Art romanic

Abstract

This article analyzes one of the fundamental texts of Spanish historiography on medieval art, El arte románico español. Esquema de un libro (Spanish Romanesque art. Scheme of a Book) by Manuel Gómez- Moreno, published by the Centro de Estudios Históricos in 1934. To that end, it contextualizes the book’s appearance in relation to previous publications of the historian from Granada and to the general views of other scholars on Spanish Romanesque. The article explains the objectives, method, structure, and results of the book, as well as the impact it caused among the author's disciples and, in general, among those interested in this period. It discusses some of the categories of thought applied in the book and their links with the way of understanding the history of Spain used in the Centro de Estudios Históricos. The article accounts for the book’s initial success and considers the reasons that contributed to its loss of esteem, a result of investigations that in the second half of the 20th century caused mistrust in the chronological accounts assumed by the author.