Artesonado wooden ceiling in the Monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes, Toledo

The Mudéjar-style artesonado ceiling is located in the Franciscan monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo. Built in the 16th and 17th century, the monastery shows a mixture of late Gothic-Isabelline and Mudéjar styles. The Mudéjar style goes back to Muslims who fell under Christian rule in Spain after the Reconquista. They included many craftsmen who, as master builders for Christian clients, had a great influence on the design of sacred buildings Characteristics of Islamic architecture, such as horseshoe arches, stalactite vaults, Moresque (surface decorations) and stucco ornaments were combined in the Mudéjar style with influences from the Christian Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance styles. Also typical were wooden ceilings, doors or prayer pulpits artistically decorated with geometric motifs and ribbed domes.

Mudéjar wooden ceiling in the cloister of the Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes, Toledo, Spain, colour photography, 2009, photograph: Bernard Gagnon; source: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monasterio_de_San_Juan_de_los_Reyes,_Toledo_07.jpg, Namensnennung - Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.de.