Art are going to be restarting on December 5th after a longer-than-wished-for absence. The main change that you’ll notice is that the Livestreamed verison will now be using the ‘Microsoft Teams’ platform, as opposed to the glitch-heavy ‘Collaborate’ platform, and we hope you’ll appreciate the difference. You won’t need to download anything new, and access via the link should be straighforward. Of course, if you can attend in person, we’ll be delighted to see you again in our usual haunt of the Keynes Library at 43, Gordon Square, London WCIH 0PD, and we hope you’ll stay for a glass of wine after the seminar.