Page 155 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

SPAIN: THE FOUNDATIONS OF EMPIRE
Two key events in the later fifteenth century pher Columbus, the Genoese captain who had Italy. It also was to provide direct access to the
consolidated Spain's position as an emerging been peddling his vision of a sea route to the courts of Asia, allowing the Gospel to be
world power: the union of the crowns of Indies throughout the courts of Europe, found preached to the ends of the earth.
Aragon and Castile through the marriage of his first sympathetic audience in the person of Spain's geographical position had long made
Ferdinand and Isabella and the victory of these the Queen of Spain. Columbus' "Enterprise of it the crossroads of Europe. In Columbus' day
"Christian Monarchs ff in 1492 over the king- the Indies" offered his patrons the prospect of a its culture was an amalgam of indigenous tra-
dom of Granada, the last stronghold of Islam, new route to the East, enabling Spanish mer- ditions, including important contributions from
which had ruled large areas of Spain in the chants to compete with their Portuguese rivals its long-established Islamic and Jewish commu-
Middle Ages. It was no accident that Christo- and the established maritime trading cities of nities, and more recent influences from the Low

154 CIRCA 1492