The Marquises of Viana: building distinction through the past (1875-1927) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Blood, Land and Power. The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Nobility and Lineages in the Early Modern Period, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021
The analysis of land management, lineage and family through the case study of early modern Spanish nobility from sixteenth to early nineteenth century is a major issue in recent historiography. It aims to shed light on how upper social classes arranged strategies to maintain their political and economic status. Rivalry and disputes between old factions and families were attached to the control and exercise of power. Blood, land management and honour were the main elements in these disputes. Honour, service to the Crown, participation in the conquest and ‘pure’ blood (Catholic affiliation) were the main features of Spanish nobility. This book analyses the origins of the entailed-estate (mayorazgo) from medieval times to early modern period, as the main element that enables us to understand the socio-economic behaviour of these families over generations. This longue durée chronology within the Braudelian methodology of the research aims to show how strategies and family networks changed over time, demonstrating a micro-history study of daily life.
Journal of the History of Collections, 2018
In this article the changes witnessed in the identities of Spanish aristocratic collections during the second half of the nineteenth century are examined in a case-study focused on the 3rd Duke and Duchess of Fernán Núñez. To this end are examined, on the one hand, the narratives of noble memory that survived within these collections when they entered the public sphere, a point at which the essentially genealogical character of these collections, formerly established for private consumption, was displaced primarily by aesthetic considerations. On the other hand, the ways in which the artistic patronage by the nobility was presented at this time are reviewed, for this in itself constituted a form of social prestige that contributed to the establishment of new cultural parameters for the noble élites.
Monarchy and Liberalism in Spain. The Building of The Nation-State, 1780-1931, 2020
'A family on the throne is an interesting idea also. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life. (…) Just so a royal family sweetens politics by the seasonable addition of nice and pretty events. It introduces irrelevant facts into the business of government, but they are facts which speak to "men's bosoms" and employ their thoughts'. Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (2 nd ed., 1873), pp. 63-64. As Bagehot points out in the epigraph, the monarchy's functions around 1867 (the date of the cited work's first edition) were already perceived as part of a symbolic apparatus designed to construct the nation's first identity reference. This situation was part of a long process initiated after the revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth. From then on, European monarchies had to be politically and culturally re-founded in order to confront the political and social challenges of the new times. It was an evolution during which they adopted monarchical constitutionalism in order to survive in a complex symbiosis with the liberal system. 2 Thus, the liberals supported an institution able to consolidate the new regimes and national states through their own historical and cultural legitimacy, incorporating a symbolic, representational power adapted to the ethos of the emerging post-revolutionary society. Of course, such compromise was characterised by pragmatism and utilitarianism. This was a new idea of power where the monarchy contributed a component of stability due to its own historical evolution, which was to coexist with the principles deriving from national sovereignty. The result was not a mere convergence of the royal tradition and the revolutionary heritage: this was a new approach to political power where the monarch had a neutral role as an umpire, even while embodying the nation. The power structure had a symbolic projection aimed at providing the political system with strength and security. 3 With the passage of time, its maintenance in most European countries would be linked to growing social recognition. 4 This was, therefore, a tangible legitimacy, but also an ephemeral one, which would lead monarchs to develop an empathic imperative and proximity formulae that, combined with the practices of traditional monarchies, would allow them to reinforce the institution as a national reference. Like its contemporary counterparts, the Spanish monarchy was engaged throughout the 19th century in a process aimed at the institution's very survival, based on two main pillars: dynastic continuity and the implementation of strategies increasing its ability to connect with popular audiences. As pointed out by one of Alfonso XIII's 1 This text is part of the research project 'Las monarquías en Europa meridional (siglos XIX y XX). Culturas y prácticas de la realeza' (Monarchies in Southern Europe (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries). Royal Cultures and Practices) (HAR2016-75954-P), sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and ERDF funds. Thanks are due to Miguel Ángel Campos-Pardillos for the translation into English. 2 biographers, 'modern, democratic monarchs' must base their authority on both their historical rights and 'on the love of their people, who must know them in order to love them'. 5 One such new resource popularising monarchies among their national audiences was the projection of the image of the 'sentimental family'. Dynastic principle and family fiction were two sides of the same coin, always perched precariously on the construction of a simultaneously close and distant family image, where the characters performed under a pre-established set of values and behaviours, not unrelated to the monarchs' awareness of their representing an inalienable power. The king, the queen and their descendants were part of an elaborate construction, aimed at enduring in an endless cycle between stately ceremonials and expressions of bourgeois domesticity, between the ritual and the prosaic. 6 They acted as role models, and at the time they needed new elements to remodel themselves. They could not start at the popular level, but neither could they rise above the heads of the people and vanish into the distance. In Spain, the stereotyped images projected by the figures of Isabel II and her consort Francisco de Asís, Amadeo of Savoy and his wife María Victoria, Alfonso XII and the regent María Cristina of Habsburg, Alfonso XIII and his wife Victoria of Battenberg are largely based on their respective family sphere. This is the case because they represent the Crown, but they also are, and must be, the model for citizens whose political patterns, cultural values and hegemonic morality are those of the bourgeoisie. Our analysis of the royal family starts from the classical distinction made by Koselleck, 7 when describing concepts, between a 'space of experience' and a 'horizon of expectation': if we apply this to the study of the monarchy, we find that the dynastic factor would act from 'experience' as a legitimising element, above social and political vicissitudes. The 'expectation' would focus on the projection of a bourgeois family ideal which, although built on the same dynastic foundations, makes it possible to project an image of the monarchs aimed at increasing their popularity in the context of the new liberal society. We shall start our study with a theoretical section, divided into three parts, followed by an analysis where we shall present how, through the abovementioned royal figures, the family image of the monarchy is progressively developed from the reign of Isabel II to the reign of Alfonso XIII.
Courts and Court Cultures in Early Modern Italy. Models and Languages, Simone Albonico / Serena Romano edd.,, 2016
In art history, the notion of court, court style and court culture normally presupposes a hierarchical, top-to-bottom way of elite distinction. This scheme has generally been applied to the European courts: to the Carolingian and Ottonian courts of the ninth and tenth century as well as to those of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from the English court of the Plantagenets in the North, to the French court under Louis XI or Philippe le Bel in the West, and to the Neapolitan court under the Angevin dynasty in the South. Serving the king and his immediate circle of family members or courtiers, court art has been defined as outstanding, representing the major aesthetic and intellectual achievements of each period. The question arises; however, as to whether this scheme is invariably valid or whether it is subject to change. If art produced for members of a court must necessarily be called "court art", one must question whether it need always follow and descend the hieratical scale of court society. In order to answer these questions, Neapolitan funeral monuments of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries provide a perfect subject of study. Not only are they primary objects of competition for social distinction, but their formal development is to be seen in close relation to models proposed by the royal family. The development of these monuments reveals many of the various possible correlations between political and social order and the development of taste. Contrary to the assumptions of previous research, though, it can be shown here that it was not always the royal family that set standards by providing the artistic models to be followed by nobility. Certain cases lead us to assume that members of thehigher nobility could (and did) choose other models deliberately, thus defying royal leadership in taste. Their choice is therefore indicative of signiflcant changes within court society itself and the social order its artworks express.
The nobility of Spain under Alfonso XIII*
During the reign of Alfonso XIII the number of ennoblements was very high, especially from 1914 onwards. The process of ennobling is of great interest due to the strategies that it employed; by the monarch, who tried to create references across the country and, by those interested in being made noble who yearned for a title. The study of these ennoblements draws us to a social group who are almost always forgotten in Spanish historiography and who did not remain on the margin of modernisation.
Between Court and Village: The Evolution of Aristocratic Spaces in Early Modern Spain
Renaissance and Reformation - Renaissance et Réforme, 2020
In May 1561, King Philip II informed the town hall of Madrid that he had chosen their town as the site for his royal residence and court. That year, the city was swiftly transformed into the Catholic king’s court and the heart of his vast monarchy. It also became the principal political and cultural space for the nobility. Yet the greatest noble houses, particularly those in Castile, were initially resistant to the establishment of a sedentary royal court and continued to exercise and represent their status at their own traditional courts. Increasingly, however, they were obliged to reside in Madrid in order to ensure direct access to the king’s grace and favour. Throughout the seventeenth century, the Spanish aristocracy became courtiers through necessity rather than conviction. In response to this situation, and without neglecting their noble estates and interests, they created their own spaces at court, and over time were able to colonize the royal capital and convert it into their own natural habitat.
Recreating the past in the ornamentation of stately homes and the leisure activities conducted within them: the Duchess of Parcent as a case study for the Spanish aristocracy in the early twentieth century, 2019
ABSTRACT This paper attempts to vindicate the part played by certain Spanish aristocratic women in the management, conservation, and transmission of their artistic patrimony in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century by creating art collections and displaying them in their own homes. The works were exhibited in rooms that were decorated and furnished to suggest historical ambiences in which French trends rubbed shoulders with styles that had been developed in Spain throughout its history, turning their homes into devices that recreated past times. Similarly, retrospective views of Spanish art were the focus of leisure and entertainment activities driven by ladies from the upper echelons of society through the performance of tableaux vivants. The focus of this study will be Trinidad Scholtz Hermensdorff, Duchess of Parcent