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William Keighley Collection
(The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Overview
The William Keighley Collection from The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be represented in ARTstor with 1,000 images depicting the pilgrimage routes that led to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain during the Romanesque period. The Metropolitan Museum's Image Library houses the complete collection created by William Keighley (1889-1984), which contains 74,000 35mm color slides, divided into thematic sets. The “Pilgrimage Roads to Santiago de Compostela” set is one of these thematic groupings photographed around 1960. Prior to his death, Keighley donated his slide collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art to educate the public on the unique art and architectural heritage of select areas of the world.
The William Keighley Collection documents the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela traveled by Medieval pilgrims, with depictions of geographical terrain and exteriors/interiors of religious buildings, including architectural details, applied arts, and works of art. Funneled into the Iberian Peninsula via four main roads, pilgrims traveled the Iter Sancti Jacobi across northern Spain with Santiago de Compostela and the relics of St. James the Greater as their ultimate goal. The discovery of the saint's tomb during the 9th century coincided with the Reconquista, and over time, popular tradition transformed St. James into the patron saint of Spain. By the time an immense new cathedral was built in Santiago de Compostela to honor St. James in 1078, the mass movement of religious pilgrims from all over Europe had already begun. By the mid-11th century, this complex network of roads necessitated the development of attendant infrastructure (churches, monasteries, hospices, bridges, cemeteries, etc.), as communities grew up and flourished along the way. Eventually, St. James' shrine at Santiago de Compostela became one of the most important religious destinations during the Middle Ages, on par with a pilgrimage to the papal seat in Rome or to Jerusalem in the Holy Land. .
William Keighley also had a prominent career in theater, radio, and film. As a movie director for Warner Brothers, he directed many well-known films from the 1930s through the 1950s, including Bullets or Ballots (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942).
Collection information
| Total size of collection* | 1,000 |
|---|---|
| Percentage of completion | 0% |
* Image totals should be regarded as an approximation until a given collection is 100% complete. Users should also bear in mind that the number of images available to them may vary from country to country, reflecting ARTstor’s approach to addressing an international copyright landscape that itself varies from country to country.
Last updated: April 2, 2008