The artist as historian-politician: Romantic historicism, art, and architecture in the performance of cultural nationalism in Pérez Villaamil and Escosura’s España artística y monumental (1842-50)

Abstract

This article analyses the sophisticated performance of cultural nationalism in the first instalment of España artística y monumental. It examines how the work’s creators interpreted the Catholic identity of Spain through their political viewpoint aligned with the Partido Moderado, the Spanish liberal conservative party; the process by which they sought to make that identity real, concrete, and persuasive, and the roles of historian, politician, and architect played by the work’s illustrator: painter Genaro Pérez Villaamil. Special attention is paid to the intellectual framework that enabled the project, with a particular focus on the epistemology of Romantic historicism and aesthetics, the understanding of the nation as a civilisation, and the weight assigned to architecture as historical proof. The article also scrutinises the readership experience in order to reveal a potential unusually effective nationalist performance of España artística y monumental in its strategic sequencing of monuments, its interpretation of these monuments through a simultaneously visual and verbal discourse, and the broad dissemination achieved by the work thanks to its printed medium.