Manuel Gómez-Moreno
(Granada, 1870 - Madrid, 1970)

Manuel Gómez-Moreno studied in Rome, and in Granada with his father, the archaeologist and painter, Manuel Gómez-Moreno González. He had a predilection since his youth for two areas: the cultural interaction between Christians and Muslims in medieval Spain, especially in the field of art, and the archaeological knowledge of the Iberian Peninsula.

In 1900, Juan Facundo Riaño suggested to him to move to Madrid to start the project of cataloguing Spain’s monuments. He began his task in Ávila, Salamanca, Zamora, and León, always accompanied by his camera in order " to share with everyone the aesthetic emotion and the informational values that the artistic monuments provide.”

He was one of the founders of the Center for Historical Studies
(1910), where he headed the Spanish medieval art department.
He also promoted the Archivo Español de Arte y Arqueología, a periodicalfounded in 1925. His main contributions focused on the Mozarabic art, the origins of the Renaissance in Castile, and the language and culture of the Iberians (his article, “De epigrafía ibérica: El plomo de Alcoy, " was published in the Revista de Filología Española, in 1922.)

He combined his research at the Center for Historical Studies with his teaching at the University of Madrid, where he became professor of Arabic Archeology in 1913. He was elected member of the Real Academia de la Historia (1917), the Academia de Bellas Artes (1931), and the Real Academia Española (1942). He was appointed director of Fine Arts in 1930. During the Civil War, he was deeply involved with the Junta de Incautación, Salvamento y Catalogación del Tesoro Artístico, the board responsible for the safeguard of Spanish art treasures.