Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/annalsofartistso01stir_0 Py/IS/S Ob svJsr Jbm/arn 4ii)r r 'rcAi\ rii. ClConso Cane deC. ANNALS OF THE ARTISTS OF SPAIN. BY WILLIAM STIRLING, M. A Los quales con colores matizadas, Y claras luces de las sombras vanas, Mostraban a los ojos relevadas Las cosas y fig uras quo eran lianas, Tanto , que al parecer el cuerpo vano Pudiera ser tornado con la mano. Garcilaso i>k la Vega. VOL. I. N HiqQ SS6 vM LONDON : JOHN OLLIVIER, 59, PALL MALL. MDCCCXLVIII. Theirs was the shill , rich colour and clear light To weave in graceful forms hy fancy dream 1 d, So well that many a shape and figure bright , Though flat, in sooth, reliev'd and rounded seem'd. And hands , deluded, vainly strove to clasp Those airy nothings mocking still their grasp. LONDON I PRINTED BY T. BRETTELL, RUPERT STREET, HAYMARKET. THESE PAGES. WHICH I HAD HOPED TO DEDICATE TO MY FATHER, ARE NOW INSCRIBED, IN AFFECTIONATE HOMAGE, TO HIS MEMORY. PREFACE. There are but two valid excuses for the publication of a book. One is, that the subject is new, or at least, unexhausted; the other, that the writer is so graced and gifted, that the gentle reader may be supposed willing to tread even a beaten path for the sake of the pleasure of his company. Preferring no claim to the latter plea, I hope to be able to shew that these Annals of the Artists of Spain are entitled to the benefit of the former. They were first conceived in 1843, in the course of a journey through the delightful land of Velazquez and Murillo; and they were in great part composed before the more cultivated languages on this side the Pyrenees possessed any separate work on Spanish art better than the few hooks of which I shall now give a brief notice. The earliest English work on the subject, with which I am acquainted, is The Lives of Spanish Painters , Sculptors , and Ar- chitects, translated from Velasco, 8 vo., London, 1739, a meagre abridgment of the biographical part of the Spanish work of Palo- mino, and at once scarce and worthless. The next is Anecdotes of eminent Painters in Spain, during the 16 th and 17 th centuries, with cursory remarks on the present state of the arts in that kingdom; by Richard Cumberland, 2 vols., 12 mo., London, 1782; reprinted, in 1787, without revision or cor- rection, but with a supplementary volume, likewise in 12mo., entitled Catalogue of Paintings in the King of Spain’s palace at Madrid. The author, well known as a second-rate novelist, dramatist, and poet, was sent to Spain in 1780, by Lord North, on a secret mission, VI PREFACE. and resided about a year at Madrid, where his agreeable qualities and pretty daughters rendered him very popular in society. But failing to effect the diplomatic purposes for which he was sent, the Government at home, according to his account, refused to repay him the expenses of his journey, and reduced him to the brink of ruin. His anecdotes were, therefore, drawn up under the pressure of necessity, and rather with a view to the publisher’s cash, than the author’s reputation. Palomino was the author from whom he drew most of his flimsy materials ; for, although he acknowledges his obligations to the scarce treatise of Pacheco, he culls nothing from it which he did not find in the pages of Palomino. His work has been justly styled by Bourgoing, “ une compilation indigeste, peu digne d’etre la sceur de Mesde- moiselles Cumberland.’’ 1 Correcting none of Palomino’s numerous errors, he blunders largely and intrepidly on his own account. For instance he tells us first (vol. ii., p. 32,) that Velazquez went to Italy with the ambassador, who was going to bring back the Archduchess Mariana, the second Queen of Philip IV., and soon afterwards (p. 3G,) that her predecessor Queen Isabella, had died, during Velazquez’s absence, leaving us to infer that the King, a pedant in etiquette, had negotiated, and perhaps solemnized his second marriage during the life of his first wife. Describing the familiarity and friendship in which Philip II. lived with his painter Sanchez Coello, he says (vol. i. p. 90), that “ in those moments “ when his temper relaxed into complacency,” the K ing “ would “ mount the ladder (the only one he ever climbed without arnbi- “ tion or disgrace) that privately communicated with the painting “ room ” of the artist. The words of Palomino, whom he followed are these, “ The King was accustomed often to come to the apart- “ ment of Sanchez, por un transito secreto, con ropa de levantar , 2 by a secret passage, in his dressing-gown” an article of apparel which Cumberland, catching at the sound, and impatient of wasting 1 Nouveau Voyage en Espagne ; 3 tom., 8vo., Paris, 1789 ; tom. iii., p. 258. 2 Palomino ; tom. iii., p. 260, fol., Madrid, 1724. PREFACE. vii a moment in reaching his dictionary, pleasantly converted into a ladder. Besides its inaccuracy, his work also labours under another grave disadvantage, that of having been composed without personal acquaintance, on the author’s part, with Valencia and Andalusia, and their rich treasuries of local art. The Catalogue of the King of Spain’s galleries at Madrid, made at Cumberland’s request by the superintendent of the pictures in the royal palace, though meagre and unsatisfactory, is valuable as a record of the condition of one of the finest collections in Europe before it had been thinned by the pillaging Bonaparte and the imbecile Bourbon. The next work on Spanish art, now somewhat rare, is called The Life of Bartolome E. Murillo, compiled from the writings of various authors ; translated by Edward Davies, Esq., late Cap- tain in the first regiment of Life Guards, 8 vo., London, 1819, pp. ciii., 183. It is a collection of extracts relating to Murillo from the writings of Cumberland, Bourgoing, D’Argenville, Palomino, Ponz, Jovellanos, and Cean Bermudez, some of them translated and some in the original French or Spanish, and strung together with a few pages and notes by the gallant captain himself. The sole merit of the hook consists in the version of Cean Bermudez’s Letter on the life and works of Murillo, which, though sufficiently ill done, is not quite so unintelligible as the original compositions of the translator. Fourteen years after the utterances of the ex-life-guardsman, appeared A Dictionary of Spanish Painters, comprehending simply that part of their biography immediately connected with the arts ; from the 14 th century to the 1 Hth ; by A. O’Neil, two parts, 1833-4, pp. xi., 280, 308, with four illustrations. This work seems to be an abridgment of Cean Bermudez’s excellent dictionary, although the lady-author has not seen fit to entrust the reader with the name of any one of her sources of information. I am sorry to he able to praise nothing in the book but the beauty of the paper and printing. Even this slender praise must he withheld from the next work on the subject, The History of the Spanish school of painting, to PREFACE. I via which is appended an historical sketch of the rise and progress of the art of miniature illumination ; by the author of Travels through Sicily and the Lipari Islands, the History of the Azores, and the History of the various styles of Architecture ; sm. 8 vo., London, 1843 ,pp. ii., 199. From so voluminous a writer some slight know- ledge of his business might have been expected. Yet he cites none of his authorities, and from the gross blunders of his own production, I suspect Mrs. O'Neil's book to have been the only one which he consulted. No Frenchman could have mis-spelt Spanish names with more persevering ingenuity than this historian, who likewise rivals Cumberland in inaccuracy, and Davies, in dulness and bad English. These were the only books on Spanish art in our language when I conceived the design of the present work. Up to that time even the journals of our travellers, our rich periodical literature, and the labours of our encyclopcedists afforded, so far as my researches have extended, little worthy of note on the subject, except the brief but accurate accounts of some of the Spanish artists in the second volume of Sketches in Spain during the years 1829, 30, 31, and 32; by Captain S. S. Cook (now Widdrington), R .X., dec.; 2 vols. 8 vo., London, 1834; an excellent article on the Spanish painters, con- tributed to the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. xxvi., May 1834, by Sir Edmund Head ; and an admirable life of Velazquez, for which the Penny Cyclopwclia is indebted to the pen of Mr. Ford. Two- thirds of the following chapters were written, and the greater part of the materials for the remainder was collected before I was informed that another and a better labourer was turning up the almost virgin soil of mv literary field. Had I sooner become aware that Sir Edmund Head had undertaken the task, I would gladly have resigned to his abler hands the care of the tillage, and to Ins well- established reputation, the undivided honours of a new harvest. The Handbook of the History of the Spanish and French Schools of Painting, sm. Svo., London, 184 8,pp. xiv., 373, is not only the most complete book on the subject, but worthy both of the author's culti- PREFACE. IX vated artistic taste and literary skill. Sir Edmund’s readers will doubtless regret what I, as a later writer on the same subject, must regard as very fortunate for myself, that the plan of his work demanded brevity and condensation, and compelled the artist, who was best qualified to execute a finished picture, to restrict himself to the production of a sketch. As one of his readers, I may take the liberty of suggesting that his above-mentioned article in the Foreign Quarterly Review might be interwoven with advantage into the next edition of his Hand-book. From a list of English works treating of Spanish art, it would be absurd to omit The Hand-hook for travellers in Spain and readers at home, by Richard Ford, post 8 vo., London 1845, pp. x. 1064 ; second edition, 1847, pp. lxii. 645. It would be equally absurd to attempt to say anything new in praise of a book, which, put forth with the humblest of all titles and in the least inviting of forms, immediately became one of the most popular books in our language. A cyclopaedia of learning on all matters pertaining to the Peninsula, the Hand-book deserves my gratitude, not only as the most delightful of travelling companions, but as the principal pioneer of my researches in the artistic history of Spain. Although the second edition contains much new and valuable matter, I have chiefly referred to the first, by which indeed Mr. Ford desires to be judged. Yielding to the mistaken wish of his publisher that the volume should be rendered cheaper and more portable, “ many are the wild Iberian flowers,” says the author in his second edition, “ (p. lvi.) which have been rooted out, and more are the old stones of “ antiquity which have been removed. ” These “ stones ” and “ flowers ” all readers of the original work will regret, and they will be little disposed to approve the self-sacrifice of the writer at the Albemarle Street shrine. The charming Gatherings in Spain, fcap 8 vo., 1846, have certainly preserved some of the loppings of the Hand-book. But let us hope that Mr. Ford will some day give us a complete edition of his unrivalled writings on Spain, worthy of himself and his subject, and embellished with some of his X PREFACE. original drawings, which prove his pencil to possess no less grace and vigour than his pen. To these Annals he has kindly con- tributed a sketch of the Capuchin convent at Seville, (p. 873), to which, I am sorry to say, the woodcutter has done great injustice. I am also indebted to liim for the use of his rich and rare Spanish prints, drawings, and library, and for much general advice and assistance, without wliich my work would have been disfigured with far more than its present numerous imperfections. French literature has done even less for the history of Spanish art than our own. “ The Irish are a very Catholic people, and by “ no means malignant in their manners,” says the Canon Fer- nandez Navarrete, 1 “ yet, of the whole multitude of them who have “ come over to Spain, not one has ever applied himself to the arts, “ nor to the toils of husbandry, nor to any occupation but begging.” As those Milesian islanders of 1G2G had the gift of eschewing useful labour, so Frenchmen, with a few illustrious exceptions, have a peculiar power of not appreciating or understanding foreign genius. In evidence of this their accounts of Spanish art may be cited. The earliest with which I am acquainted is the Histoire abregte das plus famau.v paint res, sculpteurs, at architectes Espagnols, traduit da lEspagnol da Palomino I elasco ; sm. 8ro., Pans, 1749 , pp. iv. 39, in which the blunders of the old Spaniard have been multiplied by his translator. Then comes the Dictionnaire des Peintres Espagnols, par F. Quilliet, Sro., Paris, 1 81 G ,pp. xxxvii. 407. M. Quilliet resided for many years in Spain, and was keeper of the royal gallery of the Escorial during the reign of the intrusive King Joseph; but writing in Paris under the Restoration, he dedicates his dictionary, in dulcet tones of legitimist loyalty, to the Duke of Beni. “ Haz buena “ farina g no toques bocma, make good flour without blowing a “ trumpet,” savs a Castilian proverb much disregarded by M. Quilliet, who heralds his meagre performance with a preface full of 1 Conservation de Monarquias y discursos politicos, por el Licenciado Pedro Fer- nandez Navarrete Canonigo de la Iglesia de Santiago, &c. ; fol., Madrid 1G26, p. 5/. PREFACE. XI flourish and pretension. Confessing that he has taken Cean Ber- mudez for his guide, he assures us that he himself had consulted all the authorities of that writer. “ Je revis tout ce qu’ avait vu Cean,” he says, and he gives a list of the Spanish books and MSS. cited by the indefatigable Spaniard. But his work affords no evidence of such researches, and I fear that he must endure the imputation of a literary dishonesty, more contemptible than uncommon, of parading as authorities books of which he lias never read a line, or perhaps even seen the backs, on a library shelf. If he really consulted the curious MSS. of Diaz del Valle, Jusepe Martinez, and the Alfaros, why does he not say where he found them, a fact which ought always to be stated when MSS. are quoted, and in this case of the greater consequence, because the libraries, indicated by Cean Bermudez as possessing these documents, may well be supposed to have been dispersed during the eventful space of time from 1800 to 1816. But whether M. Quilliet did or did not consult the MSS. and rare books with which he claims such intimate acquaintance, it is certain that he has not preserved a single fact of importance which has not already been given to the world by Cean Bermudez, while he has omitted many which that able writer had collected to Ids hand. The scraps of new information, few and far between, winch may be detected by a careful reader in his pages, are rendered of no value at all, because we are not in a condition to judge of their authenticity. For ex- ample, at the end of the story of Antonio Pereda and the sham duena painted by him on a screen to satisfy the fashionable requirements of his lady-wife, we are told that that picture was sold for a high price at the artist’s death. M. Quilliet did not find this information in Palomino, nor in Cean Bermudez, for neither of them mention the sale ; and it is rather too much to expect us to take the unsupported evidence of a French book of 1816, with regard to the prices of a Madrid auction in 1669 or 70. But for his pretension to original research, I should have briefly dismissed M. Quilliet as a dull and careless translator of Cean Bermudez, a character in which he appeared for the second time, when he induced Xll PREFACE. the Roman Academy of St. Luke to print a work of his entitled, Les Arts It aliens en Espagne, ou histoire cles artistes Italiens qui con- tribuerent a embellir les Castilles ; fol ., Rome, 1824, and published in the same form and at the same date in Italian. The next French work on the subject is Vie complete des Peintres Espagnols, et Histoire de la Peinture Espagnole, par El. Hoard ( de File Bourbon J , Premiere Partie ; 8 vo., Paris, 1839, pp. 212; Seconde et derni ere Partie, 1841, pp. 272; with three paltry illustrations, one of which is the portrait, not of Velaz- quez or Murillo, but of M. Huard. This production was begun, it appears, as a sort of hand-book for the Spanish gallery of the Louvre, and panegyric on Baron Taylor who amassed that colossal collection of bad and spurious pictures. Whatever its pages contain of truth has obviously been taken from M. Quilliet, whose dictionary, and the Louvre catalogues, were probably the only books that M. Huard took the trouble to look into. Bor- rowing his lives of Spanish painters from M. Quilliet, as Gold- smith's scribbler translated Homer out of Pope, M. Huard has likewise traduced the rival whom he robbed. He condemns the dictionary, as a cold, colourless, and incomplete work, and boasts of his own researches in libraries and cabinets of engravings (p. ii. ) , prudently, however, omitting to name any collection to which he was indebted, or any author whom he had consulted, except M. Quilliet, But more than this, he has signalized himself by an offence of which I am happy to say our worst English writers on the subject are blameless. To such of his lives, as appeared most wanting, in M. Quilliet's pages, in warmth and colour, he has added those agreeable qualities by freely supplying incidents from his own imagination. In the early part of the life of Ribera, for instance, he entertains us by narrating how being turned out of the school of Ribalta for want of money to pay the customary fee, the young artist wandered about Valencia, sketching in the streets, and how on the evening of the second day he lay down to die in the ruins of a chapel. “ II se mourait done d inanition," proceeds PREFACE. xiii this intrepid novelist, (p. 6), “ quand passa pres de lui une jeune femme “ qui entendit les plaintes que la faim arrachait au pauvre artiste ; “ elle lui donna, d une main tremblante, non cette aumone du riche “ mais ce partage du malheureux ; Ribera eut la force de se lever, “ il n’etait plus seul sur la terre, il avait trouve une amie et avec “ elle le bonheur.” In short, “ cette ange que Dieu avoit envoyee “ pour le consoler,” became his mistress, and lived with him on the funds which he obtained by sign-painting, until she “ devait retourner “ dans sa demeure celeste,” and he found means of going to Italy. Not content with thus giving the Yalencian a mistress, M. Huard also furnishes him with a grandfather, one Antoine Ribera (p. 11), of whose existence Palomino, Dominici, and Cean Bermudez were profoundly ignorant. If M. Huard has been so fortunate as to discover in some dusty MS. or forgotten book, anecdotes or names which have escaped those writers, why does he not let the world know where the discovery was made ; if he is fond of inditing romance, why should he circumscribe his circle of readers and en- gender doubts in their minds as to his own sanity, by calling his fictions complete lives of the Spanish painters ? His inventions, for such I conclude everything in his book that I have not seen else- where, to be, are marked by a singular ignorance cf the most commonplace things of Spain. Thus, he informs us that Fran- cisco de Solis painted for a certain convent at Madrid a figure of the Virgin, young and beautiful, standing on a dragon with red eyes and flame-vomiting jaws, “ afin de produire une de ces oppositions “ vulgaires qui ne manquent jamais leur effet” (p. 21), as if the symbol of the Evil One, which the etiquette of Spanish painting required to be introduced into that subject, had been a mere taste- less whim of the painter. Having thus displayed his ignorance of Spain and the Bible, he proceeds to narrate with great gravity, how all the fine ladies and Phrynes of Madrid rushed to be pour- trayed as Virgins of the Conception, and in some cases com- pelled Solis to paint their favourite " bow-wow ( toutou favorij “ cat, or parrot,” under the crescent, in place of “ Mary’s impetuous XIV PREFACE. “ dragon and lie crowns the monstrous fable by informing us that Solis was, therefore, called the Painter of Conceptions ; the sole foundation of the story being that Solis did paint a picture of the Conception at Madrid, and that the title applied to him was some- times given to Murillo at Seville. Of course this writer exercises his national privilege of mis-spelling Spanish names and misplacing Spanish titles ; of romancing about Estramadura, Tolede, Borgona, and Vargara, and of inventing incidents for the life of Don Guevara, as journalists of France pen paragraphs on Lord Henry Brougham or Sir Peel, and dramatic critics, parade their acquaintance with Shakespeare by discoursing of him with playful affection as “ le vieux Williams.” Even of Italian he takes care to show his ignorance by explaining that the Valencian companions of Ribera called him LI Espagnoleto, “ en faisant “ allusion a la facilite prodigieuse avec laquelle il dessinait et “ composait;” (p. C), as if calling M. Huard “ the little Frenchman ” would convey any adequate idea of the “ prodigious facility ” with which he has obscured a fine subject with stupid and impudent fictions. M. Louis Yiardot is the only other French writer on Spanish art whose works deserve notice. Well known as an essayist on the picture galleries of Europe, he has given us in Les Musees d Espagne, d Angleterre, et de Belgique, sm. 8 vo., Paris, 1843, pp. x., 382, lively and agreeable sketches of some of the chief Spanish masters. Setting aside the author’s “ intuitive inspirations,” they are light and readable, and, if they do not possess the merit, they are at least not disfigured hv an affectation, of learning. M. Viardot is also author of the notices of Spanish painters which form the letterpress to the French collection of engravings known as La Galerie Aguado. published in Paris in 1837. Of the German works, which I have consulted, by far the best is Fiorillo's Geschichte der Mahlerey in Spanien, pp. x. 470, besides the index, forming vol. iv. of the Geschichte der Zeichnenden Kiinst von Hirer Wiederaujlcbung his a uf die neuesten Zeiten, 6 hand. 8 vo., PREFACE. XV Gottingen, 1798—1808. It appears to be a careful abstract of Cean Bermudez’s Dictionary, and it contains (p. 464 to 470) a useful list of Spanish and other books on the subject. In Dr. Kugler’s dry and unsatisfactory Hatidbuch der Kiinstgeschichte, 8 vo., Stuttgart, 1842, pp. xxiv. 917, the five pages devoted to the masters of Spain, are, like most of his other pages, a mere catalogues of names. But even so much as this is not to be found in any Italian work with which I am acquainted. The Spanish authors who have been my chief guides, are, first, Cean Bermudez, and after him, Palomino, Ponz, Pacheco, Carducho, and Butron. These writers being also painters, I have given so full an account of them and their literary works in their proper places in the following chapters, that it is unnecessary to discuss their merits here. So also in the case of my other authorities ; for I have likewise made it a rule to acknowledge my literary debts, Avhenever and wherever contracted, so explicitly that my readers, unlike those of M. Huard, may at once, if it please them, verify my j accuracy or detect my mistakes. I trust that I have now established my original proposition, that a new book on Spanish art was a desideratum in our literature when my work was begun. I think I have also shewn that at that time any accurate or extended knowledge of the subject was to be obtained only from Spanish authors, who are not commonly found on the shelves of private libraries in England, and still more rarely in the hands of English readers. Even now I venture to hope that these Annals may in some measure serve purposes as yet un- attempted by an English pen. Besides narrating the lives of the painters, I have given an account of the more remarkable sculptors, goldsmiths, and engravers of Spain. I have likewise endeavoured to afford some view of the national and social peculiarities of con- dition in which Spanish artists flourished, and which coloured their lives, and directed, or at least strongly influenced, their genius. In pursuance of this object, I have occasionally ventured into the field of history, especially in reviewing the characters of the princes XVI PREFACE. of the Spanish house of Austria, of all royal houses the foremost in the protection and promotion of the fine arts. Of the anecdotes, of the more remarkable artists, which Pacheco and Palomino narrated, and Cumberland despised, I have rejected but few, holding that every relic of the personal history of a man of genius has a certain value, and being disposed to regard even the slightest, with that sort of interest with which Sir David Wilkie detected some of the hairs of Yandyck’s pencil in the portrait of a Cardinal in a palace at Genoa. 1 I have also dilated, more than English writers on art have generally thought fit to do, on the legends of the most remarkable saints whose names do not appear in the New Testa- ment, remembering that I am addressing readers, who, though versed in the loves and labours of Jupiter and Hercules, are by no means familiar with the bucolical achievements of St. Isidro or the nautical skill of St. Raymond, and may perhaps have never even heard the names of the holy Eulalia of Merida, or Justa and Rufina, the sainted patronesses of Seville. The chronological system of arrangement which I have chosen, will, I trust, secure to my work the advantages of continuous narra- tive and yet permit of occasional digressions. In order, however, to combine these advantages with the convenience of a dictionary, I have provided an ample table of contents and index, by means of which the reader will be able to turn at once to the precise passage in the biography of any artist that he may happen to be in search of, to the titles of books quoted, and to the explanation of any words which may require it. The Catalogues, which I have compiled, of the pictures of Velaz- quez and Murillo now existing in the principal national and royal galleries, and in some of the best private collections, may, perhaps, one day be curious and valuable records. While the sheets were passing through the press, one royal collector lost, and another abdicated, his crown; and it is impossible to foresee the effects, of the French revolution of 1848 on the dynasties and galleries of 1 Cunningham’s Life of Wilkie; vol. ii., p. 450. PREFACE. xvii Europe. These Catalogues include, I am aware, many doubtful, and some certainly spurious, pictures ; but they also contain all the finest specimens of those great masters. I have carefully noted as far as possible the engravings which have been executed from them ; and to avoid repetition, whenever a picture has been described in the Annals, the reader is referred to the passage. Of the illustrations to the following chapters, I may venture to say that I am not aware of the existence of any engraved portraits of El Greco, Joanes, Y. Carducho, and Zurbaran : of any views of the interior of the Hospital-church of Charity, the Capuchin convent and Murillo’s house at Seville ; of any engraving from Murillo’s Guardian- angel, or from a drawing by Alonso Cano, except those which are now offered to the public. Several monograms of artists are likewise re-produced, which have escaped Orlandi, Bartsch, Brulliot, and other diligent collectors. While I have thus ventured to point out the particulars in which I trust these Annals may be found to possess some value, I would not have it supposed that I am blind to their numerous defects. The workman who compares the conception with the result of his labour, knows full well how wide is the distance which separates the thing hoped for and intended from the thing actually accomplished. It is rare, indeed, for the literary artist “ to see of the travail of his “ soul, and be satisfied;” to find that complacent feeling justified by the concurrent satisfaction of the reader is scarcely more rare. In reviewing my work, I have detected many faults of arrangement, which are now irremediable, and many omissions which I have been obliged to remedy by a chapter of additions and corrections, a chapter in defence of which I have nothing to say, except that it has enabled me to give my readers the benefit of gleanings from certain books which have been published since my own went to press. Worse than all, in observing with dismay the unexpected array of figures with which my final pages are numbered, I begin to fear that I have myself sinned in the sort which I have rebuked in others, and that, groaning under the prolixity of Castilian writers, I have b xviii PREFACE. given my English readers just cause to grumble under mine. Quien en caca, o e?i guerra , o en amores se mete, no sale quando quiere, says the Castihan proverb ; he who goes hunting, cam- paigning, or wooing, cannot leave off at his own pleasure. So literary 'adventure, partaking somewhat of the nature of each of these pursuits, resembles them also in leading those who engage in it far beyond their first intended limits. If I have sometimes overtasked my readers’ powers of endurance, my hope is that I have at least opened the way to “ fresh fields and pastures new,” which a more skilful guide may one day render as pleasant to others as they have been to me. 38, Clarges Street, April 1848 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.— INTRODUCTION. Political importance of Spain, during the 16 th and 17 th centuries, coeval with her greatness in art Poetry the eldest of the arts Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Emperor Charles V. Philip II. . Philip III. Philip IV. Charles II. House of Bourbon Spanish sculpture Spanish architecture Spanish painting compared with Span isli literature .... Schools of painting — Castile . Estremadura Andalusia Valencia .... Northern provinces, and the Islands Grave character of Spanish painting . Spanish and Italian painters contrasted Rafael, Correggio, Joanes, . Titian ..... Murillo Influence of the Inquisition Influence of the national character Pictorial improprieties punished Religious disposition of Spaniards The Church the chief patron of art The Catholic painter an important minister of his church Remark of Don J. de Butron on reli gious pictures Painting popular with the multitude Peasants of Loeches resist the remova of pictures .... Devotion of Spanish painters Joanes, Vargas .... Clerical artists .... Factor, Leon, Fuente del Saz, Cotan Berenguer .... Ferrado, Cespedes, Roelas, Cano J. Rizi, Espadana, Mascarenas Juncosa, Maria de Valdes Page 10 11 12 13 1331 14 15 16 17 18 19 Page 19 Laws regulating religious painting Writers on the subject; Interian de Ayala ; knotty points discussed by him ...... 20 Nude figures forbidden . . .21 Pacheco’s story of the effects of an im- modest altar-piece by Martin de Vos — Miraculous images . . . .22 Joanes commanded to paint the Virgin 23 Becerra aided by Virgin in a carving . — She sits to Sanchez Cotan . . — Miraeles performed by an unfinished picture of the Virgin, and by the Virgins of Nieva and Monserrate 1332 G. Micael carves an image gifted with healing powers, and dies . 24 Favour shown to artists by Saints . 25 Legend of the incontinent Painter-friar, the Devil, and the Virgin . .26 Legend of the Virgin, the Devil, and another incontinent Painter . 1333 Court painters in Spain usually de- corous in their choice of subjects . Spanish princes not fond of pictorial improprieties Philip II. and princess of Eboli Pictures of the princess Philip II. and B. Cellini’s Crucifix Philip IV Charles II., his purism General character of Spanish painting Painters of the religious orders ; Mu rillo, Espinosa, Carducho, and Zur baran ..... Roelas; Models for drapery Colouring; School of Castile, El Mu do, El Greco, female heads, Tristai Schools of Andalusia and Valencia Sevillian painters of still life Then’ Bodegones Valeneian flower painters . Spanish portraiture ; Joanes Velazquez and Murillo not inferior to Titian and Vandyck Female portraits not common in Spain Spanish jealousy the cause 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 34 XX CONTENTS. Page Page Sir K. Digby’s adventure . 34 Exportation of Spanish pictures from Husbands and wives 35 Spain during the War of Indepen- Philip IV. and Olivares horsewhipped dence ..... • 49 bv the Duke of Albuquerque — Daring English picture-dealers . — Habits of female life 30 Plundering French generals; Soult and Portraits of Spanish ladies rare — Sebastiani ..... 50 Tasteless female costume . — King Joseph’s judicious pilferings — Absurd modes of dressing hair . 37 Suchet and Victor .... — Court dresses ..... — Effects of French rapine and English Duchess of Terranova — commerce . — Universal and extravagant use of rouge 38 Spanish public galleries still rich in Ladies of Vittoria described bv Madame native art ..... 51 d’Aulnoy ..... 39 Madrid ; Royal Museum . — Rouged statues at Madrid Royal Acad, of St. Ferdinand 53 Portraits of royal personages 40 National Museum 54 Excellence of the court portrait-painters — Toledo; Cathedral .... 56 Character of the Austrian princes to Valladolid; Museum — be read in their portraits Zaragoza and Barcelona ; their Mu- Emperor Charles V.,his Empress, and seums . 57 his family ... 41 Cordova ; its Museum — Philip 11., his Queens, and children . - Cadiz; Museum .... 58 A. Sanchez Coello, Pantoja de la Cruz Seville ; Museum — 1 Philip 111., his Queen, and his family — Chapel of the University 61 Philip IV., his Queens, and family 49 Chapel of the Hospital of Rubens, Velazquez .... — Charity .... — Charles II. and Queen Maria Louisa 43 Cathedral .... — Landscape-painting little cultivated . — Valencia ; Museum .... Landscape-painters not generally born Cathedral .... 63 amongst line scenery, and most nu- Academy of S. Carlos — merous in the North 44 Suggestions for the improvement of In Italy chiefly foreigners . 45 the public collections of Spain — Few foreign landscape-painters in Spniu 40 Foreign collections of Spanish pictures 64 The great painters of Spain generally Paris ; Louvre native Spaniards .... — St. Petersburg ; Hermitage 65 Spanish art long unknown to the rest Munich ; Roval Pinakotbek 66 of Europe 47 Vienna ; Belvedere Palace — MuriRo early known in England 48 Berlin. Dresden, The Hague, Amster- Spanish pictures in France in the ISth dam, Antwerp, Brussels, Stockholm 67 century — London, Dulwich, Florence 68 Dictum of the Abbe Dubos — 1 Milan, Turin, Naples 69 CHAPTER II. -NOTICES OF EARLY ART TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC, 1516. Earliest works of painting and sculpture 70 Portrait of St. Ferdinand at Seville . 72 Vigila; Aparicio; . . — Alonso X. of Castile .... 73 Architectural works of the middle ages — Pedro de Pamplona .... — Cathedral of Santiago 71 Sancho IV. of Castile — Ferdinand II. of Castile — Rodrigo Esteban, his painter — Maestro Mateo . — i Pedro I. of Castile . 74 Cathedral of Tarragona — j The Alcazar of Seville — Alonso VIII. of Castile — E arlv painters in Arragon and Catalonis — Cathedral of Cuenca . . . . — R. Torrente, G. Fort . 75 Leon . . . . 72 J. Cesilles ...... — St. Ferdinand III. of Castile — Juan I. of Castile . — Cathedral of Burgos . . . . — G. Stamina . — Toledo . . . . — ] The Chartreuse of Paular . 76 CONTENTS. XXI Monastery of Guadalupe Cathedral of Oviedo . Henry III. of Castile Alcazar of Madrid and palace of the Pardo Cathedral of Htiesca . Cathedral of Seville . Juan II. of Castile His painters Dello His epitaph J. Alfon Rogel Jorge Ingles Egas, Castile, Toledo; Dolfiu, a glass The sculptor Rodriguez Andalusia ; Seville Sanchez de Castro Legend of St. Christopher Moorish decorations imitated by Chris tian artists G. del Barco Goldsmiths; the Castelnous of Valencia Fr. J. de Segovia of Guadalupe . Progress of taste and refinement to- wards the close of the 15th century Fall of Granada, and its effect on Christian art . . . . Isabella I., the Catholic, of Castile Her taste for art ; her architectural works at Segovia . . . . Page 77 79 1335 1330 80, 1330 . 81 1330 painter of 81 82 83 84 85 80 Page Seville, Miraflores, Madrid, Toledo . 87 Ferdinand VI., the Catholic, of Arragon and Castile . . . . — His conquest of Naples, and its effects 88 His buildings at Zaragoza . . . — J. and D. Morlanes, sculptors . . — G. Siloe, sculptor of Burgos . . — D. Siloe ; cathedral of Granada . 89 Painters, Castile; A. Rincon . . — His portraits of Ferdinand and Isabella — His pictures at Toledo and Robleda de Chavila . . . . .92 F. Florez — P. Berruguete . . . . .93 Santos Cruz . . . . . — J. de Borgona . . . . . — Fresco in the Muzarabic chapel of Toledo cathedral . . . .94 Frescos in the library, and portraits of archbishops in the chapter-room . 95 Painters of Andalusia ; Seville, J. Nunez ..... 96 Cordoba, A. Fernandez ... 97 Painters of Valencia ; F. Neapoli and P. de Aregio .... — Munificence of the Church . . 98 Cardinal P. Gonzalez de Mendoza, archbishop of Toledo ... — Cardinal Ximenez de Cisneros, arch- bishop of Toledo . . .99 Ramirez, bishop of Salamanca . — J. A. de Toledo, archbishop of Seville — Proof of the progress of the arts . 100 CHAPTER III.— REIGN OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 1516—1556. Brilliant age of the Emperor Charles V 101 Intercourse between Spain and Italy — Charles V. as a patron of art . . 102 His fine taste ; his visit to the cathe- dral of Cordoba .... 103 His regard for Titian ; anecdotes . 104 His architectural works — Madrid, the Alcazar, and the Pardo ; Granada, the Alhambra ; Toledo, the Alcazar 105 His love of painting . . . 106 Pictures at San Yuste . . . 107 Spanish artists in Italy; A. Berru- guete, P. Francione . . . — G. di Spagna ..... 108 Spanish patrons of art in Italy ; Marquess del Guasto, Marquess of Villafranca ..... 108 P. de Prado and J. de Toledo . . — Bishop Bobadilla of Salamanca . — Italian artists in Spain . . . — Miguel and Antonio Florentin . 109 P. Torrigiano ..... 110 Examination of the story of his death ; La Mano de la Teta . . Ill His statue of St. Jerome at Seville . 112 Julio and Alessandro introduce fresco painting into Spain . . . 115 Titian’s portraits of Charles V. .116 Story of his visit to Spain examined 117 Flemish painters in Spain ; J. Bos . 119 His works at Madrid . . . 121 And at Valencia .... 122 J. C. Vermeyen .... — P. Campana ..... 123 His Descent from the Cross . . — Other works at Seville . . . 124 F. Frutet ..... 125 H. Sturmio or Esturmio . . . 126 His picture of Sta. Rufina and Sta. Justa, and their legend . . 127 Native artists ; F. de Vigarny . .128 His monument to Ferdinand and Isabella at Granada . . . 129 XXII CONTENTS. Page His influence on Spanish art . . 130 Spanish painted sculpture . . 131 Colour not admissable in statuary . 134 D. Forment, sculptor . . . 133 P. Munoz ...... 137 P. Macliuea ..... — Plateresque architecture . . . 139 D. de Sagredo and his hook Las Medidas del Romano . . 139, 1336 A. Berruguete ..... 140 His studies in Italy . . .141 Marriage and life at V alladolid . 142 Works at Salamanca . . . 143 At Toledo and Palencia . . . 144 Monument of Cardinal Tavern, arch- bishop of Toledo . . . — His genius and influence . . 143 G. de Tordesillas .... 140 D. de Navas ..... 1337 Xamete ...... 147 Painters ; F. Gallegos . . . 148 A. Perez de Villoldo and J. de Villoldo — L., A., and E. Comoutes . . . 149 D. Correa . . . . .130 J. de Yciar. His book on penman- ship, with plates by J. de Yiugles 1338 CHAPTER IV.— REIGN Reign of Philip II 103 Philip II. ; his love of art, and kind- ness to artists .... — Titian ...... — A. More 164 Philip I. compared with his father . — Favourite pursuits .... 103 Painting and architecture . . 100 Architectural works at Madrid, Lis- bon, Aranjuez, Segovia, VaUa- dolid, Douay, Malaga . . . 107 Convent-palace of San Lorenzo del Escorial ..... 108 Philip’s anxiety for its completion . 169 Remarkable events of his life as con- nected with the Escorial . .170 The Escorial compared with other great buildings; books describing it 171,1353 Purposes for which it was built . 173 Architects of the Escorial . . 175 J. B. de Toledo and J de Herrera . 170 Architectural merits of the Escorial; opinions of Padre Santos and Cum- berland ..... 178 Exterior — Interior ...... — Materials and decorations employed in its construction . . .181 Page His book on the art of letter- writing 1341 H. Yafiez ..... 152 P. Rubiales 153 Patrons of art ..... — The Church ; chapter of Seville ; archbishop Tavera of Toledo . 154 F. de los Cobos; F. de Guevara, an amateur ..... 155 Painters of iUuminations ; A. de Ho- landa, D. de Arroya . . . 157 F. de Holanda ..... 1342 Visit to the Emperor Charles V. at Barcelona ..... 1343 His description of his interview with the Emperor .... 1344 Travels in Italy and France . . 1347 Drawings 1348 His return to Portugal, and death — His writings on art . . . . 1350 His Dialogues on Painting . . 1351 Note on the Portuguese books on art — Goldsmiths ..... 158 H. d’Arphe; his Custodia in the Ca- thedral of Toledo . . . 139 A. d’Arphe, J. Ruiz, A., F., and C. Beeerril ..... 161 ’ PHILIP II. 1556—1598. Sculptors, carvers, and other artists employed ; P. Leoni, G. Trezzo, B. Cellini, J. Frecha, J. B. Monegro . 182 Foreign painters in the service of Philip II 183 Titian ; his Cena, and his portrait of Philip II. . . . .184 Sofonisba Anguisciola . . . 185 Her visit to Spain .... 186 Marriages and honours . . . 188 Works ; her portrait . . . 190 Sofonisba Gentilesca . . . 191 G. B. Castello, el Bergamasco; F. CasteRo, and N. Granelo . . 192 R. Cincinato ..... 193 F. de Viana ..... 1354 P. Caxes 195 A. and V. Campi .... 196 A. Campi’s work on Cremona . . 1354 L. Cambiaso ..... 198 Death of his wife, and its effects . 200 Industry ; invited to Spain . . 201 Works at the Escorial . . . 202 Disappointment, sickness, aud death 204 Other works at the Escorial . . 205 Character and merits . . • — O. Cambiaso ..... 206 L. Tavarone . . . . . — CONTENTS. xxiii G. B. Castello, el Genovese Pncje 207 A. Rizi ..... Page 1355 F. Zuccaro ..... — P. Tibaldi . . . . . His travels . 208 Invited to Spain by Philip II. . 215 Journey to Spain, and works at the Frescos and other works at the Escorial — Escorial . . . . . 209 B. del Agua . 1355 Criticism of Philip II., and condemned A. More ...... 217 frescos . ... . 210 His travels in England 218 Remarks of Philip II. 211 Visit to Spain; success and flight 219 B. Carduclio . . . . . 212 M. Coxcie 221 His works at the Escorial — A. Pupiler . . . . . 222 His good-nature as a critic 214 U. Staenheyl . . . . . — His picture of the Last Supper . 1354 CHAPTER V.— REIGN C )F PHILIP II. — Continued. Artists of Castile ; painters employed at court ..... 224 His death, burial, and merits as an artist ...... 249 L. Morales ..... — M. Barroso . ... . — His visit to the Escorial . 225 His scholars ..... — His last interview with Philip II. 220 B. del Rio Bernuiz, L. Lopez, G. His self-taught genius 227 Vazquez, M. Ribas, M. Martinez, Subjects and style .... 228 J. Ruiz de Castaneda . 251 Some of his larger works 229 J. Fernandez Navarrete, el Mudo — Their careful finish .... 230 His master, Fr. V. de Sto Domingo . 252 Morales the younger 231 El Mudo in Italy .... — J. Labrador ..... — His works at the Escorial 253 A. Sanchez Coello .... — He caricatures the secretary Santoyo 254 His favour with Philip II. 232 His picture of Abraham receiving the Royal and noble friends . 233 Angels, and other works 255 Anecdote of Philip II. — His sickness, death, and will . — Praise bestowed by Lope de Vega on A. Sanchez Coello 234 His quickness and intelligence; anec- dote ...... 258 Portrait of A. Sanchez Coello . 1356 His style and merits 259 Isabella Sanchez Coello . 234 Portraits ...... 260 Portraits by A. Sanchez Coello 235 His own portrait .... 1356 Of Inf. D. Carlos .... 236 Lope de Vega’s eulogistic epigram . 261 Infa. Isabella Clara Eugenia — L. de Carbajal .... — Queen Isabella de la Paz 237 His portrait of archbishop Carranza And Antonio Perez .... — de Miranda of Toledo . 262 Triumphal arches and religious pie- Bias del Prado .... 263 tures ...... 238 His mission to the court of Morocco 264 Portrait of St. Ignatius Loyola . 239 His works now at Madrid, and portrait C. Lopez ..... — of Fr. A. de Villegas 265 J. de Urbina ..... 240 J. Pantoja de la Cruz 266 G. Narduck, or Fr. J. de la Miseria . — Portraits of Philip II. and other royal G. Becerra, painter and sculptor 241 personages ..... 267 His works in Italv .... 242 Sacred pictures .... 268 His plates for Dr. J. Valverde’s book Style and merits .... 269 on anatomy . . . 242, 1356 Anecdote of his eagle-sitter 270 His return to Spain and success at court . . . . . ' . 243 T. Mingot, G. Cabrera, D. Urbina, A. Segura ..... 271 His religious works .... 224 R. de Holanda, J. Gomez, E. Jordan 272 His miraculous image of Our Lady of Solitude, carved with the assistance Painters of illuminations ; Fr. A. de Leon, Fr. C. de Truxillo of the Blessed Virgin, for the Queen 245 Fr. J. Fuente del Saz, Fr. M. de His works at Granada, Valladolid, Palencia ..... 273 Salamanca, Burgos, Segovia, As- torga, &c. ..... 247 Embroiderers; Fr. L. de Monserrate, D. Rutiner ..... — xxiv CONTENTS. Page Painters employed by die Church; N. de Vergara the elder, N. de Ver- gara the younger, J. de Vergara . 274 L. de Velasco . . . . .275 I. de Helle ..... 270 D. Theotocopuli, el Greco . . — His works at Toledo . . . 277 His St. Maurice, painted for the Es- corial ...... 278 Its failure, and condemnation by Philip II 279 His Burial of the Count of Orgaz, painted for the church of S. Tome at Toledo ..... 280 Inscription beneath it 283 His portraits at Toledo, Illescas, Ma- drid, and Paris .... 284 His portrait of V. Anastagi in Eng- land ...... 1857 His style ...... 285 His works of sculpture and architec- ture ...... 2S7 Page His industry; Pacheco’s visit to him. 288 Death ; and sonnet in his praise by Gongora ..... 289 A. de Herrera ..... 290 J. F. and E. Perola .... — Fr. M. Galindez .... 291 J. Martinez, G. Martinez . . . 292 J. de Aneda, J. de Cea . . . — Artists of Catalonia; painters; P. Pablo, P. Serafin, P. Guitart, I. Hermes, Fr. L. P. Gaudin . . 293 Artists of Castile ; sculptors . . 295 J. de Juni ..... 290 His works at Valladolid . . . 297 At Osma and Bioseco . . . 299 His fresco paintings at Bioseco . 300 His works at Segovia, Santiago, and Valladolid ..... — His family, and his artistic merits . 301 B. de Leon ..... 303 P. Arbulo Marguvete . . . 304 M. de Ancheta .... — CHAPTEB VI.— BEIGX OF PHILIP II.— Concluded. Artists of Andalusia . . . 30G I Painters ; A. Perez, J. B. Campana . 307 I L. de Vargas . . . . . — I His visit to Italy .... 308 His works at Seville . . . — His portrait of Fr. F. de Contreras . 309 His pictures in the Cathedral . . — La Gambu . . . . .310 Frescos on the external walls and on the Girahla .... 311, 1357 Views of the Girahla . . . — Legend of Sta. Butina and Sta. Justa 312 Note on engravings of the Giralda 312, 1357 Death and character of Vargas . .313 His merits as an artist . . . — Various works ..... 314 Ant. de Arden .... 315 The Fvria of Seville . . . — A. Buiz ...... — Al. de Arfian ..... 310 J. B. Vazquez — A. Vazquez ..... 317 His picture of St. Baymond, and the legend of that saint . . . 318 L. Fernandez ..... 319 P. de ViUegas Marmolejo — His epitaph by Arias Montano . . 320 P. de Cespedes .... 321 His travels in Italy .... — His works at Borne ; pictures . . 322 Sculptures ..... 323 His versatility and his learning . — His friendship for archbishop Car- ranza de Mirando of Toledo . 324 He returns to Cordoba a canon . 325 His literary and artistic works there — His visits to Seville, and friendship with A. Montano .... 320 His second visit to Italy . . . 327 Literary works .... — Close of his life .... 328 Epitaph and bequests . . . 329 Artistic merits, and works . • 330 Anecdotes .... 330, 1357 His portraits ..... 332 His poetry ..... 338 Analysis and specimens of his poem on Painting ..... 334 A. Mohedano ..... 344 His works ..... — B. de Ledesma .... 340 Painters of illuminations; Fr. D. de Salto, Fr. F. Galeas . . . — P. de Basis and brothers . . . 1358 Foreign artists in Andalusia; C. Ar- basia ...... 347 M. Perez pointed confessor to a royal nun- and gold ..... — nery at Madrid .... 373 Funeral honours of Philip 11. in the Addressed by Our Lady of Atocha . 374 cathedral of Seville 403 CHAPTER VII.— REIGN OF PHILIP TIL 1598—1621. Philip III. ; his character as a patron G. B. Crescenzi . . . 411, 1360 of art . 407 The Messina reliquary at the Escorial 412 Anecdotes of him .... 408 Portraits of Philip III. — His additions to the royal palaces . 409 Queen Margaret .... 413 Valladolid; E. Gutierrez, the painter — Patrons of art; Cardinal Duke of Palace of the Pardo ; artists employed Lerma ...... 414 there ...... — Marquess of Canete — Litigation between the artists and the Duke of Uzeda .... — Board of Works ; P. Horfelin 410 Amateur artists ; Don T. Gracian G. C. Semin, L. de Viana 411 Dantisco, Don F. Tejada, Don G. Statue of Philip III. at the Casa del Lopez Madera .... 416 Campo . . . . . — Marquess of Aula , . . . 1360 Pantheon of the Escorial, and the Artists of Castile ; painters 417 saying of Philip II. — P. D. Guzman . . . . . — XXVI CONTENTS. Page F. Lopez 417 C. Velasco ..... I860 V. Corducho . . . . .417 His works at Valladolid and the Pardo 418 Eclipsed at Court by Velazquez . — Works at Toledo, Guadalupe, and Paular ...... 419 Remarks on his Carthusian pictures at Paular ..... 421 He visits Granada and Valencia . 423 His dialogues on painting . . 424 His last work and death . . . 420 Style ; works on subjects of profane history ..... — Sonnet in his praise by Lope de Vega 427 Eugenio Caxes .... 428 Ilis works at die Pardo, Madrid, and Toledo . . . . . — I His death and character . . . 429 Fr. J. B. Mayuo .... — His success at Court, and his works in the palaces .... 430 Praised by Lope de Vega, and other poets 431, 1301 B. Gonzalez . . . . .431 B. de Cardenas, and his assistant, J. de Cliorinos .... 432 His works at Madrid and Valladolid — His picture of St. Francis of Assisi's Jubilee of die Porciuncula . . 433 J. de Cardenas .... 434 F. de Linfio ..... — His epitaph by Lope de Vega . . — P. de las Cuevas .... 435 Fr. J. Sanchez Cotan . . . 430 His pictures of still life . . . — His visit to Alcazar de San Juan, and Toledo ..... 437 Removal from Paular to Granada . — Visited by V. Carducho . . . 438 j His various talents and his piety . 439 The Blessed Virgin sits to him . — L. Tristan ..... — His works ; his Ccna at the monastery of La Sisla ; anecdote of El Greco 440 Portrait of Tristan .... 1362 His pictures at Yepes . . . 44J His women usually coarse . . 442 Portraits of archbishop Sandoval of Toledo, Lope de Vega, and other works ..... 443, 1362 J. de Haro ..... 444 Fr. A. Mascagio .... 1362 Engraver ; P. Angelo . . . — Sculptors ; G. Hernandez . . 444 His works ; J later Dolorosa at Val- ladolid 445 Odier sculptures .... 446 Page Works of architecture . . . 446 His style, character, deadi, and portrait 447 J. F. Hibame . .... — House of Juni and Hernandez . 448 Artists of Arragon; G.Cosida, apainler — Artists of Andalusia . . . 449 Painters; J. de las Roelas . . — His Transit of St. Isidore . . 450 His Martyrdom of St. Andrew and other works at Seville . . . 452 F. de Herrera the elder . . . 454 His methods of painting . . . 455 His bad temper . . . . Accused of coining false money, he takes refuge with the Jesuits, for uhom he paints St. Hermengild, which procures his pardon from Philip IV. ..... 456 Flight of his children . . . 458 Various works at Seville . . . — Removal to Madrid and death . . 459 B. Herrera — Herrera the red .... — Style of Herrera the elder . . — Ag. de Castillo .... 460 J. de Castillo ; his works at Seville — He visits Granada .... 461 F. Pacheco ..... 462 His early works .... 463 His works at Seville . . . — He visits Madrid and Toledo . . — Returns to Seville, and paints the Last Judgment, for the nunnery of St. Isabel 465 Chosen Inspector of Pictures for the Inquisition ; and edits F. de Her- rera's poems .... 466 Writes an essay on painting and sculpture 467 Accompanies bis son-in-law, Velaz- quez, to Madrid .... 468 Returns to Seville ; his writings, and death ...... 469 His style as a painter . . . — Satirical epigram on his picture of Our Lord ..... 470 His admiration for Rafael . . — Portraits ; and sketches of his con- temporaries . . . .471 Verses in his praise by Quevedo . 472 Pacheco’s literarv sketch of Lope de Vega 1364 His book on painting . . 472, 1364 Remarks on it . . . . — His poetry ; an epigram by him 478, 1364 Verses in his praise by Lope de Vega 479 D. Vidal . . . ‘ . . . 1364 C. de Vera, J. de Vera . . .479 CONTENTS. xxvii I Page Fr. Adriano 479 J. Penaloso ..... 480 J. I. Zambrano .... — A. de Contreras .... 481 G. Lucenti, an Italian painter . — Sculptors ; Ger. Hernandez . . 482 G. Nunez Delgado .... 483 Anecdote of the poet Herrera . . — J. Martinez Montanes . . . — His statue of St. Ignatius Loyola . 484 His equestrian statue of Philip IV. . 485 His death ... . . — His style, merits, and works . . 486 Seville ; its wealth, grandeur, and politeness in this reign . 487 Society in the house of Pacheco . 488 Patrons of art ; the Duke of Alcala ; his house, called the Casa de Pilatos — Artists of Valencia .... 491 F. de Ribalta; his romantic story . — His Last Supper, painted for the College of Corpus Christi . . 492 CHAPTER VIII.— REIGN OF PHILIP IV. 1621—1665. Philip IV. ; his character 509 Religious service attlie palace of Mad- His patronage of literature 511 rid, 1624 532 His literary, histrionic, and artistic Queen Mariana of Austria 533 talents ..... 512 The Count-Duke of Olivares . — His taste in choosing his artists 513 His patronage of letters, and his His visit to Andalusia in 1624 514 library ..... 534 His regard for Rubens and A. Cano . — His patronage of art 535 Projected Royal Academy of Art 515 The Admiral of Castile 536 His architectural works . 516 Marquess of Leganes — Church of St. Isidore at Madrid 517 Count of Monterey .... — Palace of Buenretiro — Don J. de E spina .... — His equestrian statue by Tacca 518 Duke of Alba, and others — Pantheon of the Escorial 520 Amateur artists .... 537 His meditations there 521 Duke of Alcala .... — G. B. Crescenzi ; Fr. E. de la Cruz; Don J. Fonseca .... — Fr. J. de la Concepcion ; artists . 522 Don J. Jauregui .... — Philip IV. a diligent collector of works Don G. Fures y Muniz 538 of art ...... — Don G. de Villafuerte 539 Pictures of Rafael and other great Bishop J. Caramuel Lobkowitz — masters acquired by him 523 Don T. Labana, Don F. Velazquez His collection of sculpture 525 Minaya, Counts of Benevente and His person and portraits 526 Tula, Don P. de Herrera, Don D. His imperturbable gravity 527 de Lucena, Duke of Bejar 540 His humour ..... 528 D. J. de Butron; his discourses on The Infant Don Carlos 529 painting ..... — The Infant Don Fernando, Cardinal Don E. Hurtado de Mendoza . 1365 archbishop of Toledo, andGovernor Lady amateurs ; Duchess of Aveiro, of Flanders ..... — Dona M. de Aharca, Countess of His funeral honours at Toledo 530 Villaumbrosa .... 541 Queen Isabella de Bourbon 531 Marquess of Montevelo, a painter by Picture of her reception at the Spanish profession ..... — frontier, and of the Infanta Anne Visit of Charles Prince of Wales to at that of France .... 1365 Spain ..... 542 Page Various works at Madrid and V alencia 493 His death ; style, and merits . . 495 J. de Ribalta ; his precocious genius 496 His Crucifixion, at Valencia . . — He imitates his father’s style . . 497 His portraits ..... — His poetry ..... 498 Works of the Ribaltas at Madrid . 499 At Oxford 500 F. Zarinena, C. Zarinena, J. Zarinena 501 B. Matarana ..... 502 G. Rodriguez de Espinosa, J. Terol, P. Orrente ..... — His picture of St. Ildefonso and Sta. Leoeadiafor the Cathedral of Toledo — His works at Murcia . . . 504 Valencia, Cuenca, and Madrid; his style ...... 505 Painters of Murcia .... 506 C. Acevedo and L. Juarez . . 507 Sculptor of Valencia; Fr. G. SanMarti — CONTENTS. xxviii Influence of thisjoumey onliis taste his purchases of pictures Presents made to him ; his portrait painted by Velazquez He employs M. de la Cruz to copy Page 543 544 C. de Beer, Maria de Beer Engravers ; P. Perret, H. Panneels, J. de Courbes, D. de Astor, J. Van Noort, J. Seborquens, A. de Popma, R.Cordier, M. Rossvood, I. Lieven- Page 557 pictures ..... 545 dal, F. and B. Heylan, Anna Hey- Foreign artists in Spain; Flemings; Ian, J. Tavernier, P. Roux . 559, 1365 P. P. Rubens .... — Notice of some of their works, chiefly His diplomatic mission to Spain 546 title pages . . 560, 1365 Portraits of Philip IV. and other royal Italians ; painters, personages ..... 547 D. Romulo, F. Romulo 561 His intercourse with and opinion of B. Cavarozzi, or Crescenzi 562 Philip IV 548 A. Nardi 563 His industry and his works — G. Campino 564 His friends ; and his visit to the Es- O. Borgianni . 565 corial with Velazquez . 549 C. Lotti .... 566 His mission to England . 550 A. M. Colonna and A. Mitelli — His second (doubtful) visit to Spain 551 Their works in the palaces at Madrid 567 His works at Madrid — MiteRi’s death and epitaph 569 SevRle, Plasencia, Fuen-Saldana, Sculptors — and Loeclies .... 552 R. Gaxi .... — His view of the Escorial, in England 553 G. B. Ceroni . 570 G. de Crayer ..... — V. Fanelli — C. Schut the elder .... 554 G. Ferrer 571 J. de Vanderliamen . . 555 G. B. MoreRi . 572 A. Vandepere ..... 556 Portuguese sculptor ; M. Pereyra 573 Miguel el Flamenco 557 Legend of San Juan de Dios 574 CHAPTER IX.— REIGN OF PHILIP IV. 1021— 1625.— Continued, Artists of Castile . . . .575 Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez 576 His birth and parentage at SeviRe . — His education, and early love of drawing ..... 577 He enters the school of Herrera thejelder — And removes to the school of Pacheco 578 His careful studies from nature . — His peasant-model .... 579 His skiU in painting heads . . — His studies of stiR life . . . — And of low life .... 580 Picture of El Aguador de Sevilla . — Other works of a simUar kind . . — Foreign andCastRianpictures brought to SevRle ..... 582 Velazquez imitates Ribera and Tristan 583 He marries Pacheco’s daughter . 584 His social life and position . . 585 His reading ..... 586 He visits Madrid, and paints the poet Gongora, in 1622 . . . 587 Second visit to Madrid in 1623 . 588 His portrait of Fonseca seen by the King ...... 589 He is retained in the King’s service — Makes a sketch of the Prince of Wales 590, 1368 Paints an equestrian portrait of the King ...... 590 Its exhibition and success . . 591 Pacheco’s sonnet in honour of Velaz- quez and PhRip IV. . . . 592 Poem on same subject by Gonzalez de VRlanueva .... 593 Velazquez is appointed painter in ordinary to the King . . . 594 Portraits of royal personages . . — Royal progress to Andalusia . . 595 Velazquez again paints the King on b orseback ..... — Picture of Los Borradws . . 596 PhRip III. expelling the Moriscos, proposed as a subject for a pictorial competition ..... 598 Velazquez victorious . . . 599 He is made usher of the royal chamber — Description of the picture . . — Further royal bounties to Velazquez and his father .... 601 Intimacy between Rubens and Velaz- quez ; and their visit to the Escorial — Velazquez’s first journey to Italy in 1629 ; he lands at Venice . . 602 11 Padovanino, Libertino, Turchi . 603 Studies of Velazquez . . . — CONTENTS. xxix War; Velazquez leaves Venice for Page Velazquez’s equestrian portrait of Page Ferrara . 604 Philip IV. in his gala dress . 632 His visit to Bologna and Loretto, and Death of Queen Isabella . — journey to Rome . 605 Her last portrait by Velazquez — Rome under Pope Urban VIII. 607 His portraits of the Infant Don Bal- The Pope's reception of Velazquez, thazar Carlos .... 633 and offer of apartments in the His picture of the Surrender of Breda 634 Vatican . — His unsuccessfnlportrait of PhilipIV. 635 Velazquez’s studies there — His portraits of Quevedo and other State of art at Rome Domeuicliino, Guercino, Guido, Al- bani, Poussin, Claude Lorraine, personages .... 635, His second journey to Italy in 1648, in the train of the Duke of Ma- 1368 Bernini . 608 queda ..... 636, 1368 Velazquez at the villa Medici . — He lands at Genoa; Vandyck, Cas- His illness ..... 609 tiglione, G. Ferrari 637 And removal to the city 610 G. Carbone ..... 638 His pictures ; portrait of himself — Milan; E.Proccaceini; Padua, Venice; The Forge of Vulcan — Bologna, A. Tiarini ; Colonna and Joseph’s coat ..... 612 Metelli ...... 639 His visit to Naples .... 614 Modena; works of Correggio . — And return to Madrid Portraits of the Inf. Don Balthazar — Parma ; works of Correggio Florence ; P. de Cortona, C. Dolci, 640 Carlos ...... 615 S. Rosa . . . . . — Equestrian portrait of the King 616 Naples; Count of Onate . 641 Equestrian portraits of Philip III. Rome ; Pope Innocent X. — and Queen Margaret — Velazquez paints his portrait . — Equestrian and other portraits of the Other portraits .... 642 Count-Duke of Olivares Duke of Modena visits Madrid, and 617 A portrait of Pareja obtains Velaz- quez’s election into the Academy is painted by Velazquez 618 of St. Luke ..... — His picture of “ Our Lord on die Cross,” painted for the nuns of San His success in society His opinion of Italian art as pre- 643 Placido ..... His portrait of the admiral Adrian 619 served by Boschini Philip IV. becomes impatient for his 1369 Pulido Pareja .... 620 return to Spain .... 643 Is mistaken by Philip IV. for the His homeward journey 644 admiral himself .... 621 Arrival at Madrid ; he is made Apo- Portraits of the admiral, now in sentador-mayor to the King . — England ..... — Rejoicings at Court at the birth of The King 1 s Dwarfs ; their portraits by the Infanta Margarita Maria 645 Velazquez ..... 622 Her christening .... — VI. Barbola ..... — Grand bull feast .... 646 VI. Pertusano ..... 628 Occupations of Velazquez 648 Bobo de Coria, JS/irio de Vallecas — His favour with the King, and his Revolts in Catalonia and Portugal 624 reputation at Court — The Court removes to Arragon — His picture of Las Meninas 649 Aranjuez and its island garden — Philip IV. dubs (or rather daubs) Velazquez’s studies of the scenery there His visit to Cuenca, Molina, and Zara- 626 him knight of Santiago Giordano’s name for the picture of 651 goza ...... His portrait of Julian de Yalcarcel, 627 the Meninas .... Velazquez’s portraits of Queen Mari- 652 alias Hen. de Guzman, adopted son ana and her children — of the Count-Duke of Olivares — Infanta Maria Margarita . 653 Last portrait of Olivares himself 629 Infant D. Philip Prosper . 654 Fall of Olivares .... 630 Velazquez at the Escorial — Velazquez visits him in exile . 631 Embassy of Grammont to Madrid ; The Court in Arragon in 1644 . — Velazquez attends him to the royal Taking of Lerida .... 632 galleries ..... 655 XXX CONTEXTS. Page Page Installation of Velazquez as knight The painter’s family picture 071 of Santiago .... 050 Character of Velazquez 672 Peace of the Pyrenees 057 Portraits of him • 074 Isle of Pheasants — Notices of some of his pictures 675 Velazquez sent to the Bidassoa 058 Las Hilanderas, .... — He erects a pavilion on the Isle of St. Anthony the Abbot and St. Paul Pheasants .... 059 the first Hermit ; their legend 076 His duties as Aposentador-mayor 000 Coronation of the Virgin . 078 Royal progress to the frontier . 001 St. Francis Borgia entering the Jesuits’ Ceremonials at Fuenterabia 00-2 college ..... — Conferences on the Isle of Pheasants — El Orlando muerto, .... 680 The meeting of the Courts of Spain El Pretendiente, .... 681 and France .... 003 Portraits of a sculptor, of an old lady, Veluzquez as a courtier . 005 &c — Pomp and rejoicings — Landscapes and hunting pieces 682 Philip IV. ; homeward progress of the Picture of the Boar-hunt at the Pardo, Court ..... 000 now at London ... 1371 Burgos, Valladolid . — Sketches 083 His arrival at Madrid 007 Velazquez compared with Rubens — Rumours of the death of Velazquez . — The variety of his powers 085 His illness, and will 009 Sacred subjects; a Spanish Venus . — His death and funeral — Opinion of Wilkie .... 086 His epitaph written by Alfaro . 070 Verses of Quevedo in praise of Velaz- Death of the widow of Velazquez 071 quez — Their family .... — CHAPTER X.— REIGN OF PHILIP IV. 1021 — 1065. —Continued. Artists of Castile 089 J. Valdelmira de Leon 700 Flourishing state of tire school of P. de Obregon, father and son . — Madrid, and decline of that of D. de Obregon, M. de Obregon 701 Toledo .... — A. Pereda ..... — Amateurs ; Don L. Diaz de Valle 090 His works ..... 702 His notes on art — His wife and her airs ; her sham Don R. Sanguineto . — duefia painted by her husband 703 A. Ltmchares .... 091 J. Pereda ..... — L. Fernandez .... 092 Character and existing works of A. B. Roman .... 1373 Pereda ..... 704 J. de la Corte .... 692 F. Collantes ..... 705 G. de la Corte .... 693 F. Fernandez ..... 706 Corte of Antequera . — P. Nunez ..... 707 Fr. J. Rizi .... — J. de Pareja, the slave of Velazquez 708 His works at Monserrate, Yuso, and His secret studies . . . . — Burgos .... 694 His talents discovered by Philip IV., At Madrid and in Italy, where he is who obtains his freedom 709 made a bishop 695 His attachment to Velazquez and his F. Rizi 696 family . . . . . — His facility of hand — His works ..... 710 His works at Toledo — J. B. del Mazo Martinez . 711 He is made painter to the King, and His works ..... — deputy-Aposentador 697 His marriages . . . . 712 His bad architectural taste — S. Moran ..... 713 His works at Toledo . , — 1 P. Moran te .... 713, 1374 His altar for the Santa Fonna of the 1 F. Camilo ..... 714 Escorial, and its legend 698 1 F. Ignacio ..... 715 Various works 699 J. de Licalde ..... — Style 700 A. Arias Fernandez — CONTENTS. xxxi F. Aguirre .... Page . 716 P. Cuquet ..... Page 738 His portrait of the Cardinal Infant Dona Angelica .... 739 Ferdinand .... . 717 Sculptors; F. de Santa Cruz, A. Pujol 740 J. de Arellano . 718 Artists of Valencia . . . . 740 His success in flower-painting . Painters ; J. de Ribera — His industry .... . 719 His journey to Rome ; his poverty, S. de Leon Leal . 720 industry, and eccentric habits 741 P. de Valpuesta . 1375 Called 11 Spagnoletto 742 J. de Montero de Roxas . . 721 Removes to Naples .... — E. de las Cuevas . 1376 Marries a rich wife, and is patronized J. Leonardo .... . 721 by the Viceroy .... 743 S. de Herrera Bamuevo . . 7 22, 1376 Faction of painters, headed by Ribera 744 A. Puga ..... . 723 B. Corenzio ..... — F. Burgos .... . 1377 G. Caracciolo ..... 745 T. D. Aguiar .... . Contest for the chapel of St. Januarius — B. M. de Agiiero . 723 D’Arpino, Guido, Gessi . 746 A. Mesa ..... . 1377 Domenichino . . . . . 747 J. S. Navarro .... . 724 Lanfranco ..... 748 P. de Villafane — Neapolitan account of Ribera’s death — Engravers; P. de Villafranca Mala- Spanish account .... 749 gon 725, 1378 Ribera’s philosopher’s stone 750 His paintings . 726 His person, portrait, wife, children, F. Navarro .... . 727 and house ..... 751 Toledo ; A. Loarte . — His scholars ; and his popularity in 1 Valladolid; M. Blasco — Italy and Spain .... 752 D. V. Diaz .... — His style ; love of horrors 753 His hospital, and his epitaph . . 729 Anecdotes ; his more pleasing works 754 ! F. Gil de Mena . 730 Jacob’s dream .... 755 G. Garcia Salmeron . 731 His portraits ..... — A. de Vargas .... . 732 His sketches and etchings 756 ! Burgos ; D. de Leyva — E. March ..... — D. de Polo, the younger . . 733 His strange habits of study 757 D. de Polo, the elder . 734 His battle pieces .... — , J. de Espinosa . Coarse subjects; religious pictures . 758 Sculptors ; J. M. Theotocopuli — Eccentric and disorderly habits 759 P. de la Torre .... . 735 Adventure of the fish fried in linseed D. de Rioja .... . oil ..... 760 1 L. de Llamosa — M. March ..... 761 L. Fernandez de la Vega . . 1378 Fr. A. Leonardo .... — j Artists of Arragon and Catalonia . 735 Jac. G. de Espinosa 763 Painters ; F. Ximenez — M. G. de Espinosa .... 764 A. Bisquert .... . 736 Their works ; picture of a remarkable J. de Galvan .... — miracle performed by a Capuchin — J. Martinez .... . 737 G. Ferrer ...... 1379 M. de Espinosa . 738 G. Bausa ..... 765 Pietro Micier .... — V. Guirri — Pablo Micier .... P. Pontons ..... — Urzanqui .... — J. de Yepes . . ‘ . — J. and J. Valles; engravers . 1379 A. Marzo, V. Marzo 766 Fr. R. Berenguer . 738 Goldsmith ; L. Puig — F. Gassen .... CHAPTER XI.— REIGN OF PHI LIP IV. 1621 — 1665. — Continued. Artists of Andalusia . 767 His works at Seville 768 D. Vidal de Liendo . . 1380 His St. Thomas Aquinas, painted for F. de Zurbaran . 767 the college of St. Thomas Aquinas . 769 He becomes the scholar of Roelas . 768 Works at Guadalupe 770 XXII CONTENTS. Page His influence on Spanish art . . 130 Spanish painted sculpture . .131 Colour not admissable in statuary . 134 D. Forment, sculptor . . . 133 P. Munoz ...... 137 P. Machuca ..... — Plateresque architecture . . . 139 D. de Sagredo and his hook Las Medidas del Romano . . 139,1336 A. Berruguete ..... 140 His studies in Italy . . .141 Marriage and life at Valladolid . 142 Works at Salamanca . . . 143 At Toledo and Palencia . . . 144 Monument of Cardinal Tavera, arch- bishop of Toledo . . . — His genius and influence . . 145 G. de Tordesillas .... 146 D. de Navas ..... 1337 Xamete ...... 147 Painters ; F. Gallegos . . . 148 A. Perez de Villoldo and J. de Villoldo — L., A., and E. Comontes . . . 14!) D. Correa ..... 150 J. de Yciar. His book on penman- ship, with plates by J. de Vingles 1338 CHAPTER IV.— REIGN Reign of Philip II. . . . . 163 Philip II. ; his love of art, and kind- ness to artists . . . . — Titian ...... — A. More ...... 164 Philip I. compared with his father . — Favourite pursuits .... 165 Painting and architecture . . 166 Architectural works at Madrid, Lis- bon, Aranjuez, Segovia, VaRa- dolid, Douay, Malaga . . . 167 Convent-palace of San Lorenzo del Escorial ..... 168 Philip’s anxiety for its completion . 169 Remarkable events of his life as con- nected with the Escorial . . 170 TlieEscorial compared with other great buddings; books describing it 171,1353 Purposes for which it was built . 173 Architects of the Escorial . .175 J. B. de Toledo and J de Herrera . 176 Architectural merits of the Escorial ; opinions of Padre Santos and Cum- berland ..... 178 Exterior — Interior ...... — Materials and decorations employed in its construction . . .181 Page His book on the art of letter-writing 1341 H. Yanez 152 P. Rubiales ..... 153 Patrons of art ..... — The Church ; chapter of SeviRe ; archbishop Tavera of Toledo . 154 F. de los Cobos; F. de Guevara, an amateur ..... 155 Painters of illuminations ; A. de Ho- landa, D. de Arroya . . . 157 F. de Holanda ..... 1342 Visit to the Emperor Charles V. at Barcelona ..... 1343 His description of his interview with the Emperor .... 1344 Travels in Italy and France . . 1347 Drawings ..... 1348 His return to Portugal, and death — His writings on art . . . . 1350 His Dialogues on Painting . . 1351 Note on the Portuguese books on art — Goldsmiths ..... 158 H. d’Arphe; his Custodia in the Ca- thedral of Toledo . . . 139 A. d’Arphe, J. Ruiz, A., F., and C. Becerril 161 PHILIP II. 1556—1598. Sculptors, carvers, and other artists employed; P. Leoni, G. Trezzo, B. CeUini, J. Frecha, J. B. Monegro . 182 Foreign painters in the service of Philip II 183 Titian; his Corn, and his portrait of Philip II 184 Sofonisba Anguisciola . . . 185 Her visit to Spain .... 186 Marriages and honours . . . 188 Works ; her portrait . . . 190 Sofonisba Gentilesca . . . 191 G. B. Castello, el Bergamasco; F. CasteUo, and N. Granelo . . 192 R. Cincinato ..... 193 F. de Viana ..... 1354 P. Caxes ..... 193 A. and V. Campi .... 196 A. Campi’s work on Cremona . . 1354 L. Cambiaso ..... 198 Death of his wife, and its effects . 200 Industry; invited to Spain . . 201 Works at the Escorial . . . 202 Disappointment, sickness, and death 204 Other works at the Escorial . . 205 Character and merits . . * — O. Cambiaso ..... 206 L. Tavarone . . . . . — CONTENTS. XX111 Page G. B. Castello, el Genovese . . 207 F. Zuccaro ..... — His travels . 208 Journey to Spain, and works at the Escorial ..... 209 Criticism of Pliilip II., and condemned frescos ..... 210 Remarks of Philip II. . . .211 B. Carducho 212 His works at the Escorial . . — His good-nature as a critic . . 214 His picture of the Last Supper . 1354 Page A. Rizi ...... 1355 P. Tibaldi ..... — Invited to Spain by Philip II. . . 215 Frescos andotherworksattheEscorial — B. del Agua 1355 A. More . . . . . .217 His travels in England . . . 218 Visit to Spain; success and flight . 219 M. Coxcie 221 A. Pupiler ..... 222 U. Staenheyl ..... — CHAPTER V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II— Continued. Artists of Castile ; painters employed at court ..... 224 L. Morales — His visit to the Escorial . . . 225 His last interview with Philip II. . 220 His self-taught genius . . . 227 Subjects and style .... 228 Some of his larger works . . 229 Their careful finish .... 230 Morales the younger . . .231 J. Labrador . . . . . — A. Sanchez Coello .... — His favour with Philip II. . . 232 Royal and noble friends . . . 233 Anecdote of Philip II. . . — Praise bestowed by Lope de Vega on A. Sanchez Coello . . . 234 Portrait of A. Sanchez Coello . . 1356 Isabella Sanchez Coello . . . 234 Portraits by A. Sanchez Coello . 235 Of Inf. D. Carlos .... 236 Infa. Isabella Clara Eugenia . . — Queen Isabella de la Paz . . 237 And Antonio Perez .... — Triumphal arches and religious pic- tures ...... 238 Portrait of St. Ignatius Loyola . . 239 C. Lopez — J. de Urbina ..... 240 G. Narduck, or Fr. J. de laMiseria . — G. Becerra, painter and sculptor . 241 His works in Italy .... 242 His plates for Dr. J. Valverde’s book on anatomy . . . 242, 1356 His return to Spain and success at court . . . . . ' . 243 His religious works .... 224 His miraculous image of Our Lady of Solitude, carved with the assistance of the Blessed Virgin, for the Queen 245 His works at Granada, Valladolid, Salamanca, Burgos, Segovia, As- torga, &c. . . . . . 247 His death, burial, and merits as an artist ...... M. Barroso . . . . . His scholars ..... B. del Rio Bernuiz, L. Lopez, G. Vazquez, M. Ribas, M. Martinez, J. Ruiz de Castaneda . J. Fernandez Navarrete, el Mudo His master, Fr. V. de Sto Domingo . El Mudo in Italy .... His works at the Escorial He caricatures the secretary Santoyo His picture of Abraham receiving the Angels, and other works His sickness, death, and will . His quickness and intelligence; anec- dote ...... His style and merits Portraits ...... His own portrait .... Lope de Vega’s eulogistic epigram . L. de Carbajal .... His portrait of archbishop Carranza de Miranda of Toledo . Bias del Prado .... His mission to the court of Morocco His works now at M adrid, and portrait of Fr. A. de Villegas J. Pantoja de la Cruz Portraits of Philip II. and other royal personages ..... Sacred pictures .... Style and merits .... Anecdote of his eagle-sitter T. Mingot, G. Cabrera, D. Urbina, A. Segura ..... R. de Holanda, J. Gomez, E. Jordan Painters of illuminations ; Fr. A. de Leon, Fr. C. de Truxillo Fr. J. Fuente del Saz, Fr. M. de Palencia ..... Embroiderers; Fr. L. de Monserrate, D. Rutiner ..... 249 251 252 253 254 255 258 259 260 1356 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 XXXIV CONTENTS. H. de las Marinas . P. de Medina Valbuena . A. de Medina .... I. de Iriarte ..... His marriages . • His friendship and quarrel with Mu- rillo His works . And style . C. Ferrado . . . • • F. de Herrera the younger His flight to Rome, and his return to Seville . • • His removal to Madrid . . • He is made painter to Philip IV. Architectural works . . • His character ; and anecdotes of him Page 930 931 932 933 931 935 930 937 939 910 Style and merits . . . • F. Marquez Joya .... J. Martinez de Gradilla . B. de Ayala P. Ramirez, F. Ramirez . C. Ramirez, G. Ramirez . P. de Camprobin . Engravers ; J. Mendez, P. de Cam- polargo, Fr. T. de los Arcos, Fr. I. de Cardenas . Sculptors; Gasp, de Ribas F. de Ribas, Gon. de Ribas, A. Mar- tinez ...... J. de Arce G. Micael Goldsmith ; J. B. Franconio . Page 911 942 943 944 945 946 947 948 CHAPTER XIII.— REIGN OF CHARLES II. 1665—1700. Death of Philip IV. The Queen-Mother Mariana . Her lover, F. Valenzuela Don Juan of Austria Charles II. His architectural and other works Financial distresses of his govern- ment . • • • His person, and portraits Queen Maria Louisa of Orleans Queen Mariana of Neuburg Patrons of art; Admiral of Castile . Marquess of Heliche C. of Monterey . - Amateur artists; DonF. A.Ethenard Don J.deV aides, Count of Las Torres, Bishop Mascarenas of Segovia, Fr. C. del Viso, DonF. V. Cabeza de Vaca, Don F. de Artiga, Don P. Nunez de Villavicencio, Don S. de Rosas, Don E. de Espadana, Don N. de ViUacis • Duchess of Bejar, Countess of Villa- umbrosa, Dona M. Cueva Beuavi- des . • • • • ' Splendour of the nobility and the Church . • • ■ ' Foreign artiste ; painters, D. Man- tuano G. Romani, F. Leonardoni L. Giordano • • • . * His visit to Rome, and his nick- name acquired there . His travels in Italy • • • Return to Naples ; marriage ; skill in forging pictures ; various works Picture in honour of Peace, and of the Viceroy Los Velez . 949 950 951 952 955 957 958 959 960 962 903 904 965 966 968 909 970 972 973 974 Visit to Florence Incident with the Viceroy Heliche and the Jesuits at Naples . Affair with the Duke of Diano Continued success Patronized by the Viceroy Santis- tevau Invited to Madrid ; his journey thither, and his reception . Successful imitation of Bassano WorksforBuenretiroandtheEscorial Frescos in the church of the Eseo- rial ..... 982 Frescos at Buenretiro, and at Toledo And at Madrid .... Employed to drape nude figures, and to metamorphose a picture by Titian .... His industry and habits His parsimony, and great success His skill, and celerity of hand Saying of Charles II. Giordano returns to Italy His death; person, and character Wealth and popularity . Faults and merits of his style His pictures in Spain Francisquito .... J. Vankesel .... Charles II. guilty of a pun J. Closterman Sculptor; Fr. N. Busi . Artists of Castile ; painters . J. Carreno de Miranda . His early life His civic posts Obtains employment at the Alcazar, and is made painter to the king 975 977 978 979 980 981 1383 983 984 1384 985 986 987 988 989 990 991 992 993 994 995 996 997 CONTENTS. XXXV Page Page Various works at Madrid in different Burgos, and Madrid 1034 provincial towns 998 His style . . . . . 1035 At Toledo . 999 V. Benavides . . . . 1036 Appointed deputy-aposentador to I. de Burgos . . . . . 1384 the King, and obtains his favour — F. Palacios . 1036 Portraits of distinguished person- G. de la Corte . . . . 1037 ages; King, and Queen 1000 F. I. Ruiz de la Iglesia . — Don Juan of Austria, Valenzuela, His works and success at the courts Muscovite ambassador, fat female of Charles II. and Philip V. 1038 dwarf, &c. .... 1001 His death ..... 1039 Carreno’s death, and character 1002 Story of his disease in the kidneys Anecdotes of his good nature — cured by a miracle — Good temper ; absence of mind 1003 I. Arredondo .... 1040 Use of a maulstick 1004 S. Munoz ..... 1041 His style ..... — His works at Madrid ; pictures of D. Gonzalez de la Vega 1005 St. Eloy and St. Sebastian — A. del Arco ..... 1000 And of Queen Maria Louisa dead . 1043 A. de Castrejon .... 1007 Works at the Alcazar and church of Roque Ponce, and G. de la Corte . — Atocha ; death .... 1043 F. Perez Sierra .... — J. Cano de Arevalo 1044 His works ..... 1008 Appointed fan-painter to the Queen 1045 Legend of Sta. Rosa of Lima — Dies of a wound .... — Flower-pieces of Perez Sierra 1009 M. de Castro ..... 1385 C. Coello 1010 T. Ardemans . • . 1046 His youthful industry — His works ; appointments at the Friendship with J. Carreno and Xi- court of Philip V. 1047 menez Donoso .... 1011 His writings ..... — Queen Maria Louisa’s entry into Madrid; Coello’s works on that J. B, Medina, or Sir John Medina of Scotland .... occasion ..... 1012 His portraits of Scottish nobles 1049 His visit to Zaragoza; is made His death and will 1051 painter to the King 1013 His portrait ; various works ; style 1052 Picture of Charles II. and his court adoring the Sta. Forma at the His son and grandson, J. and J. Medina ..... Escorial ..... — Engravers; G. Fosman . 1053 Other works, and success 1016 1V1. de Orozco .... 1054 He is eclipsed by L. Giordano 1017 Sculptors ; B. Gutierrez de Torices 1055 Disgust, and death ; style and merits — J. de Churriguera .... 1056 His works at Madrid 1018 G. and N. Churriguera . — Sketches and engravings 1019 Artists of Catalonia and Arragon ; J. Ximenez Donoso — painters; Fr. Joaq. Juncoso 1057 His pictures ..... — Dr. Jos.Juncosa; Legend of Sta Tecla 1059 His architectural works 1020 Bastard, of Palma .... 1060 Death ; writings ; anecdotes of him 1021 Fr. S. Ilia — F. de Solis ..... 1022 F. Vera Cabeza de Vaca — M. de Torres .... 1024 Our Lady sits to him for her portrait 1061 G. de Torres ..... 1025 F. de Artiga ..... — Pleasantry of F. de Solis — J. de Renedo, engraver . 1385 J. de Ledesma .... 1026 G. Secano ..... 1062 J. A. Escalante .... — Fr. A. Martinez .... — J. Fernandez de Laredo 1027 B. Vicente — P. Ruiz de Gonzalez 1028 F. Plano ..... 1003 J. M. Cabezalero .... 1029 Sculptor ; J. de Rebenga 1386 J. Giachineti Gonzalez . 1030 M. Serra of Marseilles . — L. de Soto ..... — His success in France, and his B. Perez ..... 1031 celerity in painting 1064 M. de Cerezo .... 1032 His noble conduct during the plague — Works at Madrid, Valladolid . 1033 His rascally son .... 1065 XXX VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIV.— REIGN OF CHARLES II. 1605— 1700.— Concluded. Page Artists of Valencia ; painters . . 1066 Fr. L. Claros .... — Dr. J. Ramirez .... 1067 L. de Sotomayor .... 1088 C. Martinez ..... — V. Salvador Gomez . . . 1070 L. Salvador Gomez . . . 1071 J. Conchillos Falco ... — His picture of the coming to Valencia of the Christ of Beyrout, and legend of that image . . . 1072 Friendship and adventures with Palomino ..... 1073 His death ; M. A. Conchillos Falco 1074 G. de la Huerta .... — Taught painting by Dona J. Sanchiz — Flis works for churches and convents 1075 V. Victoria ..... 1076 His visit to Italy .... — Return to Valencia as a canon, and his works there . . .1077 His controversy with CountMalvasia of Bologna, and Zanotti’s reply to his observations . . . 1078 Removal to Rome .... 1080 His literary and other works . . 1081 Flis engraved portrait . . . 1386 His sonnet on painting . . . 1082 J. and J. Eximeuo .... 1083 J. Bavuco ..... — M. V.' Bru — V. Guillo, A. Guillo, F. Guillo . 1084 Sculptors ; J. Capuz . . . 1085 J. L. Capuz, R. Capuz ... — F. Capuz ..... 1086 Artists of Murcia; painters ; N. de Yillacis ..... — His correspondence with Velazquez 1087 M. Gilarte, Magdalena Gil arte . 1088 J. Garcia Hidalgo .... — His work on painting . . . 1090 S. Vila — L. Vila 1091 Artists of Andalusia ; painters ; amateurs ; Dou J. de Loaysa; Don S. de Roxas .... 1092 C. Scliut the younger ... — J. de Valdes Leal .... 1093 His painter-wife, Dona Isabel Caras- quilla ..... 1094 Removes to Seville, and connection and quarrel with the academy . — Engraves the Ctistodia of the Cathe- dral ...... 1095 Canonization of St. Ferdinand, and rejoicings at Seville . . . 1096 Page Valdes Leal superintends the deco- rations of the cathedral . . 1096 He visits Cordoba .... 1097 Works at the Hospital of Charity at Seville ..... 1098 He visits Madrid .... 1099 Death and style .... — Various works at Seville . . 1100 L. de Valdes; his precocity as an engraver ..... — His frescos ; and picture of St. Elizabeth of Hungary . . 1101 Engravings ..... 1102 Dona Maria de Valdes ... — Dona Luisa de Valdes ... — F. Meueses Osorio . . . 1103 J. Garzon ..... — P. Nunez de ViRavicencio . . 1104 His travels ; and his success at the court of Charles II. . . — G. de Bobadilla . . . .1105 M. Correa ..... 1106 J. Antolinez ..... — F. Antolinez Sarabia . . . 1108 M. Arteaga ..... 1109 His engravings .... 1110 F. Arteaga ..... 1111 J. Lopez, C. Lopez ... — I. de Leon Salcedo, J. C. Ruiz Gixon, C. de Leon ... — E. Marquez ..... 1112 C. de Torres .... — A. Garcia Reynoso . . .1113 J. de Alfaro ..... 1114 He marries, and settles at Madrid . 1115 And is patronized by the Admiral of Castile ..... 1110 His visit to Cordoba ... — Loses the favour of the Admiral . 1 117 Second marriage ; death . . 1118 His merits as an artist and man of letters ..... 1119 A. A. Palomino de Castro . . 1120 He visits Madrid .... 1121 Marries, and is made painter to the King 1122 Visits Valencia .... 1123 Granada, Cordoba .... 1124 And the Chartreuse of Paul ar . 1125 Death ; merits as an artist . . — And as an author .... 1126 i Notice of his book on art .1127 His ideas on the origin of painting 1128 The rights of artists . . 1129 1 Notices of miraculous images and reliques ; of Our Lord . . 1130 CONTENTS. XXXVI) Miracles of Our Lady, and of Sta Page P. Camacho .... Page 1141 Teresa ..... 1131 Sculptors ; P. Roldan 1142 Miraculous portraits of St. Ignatius His works at Seville — Loyola and of St. Jerome 1132 And at Jaen .... 1143 Practical instruction for painting . — Habits of life and study 1144 Palomino as a biographer — Dona L. Roldan 1145 Dona F. Palomino 1134 A. Cancino .... 1146 J. de Sevilla Romero — B. S. Pineda 1147 J. Nino de Guevara 1135 .1. A. Ruiz Gixon; F. Ruiz Gixon — P. Atanasio Bocanegra . 1137 P. de Mena .... 1148 His self-conceit .... 1138 B. de Mora, J. de Mora 1150 His artistic contest with Ardemans, D. de Mora .... 1151 in which he is worsted 1139 Goldsmiths .... 1151 M. G. de Cieza .... — J. Segura .... — J. de Cieza, V. de Cieza 1140 •J. Laureano .... 1152 J. Risueno ..... CHAPTER XV.— REIGNS The War of the Succession, 1700- OF rHE BOURBONS. 1700—1800. Duchess of Huescar and Arcos 1172 1712 1153 Marquess of Montehermoso — Decline of artistic genius 1154 Don D. Rejon de Silva . — Want of portrait-painters under the His poem on Painting . — Bourbons ..... 1155 Reply to French critics, especially R. Mengs ..... — M. Patte .... 1173 Philip V., 1700-1746 1156 Other writings 1174 He establishes a school of art at Don J. N. de Azara — Madrid ..... 1157 Don. G. M. de Jovellanos 1387 His architectural works . — Foreign artists ; painters 1175 At Aranjuez and La Granja de San A. Procaccini — Ildefonso ..... 1158 His visit to Spain . 1176 Gardens of San Ildefonso 1160 He is caressed at court, marries an The palace of Madrid destroyed by Irishwoman, and dies 1177 fire ...... 1161 His merits as an artist . — New palace designed by F. Juvara . 1162 R. A. Hovasse 1178 Plans altered by J. B. Sachetti 1163 M. A. Hovasse — Notice of the present palace . — J. Ranc ..... 1179 Queen Isabella Farnese 1164 His portrait and practical joke on Louis I., 1724 .... 1165 the friends of a sitter — Ferdinand VI., 1746-1759 — Visit to Spain — He founds the academy of San Fer- L. M. Vanloo 1180 nando ..... — His visit to Spain . — Queen Maria Barbara of Braganza . 1166 F. Vieira .... 1181 The royal nunnery of Las Salesas . — His romantic career, and visit to Charles III., 1759-1788 . 1167, 1386 Rome .... His patronage of art when King of Return to love and Lisbon 1182 the Two Sicilies — Misfortunes, and return to Rome 1183 Decree against the exportation of pictures from Spain . 1168 Second return to Lisbon, and mar- riage ...... 1184 Architectural works 1169 Visit to Spain — The Infant Don Gabriel — Return to Portugal, and appointment Charles IV., 1788-1808 . 1170 as painter to King John V. 1185 Amateur artists ; Duke of LTceda . — His works .... — Don B. I. Mendez de Sotomayor 1171 Widowhood and authorship . 1186 Don J. J. Navarro Marquess de la J. Amigoni .... 1187 Victoria, Da. M. I. and R. Navarro — C. Giaquinto — Don L. Alvarez de Nava 1171 G. B. Tiepolo 1188 XXXY111 CONTENTS. Page D. Tiepolo, L. Tiepolo . . . 1189 C. F. de la Traverse ... — A. R. Mengs ..... 1191 Taken to Rome by bis father . . — Return to Dresden, and success there — Second visit to Rome . . . 1192 Marriage, and return to Dresden . — Appointed painter to the King of Poland ..... — Third visit to Rome, and works there 1193 Visit to N aples, where he is employed by the King .... 1194 Various works at Rome . . 1195 Journey to Spain .... 1196 Success and works at Madrid . . — Connection with the academy of San Fernando . . . . .1197 His health impaired by over-exertion 1198 Return to Rome .... — Works at the Vatican . . . 1199 Visit to Naples .... — And Florence .... 1200 Return to Madrid ; works there and at Aranjuez .... — Return to Rome for life . . . 1201 Last work ..... 1202 Illness, and death . . . . — Epitaph ; character, and anecdotes of him ..... 1203 Habits; family .... 1204 Fame and merits .... 1205 His writings ..... 1206 His knowledge of languages . . 1207 And of antique sculpture . . 1208 Popularity as an author . . . 1209 Sculptors; R. Fremin ... — J. Thierry ..... 1210 J. Bousseau ..... — G. D. Olivieri . . . * . 1211 R. Michel 1213 Artists of Castile; painters; J. Gar- cia de Miranda .... — J. Garcia de Miranda the younger . 1215 N. Garcia de Miranda ... — P. Rodriguez de Miranda . . — F. and N. Rodriguez de Miranda . 1216 M. J. Menendez .... 1217 F. A. Menendez . — L. Menendez ..... 1219 J. A. Menendez .... 1220 Dona A. Menendez ... — F. Bustamente .... — J. B. Palomino .... 1221 Page His engravings .... 1222 J. F. Palomino .... — G. A. de Ezquerra .... 1223 J. Romeo . . . . . — A. de la Calleja .... — B. Rodriguez, orFr.B. de SanAntonio 1224 P. Pernicliaro .... 1225 L. Gonzalez Velazquez . . . 1226 Alex. Gonzalez Velazquez . . — His son, Ant. Gonzalez Velazquez . 1227 Ant. Gonzalez Velazquez . . — J. C. Magadan .... 1229 F. X. de Santiago Polmares . . — B. Martinez del Barraneo . . 1230 J. del Castillo .... — F. del Castillo .... 1231 L. Paret ..... 1232 Various works .... — Dona B. M. de Ilueva . . . 1233 J. Ximeno 1234 A. Mures, painter at Badajoz . . — Sculptors ; F. de Castro . . 1235 His studies in Italy ... — Return to Spain; and various works 1236 Translation of B. Varclii’s essay on Sculpture ..... 1237 J. A. Ron ; P. Ron . . . 1238 N. Tome 1239 The Trunsparcnte of Toledo . . — S. Tome Gavilan .... 1240 Alex. Carnicero .... 1241 G. Carnicero ; I. Carnicero ; Ant. Carnicero — J. P. de Mena .... — L. Salvador Carmona . . . 1242 B. and J. Salvador Carmona . . 1243 M. Alvarez — Engravers ; L. Montemans . . 1244 Persecuted for impiety . . . 1245 His scholars ; T. F. Prieto . . — F. Fernandez ; J. Fernandez de la Pena 1246 D. Tome, F. Vidal, P. Minguet, M. de Chozas ..... 1247 M. Salvador Carmona . . 1247, 1388 F. Selma .... 1247, 1389 B. Moreno Tejada, M. Albuerne . 1248 S. de Brieva, J. Minguet, G. Gil, J. Fabregat, J Ballester. P. P. Moles, M. Brandi, B. Amettler, .J. de la Cruz, J. Barcelon, B. Vazquez, J. A. Salvador Carmona, M. Es- quivel, and F. Muntaner . . 1248 CONTENTS. xxxix CHAPTER XVI.— REIGNS OF THE BOURBONS. 1700—1800. Concluded. Artists of Catalonia and Arragon ; Page Ponz’s Journey out of Spain . Page 1289 painters ..... 1249 J. de Vergara 1290 G. Mesquida .... — F. Grifol .... 1292 Morey, of Majorca .... 1250 J. Collado .... — A. Viladomat ..... — Fr. T. de Ubeda . — His epitaph and works . 1252 M. S. Maella .... J. Viladomat ..... 1253 M. Sanchez .... 1293 M. J. Ponz ..... — Engravers ; J. B. Ravanals 1294 F. Tramulles .... 1254 V. Galceran . M. Tramulles .... — Sculptors; C. Rodulfo . 1295 J. Luzan Martinez 1255 A. Salvador .... 1296 C. Casanova ..... 1256 Fro. Vergara the elder 1297 F. Casanova ..... 1257 Fro. Vergara the younger — F. Bayeu ..... — His visit to Italy . 1298 His works ..... 1259 Ig. Vergara 1299 R. Bayeu ..... 1259 F. Zarcillo .... 1300 F. Goya ..... 1260 J. and P. Zarcillo . 1301 His success at court — Dona Ines Zarcillo Religious pictures .... 1261 J. and R. Lopez 1302 Portraits ..... 1263 Artists of Andalusia ; painters — Dislike to the clergy and friars 1264 J. Garzon .... — Style ...... 1265 A. M. de Tobar — Engravings ; Los Caprichos . 1266 He marries, and becomes a Familiar Sketches of the French invasion 1269 of the Inquisition 1303 And of bull-fights . . . 1270,1390 Removes to Madrid, and dies 1304 Sculptors ; J. Ramirez . — Style — Jos. Ramirez Benavides . 1271 Works ; The Divine Shepherdess M. Ramirez Benavides . — his favourite subject ; its origin 1305 Juan Ramirez Benavides — B. German Llorente 1306 F. A. de Huesca .... 1272 D. Martinez .... 1307 Artists of Valencia ; painters . 1272 F. Perez de Pineda 1308 D. Vidal — F. Preciado de la Vega . — E. Munoz ..... 1273 He goes to Italy 1309 Twice commits bigamy by accident — Settles at Rome, and writes a book Fr. J. Minana .... 1274 on Painting 1310 A. Gasull ..... 1275 J. de Espinal 1311 A. Richarte ..... 1276 P. Tortolero .... 1312 H. Rovira ..... — B. Rodriguez Blanes 1313 His engravings, industry, and eecen- A. Fernandez de Castro . — tricities ..... 1277 His epitaph .... — J. de Paredes .... 1278 Sculptors ; J. Montesdoca 1314 J. Espinos, B. Espinos . 1279 G. Barbas .... — A. Ponz ..... — P. Duque Cornejo . 1315 His travels in Italy 1280 His epitaph and works . 1310 Return to Spain ; and works at the A. Perea .... 1317 Escorial ..... — M. Roldan .... 1318 Visit to Andalusia .... — J. de Hinestrosa 1319 Padre Caimo’s Letters on Spain 1281 C. Acosta .... 1320 Ponz’s Journeys in Spain, and out Fr. J. M. Vazquez 1321 of Spain ..... 1283 M. Verdiguier, B. Graveton — Reward of his labours ; death 1284 J. A. Cean Bermudez 1322 Epitaph and character . 1285 His official advancement 1323 Remarks on his writings on Spain 1286 Literary works 1324 Continuation of his Journey by I. Bosarte ..... 1288 Obligations of the present writer to them ...... 1326 xl CONTENTS. Dictionary of the artists of Spain Letter on the school of Seville Style of Cean Bermudez Page 1220 Effect of his labours on the spolia- 1327 tions of the French 1328 Page 1329 CATALOGUE OF WORKS EXECUTED BY, AND ASCRIBED TO, DIEGO RODRIGUEZ DE SILVA y VELAZQUEZ. Explanation of inferences, and notices of catalogues and other authorities .... 1392 Sacred subjects .... 1393 Historical, mythological, and fancy compositions and figures . . 1394 Portraits and studies . . . 1396 Landscapes, architectural and hunt- ing pieces ..... 1407 Animals, and subjects of still life . 1410 Drawings ..... — CATALOGUE OF WORKS EXECUTED BY, AND ASCRIBED TO, BARTOLOMfi ESTEVAN MURILLO. Explanation of references, and notices of catalogues and other authorities . . . . Sacred subjects .... I Fancy compositions and figures Landscapes .... 1414 | Drawings executed on paper . 1415 I 1440 1445 1446 MONOGRAMS OF ARTISTS 1449 INDEX 1451 ILLUSTRATIONS. Engraved Title-Page Design for an altar, from a drawing by Alonso Cano. Louvre; Collection-Standish ; No. 317. Drawn on stone by J. Jobbing. Page PREFACE. Iron cross on a church at Miranda del Ebro CHAPTER I. Iron cross at Toledo 69 ILLUSTRATIONS. xli CHARTER II. Iron cross, on a stone pillar, at Illescas ........ CHAPTER III. A woman’s hand, known as La Mono de la tt-ta. ; supposed to be a fragment of the statue of the Virgin, executed by Torrigiano ..... Iron cross on the belfry of the convent at Almeria, in the cork wood near Gibraltar CHAPTER IV. Iron cross and vane on one of the towers of the Lonja of Seville, drawn by R. W. Grey, Esq., M.P CHAPTER V. Domenico Theotocopuli, known as El Greco. From a picture by himself in the Louvre. Galerie Espagnole ; No. 260. Engraved on steel by H. Adlard, to face Iron cross near the hospital of St. John Baptist at Toledo .... CHAPTER VI. Pablo de Cespedes. From thfe engraving by Enguidanos in Retratos de los Espanoles Ilustres, fol., Madrid, 1791. Engraved on steel by H. Adlard, to face Vicente Juan Macip, commonly called Joanes. After the print of his own picture of the Burial of St. Stephen, in the Coleccion Lilhographica de los cuadros del Rey de Espana, 3 tom., fol., Madrid, 1826. The border is taken from the title-page of the Silva de Varia Lection, por Pedro de Mexia ; fol,, Sevilla, 1570. Drawn on stone by J. Jobbins ..... to face The holy chalice of Valencia. From the engraving by Lopez . . . . The Blessed Nicholas Factor. From a small print, designed by J. Camaron, and engraved by P. P. Moles, 1789, representing the Virgin and angels appearing to Factor, and entitled, “ Effigie del B. Nicolas Factor, Abogado de de Quartanas ......... The Alcazar and Casa del Tesoro, at Madrid From an old plan of the town Design for a Custodia ; by Juan d'Arplie. From his own wood-cut in his book De Varia commensuracion .......... Design for a portable Custodia, by Juan d’Arplie. From a wood-cut in the above work ............. CHAPTER VII. Palace of the Pardo. From an etching by Louis Meunier, 1665-8 Vincencio Carducho. From the portrait by himself in the Louvre; Gal. Esp. No. 454, which, in spite of the inscription on the open MS. proving this to be the portrait of the author of the Dialogos, is erroneously called B. C arducho. Engraved on steel by H. Adlard ...... to face Iron cross on the dome of the church at the Puerta del Sol, Madrid . CHAPTER VIII. Iron cross in front of the church of Getafe Page 100 111 162 222 276 305 321 354 361 377 I 384 395 406 410 417 508 574 d xlii ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTER IX. Page Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez ; from the engraving by Bias Amettler, in the Retratos dc los Espanoles Iluslres. Engraved hy H. Adlard . to face 576 Los Borrachos, the Drunkards. From the etching hy F. Goya, executed from the picture by Velazquez at Madrid, in the Royal Museum, No. 138. Etched hy IT. Adlard .......... to face 590 El Crucifixo de las Monjas de Ban Placido ; Our Lord on the Cross. From the print in the Coleccion Lithographica ; executed from the picture hy Velazquez, in the Royal Museum, No. 51, at Madrid. Etched hy R. C. Bell . to face 619 The Fountain of the Tritons, in the island garden at Aranjuez. From the print in the Coleccion Lithographica, executed from the picture hy Velazquez, in the Royal Museum, No. 145, at Madrid ....... 626 Arms of the family of Velazquez on the cross of Santiago. The arms from Argote de Molina; Nobleza de Andaluzia ; fol . , Sevilla, 1588, fol. 112 . 688 CHAPTER X. A tile, 2$ inches square, from the Casa de Pilatos, Seville .... 766 CHAPTER XI. Francisco de Zurbaran. From the portrait hy himself in tire Louvre ; Gal. Esp., No. 401. Engraved hy H. Adlard ..... to face 768 j Town and castle of Lebrija. From a sketch taken front the road to Cahezas de San Juan ............ 781 I Alonso Cano. From the portrait hy himself in the Louvre ; Gal. Esp., No. 32. Engraved hy H. Adlard ........ to face 780 Our Lady of Bethlehem. From a copy, now at Keir, hy Don Jose Roldan of the picture hy Alonso Cano, in the cathedral of Seville. The inscription is copied from the original frame, from which the engraved border is mainly taken. Engraved hy H. Adlard ...... to face 802 Iron cross on the Casa de Ayuntamiento, Yepes ...... 824 CHAPTER XII. Bartolome Estevan Murillo. From the portrait hy himself in the Louvre, Gal. Esp., No. 183. Engraved hy IT. Adlard . . ... to face 826 Church of the Hospital of Charity at Seville ; showing the pictures of San Juan de Dios, and Moses striking the rock, hy Murillo, and the grand altar-piece, carved by Pedro Roldan. From a picture hy Don Jose Roldan. Drawn on stone by G. Madeley ......... to face 855 Charity, painted on tiles, in the front of the church of the Hospital of Charity at Seville, and supposed to have been designed hy Murillo. From a sketch hy Don Jose Roldan ........... 870 Capuchin convent hevond the walls of Seville. From a drawing hy Richard Ford, Esq. 873 Nuestra Sehora de la Servilleta. Our Lady of the Napkin. From the engraving hy Bias Amettler ; executed from the picture hy Murillo ; now in the Museum of Seville ............ 879 Angel de la Guarda. Guardian angel aud child. From a copy, executed in 1809, hy Don Salvador Gutierrez, and now at Keir, of the picture hy Murillo, in the cathedral of Seville. Engraved on steel hy R. C. Bell . to face 880 ILLUSTRATIONS. xliii Page House of Murillo at Seville ; garden -front ....... 897 Las Gallegos. A woman and girl at a window. From the engraving, by Ballester, of the picture formerly in the collection of the Duke of Almodovar, at Madrid, and now in that of Lord Heytesbury, at Heytesbury House, Wilts. 920 Iron cross at Aranda de Duero .......... 948 CHAPTER XIII. Iron cross and vane at Toledo .......... 1065 CHAPTER XIV. Iron cross and vane on one of the towers of the Escorial ..... 1152 CHAPTER XV. The Alcazar of Madrid. From a print engraved by N. Guerard, and designed by Filippo Pallotta, 1704 .......... 1161 Iron cross on the road from Olia to Toledo ....... 1248 CHAPTER XVI. Duendecitos ; a caricature of friars. From the engraving in the Caprichos, No. 49, of F. Goya . 1267 Francisco Goya. From the engraved portrait prefixed to his Capriclws . . 1269 Iron cross and vane at Tolosa ......... 1330 ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. Finis. The design and motto from a wood-cut in the title-page of Emblemas morales de Don Juan de Hurozco, 4 to. Segovia, 1589 .... 1390 CATALOGUE OF WORKS OF VELAZQUEZ. El Nino de Ballecas, the Boy of Ballecas. From the engraving of B. Vazquez, executed from the picture by Velazquez ; Royal Museum, No. 284, at Madrid 1391 Iron cross in the church-yard of Las Cabanas, a village between Madrid and Toledo i til CATALOGUE OF WORKS OF MURILLO. Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. From the engraving by Bridoux, executed from the picture by Murillo, in the Louvre ; Gal. Esp., No. 149 . 1413 Iron cross on the church of San Miguel, at Vittoria ...... 1448 The above illustrations, not otherwise specified, are on wood, and are taken from sketches made by me in 1845, with the exception of those in pp. 948, 1065, 1152, and 1330, for which I am indebted to the ready kindness and neat pencil of John Coningham, Esq. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. MONG the most remarkable features in the history of Spain are the rapid growth and decay of her power. She first began to rank among the great kingdoms in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Their great-grandson Philip II. was the acknowledged leader and protector of Catholic Europe. Under Charles II., great-grandson of the second Philip, Castile had ceased to produce statesmen and soldiers, and Peru, to furnish ducats, at least to the royal treasury. The monarchy was as feeble as the monarch ; its star had run its course in little more than six genera- tions, rising at the end of the fifteenth, and set- ting at the end of the seventeenth century. This era was likewise the great period of literature and art in Spain. Growing up with her political greatness, they added lustre to her prosperity, and a grace and charm to her decline. During the middle ages, her taste and imagination had been embodied in the unri- valled multitude of ballads, sung by unknown Political Im- portance of Spain during 16th and 11th centuries, coeval, with her greatnessin art. 2 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Ferdinand and Isabella. bards, part of which the Castilian Romanceros still preserve, and in the magnificent Cathe- drals reared by nameless architects in her Chris- tian cities ; the songs and the shrines being equally tinged with the colouring of northern piety and oriental fancy. Poetry, the eldest and most docile of the fine arts, was the first of the sisterhood to be affected by the revival of ancient learning. Spanish writers had borrowed some- what of refinement and correctness from the Latin and Italian, long ere architecture in Spain had yielded submission to Greek and Roman rules, and ere painting and sculpture had produced ought but uncouth caricatures of the human form. Juan de Mena had written his graceful love songs, Santillana had even wandered from the gay science into the strange field of criticism? and Ilernan Castillo was probably preparing the first Cancionero for the press of Valencia, before the pencil of Rincon had obtained for him the cross of Santiago from the hands of Ferdinand and Isabella. The reign of “ the Catholic Sovereigns” is me- morable for the discovery not merely of a new continent, but of vast regions of intellectual enterprise. History, the drama, and painting, were revived in Spain in the same stirring age that sought and found new empires beyond the great ocean. Pulgar, the father of Castilian history, Cota, the earliest forerunner of Cal- deron, Rincon, the first native painter in the CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 3 Peninsula who deserved the name, were the con- temporaries of Columbus, and, with the great navigator, mingled in the courtly throngs of the presence chamber of Isabella. The progress of refinement during the first half of the sixteenth century was perhaps more rapid in Spain than in any other country. The iron soldier of Castile, the Homan of his age, became the intellectual vassal of the elegant Italians whom he con- quered, “ Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes “ Intulit agresti Latio.” 1 Under the Emperor Charles V., the Iberian Peninsula, the fairest province of ancient Pome, grew into the fairest colony of modern art. The classical Boscan and Garcilasso, and the many- gifted Mendoza, left behind them monuments of literature which might bear comparison with those of Italy, Berruguete and Vigarny, schools of painting and sculpture that Florence might have been proud to own. The odes of Fray Luis de Leon were excelled in strength and grace by none ever recited at the court of Ferrara ; and pastoral Estremadura could boast a painter — Morales of Badajoz — not unworthy to cope with Sebastian del Piombo on his own lofty ground. Charles V. During the reigns of the three Philips, litera- ture and art kept an even pace in their rapid and triumphant march. When Juan de Toledo 1 Horat. Ep. II. i. 156. Philip II. 4 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Philip III . laid the foundations of the Escorial, Cervantes was writing his early poems and romances in the schools of Madrid. The versatile Theotocopuli was designing his various churches in and around Toledo, and embellishing them with paintings and sculptures, whilst Lope de Vega was dashing off his thousand dramas for the diversion of the court. Mariana composed in the cloister his great history of Spain, whilst Sanchez Coello, the courtier and man of fashion, was illustrating the story of his own times by his fine portraits of royal and noble personages. In the reign of Philip III., Velasquez aud Murillo were horn, and the Philip IV. great novel of Cervantes first saw the light. Solis and Villegas, Moreto and the brothers Leonardo de Argensola, famous in history, poetry, and the drama, were contemporaries of Ribera, Cano, and Zurbaran, and with them shared the favour and Charles II. patronage of the tasteful Philip IV. When Ve- lasquez received the cross of Santiago, Calderon was amongst the knights who greeted the new companion of that ancient order. In the evil days of Charles II., Spain and her literature and her arts drooped and declined together. Paint- ing strove the hardest against fate, and was the last to succumb. Murillo and Valdes, Mazo and House of Bour- bon. Carreno, and their scholars nobly maintained the honour of a long line of painters, till the total eclipse of Spain in the War of the Suc- cession. With the House of Bourbon came in foreign fashions, and foreign standards of taste. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 5 Henceforth. Crebillon and Voltaire became the models of Castilian writing ; V anloo and Mengs, of Spanish painting. From the effects of this disastrous imitation, painting, at least, has never recovered. If Spain holds a high place in the roll of nations illustrious in art, it owes it to her painters ; her sculptors have never obtained, nor indeed have often deserved, much notice beyond the limits of the Peninsula. Amongst them, however, were several men of fine genius. Berre- guete, the disciple of Michael Angelo, was a great sculptor; Juni and Hernandez modelled with singular feeling and grace ; and had Mon- tanes and Cano flourished beneath the shadow of the Vatican, they would have been formidable rivals to Bernini and Algardi. Flanders can shew no carvings more delicate and masterly than those which still enrich the venerable choirs of many of the Peninsula churches — stalls em- bowered in foliage — almost as light as that which trembled on the living tree — where fruits cluster, and birds perch in endless variety, or those ara- besque panels and pillars, where children rise from the cups of lily blossoms, and strange mon- sters twine themselves in a network of garlands, or the niches filled with exquisite figures, or the fretted pinnacles crowned with a thousand various finials, and towering above each other in graceful confusion. But in his high religious statuary, the Virgin of the chapel, or the tutelar saint Spanish Sculp- ture. 6 CHAP. I. — INTRODUCTION . Spanish Archi- tecture. of the abbey — the Spanish sculptor was too often unhappy in his choice of materials. Neg- lecting the pure marble and abiding bronze, the time-honoured and fitting vehicles of his thought, he wrought either in metals too precious to escape the chances of war. and the rapacity of bankrupt power, or in wood and clay, offeiing little resistance to the tooth of time, and but too much temptation to the foreign trooper, weary and hungry with his march, and seeking wherewithal to kindle his fire and make the camp-kettle boil. The use of colour — universally adopted in the larger statues and groups — was also injurious to Spanish sculpture; bringing the art, so far as it addressed the taste of vulgar monks and country clowns, within the reach of every hewer of wood who possessed a paint-pot ; and causing the works even of the man of genius, at first sight, rather to startle than to please, by their similitude to real flesh and blood. The early religious architects of Spain were great masters in art. Their magnificent cathedrals — too often mere portions of giant plans — were worthy of a people who possessed so many noble remains of older times, who inherited from the Roman the bridge of Alcantara, and the aqueduct of Segovia — and who had won from the Saracen the Mosque of Cordova and the Alhambra of Granada. But the architects of the Renaissance were a feebler folk — lovers of the ornate, rather than the grand. Machuca, Toledo and Herrera, CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 7 indeed, left examples of a pure and admirable style; but they found few followers. Ecclesi- astical buildings, while they increased in num- bers, grew likewise in ugliness ; and the mo- nastic system bore equally hard on the financial resources and architectural taste of the country. Amongst the churches and convents erected since the end of the sixteenth century, there are few that are not either plain to bareness, or loaded with tawdry decoration ; and rare, indeed, it is to meet with that graceful propriety of design, which lends its chief charm to Italian architecture, and is often to be found in the monastery of the Appenine woodlands, as well as in the princely palace on the Corso. In age, the Spanish school of painting ranks third amongst the national schools of Europe, after the German, and before the French ; in Spanish Paint- i>iy> artistic importance, second only to the Italian. But Spanish painting, like Spanish literature, has a glory proper and peculiar to itself. It is true that no Spaniard can claim to rank with those great Italian painters, whom their most illustrious followers have regarded with a reverence that forbade rivalry. Spain has no Rafael — no Correggio — nor has she a Dante nor a Shake- speare ; yet her noble Castilian tongue pos- sesses the single book of which the humour — so strictly national, and yet so true and universal — has become native to all Europe. And Spain has produced the painters whose compared with SpanishLitera- ture. 8 CHAP. I. — INTBODUCTION. School of Cas- tile. works unite high excellence of conception and execution, with an absolute adherence to nature, and are thus best fitted to please the most critical as well as the most uneducated eyes. If the visible and material efforts of the pencil may be compared with the airy flights of thought, Velasquez and Murillo may be said to appeal, like Cervantes, to the feelings and perceptions of all men ; and, like him, they will be understood and enjoyed where the loftiest strains of Shakespeare, and the ideal creations of Rafael, would find no sympathy, because addressed to a kindred and responsive imagination belonging only to minds of a higher order. The crazy gentleman of La Mancha and his squire will always be more popular with the many than the wondrous Prince of Denmark. And those who turn away, per- plexed and disappointed, from the Spasimo or the Transfiguration, would probably gaze with ever fresh delight on the living and moving captains and spearmen of Velasquez, or on Murillo’s thirsty multitudes flocking to the rock that gushed in Horeb. The venerable city of Toledo was the cradle of Spanish painting : there the school of Castile was founded in the first half of the fifteenth century, and chiefly flourished under the fostering care of munificent prelates and chapters till the close of the reign of Charles V. Viloldo, Bias del Prado, El Greco, Tristan, and others, maintained the reputation of Toledo till the days of Philip 1^ . CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 9 Under Philip II. Madrid, the seat of government, became the resort of many good Flemish and Italian artists, and of those native painters, such as El Mudo and Sanchez Coello, who enjoyed or hoped for the royal favour. Valladolid, a city more famous for its goldsmiths and sculptors than its painters, was the chief residence of Philip III. ; Madrid, however, continued to prosper as a school of art, and finally became, in the brilliant times of Philip IV. and Velasquez, the metropolis of Castilian painting as well as of the monarchy. Of the school of Estremadura, if school it can be called, Morales is the sole glory and representative; and if his history were better known, it would pro- bably befouncl that, although he lived and laboured at Badajoz, he belonged to the school of Castile. School of I Estremadura. The great school of Andalusia was founded by Sanchez de Castro, at Seville, about 1454, and flourished till the troubles of the war of Succes- sion. The beautiful Terra Bretica has ever been School of Andalusia. prolific of genius. The country of Lucan, and Seneca, and Trajan, of Averroes, and Azzarkal, likewise brought forth Vargas, Velasquez, and Murillo. Seville was always the principal seat of Andalusian painting ; but some able masters resided also in other cities, as Cespedes at Cordova, Castillo at Cadiz, and Cano and Moya at Granada. The Valencian school sprang into eminence under Vicente Joanes about the middle of the sixteenth century, and sank into mediocrity at the death of the younger Espinosa in 1680. School of Valencia. 10 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Arragon, Catalonia, Ac. The northern provinces and the Balearic Isles were not prolific, yet not altogether destitute, of artists. Zaragoza possessed a respectable school of painting till the end of the eighteenth century, of which Jusepe Martinez 1 may be considered the chief; and Barcelona is justly proud of Vilado- mat, 2 who maintained the honour of the Spanish pencil in the corrupt age of Philip V. Grave Charac- ter of Spanish Painting. Spanish art, like Spanish nature, is in the highest degree national and peculiar. Its three principal schools of painting differ in style from each other, but they all agree in the great features which distinguish them from the other schools of Europe. The same deeply religious tone is common to all. In Spain alone can painting be said to have drawn all its inspiration from Christian fountains, and, like the architecture of the middle ages, to be an exponent of a people’s faith. Its first professors, indeed, acquired their skill by the study of Italian models, and by com- munion with Italian minds. But the skill which at Florence and Venice would have been chiefly employed to adorn palace-halls with the adven- tures of pious ./Eneas, or ladies’ bowers with passages from the Art of Love, at Toledo, Seville and Valencia was usually dedicated to the ser- vice of God and the Church. Spanish painters are very rarely to be found in the regions of history or classical mythology. Sion hill de- lights them more than the Aonian mount, and 1 Chap, x., p. 737. 2 Chap, xvi., p. 1230. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 11 Siloa’s brook, than ancient Tiber or the laurel- shaded Orontes. Their pastoral scenes are laid, not in the vales of Arcady but, in the fields of Judea, where Ruth gleaned after the reapers of Boaz, and where Bethlehem shepherds watched their flocks on the night of the nativity. In their landscapes it is a musing hermit, or, perhaps, a company of monks, that moves through the forest solitude, or reposes by the brink of the torrent : not there “ Gratia cum Nymphis geminisque sororibus audet “ Ducere nuda choros.” 1 Their fancy loves best to deal with the legendary history of the Virgin, and the life and passion of the Redeemer, with the glorious company of Apostles, the goodly fellowship of Prophets, and the noble army of Martyrs and Saints ; and they tread this sacred ground with habitual solemnity and decorum. The great religious painters of Spain rarely descended to secular subjects. Not so the Italians. Rafael could pass from the creation of his hea- venly Madonnas to round the youthful contours of a Psyche, or elaborate the charms of a Gala- tea, Correggio, from the Magdalene repenting in the desert, to Antiope surprised in the forest. Joanes of Valencia would have held such trail- Spanish Pain- ters contrasted with the Italian. sition to be a sin, little short of sacrilege, and worthy of the severest penance. Titian’s u Last “ Supper,” and his “ Assumption of the Virgin,” l Herat. Carm. Lib. iv., 8. v. 5, 6. Titian. CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION. are doubtless amongst the noblest of religious compositions. But his fancy ranged more freely over profane than sacred ground ; his Maries are fair and comely, but they sometimes want the life and warmth that breathe in his Graces and his Floras, in whom he delighted to reproduce his auburn-haired mistress, who figures in one of his most charming allegories 1 with his name inscribed on her bosom. The Queen of Love herself was his favourite subject ; she it was that most fully drew forth all “ The wondrous skill and sweet wit of the man .” 2 Murillo. Influence of the Inquisition. Far different were the themes on which Murillo put forth his highest powers. After the “ Mystery “ of the Immaculate Conception,” he repeated, probably more frequently than any other subject, the “ Charity of St. Thomas of Villanueva and it was his finest picture of that good prelate, inimitable for simplicity and grandeur, that he was wont to call emphatically “ his own .” 3 The sobriety and purity of imagination which distinguished the Spanish painters, is mainly to be attributed to the restraining influence of the Inquisition. Palomino 4 quotes a decree of that tribunal, forbidding the making or exposing of immodest paintings and sculptors, on pain 1 “ The Offering to the Goddess of Fecundity.” Catalogo del Real Museo de Madrid, por Madrazo, No. 852. Two beautiful young women, of whom the lady in question is one, bow before a marble statue, in a forest glade ; around them gambol a multitude of children of the true Titian race. 2 Spencer. 8 Chap, xii., p. 876. 4 Pal., tom. ii., p. 138. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 13 of excommunication, a fine of fifteen hundred ducats, and a year’s exile. The Holy Office also appointed inspectors, whose duty it was to see that no works of that kind were ex- posed to view in churches and other public places. Pacheco, the painter and historian of art, held this post at Seville, and Palomino himself at Madrid. But the rules of the Inqui- sition cannot have been observed to the letter, otherwise so many of the Loves and Graces of Italian painting would not have been left hanging almost to our days on the walls of the Escorial. Another cause of the severity and decency of Spanish art is to be found in the character of the Spanish people. The proverbial gravity — which distinguishes the Spaniard, like his cloak — which appears in his manner of address, and in the common phrases of his speech, is hut an index of his earnest and thoughtful nature. The Faith of the Cross, nourished with the blood of Moor and Christian, nowhere struck its roots so deep, or spread them so wide, as in Spain. Pious enthusiasm pervaded all orders of men ; the noble and learned as well as the vulgar. The wisdom of antiquity could not sap the creed of Alcala or Salamanca, nor the style of Plato or Cicero seduce their scholars into any leaning to the religion of Greece or Pome. Whilst Alexan- der Borgia — a Spaniard indeed by birth, but Italianized by education — polluted the Vatican Influence of the National Cha- racter. 14 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. with filthy sensuality, whilst the elegant epicurean Pope Leo banqueted gaily with infidel wits, or hunted and hawked in the woods and plains around Viterbo — the mitre of Toledo was worn by the Franciscan Ximenes, once a hermit in the caves of the rocks, who had not doffed the hair-shirt in assuming the purple, nor in his high estate feared to peril his life for the Faith. In the nineteenth century, of which superstition is not the charac- teristic, a duchess returning from a ball, and meeting the Host at midnight in the streets of Madrid, resigned her coach to the priests attend- ant on its Majesty 1 the Wafer, and found her way home on foot. 2 After all the revolutions and convulsions of Spain, where episcopal crosses have been coined into dollars to pay for the bayonet- ting of friars militant on the hills of Biscay, and the Primacy has become a smaller ecclesiastical prize than our Sodor and Man ; it is still in Spain — constant, when seeming most false, — religious, when seemiug careless of all creeds — that the pious Catholic looks hopefully to see the Faith of Rome rise, refreshed, regenerate, and irre- sistible. 3 1 “ Su Magestad” is the style and title both of Isabel II. and the con- secrated bread of the altar. 2 L'Espagne sous Ferdinand VII., par le Marquis de Custine. He tells the story of the Duchess of Alba, who, it must be confessed, turned off her coachman for not getting out of the way. The transaction, however, shows the spirit of the time. 3 See the able article on Spain in the “ Dublin Review,” No. XXXVI., art iv., containing an interesting sketch of the present state of the Spanish Church, which, though drawn by the too favourable hand of an enthusiastic partizan, displays that knowledge of the subject in which CHAP. I— INTRODUCTION. 15 Nurtured in so devout a land, it was but na- tural that Spanish art should show itself devout. The painter was early secured to the service of religion. His first inspiration was drawn from the pictured walls of the churches or cloisters of his native place, where he had knelt a wondering child beside his mother, where he had loitered or begged when a boy : to their embellishment his earliest efforts were dedicated, out of gratitude, perhaps, to the kindly Carmelite or Cordelier, who had taught him to read, or fed him with bread and soup on the days of dole ; or who had first noted the impulse of his boyish fancy, and guided “ his desperate charcoal round the convent “ walls.” As his skill improved, he would receive orders from neighbouring convents ; and some gracious prior would introduce him to the notice of the bishop or the tasteful grandee of the pro- vince. The fairest creations of his matured genius then went to enrich the cathedral or the royal abbey, or found their way into the gallery of the Sovereign to bloom in the gardens of Flemish and Italianart. Throughout his whole career the Church was his best and surest The Church, the chief Patron of Art. patron. Nor was he the least important or popular of her ministers. His art was not merely decorative and delightful, but it was exercised to instruct the young and the ignorant; that is, some zealous Protestant travellers, who have lately written hoolcs about it, are so lamentably deficient, and the absence of which few of their Pro- testant readers ever seem to detect. The Catholic Painter an im- portant Servant of the Church. 16 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Remark of Don J. ih ■ Butrun. the great body of worshippers, in the scenes of the Gospel history, and in the awful or touching legends of the saints, whom they were taught from the cradle to revere. “ For the “ learned and the lettered,” says Don Juan de Bu- tron, a writer on art in the reign of Philip IV., “ written knowledge may suffice ; hut for the “ ignorant, what master is like painting ? They “ may read their duty in a picture, although they “ cannot search for it in books.” 1 The painter became, therefore, in some sort, a preacher, and his works were standing homilies, more attractive, and perhaps more intelligible, than those usually delivered from the pulpit. The quiet pathos, the expressive silence of the picture, might fix the eye that would drop to sleep beneath the glozing of the Jesuit, and melt hearts that would remain untouched by all the thunders of the Dominican. Painting, popu- lar with the multitude. We Protestants, to whom religious knowledge comes through another and a better channel, are scarcely capable of appreciating the full import- ance of the Spanish artist’s functions. The great Bible, chained in the days of King Edward VI. to the parish lectern, silenced for us the eloquence of the altar-piece. But, to the simple Catholic of Spain the music of his choir, and the pictures of his ancient shrines, stood in the place of the theological dogmas which whetted and vexed the intellect of the Protestant peasant of the north. 1 Discursos Apologeticos. Madrid, 1626. 4to. p. 36. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 17 He discoursed of them with as much delight, and perhaps, with as much moral advantage ; and he clung to them with as much affec- tionate reverence. In the great Peninsular war, when the nuns of Loeches — tempted by the gold of an English picture-dealer — had agreed to strip their walls of the six magnificent compo- sitions by Rubens, the gift of Olivarez to their sisterhood, the country-people rose in defence of the heir-loom of the village. It was necessary to obtain the assistance of a more powerful spoiler, a French general of brigade, whom the purchaser bribed with two of the disputed pictures, in order that the fitting decorations of a Castilian church might cumber the gallery of an English noble. 1 The Spanish painter well understood the dignity of his task, and not seldom applied him- self to it with a zealous fervour worthy of the holiest friar. Like Fra Angelico at the dawn of Devotion of some Spanish painters. Italian painting, Vicente Joanes was wont to prepare himself for a new work by means of prayer and fasting, and the holy Eucharist. The Joanes. life of Luis cle Vargas was as pure as his style; he was accustomed to discipline his body with the scourge, and, like Charles V., he kept by his bedside a coffin, in which he would lie down to meditate on death. Vargas. The Spanish clergy have furnished at various 1 Buchanan's Memoirs of Painting, with ft History of the Importation ' of Pictures, by the great Masters, into England. London, 1824. 2 vols. 8vo. Vol. ii. p. 222. Clerical artists. c 18 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Factor. times some considerable names to tlie records of art. The priest sometimes aspired to exhort his flock, the friar to address his brotherhood, in a picture instead of a sermon. There were few religious houses but had possessed at one time or another, an inmate with some skill or ambition as an artist, who had left a rich chalice or pix in the sacristy, or a picture or carving in the chapel, as the literary brother had bequeathed to the library, where he pored and pondered, his MS. tomes, — his curious chronicle, or interminable legend. The fine genius of the deaf and dumb boy of Logrono — afterwards famous throughout Europe as “ The Dumb Painter” (El Mudu ) — was discovered and first directed by a father of the Gcronomite monastery at Estrella. Nicolas Factor, a Franciscan of Valencia, is as well known as a painter of merit, as a “beato,” or Forms. saint of the second order. Nicolas Borras, of Gandia, during a residence of twenty-five years, filled the church and cloisters of the Geronomites Leon and Fuente del Saz with a multitude of pictures, of which the best would do no discredit to his great master Joanes. Fray Andres de Leon and Fray Julian Fuente del Saz, monks of the Escorial, exercised their S. Cotan. delicate and diligent pencils in illuminating the choir books (libros de coro ) of their church. The Carthusians of Paular, and Granada, could boast that Sanchez Cotan, one of the ablest of the scholars of Bias del Prado, wore their robe, Berenguer. and dwelt within then walls. Ramon Berenguer, CHAP. I. — INTRODUCTION. 19 at Scala Dei in Catalonia, and Cristobal Ferrado, in the noble Chartreuse of Seville, likewise be- guiled, by painting, the hours of solitude and Ferrado . silence imposed by the rule of St. Bruno. Ces- pecles, the painter-poet, was a canon of Cordova ; Cespedes. Juan cle Roelas enjoyed a prebendal stall at Oli- Roelas. varez, and Alonso Cano at Granada. Juan Bizi Cano. was an excellent painter; and so good a Bene- dictine that he rose to be an Abbot, and was J. Rizi. at last promoted to an Italian mitre. Espadana, Inquisitor of V alencia, when the labours of the Holy Office were over, was wont to lay aside his torture-dealing pen for the palette and brush of the amateur ; repeating perhaps in the studio the Espadana. martyrdoms inflicted in the dungeon. Bishop Mascarehas of Segovia also amused his leisure with the pencil ; and in the Cathedral of Tarra- Mascarenas. gona, Doctor Josef Juncosa figured both as a popular preacher, and as one of the best and busiest of Catalonian painters. Nor was artistic Juncosa . skill confined to the male religious ; for Doha Maria de Maria cle Valdes, a Cistercian nun, and daughter of Valdes-Leal, Murillo’s rival, painted clever portraits in the convent of S. Clemente at Seville. Valdes. Painting being of so much importance to the Laws of reli- Church, a great deal of learning and research was devoted to the investigation of rules for representing sacred subjects and personages. The question was handled in every treatise of art. That considerable portion of Pacheco’s hook, which relates to the subject, is said to have been fur- pious painting. 20 CHAP. I. — INTEODUCTION. Fr. J. I. de Aijala. nished by his friends of the Jesuits’ college at Seville. But the most complete code of Sacro- pictorial law is, perhaps, that of Fray Juan Inte- rian de Ayala, which was not, however, promul- gated till the race of painters, for whose guidance it was designed, was nearly extinct. Fray Juan was a doctor and professor of Salamanca, and one of the compilers of the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy ; his hook, which was in Latin, was entitled “ Pictor Christianus Eruditus, sive de “ erroribus qui passim admittuntur circa pingen- “ das atque efhngendas Sacras Imagines.” — Ma- triti in fol. 1730. A translation into Castilian Knoll y points discussed. by Dr. Luis de Duran appeared at Madrid in 2 vols. 4to. in 1782. The work is, as might be expected, a fine specimen of pompous and prosy trifling. For example — several pages 1 are de- voted to the castigation of those unorthodox painters, who draw the Cross of Calvary like a T instead of in the ordinary Latin form — the question, whether in pictures of the Maries at the sepulchre on the morning of the Resurrec- tion, two angels or only one should be seated on the stone which was rolled away, is anxiously debated, 2 and the artist is finally directed to make his works square with all the Gospels, by adopt- ing both accounts alternately ; — and the right of the devil to his horns and tail undergoes a strict 1 Duran's Translation. “ El Pintor Christiano y Eradito,” tom i. p. 431. 2 Do. do. i. p. 469. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 21 examination, 1 of which the result is that the first are fairly fixed on his head on the authority of a vision of Santa Teresa, and the second is allowed as being a probable, if not exactly proven, ap- pendage of the fallen angel. All the writers on this curious subject strongly reprobate any unnecessary display of the nude figure. Ayala censures 2 those artists who ex- pose the feet of their Madonnas — which Spanish women are always so chary of displaying — almost as severely as he does the indecent limner whom he records 3 to have painted for a certain church a holy Virgin suffering martyrdom on a St. Andrew’s cross, in the state in which the good Nude figures forbidden. Lady Godiva rode through Coventry. Pacheco 4 illustrates his argument against immodest altar- pieces by a singular anecdote of their distressing effects. Lie had it, he says, from a grave and pious bishop, himself the hero of his tale. The picture was a “ Last Judgment,” by Martin de Vos, once in the church of the Augustines, now in the Museum 5 at Seville, and is like other works of the master — a composition of considera- ble power and merit — but disfigured by ill-placed episodes of broad caricature. The grouping is effective, and many of the principal figures are 1 Duran’s Translation, vol. i. p. 173. 2 Do. i. p. 25. 3 Do. i. p. 27. 4 Arte de la Pintura, p. 201. 5 Tile picture is on panel, six or seven feet square, and is signed “ F. Mertlien de Vos, 1570.” It is (1845) in the small oratory of the transept of the church, now the principal hall of the Museum, where Montanes’ fine Crucifix is placed. Story of the effects of an altar-piece. 22 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Miraculous images. nobly drawn, and full of various interest and character. But beyond them in the distance the eye is offended by a grotesque devil, who quells certain of the damned that attempt to break their prescribed bounds, by means of vigorous blows of his trident, and administers to one of the more refractory a hearty kick with his cloven hoof, aimed in the most vulgarly insulting direction. Amongst a group of naked women in the fore- ground, one magnificent specimen of the Lais order, conspicuous for her fair flowing locks and full voluptuous form, is being dragged off by a hideous demon, terminating in a fish, and grin- ning with horrid glee. It was doubtless on this figure — “ a woman remarkable,” says Pacheco, “ for the beauty and disorder of her person” — that the eye of the bishop chanced to rest, when he was one day saying mass, as a simple friar, before the painting. His quick southern imagination being thus suddenly and strongly excited, the poor man fell into a state of mental discomposure such as he had never before known. “ Bather than undergo the same spiri- “ tual conflict a second time,” said the good prelate, who had made the voyage to America, “ I would face a hurricane in the gulf of Ber- “ muda. Even at the distance of many years, I “ cannot think of that picture without dread.” The pious enthusiasm of Spanish artists not unfrequently led them to believe, like Fra Ange- lico — that their fancy was quickened, and their CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 23 hands strengthened by inspiration from on high. The idea was readily adopted by priestly craft and popular superstition. To the studios of To- ledo and Valencia, if their occupants are to be trusted, angels’ visits were neither few nor far between. Works not seldom issued thence, little inferior in powers of performing miracles and enriching shrines, to veritable portraits from the easel of St. Luke or the holy kerchief of St. Ve- ronica. Of this kind was a celebrated “ Virgin” painted by Joanes, at the express command of the holy original, who revealed herself to Fray Martin Alberto, of the order of Jesus, and even gave directions about the dress in which Joanes com- manded to paint the Vir- gin. she chose to appear. 1 Thrice had Gaspar Be- cerra been baffled in carving an image of 'the Virgin to the mind of Queen Isabel of Valois ; he owed his success at last to a visit paid him by the blessed Mary, who roused him in the night watches, and enjoined him to go to work on a fire-log, which was presently fashioned into one Becerra aided by her in a carving. of the most famous idols of Spain. The same divine personage actually honoured Sanchez Co- tan with a sitting for her portrait, 2 of which the miracles were innumerable as St. Apollonia’s teeth — effectual against tooth-ache — whereof an officer appointed for that purpose at our Befor- mation — if we may credit Fuller — collected in England enough to fill a tun. 3 1 Palomino iii. p. 395. 2 Palomino iii. p. 433. 3 Fuller’s Church History. B. vi. p. 331. London 1055. Folio. She sits to S. Cotan. 21 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Mieael carves a healing image, and dies. To have achieved a wonder-working painting or sculpture, was, however, sometimes a perilous as well as a glorious distinction. In the plague of Malaga, in 1649, a certain statue of Christ at the column, carved for the cathedral by Giu- seppe Mieael, an Italian, performed prodigies of healing, and bade fair to rival that holy Crucifix — sculptured at Jerusalem by Nicodemus, and possessed by the Capuchins of Burgos 1 — which sweated on Fridays, and wrought miracles all the week. While the pestilence was yet raging, the sculptor stood one evening musing near the door of the sanctuary where his work was enshrined, but with so sorrowful a countenance, that a friend, hailing him from afar, according to the usages of plague-stricken society, enquired the cause of his sadness. “ Think you,” said the artist, “ that I have anything more to look for 1 Madame d’Aulnoy, Relation du Voyage en Espagne — 3 toms. 12mo. La Iiaye, 1093 — tom. i. p. 122. Marie Catherine JurneRe de Berueville, — niece of Madame des Loges, famous for her wit in the reign of Louis XIII., and wife of the Comte d'Aulnoy, who had nearly lost his head under Louis XIV 7 '. ou a false charge of treason — was one of the most lively and agreeable lady-writers of the age of Madame de Sevigne. She has left several romances, (Contes des Fees, Histoire du Comte de Duglas, &c.) as weU as memoirs in which facts are sometimes seasoned with fiction. Her “ Voyage en Espagne,” and her “ Memoires de la Cour “ d’Espagne,” are rare, and deserve reprinting for the vivacity of their style, and their curious pictures of manners. In the Amsterdam edition of the latter — 2 toms. 12mo. 1716 — there is an indifferent portrait of her, in which she is represented as a tall pleasing woman, attired in the brocade petticoat and looped-up negligee of her time. She died in 1705. There is an English translation of the “ Voyage,” entitled “ The “ Ingenious and Diverting Letters of the Lady ’s Travels into Spain.” London, 1692. 3 vols. 12mo. — which is very scarce. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 25 “ on earth, after seeing and hearing the prodi- “ gies and marvels of this sovereign image “ which my unworthy hands have made 1 It is “ an old tradition amongst the masters of our “ craft, that he shall soon die to whom it is “ given to make a miraculous image.” And the good Giuseppe erred not in his presenti- ment ; his chisel’s task was done ; he was “ to “ return no more, nor see his native country;” 1 and within eight days the dead-cart had carried him to the gorged cemetery of Malaga. His name, if not his life, was preserved by the statue — which was long revered for its Escula- pian powers, under the title (profanely usurped) of the “ Lord of Health.” ( El Senor de la Salud.J Where no direct visits or angelic sittings were vouchsafed, still the saints looked kindly on artists who did them honour, and would stand by them in seasons of spiritual need. Fa- ther Martin de Poa 2 used to tell of a young painter who yielded to the entreaty of a loose- minded lord, that he should paint for him an immodest picture. Dying not long after, he was forthwith cast into purgatory, and not released till his patron had repented him of the picture, destroyed it, and done a proportionate number of good works. The intercession of the saints, whom he had in his life-time depicted, then opened to the painter the gate of Paradise. 1 Jeremiah, e. xxii., v. 10. 2 Pacheco, Arte tie la Pintura, 271. Favour shewn to artists by saints. 26 CHAP. I— INTRODUCTION. Legend of the Painter-Friar, the Devil and the Virgin. Don Josef cle Valdivielso, 1 one of the chap- lains of the gay Cardinal Infant Ferdinand of Austria, cites a yet more remarkable instance of celestial interference on behalf of an artist in trouble. A certain young friar, he says, was famous amongst his order, for his skill as a pain- ter ; and took peculiar delight in drawing the blessed Virgin and the Devil. To heighten the divine beauty of the one, and to devise new and extravagant forms of ugliness for the other, were the chief recreations of his leisure. Vexed at last by the variety and vigour of his sketches, Beelzebub, to be revenged, assumed the form of a lovely maiden, and, so disguised, crossed the path of the religious, who — being of an amo- rous complexion — fell at once into the trap. The seeming damsel smiled on her shaven wooer, but though willing to be won, would not surrender her charms at a less price than certain rich reliquaries and jewels in the con- vent-treasury — a price which the friar, in evil hour, consented to pay. He admitted her at midnight within the convent walls, and leading her to the sacristy, took from its antique cabi- nets the precious things for which she had asked. Then came the moment of vengeance. Passing in their return through the moonlit cloister — as the sinful friar stole along, embracing 1 See liis paper against tlie tax on Pictures — a subject 'which does not at first sight seem capable of being much illustrated by such a legend — appended to Carducho’s Dialogos de la Pintura, p. 184. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 27 the booty with one arm and his false Duessa with the other, the demon-lady — “ more like a woman “ than a demon,” as the chaplain slyly remarks — suddenly cried out “ Thieves ! ” with diabolical energy. The snoring monks rushed disordered, each from his cell, and detected their unlucky brother in the act of making off with their plate. Excuse being impossible, they tied the culprit to a column, and leaving him till matins, when his punishment was to he determined, went hack to their pillows or their prayers. The Devil, unseen during the confusion, re-appeared when all was quiet, but this time in his most hideous shape. Half dead with cold and terror, the discomfited caricatu- rist stood shivering at his pillar, while his tormen- tor made unmercifully merry with him ; twitting him with his amorous overtures, mocking his stam- mered prayers, and irreverently suggesting an appeal for aid to the beauty he so loved to deli- neate. The penitent wretch at last took the advice thus jeeringly given — when lo ! the Mother of Mercy, radiant in heavenly loveliness, descended, loosed his cords, and bade him bind the Evil One to the column in his place — an order which, through her strength, he obeyed with not less alacrity than astonishment. She further ordered him to appear amongst the other monks at ma- tins, and charged herself with the task of restor- ing the stolen plate to its place. The tables were thus suddenly turned. The friar presented himself amongst his brethren to their no small 28 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Court pointers in Spain, in general deco- rous in their choice of sub- jects. surprise, and voted with much contrition for his own condemnation — a sentence which was, how- ever, reversed, on the sacristy being examined and its contents miraculously found correct. As for the Devil, who remained fast bound to the pillar, he was soundly flogged, and so fell into the pit he had digged for another. His dupe, on the other hand, gathered new strength from his fall, and became not only a wiser and a better man, but likewise an abler artist ; for the experi- ence of that terrible night had supplied all that was wanting to the ideal of his favourite subjects. Thenceforth he followed no more after enticing damsels, hut remained like a respectable monk in his cloister, painting the Madonna more serenely beautiful, and the Arch-enemy more curiously appalling than ever. These legends may serve as specimens of the stories with which Spanish works on art are plentifully garnished. They prove, at least, the intimate connection of religion and art in Spain, and the good understanding that subsisted between priests and painters. But the grave and decorous taste of the nation influenced the artists whose practice lay chiefly in the Court, no less powerfully than it did those who laboured exclusively for the Church. It cannot be said that the court of the Catholic Kings of the Spains and the Indies was much more strict in its morals than those of the Most Christian sovereigns of France, or our own Defenders of the Faith. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 29 Madrid, like Paris and London, never lacked its Bassompierres and Bochesters : the race of Portsmouth and Pompadour flourished at Aran- juez as freely as at Windsor and Versailles ; nor was the post held by Ortiz and the Godoys a creation of the Bourbons in Spain. But at the Spanish Court it is certain that fewer indecorums were perpetrated on canvas than at others ; and amongst all its painters, not one either gained, like Pietro Liberi of Venice by his lascivious pictures, or deserved, the name of “ Liber- “ tino.” The Austrian princes descended of Charles V. were all of them rigid formalists in religion and etiquette, and seldom encouraged improper free- dom of the pencil. Philip II., indeed, in his youth, suffered Titian to paint him indulging in that singular pleasure, — offered two centuries later by the profligate Augustus of Poland, after a drinking bout at Dresden, to his boon compa- nion, Frederick William of Prussia, rejected by that intemperate drill-sergeant with virtuous disgust, and described with much animation by his daughter, 1 — the contemplation of the charms of a Venus, unreservedly abandoned to his gaze, and said to be those of his faithless and haughty mistress the Princess of Eboli. That lady, it would appear, was nothing loath to display her faultless form, holding the opinion perhaps that — 1 “ Memoires de Frederique Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Bareith,” 2 tomes 8vo., Paris 1811 — tom. i. p. 112. Spanish Princes not fond of picto- rial impro- prieties. 30 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. “ Beauty, without falsehood fair, “ Needs nought to clothe it but the air;” 1 for, in 1679 a portrait of her in the same character, attended by Cupids, and probably like the former, the work of a foreigner, adorned one of the sump- tuous chambers of the Castle of Buitrago, the ancient seat of her lord, Buy Gomez de Silva. 2 Her royal lover, however, soon turned away his eyes from beholding such vanities ; and finally be- came so great a purist in these matters of deficient drapery, that on the arrival, at the palace, of Cellini’s magnificent Crucifixion, his finest work in marble, a present from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, he would not permit the Infantas of Savoy and Flanders to see it till he had arranged his handkerchief discreetly across the figure, where monkish loyalty long revered it as a relic. 3 In the times of Philip IV., the palmy days of portrait painting and gallantry, not the freest fan - ones of the Court — neither Maria Calderona the Spanish Nell Gwynne, nor the beautiful Ilippolita d'Alby, nor the fearless Ducliesse de Chevreuse, seem ever to have 1 Ben Jonson’s Works, is. p. G7. — Gifford’s Ed. 8vo. 181G. 2 Mine. d’Aulnoy, Voyage en Espagne, tom. ii. p. 43. 3 Paclieco, Arte de la Pintura, p. 632. Mr. Beckford speaks with rapture of this “ revered image of the crucified Saviour, formed of the “ purest ivory, which Cellini seems to have sculptured in moments of devout “ rapture and inspiration.” — (Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal ; London, 8vo. 1834 — vol. ii. p. 320). It is strange that this admirable and observing writer should have taken a marble figure of the size of life for ivory. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 31 loosed tlieir zones in the studios after the fashion of our Villierses and Stuarts — those “ Beauties of Sir Peter Lely, “ Whose draperies hint we may admire them freely.” The Spanish Charles II., who was so opposite in mind and morals to his namesake and contempo- rary, our Merry Monarch, and to Avhom nothing of his stern great-grandsire had descended hut the gloom and prudery of his old age, permitted some foolish monks of the Escorial to employ the pencil of Luca Giordano in letting down the robe of Titian’s St. Margaret, because she slew her dragon, to their thinking, with a too free exposure of leg. 1 The general character of Spanish painting, therefore, is solemn and religious ; its composi- tions for the most parts dark and grand ; and its figures more remarkable for the majesty and variety of draperies than for display of anatomical skill. Spain being the elysium of monks, the various religious orders, “ white, black, and grey,” were there delineated with unusual force and General cha- racter of Spa- nish painting. frequency, as the most careless observer will remark in traversing the Spanish division of any large gallery. Murillo and Espinosa were much employed by the friars who wore the brown frock of St. Francis ; Carducho and Zurbaran most affected the Carthusians, whose white robes and hoods they managed with fine skill and effect ; 1 Byron, Don Jnan, cant. xiii. st. 68. 2 Cumberland’s Anecdotes, v. i. 65. Painters of the religious or- ders; Murillo, Espinosa, Carducho, Zurbaran. 32 CHAP. I. — INTRODUCTION. Roelas. Roelas was the peculiar painter of the crafty and Afodels of dra- pery excellent, and always at hand. sable-stoled followers of Loyola. Subjects of this kind naturally gave to the Spanish pencil a great facility in dealing with drapery, of which the national “ capa,” or cloak, worn alike by Man- chegan shepherd, and serenading courtier, like- wise afforded admirable studies in every street and highway. Colouring — School of CllS- tile. The school of Castile is generally distinguished by a dark and sober style of colouring, grey back- grounds, and clouded skies. One of its great El Mudo. masters, however, El Mudo. imitated with success the splendour of Titian ; while another, El El Greco. Greco, who also had studied at Venice, played a hundred fantastic tricks with colour, which Female heads. amazed Toledo, and injured his reputation. The female heads in Castilian paintings, in those Tristan. of Tristan especially, are generally inferior in dignity and interest to the male ; their features arc too often coarse, and bear the marks of being taken from models, in whose veins the blood of the Southern Schools : Andalusia and Falencia. Goth predominated over that of the Moor. Moving southward, we enter fairer regions both in nature and art. The tawny brown of the Castilcs. and the dismal snuff-coloured cloth ( pa no pardo ) that drapes the peasant who tills them, give place to fields green and flowery, and mendicants flaunting in blue and scarlet rags. The gay blossoms of the cactus and oleander, mantle the southern roots of the sierra, and blush along the margin of the stream. Vivid mulberry CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 33 ancl violet hues brighten the canvases of Va- lencia, reds and golden yellows enrich those of Seville. The Madonnas and saintly women of the painters of these schools, reflect the grace and beauty of the daughters of the south, whose arched brows, lustrous eyes, and delicate features, are inherited from Arabian mothers, and their Moslem lords, the captors of Spain, “ who enno- “ bled her breed, and high-mettled the blood of “ her veins.” 1 The Sevillians were fond of intro- ducing into their pictures objects of still life— such as water-jars and baskets of fruit and vegetables — which they painted with admirable effect. These they had excellent opportunities of study- ing in the weekly fair ( feria ), where Murillo and many of his ablest compeers were wont in their early days to gain a livelihood by selling the rude productions of their pencil, which they would retouch on the spot to suit the taste of their Painters of Se- ville fond of subjects of still life; homely customers. Some of their “ bodegones,” — kitchen pieces, — as they are called, where fish and game lie mingled with water-melons, citrons, and the large olives of Andalusia, are their “ bodc- goncs” works of high technical merit. The Valencian painters of still-life chiefly affected the flowers that bloom so lavishly in that soft delicious clime ; and have left flower-pieces not excelled in dewy freshness and luxuriant dyes, by the most elaborate efforts of the garden artists of Holland. 1 Campbell : Lines written at sunset on the battle-field at Hastings. Valencian fiower-j>ain~ ters. D 34 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Spanish painters distin- guished in por- traiture. Iii portraiture — the most useful and valuable department of painting, which lightens the labour and points the tale of the historian and the biographer, embalms beyond the arts of Egypt, and gives to beauty centuries instead of years of triumph — the Spaniard attained a proud eminence. All the greatest painters of Spain Joanes. have produced admirable portraits. Joanes has been called the Spanish Rafael, and in this branch of his art, he deserves that proud title. Velasquez and Murillo not in- ferior as por- trait-painters to Titian and Vandyck. If V elasquez and Murillo have not here equalled the achievements of Titian and Vandyck, it is not that the genius and skill of the Spaniards were less, but that the fields of their famous rivals were finer. The Senate of Venice, and Female por- traits not com- mon in Spain. the splendid throngs of the imperial court, the Lomcllini and Brignoli of Genoa, and the Her- berts and Howards of England, afforded better models of manly beauty, than the degenerating nobility of the court of Philip IV., and the clergy and gentry of Seville. With the beauty of high-born women — the finest touchstone of skill — they were hut seldom brought into professional contact. The great portrait painters of Spain lived in an age of Spanish jealousy the cause. jealous husbands, who cared not to set off to public admiration the charms of their spouses. Velasquez came to reside at court about the same time that Madrid was visited by Sir Kenelm Sir K. Digby's adventure. Digby, who had like to have been slain on the night of his arrival for merely looking at a lady. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 35 Returning with two friends from supper at Lord Bristol’s, the adventurous knight relates 1 Iioav they came beneath a balcony where a love-lorn fair one stood touching her lute, and Iioav they loitered there aAvliile to admire her beauty, and listen to “ her soul-ravishing harmony.” Their delightful contemplations Avere soon rudely dis- turbed by the sound of heavy footsteps, by arms glittering in the moonlight, and the furious onset of “ fifteen men in mail, Avith dark lanterns “ fixed on their bucklers;” Avhen, had not the lover of Yenetia Stanley, who sleAV the leader, been a tall man at his weapon, the streets of Madrid Avould have been red Avith the blood of three bold Britons, Avho but a moment before had been “ sucking in the fresh air and pleasing themselves “ in the coolness of the night;” and the story told not in the valiant SAVordsman’s OAvn curious memoirs, but in Bristol’s next dispatch, or by honest Howell in a quaint letter. Few grandees Avere content, like the Prince of Eboli, that their wives should play Venus even to a royal Mars. The Duke of Albuquerque, who, at the door of his own palace, Avaylaid and horsewhipped Philip IV. and Olivarez, 2 feign- ing ignorance of their persons, as the monarch came to pay a nocturnal visit to the duchess, — was not very likely to call in the court-painter to 1 Private Memoirs, written by himself — London, 8vo. 1827, p. 154. 2 Madame d’Aulnoy : Relation du Voyage d’Espagne, 3 vols. 12mo., La Haye, 1093 — vol. ii. 21 — 22. Husbands and ivives. 36 Habits of fe- male life Portraits of Spanish ladies rare. Female cos- tume. Tasteless dresses. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. take her grace’s portrait. Ladies lived for the most part in a sort of Oriental seclusion amongst duennas, waiting- women, and dwarfs; often treated by their lords rather as menials than as wives, and not sitting with them at table, but eating apart, squatted on the floor “ like Turks or jour- “ neymen tailors,” as a surprised Frenchman wrote in his travels j 1 and going abroad only to mass, or to take the air in curtained coaches on the Prado. It was not the fashion amongst them to sit for then- likenesses, as is proved by the rare occurrence of female portraits, — of other than royal personages — in collections of Spanish pic- tures. Of the sixty-two works of V elasquez, in the royal gallery at Madrid, there are only four of this kind ; and of these two represent children, another an ancient matron, and the fourth his own wife. Even when permitted to make the portrait of a great lady, in the bloom of youth and beauty, the painter of the seventeenth century had to contend with the difficulties of tasteless and even unsightly costume. The fairest forms were thrust 1 See the amusing “ Voyage d’Espagne,” 12mo. Cologne, 1067 (of which an English translation was published in London, 1670) ; and also Mme. d’Aulnoy (Voyage II. p. 108), who once attempted to conform to the national attitude, out of politeness to a young Castilian hostess, — who never doubted but that all the Countesses of “ the Faubourg” sat cross- legged on carpets, — but unsuccessfully, for, says she, “ les jambes me “ faisoient un mal horrible ; tantot je m'appuyois sur le coude, tantot sur “ le main ; enfin je renonjois a diner.” It is satisfactory to know that a gentleman of the party, more familiar with foreign customs, at last brought her a chair. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 37 into long-waisted corsets, stiff and unyielding as armour of proof, and were disguised in hoops of monstrous circumference, — compared, for size, to roofs of houses 1 — in which all the bending lines of beauty were lost, and the finest and the faultiest figures brought to one conventional shape — that of a drum with a funnel planted in its top. Luxuriant tresses were twisted, plaited, and plastered into such shape that the fair head that bore them resembled the top of a mushroom ; or curled and bushed out into an amplitude of frizzle that rivalled the cauliflower wig of an Abbe. 2 An ungainly mode also pre- vailed of parting the hair at the side instead of the top of the head, thus marring the symmetry and balance of its outline, of which some wretched Absurd modes of dressing hair. portraits in the Spanish gallery of the Louvre, impudently ascribed to Velasquez, might be cited as examples sufficiently offensive and deterring. The dresses worn by the great ladies of the Royal Household on state occasions were admirable for the purposes of disguise and disfigurement. The Duchess of Terranova, the heiress of the Mexican principality of Cortes, mounted on a mule, and riding behind her grace- ful young mistress, Louisa of Orleans, at that Queen’s solemn entry into Madrid, doubtless looked singularly forbidding ; her sombre nun- like widow’s weeds, crowned with an enormous 1 Voyage d’Espagne, Cologne, 1067 — p. 21. 2 Madame d’Aulnoy : Voyage en Espagne, tom. ii. p. 102. Court dresses. 38 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Universal and extravagant use of rouge. hat, being well adapted to display to the worst advantage the pale wrinkled face and small sharp eyes of that “ terrible Camarera Mayor,” whose “ I will,” and “ I won’t,” made the Court tremble. 1 The baffled rival, or the scolded maid of honour — with any taste in dress — could have wished for no severer punishment to overtake her than a portrait drawn under these circumstances by a plain-speaking pencil. But the truth is, the per- ception of the proprieties of costume was wanting, and the fashions of the fair Spaniards who lived in an age which offered to their charms the best chance of becoming historical, tended — certainly by no design of the sweet sex — to second the wishes of their jealous lords, and to conceal, rather than to set off their attractions; their black eyes, the finest in the world, their pretty hands, skilled in the “ nice conduct” of the speaking fan ; and more than all, their feet, so dainty and fairylike, of which a glimpse was one of the last precious favours accorded to a lover’s sighs and tears. ? But worse than all these absurdities was the abomination of rouge, which tinged not only the cheeks, but also foreheads, ears, and chins, and was likewise bestowed on the shoulders and hands. In the reign of Philip IV., great was the consumption of vermilion and white- 1 Mine d’Auluoy. Memoires de la Cour d’Espagne — tom. i. pp. 104 — 203. 2 Mine. d’Aulnoy. Voyage — tom ii. p. 126. CHAP. I. — INTBODUCTION. 39 lead on the morning of a royal bull feast. 1 The ladies of Vittoria — who, doubtless, affected the newest fashions of Madrid — not a little astonished, by their ruddiness, the French Countess who visited their city in 1679. Writing of the theatre there, Madame d’Aulnoy says, 2 “toutes les dames “ que je vis dans cette assemblee avoient une “ si prodigieuse quantite de rouge, qui com- “ mence juste sous l’oeil, et qui passe du men- “ ton aux oreilles et aux epaules, et dans les “ mains, que je n’ai jamais vu d’ecrevisses cuites “ d’une plus belle couleur.” “ Scarlet” was an epithet that might be properly applied to other ladies besides her of Babylon — and to be “ rosy “ fingered” was no longer peculiar to the Morn. Had any Castilian Burns chanted beneath his mistress’s window or whispered in her ear that she resembled “ a red red rose,” the lattice Ladies of Vit toria. would have been indignantly shut, or the bard, perhaps, might have had his own ears boxed, for a blockhead and a dealer in truisms and prose. The very nymphs and goddesses that figured amongst the statues on the terrace of the royal palace of Madrid had their marble cheeks and bosoms smeared with carmine. 3 This perversion of taste at the toilette not only destroyed the complexions of the court-beauties, but what is much more distressing to lovers of art — spoiled 1 Voyage d’Espagne, Cologne, 1667 — p. 87. 2 Madame d’Aulnoy, Voyage en Espagne, tom. i. 57. 3 Madame d’Aulnoy, Voyage en Espagne, iii. p. 5. Rouged statues. 40 CHAP. I. — INTRODUCTION. Portraits of royal per- sonayes. the female portraits of Velasquez and Carreno. The second King of Prussia used to amuse his leisure by taking likenesses of his grenadiers ; and it is said that when he found his work too highly coloured, he would daub the patient’s face with red paint, till it assumed the same fiery hue. The difficulty with the Spanish artists was, not to subdue their tints, but to bring them up to the crimson glow of their well-rouged sitters. The royal portraits of the Austrian dynasty in Spain afford ample evidence of the fine powers of Spanish portrait-painters. That family — perhaps the plainest — was also the best painted of the royal houses of Europe. The noble features of the Stuart, the regal port of the Bourbon, found rarely and at long intervals a Vandyck or a Phi- lippe de Champagne ; even the princely houses of Italy want a scries of able and honest chroni- Excellence of the court por- trait-painters. clers on canvas, such as those who have trans- mitted to us the faces of their Spanish contempo- raries. The policy of the Catholic kings curbed with a heavy hand the liberty of the press ; their taste granted full freedom to the pencil. While history, therefore, has caricatured by turns the good and evil of their characters, painting has told the truth and nothing but the truth of their The characters of the A ustrian princes to he read in their portraits. persons. Days of study in the library will but confirm and fill in the story we find sketched in their portraits, where we see the intellectual force that stamps the brow and mouth of the great Emperor, re-produced in the gloomier counte- CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 41 nance of his terrible son, visible though in far fainter reflection in the features — but little changed in form — of Philip III., gradually fading from the lack-lustre eye and sensual lip of Philip IV., and finally lost in the forlorn idiocy that clouds the pale face of Charles II. It is in the colours of Titian that the person of Charles V. is so well known to the world; and though his portrait was doubtless frequently painted by Spanish artists, no example of it is to be found in the public galleries of Spain. The mild counte- nance, however, of his Empress, Isabella of Portu- gal, has been preserved by the accurate pencil of Alonso Sanchez C'oello. Philip II. pourtrayed in his better days, by Titian, ere his cold features had lost the freshness of youth, was often painted after he became King, by his favourite Sanchez Coello, who has recorded on several canvases the lines and wrinkles as they gathered on his brow, between the victory of St. Quentin and the loss of the Armada. Pantoja de la Cruz has likewise drawn him, noting with unshrinking fidelity the traces of the disease and melancholy of his ghastly old age. His queens, and his sallow sickly children, and his gallant brother Don Juan fell, according to their dates, to the pencils of More, Coello, and Pantoja, the latter of whom seems to have been warmed into rivalry with Titian by the sweet smile and superb complexion and figure of the dark-eyed Isabella of V alois. Pantoj a was like- wise the favourite portrait-painter of Philip III. Charles V. and his family. A. S. Coello. Philip II., his Queen, and children. A. S. Coello. Pantoja de la Cruz. Philip III. and his family. Pantoja. 42 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Philip IV. and Queen Margaret, whom, with their Infants and Infantas, he frequently introduced into sacred compositions, flattering at once their vanity and piety by grouping them, in peasant garb, round the bed of St. Anne or the manger at Bethlehem, in pictures of the Nativities of the Virgin and our Lord. With Philip IV. the desire of multiplying his own image on canvas seems to have amounted to a passion. Ilis long pale face and fiercely curling moustacliios are to he found on the walls Rubens. of almost every great gallery. Rubens painted him nearly as often as he did his own peculiar patrons, the good Arch-Duke and Duchess, Albert and Isabella. Perhaps more hours of the King’s life were spent in the studio of Velas- Velasquez. quez than in the Council of Castile. That great master has painted him in every possible costume and circumstance — attired for the field, the chase, Queens and brothers of Philip IV. and the pageant, on foot, on horseback, and kneel- ing in his oratory. For the beautiful Isabella of Bourbon, Philip’s first Queen, he has done all that Vandyck did for her sister, our own Henrietta Maria ; for the Infants Carlos and Ferdinand all that was done by that famous His children. Fleming for Prince Rupert and his brother. In his portraits of Mariana of Austria, Isabella’s rather pretty successor, he has left to all future great ladies some signal warnings against ex- travagant modes of dressing the hair and the use of rouge. He has saved from oblivion, by many delightful pictures, the little round CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 43 head of Prince Balthazar Carlos, whose early death placed him almost beneath the level of history; and the girlish beauty of the Infanta Maria Margaret and her playmates, blooms for all time in one of his most remarkable works. In the next reign, in the general dearth of genius, the Court painter, Carreno de Miranda, showed himself a man of talent and skill, not only in his graceful portraits of the lovely Queen Louisa of Orleans, but in the more arduous task of grap- pling with King Charles the Second’s leaden eye and projecting nether jaw, so as to transmit to posterity an image, — faithful, and yet not alto- gether unpleasing, — of the last withering branch of the royal stock. Charles II. and Queen Louisa. Carreno. Landscape painting was but little cultivated in Spain. The Vega of Granada, beautiful beyond the praise of Arabian song; the delicious “garden” of Valencia, where the azure-tiled domes of countless convents glittered amidst their groves of mulberry, and citron, and palm ; the stern plains and sierras of Castile ; the broad valley of the Guadalquivir, studded with towered cities and goodly abbeys ; the wild glens of the Alpux- arras ; the pine forests of Soria, have found no Claude or Salvator to feel and express their beauty and magnificence. Velasquez, in all branches of his art a great master, has painted some noble sketches of scenery, as Murillo also has done, though in a less vigorous style. Mazo a Castilian, Iriarte a Biscayan, but belonging Landscape painting little cultivated. 44 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Landscape- painters not generally born amongst fine scenery. to the school of Andalusia, and the Sevillian Antolinez, are almost the only Spaniards who made the fields their place of study, or whose doings there deserve much notice. Italian as well as Spanish art seems to afford evidence that the beauties of nature are not most keenly felt where they are most lavishly bestowed. The scenery of Italy has been studied with greater zeal and better results by foreigners, than by her own sons. Salvator Rosa, the best of her native landscape-painters, does not generally dwell on the finest and most attractive features of that glorious land. Three Frenchmen — Gelee, Poussin, and Dughet, whom fate might have detained in Normandy and Lorraine, were the first to do pictorial justice to the sky and atmo- sphere of Italy — to her classic ruins and tall umbrageous pines, her ancient rivers winding through storied fields, and the soft and sunny shores of her blue Mediterranean. Painters of landscape abound in tlu: North. It is not till we leave the regions of noble landscapes, grand architecture, and picturesque population, that we reach the lands most prolific of painters capable of doing justice to these things. While far finer subjects for the pencil lay unheeded around the artists of Spain and Italy, the Fleming and the Hollander committed to canvas every varying aspect of their cloudy skies and leaden seas, and canals creeping wearily through interminable flats of lush pasturage — and studied then- mills and their gardens, their brick-built CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 45 streets and trim white-washed churches, with a zeal worthy of a better cause. The august cathedrals of Seville and Leon, — the sumptuous mansions of Valencia, — the mosques and palaces of Moorish Spain, — want their Steenwyks and their Neefs, — the fierce sports of the bull-ring and the wild herds of Utrera and Jarama, their Cuyp and Wouvermans, Sneyders, and Potter; the posada, with its gay and motley throngs, has no Jan Steen and Ostade, nor the joyous “ dance “ and sun-burnt mirth” of the Andalusian vintage — a Teniers or a Rubens. In Italy, the omissions of native artists were supplied by their foreign disciples, whose imagi- nation was readily caught by all that was pic- turesque and peculiar in its life and scenery. Thither students flocked yearly from the north, full of the curiosity and ardour of youth, and eager to see, to learn, and to labour. They saw at once that the sea and sky of Gaeta and Naples were brighter than those they had known in Guelder- land and Brabant ; that V enice, with its canals margined with Palladian palaces, was fairer and fitter for the purposes of art than Amsterdam ; that the villas of the Medici were not as the rural retreat of V anderhulk ; and that the weeds of the Flaminian Circus were better than all the tulips of Haarlaem. As mere tyros, — and perhaps as heretics,— on arriving at Rome or Florence, they were not immediately retained by princes and cardinals, and worn out by intense labours prose- Best painters of Italian scenery foreigners. 46 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Few foreign painters of landscape in Spain. cuted on ladders and dizzy scaffoldings ; but they were left at liberty to indulge fresli emotions, and gather new ideas, to sketch as they listed the hoary ruin, or the classic costume, and to study and enjoy the new face with which nature shone and smiled around them. Thus it was that the great French painters of landscape turned, half by accident, out of the beaten roads of art into the path that led them to fame ; thus it was that Both and Swanevelt divined the secrets of their craft, and acquired that mastery over the atmo- sphere of the south, which covers their faults as with a shield of gold, and makes their pictures, when met with in a northern gallery, cheer and delight us, like a burst of sunshine in an English winter’s day. But it was otherwise in Spain. There stranger artists came — as we shall see — with few excep- tions, at the invitation of the great, to display, not to improve then’ genius, and to perform in fresco or on canvas feats similar to those which had won the applause of Brussels or Borne ; and therefore had no leisure to bestow on scenes and The greater painters of Spain in gene- ral native Spaniards. subjects neglected by the native pencil. Cambiaso was too much in love, Zuccaro too conceited, Rubens too busy in politics as well as painting, to glean after El Mudo, Joanes, and Ribalta. Many of the foreign auxiliaries of Italian art became naturalized in their new country; they were made free of the academies, and after their death, were sometimes claimed as native CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 47 Italians by their Italian biographers. Amongst the greater painters of Spain, only three foreigners are reckoned — the Fleming Campana, the Greek Theotocopuli, and the Florentine Vincenzio Car- ducci — the latter of whom came to Madrid in his childhood, and lived and died a good Castilian. The fame of Spanish painters, like the honour of certain crowned heads, 1 long suffered from their geographical position. Till the present century, little was known on this side the Pyrenees, of the arts of the Peninsula. Pibera — the “ Spagnoletto” and favourite of Naples — whose passion for the horrible was little likely to produce a favourable impression of Spanish taste, was long the sole Spaniard whose name and works were familiar to Europe. At Pome, Vargas, Cespedes, and a few others had acquired some distinction in their day; and Velasquez had left a few portraits in the palaces, and enjoyed a traditionary reputation as a member of the academy of St. Luke. Few Spanish pictures travelled northwards, except the royal portraits sent to imperial kinsfolk at Vienna, and the works now and then carried home from Madrid by tasteful ambassadors. The catalogues of the rich collection of our Charles I. do not con- 1 The witty Prince de Ligne, in his “ Vie du Prince Eug&ne," makes his hero thus remark on the politic and cautious Head of his House — “ Voila le Due de Savoie, pour quelque temps le meilleur Autrichien du “ monde. Sa conduite, que je ne veux pas justifier, ma rapelle celle que “ les Dues de Lorraine ont tenue autre fois, ainsi que les Dues de Baviere. “ La Geographic les empeche d'etre lionnetes gens." — Melanges Historiques et Litteraires, 5 tomes, 8vo., Paris, 1829, tom v. p. 29. Spanish art long unknown to the rest of Europe. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 48 Name of Mu- rillo early Known in Eny- land. Spanish pain- ters known in France in 18th century. Dictum of the Abbe Dubos. tain the name of a single Spanish master. Evelyn 1 indeed tells us, that, at the sale of Lord Melford’s effects at Whitehall, in 1693, “Lord Godolphin “ bought the picture of the Boys, by Morillio, the “ Spaniard, for eighty guineas,” which he re- marks was “ deare enough.” Yet Cumberland, 2 nearly a century later, while he admits Murillo to be better known in England than any Spanish master except Ribera, “ very much doubts if any “ historical group or composition of his be in “ English hands.” The Bourbon accession and increased intercourse with Spain brought a few good Spanish paintings into France to adorn the galleries of Orleans, Praslin, and Presle, most of which at the Revolution emigrated, like their possessors, to England. Yet the Abbe Dubos, in his Reflections on Poetry and Painting, first published in 1719, cites 3 Spain as one of those unfortunate countries where the climate is unfavourable to art, and remarks that she had produced no painter of the first class, and scarcely two of the second ; thus with one stroke of his goosequill erasing from the book of fame Velas- quez and Cano, Zurbaran and Murillo. Never- theless the Abbe was a man of curious reading and research, — for he made the discovery that the poetry of the Dutch was superior in vigour 1 Memoirs of John Evelyn, 5 vols. 8vo. London, 1827, v. iii. p. 325. 2 Anecdotes, ii. p. 101. 3 Reflexions Critiques sur la Poesie et sur la Pienture, sixieme edition, 3 tomes, 4to., Paris 1755, tom. ii. p. 148. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 49 and fire of fancy to their painting and his Reflections — which formed the last round of the literary ladder whereby lie climbed into the Academy — passed unquestioned through many editions, and were praised by V oltaire as the best and most accurate work of the kind in modern literature. Meanwhile the countless treasures of Spanish painting — thus triumphantly libelled — hung neglected in their native convents and palaces, far from the highways of Europe, wast- ing their beauty on gloomy walls, unstudied, unvisited, forgotten, except by a few tasteful and patient spirits, like Ponz and Bosarte. But the time of their deliverance drew nigh. The French eagles stooped on the Peninsula, and then was the wall of partition broken down that shut out Spanish art from the admiration of Europe. To swell the catalogue of the Louvre was part of the recognised duty of the French armies ; to form a gallery for himself, had become the ambition of almost every military noble of the empire. The sale of the Orleans, Calonne, and other great collections, had made the acqui- sition of works of art fashionable in England, and had revived the spirit of the elder Arundels and Oxfords in the Carlisles and the Gowers. With the troops of Moore and Wellesley, British picture-dealers took the field, well armed with guineas . 2 The Peninsula was overrun bydilletanti, Exportation of pictures during the War of Independence in Spain. Daring picture dealers. 1 Reflexions Critiques sur la Poesie et sur la Peinture, sixieme edition, 3 tomes, 4to., Paris 1755, tom. ii. p. 142. 2 See Buchanan's Memoirs of Painting. E 50 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Plundering French Com- manders. who invested galleries with consummate skill, and who captured altar-pieces by brilliant manoeuvres, that would have covered them with stars had they been employed against batteries and brigades. Convents and cathedrals — venerable shrines of art — were beset by connoisseurs, provided with squa- drons of horse or letters of exchange, and demand- ing the surrender of the Murillos or Canos within ; and priest and prebend, prior or abbot, seldom refused to yield to the menaces of death or to the temptation of dollars. Soult at Seville, and Sebas- tiani at Granada, collected with unerring taste and unexampled rapacity ; and having thus sig- nalized themselves as robbers in war, became no King Joseph pilfers with judgment. less eminent as picture-dealers in peace. King Joseph himself showed great judgment and pre- sence of mind in his selection of the gems of art which he snatched at the last moment from the Effects of French rapine and English commerce. gallery of the Bourbons, as he fled from their palace at Madrid. Suchet, Victor, and a few of “ the “ least erected spirits,” valued paintings only for the gold and jewels on their frames; but the French captains in general had profited by their morning lounges in the Louvre, and had keen eyes as well for a saleable picture as for a good position. 1 By the well-directed efforts of steel and gold, Murillo and his brethren have now found their 1 The Hand-Book for Spain” tracks Soult and Co. through the scenes of their sacreligious robberies with unwearied vigour, and a lash always keen, ready, and richly deserved. — See Seville, Granada, — Valencia — &c. CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 51 way, with infinite advantage to their reputation, to the banks of the Seine and the Iser, the Thames and the Neva. French violence and rapine, inexcusable in themselves, have had some redeeming consequences. The avarice of Joseph and his robber-marshals, by circulating the works of the great Spanish masters, has conferred a boon on the artists of Europe. Nor is the loss to Spain so serious as it may at first appear. Great as was their booty, the plunderers left behind, sorely against their will, treasures more precious than those which they carried away ; and the rich remainder is now more highly valued than the whole ever was, and more carefully preserved. A review of the various collections of Spanish paintings now existing in the royal and public galleries of Europe, will show that the painters of Spain can still be studied nowhere so effec- tually as on their native soil. The Royal Museum of Madrid far exceeds all others in the variety and splendour of its Spanish pictures. This Museum, where Rafael appears as great as at Rome, Rubens as vigorous and versatile as at Antwerp and Munich, Claude as sunny and gladdening as in London and Paris, and into which the palaces of Madrid, Aranjuez, the Prado, San Ildefonso, and the Escorial, have poured their treasures to form the richest gallery in the world, is one of the few honourable monu- ments of the reign of Ferdinand VII. That royal Vandal has, however, little merit in the No public gal- leries in Europe so rich in Spanish pictures as those of Spain. Madrid Real Museo. 52 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. affair ; he was tired of his hereditary Titians, which he thought injured the effect of his Parisian upholstery, and therefore sent them up to the gar- rets ; the honour is due to his first Queen, Maria Isabel of Braganza, whose taste and public spirit conceived and executed the design. 1 The struc- ture — of brick with granite pillars and coignings — does some credit to the architect Villanueva ; its massive cornices and long colonnades form the chief architectural feature of the avenues of the Prado, famous in history and romance. But having been originally intended for a scien- tific institution, it is inferior in internal conveni- ence to some of the new Pinacotheks of Germany, and the long central gallery and its vestibules are the only apartments that possess the advantage of sky-light. These favoured regions being appro- priated to the patrician pictures of Italy, Velas- quez, Murillo, and their countrymen are crowded into two side rooms and some smaller chambers below stairs, where the windows are few and far between ; and some of them have even been thrust into the outer darkness of the corridors. Besides being badly lighted, the Spanish collection is also far less complete than it might easily be made ; for you will look in vain for several names of renown, such as Correa, Berreguete, and Tris- tan in the catalogue of Don Pedro Madrazo ( Cata- loqo dc los Cuadros del Real Museo , Madrid 1843, l For a full, accurate, and agreeable account of this gallery see “ Hand- book ” — Madrid. CHAP. I. — INTRODUCTION. 53 12 mo. pp. 435 ) , a work accurate indeed as far as dates and figures go, but in which a few historical notices of the more remarkable articles are greatly to be wished for. But here and here alone is Velasquez to be seen in all his glory, as the painter of history, landscape, and low life, of courtly portraits and solemn altar-pieces, and here he may be studied in sixty first-rate pictures. Of Murillo there are forty-six excel- lent specimens; and Joanes, Morales, Cano, and Zurbaran, all contribute a variety of fine works. Many good pictures are also to be found here by artists like Pereda, Collantes, Escalante, and Pareja, whose names have hardly crossed the seas and mountains that bound the Peninsula. It is much to be regretted that the dangerous and often fatal process of cleaning, of which some of the finest Rafaels were the first victims when in the Louvre, has been carried on here, in what is called the restoring room, with a vigour very unusual in Spain, and an audacity not exceeded in France. The manly touch of Velasquez, and the delicate vapory tones of Murillo have, in too many instances, disappeared beneath masses of fresh paint, flat and hard, as if they had been laid on with a pallet-knife or a trowel. The Royal Academy of St. Ferdinand, founded in 1752 by Ferdinand VI., 1 possesses a collection of about three hundred paintings, which are 1 Estatutos de la Beal Academia de S. Fernando — Madrid, 1757, 8vo. p. 6. Madrid Real Academia de S. Fernando. 54 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Museo Na- tional. placed in a suite of apartments in the vast palace in the Calle de Alcala, which the Academy shares with the Museum of Natural History. There is no catalogue here, and what is worse, in some of the rooms no light. Here are good specimens of Bias de Prado, Pereda, C'incinati, and Orrente ; and here also are the wonderful “ St. Isabel of “ Hungary,” and the “Dream of the Roman Pa- “ trician,” master-pieces of Murillo, stolen from Seville by the French, and dishonestly detained by the Academy when sent back from the Louvre. The National Museum is a vast collection of pictures of all degrees of merit, formed for the nation out of the spoils of the religious houses, under the auspices of the Regent Espartero. The desecrated monasteries of Spain have been turned to strange uses, and have become barracks, hos- pitals, museums, manufactories, theatres, bull- rings, or quarries, according to the wants of their respective localities. Thus the great convent of the Trinidad, of which the long brick facade with its tall flanking towers, forms a principal object in the Calle de Atocha, and the front enclosure, affording a nestling place for book stalls, serves as the Paternoster Row of the unliterary capital, has been chosen as the magazine of the artistic property of the nation. The pictures, which stand much in need of weeding, arrange- ment, and light, fill the upper and lower cloisters or galleries which surround the quadrangle, and also the chapel, refectory, and several other apart- CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 55 ments. The museum was opened in 1840 ; but Spaniards being — as a Castilian foreign secretary once serenely observed to an impatient French minister 1 — men and not birds, five years have not sufficed for the preparation of a catalogue. When published, it is to be hoped it will connect with each of the best pictures the name of the convent whence it was taken. The collection contains a few Italian paintings, and some valuable works of the older Flemings and Germans, by which its monotony is relieved. Velasquez, whose pencil was more employed in the palace than the cloister, is here represented only by two por- traits of moderate merit. Cano, Zurbaran, and Murillo, whose connections were more conventual, appear to greater advantage. But the contents of the museum having been chiefly contributed by the monasteries around Madrid and Toledo, the productions of the Castilian school far out- number those of the others. Vincencio Carducho is the presiding genius of the place : his long series of paintings from the Chartreuse of Paular display a vigour of imagination worthy of Rubens, and cover acres of canvas, which might have astonished (as perhaps they did) Luca Fa Presto himself. Correa, one of the earliest, and Sebas- 1 M. de Louville writes thus to Torcy, May 10th, 1701. — “ Quand on “ presse Don Antonio de Ubilla d’expedier les depeches de six semaines, “ il repond avec un beau sang froid — ‘ En Espagne les homines ne sont “ ‘ pas des oiseaux.’ ” See Correspondence of the Honourable Alexander Stanhope, edited by Lord Mahon, p. 195, sm. 8vo., London, 1844. 56 CHAP. I. — INTRODUCTION. Toledo ; Cathedral. Valladolid : Museo. tian Munoz, one of the last of the great Spanish masters, may likewise be best known and appre- ciated in this gallery. Toledo possesses no museum, hut its venerable metropolitan church is a treasury and monument of Castilian art. The grand portals and beauti- ful choir display the fine fancy and manual skill of the elder sculptors and their classical successors, while the chapels and chapter-rooms are rich udth the works of Juan de Borgona, El Greco, and other Toledan painters. The Museum of Valladolid contains many works of art which enriched the monastic houses of Old Castile and Leon, and which were saved from destruction in the civil war by the energy of Don Pedro Gonzalez, director of the Academy, to whose glory be it recorded ! It occupies the ancient College of Santa Cruz, one of the six greater colleges of Spain. Fomided, in 1594, by the Grand Cardinal Mendoza, this noble Gothic pile has been gently dealt with by the restorers and destroyers of after-times, and retains much of its pristine magnificence. The ornate facade looking on the Plaza, the simpler garden front, and the rich court within, are well preserved and neatly kept. The pictures here, of the highest historical interest, are those by Rubens, which once belonged to the nuns of Fuen-Saldana, and were refused by that sisterhood to a grandee, high in the court of Ferdinand VI., who offered to give them a magnificent new altar-piece and double CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. revenues in exchange ; 1 and which afterwards figured in the Louvre of Napoleon. Amongst Spanish painters — Carducho, Pereda, and Josef Martinez, are pre-eminent in this museum. But the collection shines rather in sculpture than in painting. The bronze monuments of the Duke of Lerma and his Duchess attest the skill of the Italian Leoni. It is here that the classical Berreguete, and Juan de Juni and Hernandez — whose statues of painted wood rival in life and spirit the marbles of Greece — must be studied ; they are the tutelars of the place. This museum enjoys the advantage — rare in Spain — of possess- ing a catalogue, which is to he found in Julian Pastor’s “ Compendio Historico Descriptivo de “ Valladolid. Ibid. 1843.” In Arragon and Catalonia, where art never flourished, the monasteries were less rich in artistic embellishment, and were more severely handled in the troublous times than in the other provinces of Spain. The Museums of Zaragoza and Barcelona, occupying as usual old conven- tual buildings, have therefore little beyond good intentions to recommend them. Andalusia, a garden of nature and art, possesses CWwa - three public museums of painting — at Cordova, Seville, and Cadiz. The first of these, established 1 Bosarte — Vi age Artistico, p. 144, London, 12mo. In Conder’s De- scription of Spain and Portugal, v. ii. p. 142, it is said that the offer was made by Charles III., with this difference, that he promised a new convent instead of an altar-piece. 58 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Cadiz. in one of the dingiest convents of the dull decaying city of the Caliphs, consists of but a few canvases, singularly dirty and degraded. The last occupies part of a new Academy of Design in the Plaza de Mina, and, as its chief ornaments, can show only some doubtful Murillos and second- rate Zurbarans, which do little credit to the Seville ; Museo. taste of opulent Cadiz. The Museum of Seville, however, nobly vindicates the genius of Anda- lusia. Filled with many of the fine works, once so thickly scattered amongst the rich convents of that beautiful city, it is one of the most character- istic and delightful shrines of art in Europe. The edifice, formerly the Monastery of the Merced, an order, whose pious business it was to redeem Christian captives from the Infidel, when as yet there were friars in Seville, and corsairs in Algiers and Sallee, — was first erected in 1249, by St. Fer- dinand, and sumptuously rebuilt in the time of Charles V. It stood embosomed in a spacious garden, now a waste of weeds and rubbish, amidst which a tall cypress rises solitary and spectre- like. Part of this garden is about to be built upon, and a part added to the little Plaza del Museo, where the citizens talk of erecting the statue of Murillo. The interior of the building, however, is probably as well kept as in the days of the monks, and is a fine specimen of the wealthy convent of a southern clime. The principal court is of elegant design ; its cloisters are sup- ported by light coupled columns of white marble, CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 59 placed on a basement, enriched with bright tiles ; a fountain murmurs • pleasantly in the centre, around it flowers breathe their fragrance, some strutting peacocks spread their plumes, and two noble weeping willows droop their green and grace- ful boughs, tempering the sunshine, and whisper- ing in the breeze. The sole relics of the banished religious are the Cross of St. John, and the Bars of Catalonia — the arms of their order — emblazoned on the rich ceilings, or carved on the curiously panelled doors, and a bad picture or two, wherein turbaned Turks, sitting arrogant and cross- legged, receive bags of money from white-robed friars — grotesque, but yet touching memorials of these meek soldiers of Christ, and their bloodless beneficent crusades. 1 The holy images and in- scriptions that once adorned the walls are gone ; our Lady of Mercy and St. Hermengild have been supplanted in their niches on the grand staircase, by plaster casts of Venus and the Apollino — and the light and lofty church has been trans- formed into a hall, of which the walls are clothed with the great compositions of Castillo and Herrera — Zurbaran, Boelas, and Murillo. An upper gallery over the principal cloister is also filled with pictures, as well as some chambers opening from it — one of which, badly lighted by a single window, is appropriated to a 1 For an account of these “ Padres de la limosna,” see the curious “ Topographia e Historia General de Argel, por el M. Fray Diego de Haedo, “ Abad de Fromesta.” Folio. Valladolid, 1012. 60 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. matchless collection of eighteen of Murillo’s finest works. In pictures by artists who lived and laboured at Seville, this museum is richer than any other ; here Zurbaran and Murillo appear in their full strength, and Valdez Leal, Meneses, Marques, and some others less generally known, show themselves to have been men of mark and likelihood. But in specimens of the other schools it is very deficient ; even Velasquez, a Sevillian by birth and education, though early removed to Madrid, makes no sign in the gallery of his native place. Little pains seem to have been bestowed in cleaning and restoring the pictures, most of which remain in the dry, dusty, and even tattered state in which they left their native cloisters, and would afford fine scope for the exertions of the gentlemen of the Queen’s “ restoring room.” Those which have been newly framed show the taste of the Director of the in- stitution to he curiously bad ; for example, the eighteen pictures by Murillo, mentioned above, have frames, painted to imitate a sort of brown marble, and also, it would appear, their own pre- vailing tones. It is to be hoped that the “ very “ loyal, very noble, and unconquered city of “ Seville,” will find ere long a little money and a little judgment to rectify these things ; to open a few sky-lights in the upper rooms, and to publish a catalogue. 1 1 The latter want the traveller will find in the mean time supplied, as far as possible, by Juan Antonio Baillv, the clever guide of Seville, whose CHAP. I. — INTllODUCTION. 61 The chapel of the University has likewise been opened as a museum, under the auspices of Don Manuel Lopez Cepero, the learned and ingenious Dean of Seville. Besides the fine monumental bronzes and marbles, rescued from the wreck of convents, it contains some excellent pictures by Roelas. The gorgeous chapel of the Hospital of Charity — though its walls were cruelly bared by Soult — is still rich in master-pieces of Murillo. Several of his fairest creations likewise adorn the chapels and sacristies of the magnificent cathedral, where are also to be found the finest existing works of Esturmio, Vargas, Campana, and Villegas, the patriarchs of Sevillian painting. Valencia has a museum of between six and seven hundred pictures , 1 almost entirely of its own fine school. Entering the city from the acacia-shaded banks of the Turia, by the gate of St. Joseph, a few steps bring you under the high and massive walls of the ancient convent of the Carmen, of which the chapel, standing forward from the pile, and conspicuous for its florid facade of the Ionic and Corinthian orders, now serves as a parish church. The rest of the building is devoted to the museum, and is divided Seville. Chapel of the University. Chapel of the Hospital ile la Caridad. Seville. Cathedral. Valencia. Museo. artistic and antiquarian information is as remarkable as tlie correctness and fluency with which he can convey it in several languages. I have found him on many occasions a trustworthy person, as well as an enter- taining companion, and heartily recommend him to any of my friends or countrymen who may do me the honour to read this note in Andalusia, with every comer of which he is well acquainted. 1 Manual de Forasteros en Valencia por J. G. ; Valencia 1841, p. 120. 62 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. into two courts, in each of which, four tall palms, rising from amidst neglected flowers, lift their pillar-like stems and plumy heads to the brilliant sky, assorting well with the Oriental character of the many-domed city of the Cid. Of these courts, one has an open and Gothic- vaulted cloister, wainscotted with gay tiles — now much broken — on which sacred histories are painted and pious quatrains inscribed The other is surrounded above and below by closed galleries, in which, and in the staircase, are gathered, as into one focus, the chief treasures of native painting, from the various religious houses that studded the rich plains and pleasant valleys between the Segura and the Ebro. Marshal Suchet, who directed the French ravages and rapine in this province, was happily curious only in church plate and jewels, and spared the pic- tures — not being aware, like his better-educated peers, of their marketable value. Hence it is that so many exquisite and elaborate works of Joanes, and powerful compositions of the Ribaltas, have found their way into this museum ; and also a positive superfluity of specimens of the diligent Borras, and the unequal Geronimo Espi- nosa. Still the collection — even as regards Yalen- cian masters — is by no means complete, which may be attributed partly to the ingenuity of the poor monks in saving, or as the lay-appropriators call it purloining, their favourite pictures at the suppression of their monasteries ; and partly CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 63 to the ignorance or dishonesty of the people employed to form the gallery, who here, as in other provinces, too often garnered the chaff, and cast the wheat away. According to the custom of Spanish museums, the light is defective, and a catalogue wanting. The old enduring gilding of many finely-carved frames, gives a rich effect to the walls ; but the paintings are much over- crowded, and hung with so little care, that one or two tall canvasses have actually been placed lengthways, as if pictures were bricks, and the one thing needful in their arrangement, was to build them into a close compact mass. The keeper of the gallery, however, is an artist, and far better acquainted with the history of art than is common with such officials, especially in Spain. The great rambling cathedral contains some excellent paintings by Joanes, Ribera and Orrente; the College of Corpus Christi, the master-pieces Valencia. Cathedral ; Colegio del Corp. Chr. of the elder Ribalta ; and the Academy of San Carlos, a few good pictures of various schools and climes. Academia de S. Carlos. The public collections of Spain would be greatly improved by a little judicious barter with each other. The National Museum of Madrid might, for example, give from its abun- dance, a series of Castilian paintings to that of Valencia, in exchange for some of the endless productions of Borras, Espinosa, and others : while the Sevillians might buy with a portion Public collec- tions of Spain might be im- proved by ex- changing with each other their superfluous pictures. 64 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Foreign collec- tions of Spa- nish pictures. of their native wealth, specimens of the other schools. The Queen of Spain possesses sixty- two pictures by Rubens, fifty-five by Giordano, fifty-three by Teniers, forty-nine by Breughel, twenty-seven by Tintoret, twenty-five by Sney- ders, twenty-two by Vandyck, and sixteen by Guido. Of each of these masters her Majesty might easily exchange a specimen with the national collections, in order to complete the Spanish department of her gallery, which would thus be rendered perfect as well as unrivalled. Leaving the Peninsula and its convent-mu- seums, we shall find elsewhere but few public galleries which possess a sufficient number of Spanish pictures to be called a collection. The Paris. Louvre. King of the French has made a more serious attempt to form one than any other monarch of our times. His “ Galerie Espagnole,” in the Louvre, purchased in Spain by the active Baron Taylor, consists of four hundred and fourteen pictures ; and the “ Collection Standish,” — be- queathed to his Majesty by an English gentle- man, — one hundred and forty-five pictures and two hundred and fourteen sketches and drawings by Spanish masters. As regards size, therefore, the Spanish gallery of Louis Philippe falls very little short of that of Isabel II. The catalogues — for the most part accurate and excellent in their historical notices — abound in high names ; they enumerate fifty-two works of Murillo, twenty-three of Velasquez, twenty-five of Cano, and no less than CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 65 eighty-two of Zurbaran ; and specimens of almost every painter of note from ancient Bincon, who painted Isabella the Catholic, down to modern Goya, who painted Maria Louisa the Unchaste. But it is no less true than lamentable, that the walls of the gallery bitterly belie the promise of the catalogues, and that a very large proportion of the paintings fathered on the finest masters, consists of mere copies or imitations by scholars or admirers, or of baser forgeries — the refuse of the studio and the sale-room. Some grains of pure gold, Iioav- ever, sparkle here and there amongst the dross ; for example, “ The Adoration of the Shepherds,” and “View of the Escorial,” by Velasquez; Murillo’s “ Christ and St. John, on the banks of “ Jordan his “ Charity of St. Thomas of Villa- “ nueva his “ Virgin of the Conception and portraits of himself and his mother ; Zurbaran’s “ Meditating Monk, holding a skull and some of Cano’s portraits. A feAV fine works of Murillo and other Spaniards hang amongst the Italian pictures in the long gallery. The Standish draw- ings are likewise a rare and interesting collection, Avell worthy of notice. Next in extent, and perhaps superior in import- ance to the Spanish collection of the King of the French, is that of the Emperor of Bussia. To St. Petersburg and the vast Hermitage of the Czar, fate has transferred one hundred and ten paintings of the Spanish schools, which once adorned the palace of the Prince of the Peace on the Prado of St. Petersburg ; Palace of the Hermitage. F 66 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. Munich. Pinakothvk. Madrid. The gifts lavished on the minion of the Queen of Spain are appropriately lodged in the sumptuous halls where Catherine wooed herOrloffs and Potemkins. There beneath gilded cornices, and amongst columns of Siberian porphyry and vases of malachite, hang many fine and original works of Joanes, Tristan, Cespedes, Mayno, Velasquez, and Murillo. — placed without method, and catalogued with little accuracy. At Munich, in the fine Pinakothek, — the most convenient and admirable picture gallery ever constructed — the schools of Spain are represented by only thirty pictures, which, however, form the collection that ranks third amongst those on this side the Pyrenees. Pantoja, Cano, Zurbaran, and Claudio Coello, are seen to advantage here ; and Murillo figures as a painter of low life in six pieces, replete with vigorous humour. The Spanish portion of the Bavarian catalogue is full of errors, and quite unworthy of the rest of that well-arranged volume. Vienna. Belvedere Palace. The “royal imperial” ( konigliche kaiserliche ) gallery in the noble Belvedere Palace at Vienna, which, from the old relations of Spain and Austria, might be expected to be a mine of Spanish art, pos- sesses only a single portrait by Sanchez Coello, and a few works by Velasquez. But one of these, the “ Painter’s Family Picture,” representing him- self, his wife and children, and some servants, is perhaps the single production of his pencil out of Spain, that deserves to rank with his grand CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. compositions at Madrid. This priceless picture hangs in one of the lower, and worst lighted rooms of the palace. The chaste and admirably-arranged gallery of Berlin has a few fair specimens of Ribera, Zurba- ran,and Murillo. Dresden, where the finest efforts of Italian, Flemish, Dutch, and German painting waste their splendour and sweetness in the damp dark chambers of a barn-like building — is poor in the Spanish masters, except Ribera. Murillo’s name, indeed, appears in the incorrect catalogue, but it is doubtful whether any of his works are to be found on the walls. Brunswick, Hesse Cassel, and Frankfort, have hardly a Spanish picture to show ; nor are Antwerp, Brussels, or Amsterdam much better provided. The Hague, however, has a few specimens, especially in the private gallery of the King of Holland, who pos- sesses some excellent works of El Mudo, V elas- quez, and Murillo, and opens his palace as freely as if his fine collection were public property. Stockholm, where pictures were once so plen- tiful, or despised, according to Winckelman 1 , that some fine Coreggios were used to stop the broken windows of the king’s stables — has “Two Beggar Boys,” by Murillo, — in the third-rate gallery of the royal palace. The Danish collection at Copenha- gen has no Spanish pictures ; but in the beautiful royal castle of Frederiksborg, near Elsinore, — inte- resting not only as a monument of the powers of 1 Reflections on Painting and Sculpture — 13mo., Glasgow, 1765. p. 5. 67 Berlin. Dresden. Brunswick, Cassel, Frank- fort. Antwerp. B russels, Amsterdam. The Hague Musee Royal and the King’s Private Gal- lery. Stockholm. Copenhagen . Frederiksborg. 68 CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. London. National Gal- lery. Inigo Jones, but also as a rich gallery of historical portraiture — there are some portraits of Philip I V. and his family, which are either original works of Velasquez, or admirable copies by his pupils. The private collections of England could pro- bably furnish forth a gallery of Spanish pictures second only to that of the Queen of Spain. But into our unhappy national collection, lodged in a building that would disgrace the veriest plasterer, and described in a catalogue that seems to have been drawn up by an auctioneer, Murillo alone of Spanish painters has as yet effected an entrance. lie appears there however to advantage in several sacred compositions ; but the variety of his style may be better appreciated in his works at Dulwich Col- laje. Dulwich college, where Velasquez likewise shines with some lustre. Italy. South of the Alps, Spanish art is still less known than in Northern Europe. Ribera is sometimes indeed to be met with in Italian collections, where Florence. he is often called a Neapolitan. He and Velas- quez are the only Spanish masters whose por- traits are to be found in the “ Sala dei Pittori” Milan, of the Florentine gallery, “ degliUffizi.” Amongst the glories of art which hang between the allego- rical ceilings and the tables of precious pietre dure in the Pitti palace, two Madonnas of mode- rate pretensions feebly vindicate the fame of Murillo. There is scarce a canvas or a panel touched by a Spanish pencil to be found in the Museum of Brera at Milan, the gallery of the CHAP. I.— INTRODUCTION. 69 Archduchess at Parma, the Pinacotheca at Bo- logna, or the Academy of Fine Arts at V enice — collections rich in native works. At the Vatican, Dutchmen, but no Spaniards are admitted to the chambers, where Rafael holds his court ; and at the Capitol, one good portrait by Velasquez, is the sole representative of all the schools of Spain, as another is in the royal collection at Turin. Naples is more fortunate than Pome; Pibera triumphs there not only in the churches but in the royal Museum “ degli Studi,” where Murillo and V elasquez likewise appear ; hut the latter is so slightly known, that his excellent, though — for him — not remarkable portrait of a Cardinal is gravely entered in the catalogue as “ suo capo “ d’ opera .” 1 Joanes, the Pibaltas, Cano, and the rarer Spanish masters, are as utter strangers in Italy as Vanderhelst or Hogarth. Parma, Bologna, J 'enice. Rome. Turin. Naples. 1 Les Musees d’ltalie par Louis Viardot, p. 308. Paris, 12mo. 1812. This agreeable writer and warm admirer of Spanish art, is an excellent cicerone for all the great galleries of Europe. His “ Musees d’Espagne, d’Angleterre et de Belgique,” his “ Musees d’Allemagne et de Russie,” Paris, 12mo, 1841, and the above-mentioned volume, should find a place in the carnage or portmanteau of every picture-loving traveUer. Earliest works of Painting and Sculpture. Cathedrals, Abbeys and Palaces of the Middle Ages. CHAPTER II. NOTICES OF EARLY ART TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC, 1516. H E most venerable specimens of Spanish art, which rewarded the dili- gent researches of Cean Bermudez, were a missal in the royal library at Madrid, adorned with illuminations and rude por- traits of ancient kings, chiefly the work of Vigila, a monk of Abelda, at the close of the tenth century ; and a wooden feretory or ark, covered with plates of gold and ivory carvings, made in 1033, by one Aparicio, by order of King Don Sancho el Mayor, to receive the body of St. Millan, and preserved with its precious contents in the monastery of Yuso. An historical sketch of Spanish painting would hardly be complete without some notice of those great religious or royal foundations which cradled its infancy, and were enriched with the trophies of its prime. Of the shadowy middle ages, the most NOTICES OF EARLY ART— FERDINAND II. ALONSO VIII. important relic, perhaps, that exists in Spain, is the Cathedral of Santiago in Galicia, the holiest spot in the Peninsula, and the Loretto of Western Europe. Begun in 1002, and finished in 1128, by the zealous Archbishop, Diego Galmirez, 1 various towers, and many a gorgeous chapel, were added in after times by royal or mitred benefactors. To one Master Mateo, the architect who built, in 1188, the grand portal — rich with foliaged niches and sculptured saints — Ferdinand II., of Castile, granted a pension of one hundred maravedis 2 — “ ex amore omnipotentis Dei, per quern regnant reges, et ob reverentiam sanctis- simi apostoli Jacobi patroni nostri piissimi,” 3 — probably the first instance on record of the patron- age of art by the munificent house of Castile. The Norman Cathedral of Tarragona, one of the noblest of the temples that look on the Mediter- ranean, was begun in 1131, by St. Olegarius its Bishop, but received most of its embellishments at the hands of his successors in the next century. Alonso VIII. founded, in 1177, the Cathedral of Cuenca, which crowns the rock-built town so grandly with its grey Gothic towers, and which within is all glorious with native jasper and marble. 71 Cathedral of Santiago. El Maestro Mateo. Cathedral of Tarragona. Alonso VIII. Cathedrals of Cuenca 1 Llaguno and Cean Bermudez. Noticias de los Arquitectos y Arquitec- tura de Espana, tom i. p. 32, 8vo. Madrid 1829, 4 vols., from winch the following notices of Cathedral and conventual buildings are in general taken. 2 Now worth about eiglitpence sterling. The maravedi, however, had anciently a higher actual, as well as relative value. 3 See the original grant, as quoted by Cean Bermudez. 72 CHAP. II.— NOTICES OF EAELY AET— FEEDINAND III. and Leon. The Cathedral of Leon, unrivalled amongst churches in the pointed style for the airy grace of its design, and for its cunning lace-like masonry, was begun by Bishop Manrique de Lara, at the close of the same century. St. Ferdinand III. At Burgos, in 1221, St. Ferdinand, the third of his name, founded on the site of his own Cathedral of Bury us. palace, the exquisitely-ornate Cathedral, which points to heaven with spires more rich and Cathedral oj Toledo — built by El Maestro Pedro Perez. delicate than any that crown the cities of the im- perial Rhine. Five years later, the same pious con- queror employed a certain Master Pedro Perez to rebuild the Cathedral of Toledo, the metropolitan church of the monarchy, for four hundred years a nucleus and gathering place for genius, where ar- tists swarmed and laboured like bees, and where Portrait of St. Ferdinand at Seville. splendid prelates — the Popes of the Peninsula — lavished their princely revenues to make fair and glorious the temple of God entrusted to their care. There is preserved in the convent of San Cle- mente, at Seville, a portrait of the royal Saint, a work of venerable aspect, “ of a dark, dingy “ colour, and ornamented with gilding,” and reckoned authentic, and coeval with the conquest of Seville. So highly was it prized by the nuns of that royal foundation, that they refused to send it to be copied at the Alcazar, where Fer- dinand VII. was residing in 1823, pleading the statutes of their house, and the copy, which ap- pears in the series of Kings in the Hall of Am- ALONZO X. SANCHO IV. 73 bassadors, was made in the convent. 1 At Osma. in Old Castile, Juan St. Ferdinand’s Chancellor and the Bishop of the Diocese built, in 1232, the fine Cathedral, of which the beauty has been marred by much modern patchwork, while its city has decayed into a poor village. Alonso X., or the Learned, whose taste in- clined rather to books than buildings, had at least one painter of illuminations in his service ; for his Bible, in two volumes, written on vellum, Alonso X. el Sabiu. and enriched with barbaric brilliancy by Pedro de Pamplona exists, or lately existed, in the ar- chives of Seville Cathedral. On the last page the artist inscribed this simple record of himself and his patient labour, his piety, and his humble hope of being remembered in his work : — HIC LIBER EXPLETVS EST : SIT PER SCECVLA LCETVS SCRIPTOR. GRATA DIES SIT SIBI. SITQVE QVIES. SCRIPTOR LAVDATVR SCRIPTO. PETRVSQVE VOCATVR PAMPILONENSIS. El LAVS SIT. HONORQVE DEI. Pedro de Pam- plona, Painter of illumina- tions. In the turbulent times of King Sancho the Brave, who reigned amidst external wars and Sancho IV. el Bravo. domestic rebellion, Rodrigo Esteban was painter to that monarch, and was paid for certain works, in 1291-2, one hundred maravedis out of the privy purse, as appears by a MS. book of ac- counts in the royal library. Of this contempo- rary of Cimabue, none of the productions, nor any further notices exist. His works, doubt- 1 Cook's Sketches in Spain, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1843. v. ii. p. 181. Rodrigo Este- ban — Painter. 74 CHAP. II.— NOTICES OF EARLY ART— PEDRO I. Pedro I., el Cruel. less, bore the same relation to the achievements of the great age of Spanish painting that the venerable verses in which the learned Alonso embodied his alchemical lore bear to the classical poems of Garcilasso. Pedro the Cruel, or the Just, whose history and character, like that of our Richard III., form a tilting-ground for historians, bestowed great pains on the renovation and embellishment of Alcazar of Se- ville. the Alcazar of Seville, the ancient palace of the Sultan Abderahman. Many of its light marble columns he brought from Valencia, and much of the delicate stucco embroidery was the work of Moors from Granada. Early Painters in Arragon and Catalonia. During the fourteenth century, Arragon and Catalonia possessed a few painters, and gave a promise of distinction in that branch of art which they did not afterwards fulfil. In Italy, art had already begun to revive from its medi- aeval torpor, and the genius of the pencil to breathe somewhat of life and beauty unto the forms of virgins and saints, drawn after the venerable models of Byzantium. Spanish churchmen, returning from the Vatican, must have observed, and perhaps may have envied, the new and graceful adornments of Italian altars ; and many a merchant of Barcelona had doubtless bowed and marvelled before the frescos of Giotto and Orcagna in the Campo Santo at Pisa, and beheld with jealous admiration the dawning glory of art at Florence. The taste of NORTHERN SCHOOLS— JUAN I. 75 the clergy and of wealthy burghers may have been the means of fostering artistic talent in the active and mercantile provinces of the north, of bringing over masters from Italy, or sending Spanish disciples to their schools. At Zaragoza, so early as 1323, died Ramon Torrente, a painter, leaving behind him a scholar named Guillen Fort. 1 Later in the century, Juan Cesilles prac- tised painting at Barcelona, and in 1382 engaged himself to execute, at the price of 330 ducats of Arragon, 2 for the high altar of the church of San Pedro, in the town of Reus, a series of pic- tures on the history of the Apostles. These early paintings remained in the Church till 1557, when they were unhappily removed to make way for some newer garniture of the altar. Torrente, 1323. Fort. Cesilles, 1382. Juan I. was especially the patron of painting, and entertained in his service the first Italian Juan I. artist who appeared in Spain, Gherardo Stamina, a disciple of Antonio da Venezia, born at Flo- rence in 1354, and employed to paint, in fresco, the life of St. Antony, the Abbot, in the chapel of the Castilians in Santa Croce. This painter attracted the notice of the Spaniards who visited that city. Their invitations, and a private feud, which rendered absence Rom home advisable, induced him to visit Castile, where he lived for 1 Hand-Book, p. 075, where some unpublished MSS. of Cean Ber- mudez are referred to as an authority. 2 The ducat of Arragon was probably worth about four shillings and sixpence sterling, and the whole sum somewhat less than £.75. Stamina of Florence. 76 CHAP. II.— NOTICES OF EARLY ART— JUAN I. Chartreuse of Paular. several years. Although even the names of his works there have perished, his epitaph in the church of S. Jacopo sopra Arno assures us that they were “ pulcherrima opera.” His history bears a favourable testimony to the generosity of Juan, and the refinement of his court; for, “ whereas,” says Vasari, “ he left Florence poor “ and clownish, he returned thither a rich and “ courteous gentleman.” He died there in 1403, or, according to another account, in 1415. He seems to have been a man of humour and unable to resist a joke, even in serious subjects ; for Vasari relates that, being ordered to paint in the chapel of S. Girolamo nel Carmine a picture of that Saint learning his letters, he seized the occasion to introduce a flogging scene, in which the luckless urchin who was horsed, (fanciullo levato a cauallo adosso ad un altro ), writhingunder the lash of the pedagogue, took his revenge by biting the ear of the companion whom he be- strode. The series of paintings, however, in which this facetious episode occurred made the name of Stamina famous in Tuscany, and even throughout Italy. 1 Juan I. founded, in 1388, amongst the lower hills of the Guadarrama chain, the wealthy Chartreuse of Paular with its sumptuous church, which afterwards became famous for its flocks and its paper-mills, its fine pictures, and for several cowled painters of its own. Amidst the wilds 1 Vasari, torn. i. p. 138. 4to. Bologna, 1047. (3 vols.) HENRY III.— CATHEDRALS OF HUESCA AND SEVILLE. 77 of Estremaclura he likewise founded, about the same time, the royal monastery of Guadalupe — the seat of a celebrated Virgin — which, with its towers and spires and spacious courts resembled a town, and was, until the rise of the Escorial, Monastery of Guadalupe. the most splendid of the Jeronomite houses of Spain. In this reign also the small, but exqui- site Cathedral of Oviedo rose on the ruins of a more venerable church, under the auspices of its Bishop, Gutierre de Toledo. Cathedral of Oviedo. Henry III. rebuilt the Alcazar of Madrid, which had been burnt down in previous civil wars, and which, after it had been enlarged and beautified, and stored with many of the finest productions of art, by a long line of kings, suf- fered the same fate in the reign of the first Bour- bon. He also founded the country Palace of the Pardo near Madrid, which became another Henry III. treasury of paintings, and the scene of another conflagration in the reign of Philip III. The beginning of the fifteenth century saw the commencement of two noble cathedrals. Of Cathedral of Huesca, 1400. these the first was begun, at Pluesca, in 1400, by Juan de Olotzaga, a Biscayan architect, and in a hundred and fifteen years, grew into one of the noblest buildings in Arragon. The second was the Cathedral of Seville, of which the ample revenues and grand decorations were so long to foster and employ the artistic genius of Anda- lusia, and of which the interior, with its five mighty aisles and awful choir, remains still Cathedral of Seville, 1401. 78 CHAP. II.— NOTICES OF EARLY ART— CATII. OF SEVILLE. unrivalled, the triumph of the rich and solemn Gothic architecture. In 1401, the see being vacant, the chapter determined to rebuild the fabric. “ Let us build,” said these magnificent ecclesiastics, “ a church that shall cause us “ to be taken for madmen by them who shall “ come after us.” 1 The name of the architect, assuredly one of the greatest masters of his art that ever left his mark upon the earth, perished, with his original plans, in 1734, in the fire of the Palace of Madrid, whither they had been removed by order of Philip II. 2 The work went on, with more or less activity, for more than a century and a half, displaying in its many incongruous parts the successive changes of architectural style. To provide the funds needful for so vast an undertaking, the preben- daries and canons for many years gave up the greater part of their incomes, — an instance of devotion and munificence not uncommon in those old and earnest times, when churchmen were content to offer all their worldly goods on the altar of the Church, hoping for no earthly re- ward, when the wealth and genius of long ages were patiently given to raise one glorious temple, and when the house of God had precedence in men's regard of the palace and the prison. And • “ Fagamos una iglesia para que los de porvenir nos tengan por locos.” — See Ponz, v. xi. p. 3., and, as usual, the Hand-book. 2 Cean Bermudez “ Descripcion Artistica de la Catedral de Sevilla,” p. 20, 8vo. Sevilla, 1804. REIGN OF JUAN II. 79 the example lias not even yet been wholly for- gotten ; for within the last fifteen years the good Bishop Silos Moreno, of Cadiz — a worthy fol- lower of the Fonsecas and Lorenzanas of old — by his holy zeal and munificence has made his Cathedral, wli ich he found a ruinous shell, one of the most stately and splendid of modern churches. Juan II., of Castile, was a lover both of poetry and painting, and his long reign was the era of nascent taste and refinement. He had in his service for several years Dello, a Florentine sculptor and painter, noted for the beauty of his miniature paintings, generally on subjects from Ovid, with which it was then the custom to adorn cofiers and other furniture, and for his frescos in the palace of Giovanni de Medicis, and in the Church of S. Maria Novella. Having acquired wealth and an order of knighthood in Castile, that artist returned to Florence, to indulge his vanity by displaying them. The Signory, how- ever, refused to accord to him the privileges of his new rank, until the King of Castile had written them a warm letter in his behalf. His ostentation was likewise punished by the jeers and gibes of his former acquaintance, as he rode through the streets in sumptuous apparel, on a finely caparisoned horse. With a ludicrous for- getfulness of his new dignities, he would reply to their sarcasms, by making with both hands “ the “ sign of the fig ;” 1 — (fece con arnbe le mane le 1 This quiet and expressive “ retort contemptuous” is conveyed — in Juan II. Dello of Flo- rence. 80 CHAP. II.— NOTICES OF EABLY AET— JUAN II. Rogel the Fleming. jiclie ;) but wearied out at last by such annoy- ances, he returned to Spain. There he was again honourably received at court, lived like a great lord, always painting in an apron of brocade ( grembiale de brocato), and died in 1421, aged forty-nine. Vasari says that his drawing was indifferent, but that he was one of the first artists who attempted to display the muscles of the naked figure. 1 None of his works exist in Spain. In the time of Philip II., an old canvas was found rolled up in a chest in the Alcazar of Segovia, on which was painted the Moorish rout at Higueruelas by the arms of Juan II. It was for some time taken for a work of Dello by certain connoisseurs, who forgot, or did not know, that he died ten years before that battle was fought. Rogel, a native of Flanders, was also painter to Juan II., who presented, in 1445, to the Car- thusian friars whom he had established in his own palace of Mirafiores, near Burgos, a small oratory, painted by that master. The centre compartment contained a “Dead Christ,” and the doors or wings his “ Nativity,” and his “Appearing to the Virgin.” It was surrounded by a stone border, on which various figures were painted, and the whole was Spain at least — “ by inserting the bead of the thumb between the fore “ and middle fingers, and raising the back of the hand toward the person “ thus complimented.” (Hand-Book, p. 83.) The Italian method is much the same. 1 Vasari I. 166 — 168. PAINTING AT TOLEDO AND SEVILLE. 81 executed with a delicacy and effect very credit- able to that early age. Master Jorge Ingles, possibly an Englishman, likewise flourished as a painter in this reign. The famous literary Marquess of Santillana ordained him by will, in 1455, to paint for his hospital at Buitrago the pictures of the high altar. Those of them which Cean Bermudez El Maestro Jorge Ingles. saw, though stiff and hard, like all paintings of the time, afforded evidence of considerable ability. Amongst them were portraits of the Marquess and his wife, which the Duke of Infan- tado, towards the close of the last century, with a regard for the illustrations of his house, unfor- tunately rare amongst the Spanish nobility, caused to be brought to Madrid to be cleaned. By his orders, that of the Marquess was well engraved by Fernando Selma. During the whole of the fifteenth century, Toledo took the lead in the fine arts. Dolfin introduced there, in 1418, painting on glass, which was brought to great perfection under the patronage of the Church. About the same time, Toledo. Dolfin, the first stainer of glass. Alonso Rodriguez and his brothers distinguished themselves in sculpture, as may be seen by their spirited, though rude, groups and figures which adorn the great portal of the Cathedral. The Eodriguez — sculptors. At Seville, Juan Sanchez de Castro, the morn- ing star of the school of Andalusia, appeared about the middle of the century. In 1454 he painted for the Cathedral the pictures of the School of Anda- lusia — J. S. de Castro. G 82 CHAP. II.— NOTICES OF EABLY AET. Legend of San Custobal. old Gothic altar, in the chapel of San Josef, which, though stiff and languid in design, still preserved their freshness of colour, when Cean Bermudez wrote, three hundred and fifty years afterwards. For the church of San Julian he painted a giant St. Christopher in fresco, an embellishment com- mon in Spanish churches, where it is placed near the door, to inculcate humility on those who come to pray. The legend of this saint, as told by an old English poet, may fitly illustrate this early work of one of the oldest Spanish painters : — “ There was a man of stature big, and big withal in mind, For serve be would, yet one than whom be greater none might find. He bearing that the Emperor was in the world most great, Came to bis court, was entertained ; and, serving bun at meat, It chanced the Devil was named, whereat the Emperor him blest, When as until be knew the cause, the Pagan would not rest. But when be beard this lord to fear the Devil, bis ghostly foe, He left bis service, and to seek and serve the Devil did go ; Of Heaven, or Hell, God, or the Devil, be erst nor beard, nor cared, Alone be sought to serve the same that would by none be dared. He met (who soon is met) the Devil — was entertained — they walk, Till coming to a cross, the Devil did fearfully it balk. The servant musing, questioned bis master of bis fear — ‘ One Christ,’ quoth be, ‘ with dread I mind, when doth a cross appear.’ ‘ Then serve thyself,’ the giant said, ‘ that Christ to serve I’ll seek.’ For him be askt an hermit, who advis’d him to be meek, By which, by faith, and work of abns would sougbt-for Christ be found, n.nd bow and where to practice these, be gave directions sound. Then be that scorn'd bis service late to greatest potentates, Even at a common ferry now to carry all awaits. Thus doing long, as with a child be over once did wade, Under bis load midway be faints, from sinking hardly staid. Admiring bow, and asking who, was answered of the child, As on bis shoulders Christ be bore, by being humbly mild, So through humility bis soul to Christ was reconciled, And of bis carriage, Christo-fer thenceforth himself was styled.” 1 1 Warner, Albion’s England, book ix. cliap. 50. MOORISH DECORATIONS. 83 Sanchez cle Castro’s saint of burden has good reason to faint under his load ; for besides the Divine Babe, he has to sustain the weight of sundry palmers and holy men, who cling to his girdle, and so pass the river dry shod. 1 The signature of the painter is nearly all that remains of his work, for the figure was repainted in 1775 by a new and heavy hand. In the Convent of Santiponce, (now a penitentiary) near Seville, there formerly existed a painting on panel, of the “ Annunciation,” by Sanchez de Castro, in which the angel was arrayed in pontifical vest- ments, — garnished with embroideries setting all chronology at defiance, and representing the twelve Apostles and the Resurrection of our Lord — and the Virgin held in her hand a rosary and a pair of spectacles! 2 He must have lived to a great age, for he received payment in 1516 from the chapter, for painting and gilding part of the high altar of the Cathedral. A marble slab in the nave of the church of San Roman, marked the sepulchre, where he and his family were laid. The internal troubles of the Christian kingdom in the fifteenth century, and the Moorish wars, which followed the union of the crowns of Arra- gon and Castile, doubtless retarded the progress 1 Cook’s Sketches of Spain, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1834, v. ii. p. 182. 2 This curious old picture is said to have been taken away by Godoy Prince of Peace, and may possibly still be in existence. See Davies’s “ Life of Murillo,” p. 17, note. London, 1819, 8vo. Moorish deco- rations imitated by Christian artists. 84 CHAP. II.— NOTICES OF EARLY ART— GOLDSMITHS. Artists in gold and silver at Valladolid and Valencia. of the arts in Spain. The taste of their patrons, however, and the skill of their professors, was steadily, though slowly, increasing. The Moorish decorations, their vivid painting and beautiful lace -like stucco-work, which had been long adopted in Christian palaces, began to be exe- cuted by uncircumcised artists even before the fall of Granada. Cean Bermudez quotes a contract, dated 1476, by which one Garcia del Barco and another painter became bound to paint with Moorish work ( obra Mori sea J the corridors of the Duke of Alba’s castle, at Barco de Avila, for the sum of 56,000 maravedis. The paper is drawn up with a formal explicitness, which implies that such documents were frequently in use. The goldsmith’s craft was advancing towards its future importance and perfection, and church treasuries to display somewhat of their coming splendour. Valladolid became famous for the skill of its jewellers and artificers in the precious The Castelnous metals. At Valencia, in 1454, Juan de Cas- telnou executed, for the Cathedral, a silver Cus- Fr. J. de Se- govia, of Gna- todia, or shrine, for the exposition of the Host on great festivals, of Gothic design, and fourteen palms high ; and, in 1460, his son and disciple, J ay me, a silver altar and retablo, 1 or architectural altar-piece, forty palms high and twenty-four vide, and profusely embellished with bas-reliefs. Fray Juan de Segovia, a Jeronomite monk of 1 Tlie “ Retablo” comprehends the entire structure of the altar-piece with its decorations. REIGN OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC. 85 Guadalupe, became famous for his exquisite chalices, reliquiaries, and crucifixes. One of his best works was the silver salt-cellar, in the shape of a lion ( leon ) tearing open a pomegranate (granada), afterwards presented by the Prior, with happy and delicate courtesy, to the Catholic Sovereigns, when they visited the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, to give thanks for the sur- render of Baza — two years before Granada opened its gates to the army of Castile and Leon. dalupe — his salt-cellar. The famous camp, built not of cords and can- vas, but of stone and lime, on the slopes of Santa Fe, where Ferdinand and Isabella held their state during the leaguer of the Moorish capital, was remarkable, not only for its discipline, and the daring of its knights and nobles, but for luxury and magnificence, such as few northern courts could then have displayed. The Great Captain — who there served his apprenticeship in war and victory — was distinguished by his sump- tuous equipments, as well as by his youthful gal- lantry. The banquets of the Duke of Infantado 1 shone with plate, and his person glittered with jewels, as brilliantly as if he had been holding peaceful revels in his ancestral halls at Guada- lajara. But it was not until that chivalrous host had sung its solemn Te Deum — till the Grand Cardinal, arrayed in vestments embroidered by the fair and pious hands of the Queen, had said 1 Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella, v. ii. p. 326, note. London, 1839. Progress of taste and re- finement. 86 CHAP. II.— REIGN OF Full of Gra- nada ; its effect on Christian art. the first mass within the mosque of the Alhambra, that Spain enjoyed the repose necessary for the growth and perfection of the elegant arts. The opening of the Damascus of the West could not but increase that taste for luxury and splendour which already inspired its Christian subduers. The stately mosques and fairy palaces, its gardens and gateways, and marble fountains, afforded superb models for their imitation. And they brought to the conquest of the domains of art all the energy acquired in their long struggle Isabella la Ca- tulica; her taste and zeal Jur the arts. with the Infidel. The great Isabella, to whom Castile owed Granada and the Indies — and history the fairest model of a wife, a mother, and a Queen — aided the progress of taste and intellec- tual culture no less studiously than she laboured Her Archi- tectural works for the political prosperity of her kingdom. Her large and active mind early comprehended the national importance of literature and art. She built and endowed churches, and worked cha- subles, and dalmatiques, and processional ban- ners for the clergy, while she also gave an im- pulse to the weightier matters of learning and piety by her munificence and example. Archi- tecture made a great stride in her reign. By an early statute, passed at Toledo, she provided for the erection of large and spacious buildings for public purposes in the chief towns of her do- at Segovia. minions. The Alcazar of Segovia, whose tall keep and clustered turrets form a fine feature in 1 Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, ii. p. 297, note. FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 87 views of that ancient city, was a favourite resi- dence of Isabella, and the rich decorations of its halls and corridors, now degraded into a military school, afford evidence of her taste. To her Alcazar at Seville she added the small Gothic Seville, chapel, and she enlarged and embellished, at her own expense, the stately Chartreuse of Mira- flores. 1 She and her husband built the grand Royal Hospice for pilgrims at Santiago, and they added largely to the great monastery of Miraflores, St. Jerome, once the pride of Madrid. 2 At Madrid, Toledo, on one of the finest sites in that romantic capital, they erected the convent of San Juan de los Reyes, the most sumptuous edifice of its day, of which, alas ! the church, much dilapi- dated, is all that has survived the invasion of the trans-pyrenean Vandals. Nearly two hun- dred pairs of rusty manacles, struck from Christian hands at the fall of Granada, still hang between the rich buttresses of the exterior, to com- Toledo. memorate the conquerors who, in their holy war, vowed this convent to St. John, their patron saint. Ferdinand the Catholic and the Crafty, the Henry VII. of Spain, whom Shakspeare — speak- ing by the mouth of his daughter, our gentle Katherine — so justly styles — “ The wisest prince that there had reigned by many “ A year before,” 3 1 Bosarte. Viage Artistico. Madrid — 8vo. 1804, p. 209. 2 Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella, v. ii. p. 346. London, 3 vols. 8vo. 1840. 3 Henry VIII. Act ii. sc. 4. Ferdinand VI. el Catolico. 88 CHAP. II.— REIGN OF Effect of this conquest of Naples. was too parsimonious, and too deeply immersed in state intrigues, to bestow much care on the arts. But his sagacity easily perceived some of the advantages arising from their cultivation, and he approved, if he did not much aid, the magni- ficent works undertaken by his Queen. By his conquest of Naples, he extended the communica- tions between Italy and his Spanish dominions ; and thus, if the fine arts owed but little to liis bounty, his ambition opened the road to know- ledge and improvement. He gave, however, 10,000 ducats out of the Indian revenues of He builds a convent at Za- ragoza. Castile, towards the completion of the Cathedral of Seville. In his own city of Zaragoza, he built the monastery of Santa Engracia, which had been The Aforlanes, sculptors. planned by his father. An excellent sculptor of Biscay, Juan de Morlanes, whose style re- sembles that of the old German masters, was principally employed in the decorations. He was assisted by his son, Diego, whose fortunes so throve, in the course of years, by the arts, that when the Jesuits came, in the next reign, to Zaragoza, he gave them, not only a plan for their church, but a present of 3,000 ducats. The Siloes , of Burgos, sculp- tors and archi- tects. The Siloes, of Burgos, father and son, were likewise excellent sculptors and architects. Gil, the first, is chiefly known for his stately tombs of King Juan II., and the Infant Don Alonso, erected in the Chartreuse of Miraflores, by orders of Queen Isabella, in which the most fantastic imagination has found hands to work its wildest FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 89 will, and alabaster has been moulded like clay, or trained and twined like the green osier, and where the Gothic genius of Spain flashed with dying splendour. 1 Diego, the son, erected the noble Cathedral of Granada, partly from his father’s designs, which remains an example of the in- fluence of Moslem taste on Christian architecture. Cathedral of Granada. He died at a great age, possessed of much wealth in houses and lands, slaves, plate and jewels. Painting also was improving, though perhaps more slowly than other arts. Antonio Rincon, the first Spanish painter mentioned by Palomino, was likewise the first who left the stiff Gothic Painting. A. Rincon. style, and attempted to give to his figures some- thing of the graces and proportions of nature. He was born at Guadalajara, in 1446 ; and is said to have studied in Italy, under Castagno, or Ghirlandajo, apparently on no better grounds than the improvement he made in the barbarous style of his age and country. He lived chiefly at Toledo, where he enjoyed the patronage of the Chapter, and also of Ferdinand and Isabella, who made him their painter-in-ordinary, and gave him the Order of Santiago. The portraits of these Sovereigns, painted by him, long hung over the high altar of the Church of San Juan de los Reyes, at Toledo, but disappeared in the wars of His portraits of the Catholic Sovereigns. 1 Bosarte, Vi age Artistico, p. 273. For an account of these wonderful tombs, see also the Hand-Book ; and Theophile Gautier’s clever and thoroughly French “ Voyage en Espagne.” Paris, 12mo, 1845, p. 58. 90 CHAP. II.— BEIGN OF Copies at Ma- drid. the French usurpation — so fatal to the historical relics, as well as to the fortunes of the Peninsula. The Church of San Bias, at Valladolid, likewise possessed similar portraits, which, in the begin- ning of this century, had been removed to the staircase of the chaplains’ house, near San Juan Letran, in that city, where they were suffering from exposure to the open air, when seen by Bosarte, who praises them for the curious exact- ness of their costumes. 1 If they have escaped the perils of fire and water, they may, perhaps, still be extant in the Museum of Valladolid. In one of the lower corridors of the royal gallery of Madrid hang two full-length portraits of the Catholic Sovereigns 2 copied from Rincon, and taken perhaps from the Toledo or Valladolid ori- ginals. With much of Holbein’s hardness, they have much of his strength, but not, however, his splendour of colour. Both seem to have been taken when the royal sitters were in the prime Ferdinand. of life. Ferdinand has the dignified presence and the fine features clothed with “ impenetrable “ frigidity,” ascribed to him in history. 3 His hair, usually described as bright chesnut, here is dark, and being cut short, and combed over his brow, enhances the cunning keenness of Iris eyes. 1 Bosarte, Viage Artistica, p. 125. 2 Catalogo de los Cuadros del Real Museo de Madrid, Nos. 1C4C and 1647. 3 Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella, v. iii. pp. 470-478. 8vo., Lon- don, 1840. FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 91 Over a cuirass he wears a red surcoat and black cloak, and in his hand he holds a paper, appa- rently of accounts. The Queen’s portrait is no less true to history than her lord’s. Her bright auburn hair and blue eyes are amongst the points of resemblance between her and our Queen Eliza- beth, recalling that Princess, as she appears in an early portrait, by Holbein, at Hampton Court. But in beauty of person, as in grace of character, the Castilian Queen far excels our imperial “ vestal throned by the west.” Her forehead is high and full, and her eyes — as yet undimmed by weeping for her only son — softly lustrous, as they might have been when she rode victorious into the Alhambra. The finely formed mouth in- dicates energy tempered with gentleness ; and the whole expression of the head and bearing of the figure are not unworthy of the woman, of whom those who knew her best have recorded, that they had never known or heard of another, “ wise, “ and fair, and good as she.” 1 Her dress is a crimson robe trimmed with gold, over which falls 1 There is probably no historical lady upon whose person and character so much trustworthy posthumous praise has been bestowed — few women perhaps have ever deserved so much. Geronimo de Oviedo y Valdez says of the one — “ En hermosura puestas delante de S. A. todas las “ mugeres que yo he visto ninguna vi tan graciosa, ni tanto de ver como “ su persona.” Quincuagenas M.S., quoted by Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella, v. iii. p. 250. Peter Martyr speaks thus of the other, in his letter to the Archbishop of Granada and the Count of Tendilla, written after Isa- bella’s death — “ Orbata est terrse facies mirabili omamento inaudito hac- “ tenus. In sexu nam foemineo et potenti licentia nullam memini me “ legisse quam huic Natura Deusque formaverit, comparari dignam.” Opus Epistolarum. F.p. cclxxix. Amstel. 1670, folio p. 159. Isabella. 92 CHAP. II.— REIGN OF Paintings by Rincon at To- ledo? a dark mantle. In her hand she holds a little bre- viary, as fitting and characteristic a companion of the leisure of the pious Queen, as the finan- cial return in the fingers of her lord. If any works of Rincon still remain to the Cathedral of Toledo, they will perhaps he disco- vered, by some future antiquarian, in the richly carved altar-piece of the chapel of Santiago, — where the Lunas repose in their tombs of ivory- like marble — amongst the paintings of which the Nativity and Entombment of our Lord are the best deserving of notice, for the force of their Altar-piece by Rincon at Ro- bleda de Cha- vila. heads, and their accuracy of execution. At the village of Robleda de Chavila, a few miles west of the Escorial, there existed, and probably still exists, an altar, in the church, containing seven- teen pictures on the life of the Virgin, entirely painted by Rincon, which Cean Bermudez praises for their “ drawing, beauty, character, expres- sion, and excellent draperies.” He died in 1500, F. Rincon. leaving a son, Fernando, his scholar, who assisted Juan de Borgoiia in various works at Toledo, and whose name appears in the accounts of the College of St. Ildefonso at Alcala, in 1518, when he Avas paid 500 maravedisfor the humble service of polishing ( dando lustre) the medallion of Cardi- nal de Cisneros. F. Florez. Francisco Florez was an excellent painter of illuminations, in the sendee of Isabella, whose missal delicately embellished by his hand, is still preserved in the Cathedral of Granada. FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. Pedro Berreguete was a native of Paredes de Nava, and painter to Philip I., or the Handsome, the Flemish husband of the unhappy Infanta Juana, by whom he was ennobled. His earliest known works are supposed to be those which he painted with one Santos Cruz, for the high altar of the Cathedral of Avila. In 1483, he was employed with Rincon, by the Chapter of Toledo, to paint the walls of the old “ Sagrario,” or chapel where the Host is kept, attached to the Cathedral, 1 for which they were paid 75,000 maravedis. He likewise painted the cloister in 1495, and the vestry in 1497, and received for those works respectively 57,000, and 36,000 maravedis. He married Elvira Gonzalez, a lady of condition, by whom he had several children, (one of whom, Alonso, became famous as an artist,) and died at Madrid, it is supposed, about 1500. Cean Bermudez considers him entitled to rank, as a painter, with Pietro Perugino. Juan de Borgona enjoyed a high reputation at Toledo, and the patronage of its great Arch- bishop Ximenes de Cisneros. From 1495 to 1499, he was employed, with other artists, in executing, in the cloisters of the Cathedral, a variety of sacred paintings, now unhappily buried beneath the pallid frescos of Bayeu and Maella. He like- wise worked at Alcala de Henares, for the uni- 1 The Sagrario is usually the largest of the chapels, and separate from the rest of the fabric. In some Cathedrals — those of Seville and Toledo, for instance — it is used as a parish church. 93 P. Berreguete. Santos Cruz. J. de Borgona. 94 CHAP. II.— REIGN OF Paintings in the Sala Capi- tular del In- vierno in the Cathedral of Toledo. versity. Between 1508 and 1511, he painted a series of religious subjects on the walls of the winter chapter-room at Toledo, the designs for which were seen and approved by the Archbishop. These works are well preserved, and are admira- ble for their brilliant colouring and tasteful draperies. The “ Nativity of the Virgin” is the best. St. Anne lies in a canopied bed, and the holy babe is brought to her to be kissed, by a young nurse beautiful as a Madonna of Peru- gino. The lower end of the finely-proportioned, but badly-lighted room, is occupied by “ The “ Last Judgment,” a large and remarkable compo- sition. Immediately beneath the figure of our Lord, a hideous fiend, in the shape of a boar, roots a fair and reluctant woman out of her grave with his snout, as if she were a truffle, twining his tusks in her long amber locks. To the left, are drawn up in line, a party of the wicked, each figure being the incarnation of a sin of which the name is written on a label above in Gothic letters, as “iEbaricta,” “iLuxtiria,” and the like. On their shoulders sit little ma- licious imps, in the likeness of monkeys, and round their lower limbs flames climb and curl. Fresco in the Capilla Muza - rabe. The forms of the good and faithful on the right, display far less vigour of fancy. In 1514, he painted, on a wall of the Muza- rabic Chapel, a fresco of the Conquest of Oran, to commemorate the military exploits of the active archbishop — a work historically interest- FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 95 ing and curious as a record of costume, but so much inferior to those in the chapter-room, that documentary evidence alone leads us to believe it to be by the same hand. The mitred leader has just debarked from his galley, and mounted his mule ; he wears the scarlet robes and hat of a cardinal ; and the cross is carried before him by a priest. The mail-clad soldiery rush to the assault with equal disregard of dis- cipline and perspective, and easily scale the Infidel walls, which they are tall enough to see over. Borgona likewise painted, in fresco, the walls of the Cathedral library, for which he was paid, Frescos in library. in 1519, 100,000 maravedis. He also executed the series of portraits of the Primates of Spam, in the winter chapter-room, down to Cardinal de Fonseca, inclusive. Like the Scottish Kings at Holyrood House, most of the fabulous and early Prelates seem to have been taken from a single model; and then - complexions, intended perhaps to alternate between ascetic paleness and jovial rubicundity, are too often either blue or bricky. Portraits of Archbishops of Toledo in chap- ter-room. The countenance of the Grand Cardinal de Men- doza, doubtless taken from an authentic portrait, is handsome, and his air high-bred and cheerful ; which accords well with his character and the Mendoza. words of his kinsman and chronicler, Pedro de Salazar, Avho describes him as “ majestic in person, “ and dignified and venerable in presence; his face “ well-featured, kindly and serene.” 1 Cardinal 1 Cronica de el Gran Cardenal, cap. lxiii. Toledo, 1025, folio, p. 39S. Cisneros. 96 CHAP. II.— REIGN OF Croy. Ximenes is taken in profile ; liis features are spare, and liis expression earnest and stern. The Flemish Archbishop de Croy has the fair com- plexion proper to his country, and the high-born look befitting his princely blood. This collection of portraits affords an inexhaustible, and probably, virgin mine, for the student of ecclesiastical costume ; endless and most gorgeous are its spe- cimens of episcopal ornament, of the crozier, the pallium, the pectoral cross, the gloves, and the mitre, aurifrigiata or pretiosa. Juan de Borgoha sometimes gave designs for Church plate ; his name ceases to appear in the Cathedral records in 1533, when it is supposed that he died. School of An- dalusia. J. Nunez. Seville, and the school of Sanchez de Castro, meanwhile produced Juan Nunez, a painter, whose best work was executed for the Cathedral, and represented the Virgin supporting the dead body of our Lord, with St. Michael and St. Vin- cent Martyr at her side, and an ecclesiastic kneeling in prayer beneath. Notwithstanding the Gothic stiffness of Christ’s figure, Cean Ber- mudez reckoned this picture not inferior to the works of Albert Durer, for beauty and brilliancy of colouring, fine disposition of drapery, and finish of the extremities, and for the delicate minuteness with which the churchman’s em- broidered robes are painted. Nunez, however, sometimes fell, like his master, into absurdities ; for he left in the same Cathedral, pictures of the archangels Michael and Gabriel, each with a FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 97 pair of peacock’s wings. The art of staining glass was brought to Seville by Cristobal Aleman, who put into the Cathedral, in 1504, a painted window, the first of that glorious series, after- wards completed by the Flemish brothers Arnao, and Carlos of Bruges. Aleman intro- duces stained glass at Seville. Alexo Fernandez was a painter of considerable taste and skill, and executed for the Convent of St. Jerome, at Cordoba, several altar-pieces on subjects taken from the life of Christ and the patron saint, which were held to equal any con- temporary production of the Spanish pencil. Called to Seville in 1508, by the Chapter, he was employed with his brother Jorge, a sculptor, and other artists, in painting and gilding the noble retablo, designed at the close of the pre- vious century, for the High Altar of the Cathe- dral, by the Flemish architect, Dancart. He re- mained at Seville till 1525. “ Though his saints,” says Cean Burmudez, “ are still adorned with “ gilt diadems and glories, they are better drawn “ than those of Castro and his disciples, and “ there belongs to them a noble feeling and “ character, and an accuracy in the imitation of “ rich stuffs and other accessories, that denote A. Fernandez. “ advancing knowledge.” At Valencia, in 1506, Francisco Neapoli and Pablo de Aregio, supposed to have been disciples of Leonardo da Vinci, painted several passages from the life of the Virgin on twelve panels of the doors which once enclosed the great silver altar Valencia. Neapoli and Aregio. H 98 CHAP. 11.— REIGN OF Munificence of the Church. of tlie Cathedral, with a correctness and grandeur of design almost worthy of that great master. Of these pictures, Philip IV. said, several ages afterwards, that “ the altar was silver, but its “ doors were gold.” 1 The “ Adorations of the Shep- “ herds and of the Kings,” are perhaps the most striking and effective pieces of the series. The artists received 3,000 golden ducats for the work, which is said to have been presented to the church by Pope Alexander VI., of the Valencian house of Borgia, a man equally remarkable for his taste, his talents, and his vices. Neapoli and Aregio likewise painted a part of the walls of the Cathedral in fresco ; but their works fell before the improvements of some mitred Goth towards the end of the seventeenth century. Isabella was nobly supported in her efforts for the promotion of art by the magnates of the Ahp. Mendoza, of Toledo. Church. At Toledo, the Cardinal Archbishop Mendoza, “ the glory and shining light of that “ ancient house, the idol of Spain, the pride of “ the conclave,” 2 erected at his own charges the Foundling Hospital of Santa Cruz, and at Valla- dolid a College of the same name 3 — magnificent 1 Ponz. Viage de Espana, tom iv. p. 40. In the Hand-Book (p. 439), by a misprint, doubtless, this remark is attributed to Philip II. 2 Writing to the Archbishop of Granada, on the death of this munificent prelate, Peter Martyr uses these words : — “ Periit patruus ejus Petrus ille “ Gonzalns Mendotiae Domus splendor, et lucida fas ; periit quern uniyersa “ colebat Hispania, quern exteri etiam Principes venerabantur, quern ordo “ Cardineus Collegam sibi esse gloriabatur.” — Epist. clix. Opus Episto- larum — Amst. 1670, folio, p. 89. 3 See p. 56. FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 99 piles, each of which was ten years inbuilcling. 1 His famous successor, Ximenes de Cisneros, was still more munificent in his patronage of letters and arts. During the reign of that good Archbishop, the ancient capital of the monarchy became the neAv metropolis of art, a proud eminence which it long maintained. Leaving the graver cares of Church and State, or the compilation of his famous Polyglot, the great Cardinal of Spain was often seen, measuring-rod in hand, amongst the rising walls of his university at Alcala de He- nares, or overlooking the progress of the new decorations which he lavished on his Cathedral. Cardinal Ximenes. The noble high altar of marble in that venerable church was erected by his orders, and fixed the reputation of its author, Vigarny, one of the best sculptors of Spain. In the Cathedral archives is still preserved his beautiful missal, in seven folio volumes, profusely embellished with paint- ings and illuminations by Vasquez, Canderoa, and other artists of merit, whose names this work has rescued from oblivion. At Salamanca, Bishop Diego Ramirez, of Cuenca, founded the Colegio Mayor, which bore the name of his see, elegant and gorgeous as a fairy palace, but now Bp. Ramirez of Salamanca . a ruin, thanks to the soldiers of Ney. There also two dignitaries of the Church, Juan Alvarez de Toledo, (uncle to the great Duke of Alba,) and Diego de Deza built the Dominican Convent of San Esteban, one of the latest and one of the 1 Prescott’s Ferdinand and Isabella, vol. ii., p. 340. J.A.de Toledo, Abp. Deza. 100 Proof of the Proyress of art under Ferd. and Isub. CHAP. II.— REIGN OF FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. most beautiful Gothic buildings in Spain. Deza, who was a friend of Columbus, afterwards became Archbishop of Seville, where lie founded the College of San Tomas. That the fine arts made a rapid progress during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, is sufficiently proved by the fact, that when Charles V., who had no predilection for his Castilian subjects, wished to erect a monument to these great an- cestors at Granada, the scene of their glory, the execution of the work was entrusted to a sculptor of Burgos, in preference to a Florentine rival of Michael Angelo. 4 % q? 6)0 A CHAPTER III. ♦ REIGN OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V.— 1510— 1556. LUS ULTRA,” the superb devise of Charles V., was not more significant of his boundless ambition than of the stirring and ardent spirit of his age. The universal mind of Europe was awakening to a fresh activity and unheard-of achievements. The scholar and the artist, as well as the soldier and the statesman, were up and doing. While one cloud of adventurers threw itself on the golden regions of the New World, another, ani- mated with nobler purpose, passed into Italy to learn of the genius of the Old. New languages blossomed into poetry and eloquence. New arts sprang up to adorn and refine civilized life. The Spanish and Italian peninsulas, to the infinite advantage of the first, had for some time been brought into close relations with each other. Ferdinand and his Great Captain had made the Crown of the Two Sicilies an appanage of the House of Arragon. “ Barcelona the Rich,” Malaga, and “ Valencia the Fair,” were yearly extending their commerce with Genoa and the Brilliant age of Charles V. Close and in- creasing con- nection of Spain with Italy. 102 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF THE Charles V. as a patron of art. Italian cities. The union of the vast dominions of Arragon, Castile, Burgundy, and Austria, under the young Emperor, promoted the interchange of interests and ideas between all the countries of Europe. The Italian schools of art began to be filled with a crowd of students, motley as the host revealed to Bradamante on the •visioned fields of Romagna. Tedesco, Ispano, Greco, Italo e Franco — 1 the tasteful and inquiring spirits of all lands came to chink at the ancient fountain-heads of refinement. Long and deep were the draughts of the Spaniard, and the rich effects were found, after many days, in the splendid creations of Castilian and Andalusian genius, till the worn- out dynasty of Austria ceased to hold the Spanish sceptre, and the scholars of Velasquez and Murillo died off at Madrid and Seville. "With the deep sagacity of his grandsire Ferdi- nand, Charles V. inherited much of the fine taste of Isabella of Castile. In the midst of wars and intrigues, which he conducted with all the shrewd- ness of our Dutch William, in the course of rapid journeys from Naples to Dover, from the Tagus to the Danube, that anticipated the fiery dispatch of Napoleon, he found time to notice and reward many of the chief artists of foreign countries, as well as of Iris own wide dominions. As a patron of art, he was as well known at Nuremburg and 1 L'Orlando Furioso, canto iii. st 55. EMPEROR CHARLES V. 103 Venice as at Antwerp and Toledo; and in the splendid group of contemporary sovereigns, none went beyond him in magnificence. Of no prince are recorded more sayings which show a refined taste and a quick eye. The burghers of Antwerp religiously preserve his remark, that the light and soaring spire of their Cathedral deserved to be put under a glass case. Florence has not forgotten how he called her the Queen of the His fine taste. Arno, decked for a perpetual holiday. The Cor- dobese historians have chronicled his vain regrets on visiting the famous mosque of Abderahman, which had become the Cathedral of their city, for the havoc made in its forest of fairy columns by the erection of the Christian choir, to which, when at a distance, he had himself in an evil hour consented. The citizens of Cordoba had vainly sought to arrest the cruel improvements commenced by the Chapter ; and appealed against that V andalic body to the Emperor ; Charles, however, as yet knowing little of the Moors and their works, sided with the churchmen, and an ample clearing was forthwith made in the midst of the long continuities of the aisles. But he came, he saw, and he confessed his error ; shifting the blame, however, as was natural and not unjust, upon the broad shoulders of the Chapter. “ Had I wotted of what ye were doing,” said he to the abashed improvers, “ you should have laid “ no finger on this ancient pile. You have built “ a something, such as is to be found any where, His visit to the Cathedral of Cordoba. CHAP. III.— EEIGN OF THE “ and you have destroyed a wonder of the world .” 1 The tine speeches which he lavished on Titian are as well known as the more substantial rewards. The painter, happening one day to let fall his brush, the Emperor, who was standing by the easel, picked it up, and gently prevented his apologies by saying that “ Titian was worthy “ to be served by Caesar.” On another occasion, Caesar having requested Titian to re-touch a picture which hung over the door of the cham- ber, the artist found that he could not reach it from the floor. The Emperor and some of the courtiers moved a table to his aid, but the height proving insufficient, Charles, without more ado, took the table by one corner, and calling on those gentlemen to assist, fairly hoisted Titian aloft with his own imperial hands, saying, “ we must all “ of us bear up this great man, to show that his “ art is empress of all others.” The envy and displeasure with which the men of pomp and ceremonies viewed such familiarities, which ap- peared to them as so many breaches made in the divinity that did hedge then king and them- selves, only gave their master an opportunity to do fresh honour to his favourite, in that cele- brated and cutting rebuke, “ There are many “ princes ; there is but one Titian.” Not less valued, perhaps, by the great painter, than his title, orders, and pensions, was the delicate com- pliment of the Emperor, when he declared that I Ponz., tom. xvii. p. 2. 104 His regard for Titian. Anecdotes of the Emperor and the Painter. EMPEROR CHARLES V. 105 “ no other hand should draw his portrait, since “ he had thrice received immortality from the “ pencil of Titian.” In architecture, the field in which princes, from Cheops downwards, have chiefly loved to dis- play their magnificence and eternise their names, His Architec- tural Works. Charles left several monuments. At Madrid, he rebuilt the greater part of the Alcazar, which, after being further embellished by his successors, perished by fire in the reign of Philip V. He likewise built anew the hunting seat at Palaces at Ma- drid. the Pardo, near that capital. His unfinished The Pardo. palace at Granada has obtained him both praise and blame. The summer which followed his marriage was passed with his young Empress in the beautiful Alhambra. Neither his admi- Granada. ration 1 for its clream-like halls and cool refreshing fountains, nor his unavailing lament for the invaded colonnades of Cordoba, prevented him from razing the winter palace of the Moors, to make way for an edifice out of all keeping with the remainder. Nothing can be said in defence of tins outrage, except that Machuca’s fragment is a noble specimen of art, and that the Moorish buildings destroyed, were possibly inferior to the rest. To the citadel of Toledo he added, with happier taste, that noble court, of which the shell, “ majestic though in ruin,” overtops the domes and spires of the ancient city, and looks up the 1 Cean Bermudez, Noticias de los Arquitectos Arquiteetura de Espana, tom. i. p. 219. Toledo. 106 CHAP. III.— EEIGN OF THE His love of Painting. valley of tlie Tagus to his favourite elm groves at Aranjuez. The front, the interior arcade, and the staircase are the glory of the architects, Covarubias and Vergara, 1 and are worthy of the imperial builder, and the natural and historic grandeur of the site. Painting was the art, however, which Charles most delighted to honour, and in which his taste was most cultivated and discriminating. Having learned drawing in his youth, he exa- mined pictures and prints with all the keenness of an artist; and much astonished iEneas Vicus of Parma, by the searching scrutiny that he be- stowed on a plate of his own portrait, which that famous engraver had submitted to his eye. 2 In power and ability the first monarch of his age, it was fitting that he should choose for his pe- culiar painter its greatest master. But in his Spanish kingdoms his favourite art owed little to his care. Perhaps, that early distrust of his Cas- tilian subjects, which placed the mitre of Toledo on the head of a Croy, may have influenced him in his predilection for foreign artists. Neither Castile, however, nor his favorite Flanders, could furnish him with a Titian. For such a treasure he was obliged to look “ plus ultra,” even beyond the limits of his far-stretching empire. Palomino is doubtless carried away by an artist’s enthu- siasm, when he asserts, 3 that Charles regarded 1 Ponz. i. p. 122. 2 Dialogo della Pittura di M. Lodovico Dolce — Vinegia, 1557, 12mo. p. 18. 8 Palomino, tom. iii. p. 877. EMPEROR CHARLES V. 107 the acquisition of a picture by Titian, with as much satisfaction as the conquest of a province. Yet, when he had parted with all his provinces, he retained some of Titian’s pictures ; when he betook himself to gardening, and watchmaking, and manifold masses at San Yuste, the sole luxury to be found in his simple apartments with their hangings of sombre brown, was that master’s St. Jerome, meditating in a cavern scooped in the cliffs of a green and pleasant valley ; a fitting emblem of his own retreat. Before this appropriate picture, or the “ Glory” which hung in the convent church, and which was removed, in obedience to his will, His Pictures at San Yuste. with his body, to the Escorial, he paid his orisons, and schooled his mind to forgetfulness of the pomps and vanities of power. 1 During this reign, the fine arts in Spain were steadily advancing towards the meridian splendour which they attained in the next. Spanish professors, as well as Spanish patrons of art, began to be known in Italy. So early as 1504 Alonso Berreguete, as we shall see, had distinguished himself both at Florence and Borne as a painter and sculptor. In Spanish Artists in Italy. 1521, Pedro Francione, a Spaniard, had earned considerable reputation as a painter, at Naples. Some of his works may yet be seen in the churches there. At the death of Pietro 1 The description of the Monastery of San Yuste, in the Hand-Book (pp. 550 — 553) is one of the most admirable passages in those charming volumes. P. Francione. 108 CHAP. III.— EEIGN OF THE Giovanni di Spagna. Perugino, in 1524, a Spanish disciple of that painter, known as Giovanni di Spagna, was reckoned the best colourist in his school. 1 Spanish Pa- trails. The Spanish viceroys, the grandees who visited their courts, and the magnates of the Iberian Church who attended at the Vatican, were many of them admirers and patrons of art. Marquess del Guasto. When Rafael died, his favourite pupil and stew- ard, Gian Francesco Penni, (il Fattore ,) passed into the sendee of the famous Marquess del Guasto, Viceroy of Naples, whose grave Castilian coun- tenance has been rendered as familiar to us as that of his master, by the portraits of Titian. To that nobleman he sold a tine copy of the “ Transfigu- “ ration,” possibly the same which now adorns the National Museum at Madrid. 2 Under the orders Marquess of Villafranca. P. de Prado. of the Marquess of Villafranca, a later Viceroy of Naples, the Spanish architects, Pedro de Prado and J. de Toledo. Juan de Toledo, designed and rebuilt many of the finest portions of that noble capital. At Rome, Bishop of Salamanca. Bishop Bobadilla, of Salamanca, the prelate who superintended the building of the fine Cathedral of that old university city, was amongst the patrons of Benvenuto Cellini. The silver vase executed by him for that bishop will be remembered by that irascible artist’s readers as the cause of one of the most amusing scenes of his life. 3 1 Vasari, tom. i. p. 411. 2 This picture, which has been heavily re-painted, differs slightly from the original — the woman who kneels in the foreground, with her back to the spectators, having a mantle of the same pale pink colour as her robe ; in the Vatican picture it is blue. 3 Vita de Benvenuto Cellini, tom. i. p. 68 — ed. 8vo. 1806. Benvenuto, EMPEROR CHARLES V. 109 While Spanish taste and skill thus found im- provement in Italy, Italian artists came to seek praise and profit in Spain. Miguel Florentin, as his name imports, a native of Florence, was the best of the early sculptors of Seville. He appeared there early in the century, and executed for the Cathedral, at the expense of the Count of Tenclilla, the rich marble monument of that nobleman’s brother, the Cardinal Archbishop Diego de Men- doza ; and afterwards (in 1519-22) the stone statues of St. Peter and St. Paul on either side Miguel Florentin. of the Moorish Gate, known as the “ Gate of “ Pardon;” and the spirited bas-relief over the arch, representing “ the Money-changers ex- “ pelled from the Temple by our Lord.” His son, Antonio Florentin, constructed, in 1545-6, for the Cathedral, the grand monument for the ex- position of the Host in the Holy Week, annually erected at Easter near the great portal. It was, in its original shape, a tall tapering edifice of three stories, supported on columns of the three orders, and crowned with a large cross. Between the columns stood coloured statues of Saints, some of them of clay, and others like the build- ing, of wood, for the most part grandly designed. This monument was altered and injured in 1624, by the addition of a fourth story of the composite who heartily hated all Spaniards, complains that he was treated “ Spagno- “ lescamente,” hy which he means scurvily — in the transaction — and says (p. 71) that at their final interview — when the piece of plate was paid for, the bishop spoke to him, “ le piu pretesche spagnolissime parole che “ imaginar si possa.” Antonio Ftorentin. 110 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF THE P. Torrigiano. order ; but still its effect in the midnight ser- vice is superb, when, blazing with church-plate and myriads of waxen tapers, it seems a mountain of light, of which the silver crest is lost in the impenetrable gloom of the vaults above. Pietro Torrigiano, the roving soldier-sculptor of Florence, came to Spain in 1520, or 1521. Having finished the beautiful tomb of Henry VII., at Westminster, — “ a pattern of despair “ for all posterity to imitate,” 1 — he aspired to construct that of the Catholic Sovereigns, at Granada. There, however, he encountered a rival more formidable than any he had met with amongst “ the English beasts,” as he contemp- tuously styled his northern patrons ; for although lie executed a fine medallion of Charity, in proof of his powers, the work was adjudged, it is said, to Yigarny, of Burgos. He thence went to Seville, where he was more successful, and modelled a Cru- cifix, a St. Jerome, and several other statues in terra cotta, for the Jeronomite convent of Buenavista. One of these, a Virgin and infant Saviour, so pleased the Duke of Arcos that he ordered a repetition of it for his own palace, and, when the work was delivered, sent the artist away rejoicing with as much copper com as two men could carry. But on arriving at his own house, and discovering that this weighty recompense amounted to only thirty ducats, Torrigiano in a fit of passion flew back, hammer in hand, and dashed the statue to pieces 1 Fuller’s Church History. London, 1C55, folio, p. 255. EMPEROR CHARLES V. Ill before the duke’s face. For this outrage on a sacred image the unhappy sculptor was seized by the Inquisition, condemned as a heretic, and died soon after in its dungeons by voluntary starvation. Such is his story, as told by Vasari , 1 who bears him a pardonable grudge for having broken the nose of Michael Angelo in a boyish fray — a fact attested by the portraits of that great man — when they were fellow-students, in the gardens of Lorenzo the Magnificent. It is repeated with great unction by Cumberland , 2 who sees a sort of poetical justice in the tragical end of the aggressor. Cean Bermudez, on the other hand, treats it as a fable, improbable in itself and discreditable to his country. He admits, indeed, that there is tangi- ble evidence for the tradition of the broken statue in a beautiful fragment of sculpture — a woman’shand placed on a bit of drapery, sup- posed to be that of T orrigiano’s V irgin — known as “ la “ mano de la feta” — of which plaster casts were common in his time at Seville. Some of these are still used as models in the Sevillian Academy, and may be found in the studios, and from one of them the annexed Examination of the popular story of Tor. '.piano. Mano de la teta. 1 Tom. ii. p. 58 — Cl. 2 Anecdotes, vol. i., p. 10. 112 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF THE woodcut is taken. But he asserts that no Crucifix, by the Florentine, was ever known to have existed there ; that the meanness of his patron was very unlike the munificence of the grandees of that age; that thirty ducats in copper would have been a moderate burden for one man ; and that not even the Inquisition would have held it heresy for an artist to destroy his own handiwork. 1 If Torrigiano were imprisoned at all, he concludes that it must have been for demeanour, or expressions, not comporting with the duke’s dignity — an offence of which he was quite capable, if his character be fairly represented by Cellini, who describes him as a fellow of infinite assurance, with a loud voice, uncouth in his gestures, and more like a bully than a sculptor. 2 On the same side it may be urged, that the price of a work of art was generally stipulated beforehand — often in writing — many such documents of that time being still in existence, and that it is against his- torical probability that the pitiful part in the transaction, imputed to the Duke of Arcos, 1 Llorente, the historian of the Spanish Inquisition, makes no mention of Torrigiano — a victim he would not have forgotten, had there been any documentary evidence of his seizure. 2 It is no wonder that Benvenuto had an aversion to Torrigiano, who seems to have been cast in the same mould with himself. The portrait he has left of his countryman is curious and characteristic: — “ Ersquesto “ uomo da bellissimi forma, audacissimo, aveva piu aria di gran soldato “ che di scultore, massime li suoi mirabile gesti e la su souora voce, con “ una aggrottar di ciglia da spaventare ogni uomo da qual cosa ; ed ogni “ giomo ragionava delle sue bravure con quelle bestie di quegli Inglesi.” Vita tom. i. p. '20. Vasari also describes Torrigiano as a “ proud and “ choleric - ’ man. The poor sculptor has, however, had enemies only for his historians. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 113 should have been played by the head of the chivalrous house of Ponce de Leon. The story, such as it is, may afford food for thought to the student of art and human nature as he pauses before Torrigiano’s delicate screens, in our own great Abbey, or his St. Jerome, at Seville. That celebrated statue was modelled from the steward of the convent of Buenavista, 1 remarkable in youth for his fine person. It does not appear whether it was coloured, to imitate life, by the sculptor, or afterwards. It was ori- ginally placed in a sort of grotto, or cavern, in that convent, which Cean Bermudez twice visited, in company with Goya the painter, who each time spent upwards of an hour in examining it, and pronounced it the finest piece of modern sculp- ture in Spain, and perhaps in the world. From this appropriate site it has since been removed to the ancient church of the Merced, now the prin- cipal hall of the Seville Museum, where it has been improperly placed on a pedestal, and also suffers dire eclipse from the strong and splendid colouring of the great pictures that enrich the walls. Another, and somewhat whimsical, cir- cumstance further mars its effect, and at first sight leads the visitor to wonder at its fame. The saint is represented of life size, with no dra- pery but a white cloth thrown round his loins, and kneeling with one knee on a rock. His left hand is raised aloft, and once held a crucifix ; 1 Vasari says, steward to the Botti, Florentine merchants in Spain. Terra-cotta statue of St. Jerome. I 114 CHAP. III.— BEIGN OF his right grasps a stone, with which he is in the act of beating his bosom — a devotional exercise which he daily performed. Unfortunately, how- ever, his attitude — somewhat like that of a man playing at bowls — is such that his object seems to be, not so much to discipline his own body, as to hurl the stone at a statue, in terra cotta, of St. Domi- nic, by Montaiies, at the other end of the transept. That saint, on his part, is supposed to be scourging himself with pious fervour, and his back streams with blood, in proof of the vigour of his strokes ; but as only the stump of the instrument remains in his hand, his action, and menacing aspect, favour the idea of defiance, and, in short, he seems to shake his fist at St. Jerome, and dare him to discharge his missile. The effect of two fine works is thus destroyed by their absurd relative position, which provokes the stranger’s laughter, and diverts his attention from their merits, and prove the directors of the Museum to be either mad wags, who prefer their jokes to their statues, or dull citizens, equally insensible to a statue or a joke. In spite, however, of these disadvantages, the life and spirit of Jerome cannot fail to arrest the eye. His sinewy and attenuated form, his frown- ing brow and shaggy locks and beard, are mo- delled in the style of -Michael Angelo, and recall the wild energy of his Moses. But Seville must become once more the city of friars and inquisi- tors, and the Jeronomites must drive out the glass-blowers, and repossess their Doric cloisters THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 115 of Buenavista, ere we can see, as it ought to be seen, this revered image of their patron saint, which the vicissitude of opinion has dragged from its shadowy shrine to uncover its nakedness in a rival church, turned, by a like fate, into a secular museum. The art of painting in fresco was brought into Spain early in the reign of the Emperor, by Julio and Alessandro, Italian artists, who are sup- posed to have belonged to the school of Giovanni da Udine. They came to Andalusia about the same time as Torrigiano, being invited by Francisco de los Cobos, the Imperial Secretary, to decorate his mansion at Ubecla. They were afterwards em- ployed at the Alhambra, in preparation for the visit of Charles and his bride, to adorn some of its walls with miniature frescos, in the style of the Vatican, especially those of the Tocador, or dressing-room of the Queen, and the adjacent gallery. In that loveliest of lady’s bowers — from whose arched and airy windows many a Moorish Sultana, and several Christian queens, have looked down on the stream of the Darro, the laughing Vega, and the sparkling city lying like a bursting pomegranate between its hills, at their feet — a few of these paintings may still be seen, though faded and fractured by time, neglect, and relic-loving travellers. They represent battles, ships, and havens, and other fanciful subjects. The artists 1 1 Cumberland (Anecdotes, vol. i. p. 22) lias adopted an error of Palomino in ascribing to tliese masters the frescos in the Duke of Alba’s palace, Fresco paint- ing brought to Spain by Julio and Alessandro. 116 Titian — effect of his wurks in Spain. His portraits of Charles V. brilliant and diligent historian. That masterly hand, which has preserved for us the faces of the princes and captains, the statesmen and scholars of Italy in her greatest age, and of her high-born beauties as they lived, and moved, and had their graceful being — has almost outdone itself in the ! portraits of the famous Emperor. We can yet behold his pale, but not unpleasing, countenance, in his prime of manhood, when the imperial dia- dem first encircled that full and thoughtful brow amidst the pageants of Bologna. We may see him “ turn and wind” his fiery steed “ with his beaver on ; “ His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly armed” for the field or the tournay ; or dressed in his buff coat, with horn at his side, and attended executed — as we shall have occasion to notice — by the brothers Granelo and Castello, sixty years later. CHAP. III.— REIGN OF afterwards established a school in Andalusia, in which were formed some painters of distinction. The most important service, perhaps, which the taste of the Emperor rendered to painting in Spain, was by bringing into that country many of the finest pictures of Titian. Hence, probably, it was that some of the best of the Castilian painters early showed in their works a leaning to the style of V enice. The portraits alone, of Charles, by Titian, were sufficiently numerous and remark- able to exert a powerful influence on the young 1 artists who were admitted to study in the royal galleries. Never was the person of a great sove- i reign recorded for all time on canvas by a more THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 117 by his favourite hound, as he went to the chase in the mountains of Toledo, or the forests of Hun- gary ; or apparelled in satin and cloth of gold for the banquets of Florence or Vienna. And we may scan his features, clouded with care and wan with the traces of pain, in his older sadder time, when his mind’s eye turned from the wearisome state paper, or the glittering board, to the green solitudes of Estremadura, and its ear from brilliant flatteries, to the bells and litanies of San Yuste. In such portraits as these we read more of the man’s nature and feelings than in whole pages of Sandoval or Robertson ; and from these, Castilian painters learned more of their art than from all the lore of Carclucho or Pacheco. It has long been a question, whether Titian visited Spain'? His Venetian biographer, Ridolfi, 1 is silent as to the fact ; the Spanish writers stoutly maintain it. Palomino asserts that he resided there from 1548 to 1553, apparently on no better ground than the date of his patent, as Count Pala- tine, which he mis-states. This instrument, he says, was signed by the Emperor, at Barcelona, in 1553, a year when it is well known that that monarch was closely confined at Brussels by gout, and his intrigues for the marriage of his son with Mary of England. Nor was he in Spain during any part of the six previous years, which renders it most improbable that Titian, in his old age, then under- 1 Le Maraviglie delle Arte, overo le Vite de gl’ illustre Pittori Veneti e dello stato — 4 to Venetia, 1648. Story of his visit to Spain examined. 118 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF Inconclusive evidence for it. Good evidence against it. took the j ourney . It required some higher induce- ment than a vice-regal court could offer, to lure him from the enjoyment of his wealth and honours at home, from the polished society of the Grand Canal, and his pleasant garden by the sea of V enice. Cean Bermudez, with more accuracy, assigns its proper date to the patent, 1535, when Charles Avas at Barcelona, preparing to sail for Tunis. But he maintains that Titian passed the two pre- vious years in Spain, alleging, as a proof, his por- trait of the Empress Isabella — once at the Palace of the Pardo — Avhich must have been painted in Spain, as she never quitted that country after her marriage, and before 1538, when she died. But it is Avell knoAAm that many of his portraits of great personages were not painted from life ; for exam- ple, that of the Great Turk, Solyman the Mag- nificent, who is ranked by Vasari amongst the subjects of his pencil, 1 but AA T hom he is not re- corded to have Aisited in court or camp, and that of the Empress herself, AA-hich he finished at Venice in 1544. 2 The best evidence, however, as to the fact is the long series of letters, Avritten by the poet Aretine to Titian, and his other friends, and extending from 1530 to 1555, which contains a monthly chronicle of the painter’s movements, 1 A 7 asari, tom. iii. p. 225. 2 Northcote’s life of Titian, v. ii., 203. 8vo. London, 1830. This work, though full of interesting matter, is strangely defective in arrangement. Each volume, in fact, contains a separate, and sometimes contradictory life. Thus, in vol. i. 309-10, we are told that Titian went to Spain, and Bidolfi is taken to task for his view of the matter — which, THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 119 but no mention of any journey to Spain, or resi- dence there. 1 We may, therefore, conclude that he never travelled out of Italy, except on occa- sion of his visits to the Imperial Court at Augsburg and Vienna, in 1548 and 1550. His residence there, and at Bologna in 1530, may have led the Spaniards into their mistake, as well as the num- berless trophies of his genius that graced their royal galleries. The Escorial alone possessed more of his pictures than five years of labour in Spain could have sufficed to produce. Italians were not the only foreigners whose example improved the artists of Spain. The works of Jerome Bos were so common in the royal collections, and in the convents of Spain, that some writers have supposed that he visited the Peninsula. 2 Of this, no proof can be ad- duced ; but his pictures must have been fami- liar to many of the Spanish painters, and may, perhaps, have influenced the style of some of them. Nothing is known of this singular artist, except that he was born at Bois-le-duc, about 1450, 3 and painted for the churches and con- however, is adopted in vol. ii., p. 78, where the Spanish journey is treated as a fable, and the Spanish writers are in turn chastised. 1 Northcote's Life of Titian, ii. 178. 2 Cean Bermudez says some writers held this opinion, and Don Pedro Madrazo, in his notice of Bos, in his Catalogue of the Queen of Spain’s Gallery, (p. 93), says “ Sabese que paso gran parte de su vida en “ Espana.” 3 Descamps. Vie des Peintres Flamands Allemands et Hollandois, tom i. p. 19. (4 yoIs. 8yo. Paris 1753.) Pilkington (Dictionary, vol. i. p. 106. London, 1829, 8vo.) with that indifference to historical fact, un- fortunately too common with writers on art, says that Bos was bom in Flemish painters. Jerome Bos. CHAP III.— REIGN OF vents of that town and its vicinity. Don Felipe de Guevara, the warm admirer, and perhaps the friend of Bos, praises his close and exact imitation of nature, the limits of which, he says, he never overstepped, except in represent- ing scenes in hell or purgatory. He bears testi- mony, however, as well to his fondness for these supernatural subjects as to his high reputation, by remarking that many monstrous compositions of this kind were falsely attributed to him, and that one of his ablest disciples, either out of respect for his master, or for the purpose of the better selling his own works, was in the habit of signing his pictures with the name of “ Bosch .” 1 The paintings of Bos are, for the most part, exe- cuted on panel ; his style of drawing is vigorous, though harsh ; he coloured well, and sometimes with the brilliancy of his contemporary, Hem- ling, to whom, however, he was far inferior in sentiment and grace. The strange and grotesque were the favourite fields of his fancy ; and there he so delighted to exercise his strong powers of caricature and exaggeration, that he might be called the Hogarth of the lower world. He often painted scenes from the Life of St. An- thony, the Egyptian Abbot; and, amongst the 1470, and died in 1530, and that he adopted his peculiar style in conse- quence of despairing of equalling the great masters, whose works he saw at the JEscorial, — a building not founded till thirty-three years after the time when he is supposed to have gone to that world of shadows which he had so often visited in imagination. 1 Guevara. Comentarios de la Pintura, 8vo. Madrid 1787, pp. 41 — 43. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 121 tormentors of that sorely-bnfFetted and hardy eremite, he usually chose to delineate, not those dangerous demons who came in the likeness of blooming maidens, angling with kind looks for his soul, or of jolly topers, pledging him in sparkling goblets “ where the wine was red and “ moved itself aright” — but the less pleasing fiends in frightful and bestial shape, whose wicked wont it was to invest the cavern by night, and sting, pinch, and pummel the good man till they left him for dead on the rocky floor. The “ Fall of Lucifer and his rebel “ Angels,” and “ Adam and Eve expelled from “ Eden,” were also subjects congenial to the taste of Bos, and may be found amongst his pictures in the Royal Gallery of Madrid, most of which were formerly at the Escorial. One of these is a large allegorical piece representing the “Triumphs “ of Death,” and teeming with strange faces and fancies. In the centre, Death, scythe in hand, gallops by on his pale horse, driving reluctant multitudes to his shadowy realms, of which the frontier is marked by a fortification of coffins, manned by a grisly host of skeletons. Behind the Destroyer comes a car — a sort of dead- cart — to pick up the stragglers and the slain. In the foreground, a party of revellers are dis- turbed at their banquet, and a king falls dead, wearing his diadem and purple, thus reading to royal eyes the solemn salutary lesson, that W orks of Bos at Madrid. 122 CHAP. III.— EEIGN OF Works at Va- lencia. J. C. Vermei/ ell . I “ The glories of our blood and state, Are shadows, not substantial things ; There is no armour against fate ; Death lays his icy hand on kings.”i When called upon to paint the person of our blessed Lord, the gloomy genius of Bos selected the most appalling moments of his mortal career. The Museum of Valencia has a series of pictures of this kind, of which the most striking in its horrors is a round panel, once an altar-piece in the Chapel “ de los Beyes” of the superb Convent of San Domingo, and signed in Gothic characters “ i^trronmnus boadj.” Here we behold the countenance of the Redeemer, pale, emaciated, and gory, beneath the crown of thorns ; around are grouped the heads of mocking soldiers, gloat- ing over that divine agony, and grinning hideously like so many incarnate devils. Juan Cornelio Vermeyen was a Dutch painter, born at Beverwyck about 1500, and invited to Spain, in 1534, by Charles V., whom he accom- panied in the expedition to Tunis, of which he preserved some scenes, afterwards transferred to Brussels tapestries. He likewise followed the court to Italy, Germany, and Flanders ; and having exercised his art with honour and profit he died, in 1559, at Brussels, and was buried in the Church of St. George, beneath an epitaph of his own writing. The sources whence he drew 1 Shirley, Ajax and Ulysses, sc. iii. Works vol. vi., p. 396. 8vo London, 1833. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 123 liis early instruction in painting are unknown ; but he excelled in several branches ; in por- traiture, landscape, and in sacred subjects. The Palace of the Pardo was adorned with a num- ber of his pictures ; — eight pieces representing Imperial progresses in Germany, and views of Madrid, Valladolid, Naples and London, all of which perished in the tire of 1608. Vermeyen was a special favourite of Charles V., who ordered his bust to be executed in marble “for the sake of “ the gravity and nobleness of his countenance.” He was yet more remarkable for the length of his beard, which gained him the name of “ el “ Barbudo ,” or, “ Barbalonga ,” and very justly, if it be true, that although the wearer of this superb specimen was a tall man, the Emperor, when in a playful mood, used to amuse himself by treading on it, as it trailed on the ground. 1 Pedro Campana, a Fleming, was one of the fathers of the school of Seville. He was born at Brussels, in 1503, where he acquired some knowledge of painting, probably from Vander Weyde, or Van Orley. He then went to Italy, and, passing through Bologna, in 1530, was chosen to paint a triumphal arch, for the solemn entry of Charles V. — a task which he executed to the admiration of the citizens. After many years spent in study at Rome, he appeared at Seville in, or shortly before, 1548. In that year he painted, for the Church of Santa Cruz, P. Campana, His “ Descent from the Cross.” 1 Descamps — Peintres Flamamls, &c. tom i. p. 86. 124 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF His various works at Seville. his famous “ Descent from the Cross.” Though skilfully drawn, and rich in colour, this picture is, on the whole, unpleasing, from the meagreness of the figures, and the antique harshness of its execution. But its name is great in Seville. Pacheco, who borrowed none of its energy, con- fesses that he did not care to be left alone before it, in its dimly-lighted chapel. 1 And though no picture was ever less akin to his own soft and airy style, it was a favourite study of Murillo, who would gaze for hours on its bold strong lines, and was buried, by his own desire, in the chapel where it hung. In spite, however, of its fame and his- torical interest, it was strangely neglected by that diligent collector, Marshal Soult, in his artistic campaign, and cruelly maltreated by his soldiery who split the panel on which it was painted into five pieces, and left them to warp and blister in the sunshine in the court of the Alcazar. When the troubles were past, though scarred and seamed beyond the power of varnish, it was tolerably restored by Joaquin Cortes 2 — and it now hangs at the end of the noble Sacristia Mayor of the Cathedral. Campana exercised his art at Seville for many years with great success. The statues of the Kings, in the Chapel Royal of the cathedral, were carved after his designs, which he made in char- coal, receiving for each one, a ducat. Many of his 1 Pacheco, Arte de la Pintura, p. 57. 2 Hand-Book for Spain, p. 262. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 125 works still adorn the churches. The Church of San Isidoro has a “St. Paul the first Hermit,” and “ St. Anthony the Abbot,” remarkable for the force and character of the heads ; and that of San Juan de la Palma, a fine “ Crucifixion.” Age im- proved his style, and it is said that he studied with advantage the works of Vargas, when that artist returned from Pome. In his “ Purification “ of the Virgin,” in the Chapel of the Mariscal of the Cathedral, we find the harsh stiffness of the “ Descent” softened to ease and beauty, and an Italian suavity of tone. Pafael himself rarely designed a figure more graceful than the fair- haired damsel descending some steps to the left, who contrasts well with the beggar sprawling beneath — a study from the streets — that, doubtless, did not escape the eye of Murillo. The other smaller devotional pieces in the same altar, and the forcibly painted half-length portraits of the Mariscal Don Pedro Caballero and his family are likewise works of Campana. He returned, in his old age, to Brussels, where he died, in 1580, and was honored by having his portrait hung in the Consistory. Francisco Frutet was a countryman and con- temporary of Campana. Nothing is known of him except that he painted several pictures for convents and churches at Seville, about 1548 ; and even his very name was lost, till exhumed from some dusty archives by the diligent Cean Bermudez. Several of his works are now in the F. Frutet, 1548. 126 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF H. Sturmio. 1555. Sevillian Museum. Their colouring is Flemish ; but in drawing and composition they display a knowledge of the Italian models, and a disposition to use them. Thus in the oratory once at the Hospital cle las Bubas, in the compartment which represents our Lord going to Calvary, are intro- duced several figures from the “ Spasimo de “ Sicilia,” by Rafael, and from his “ Burning of “ the Borgo” at the Vatican. The butcher-like figure of Simon the Cyrenian, however, recalls the brawny vulgar forms of Flanders. In the large central picture of the “ Crucifixion,” our Lord on the cross is grandly conceived ; the rest is indif- ferent. But of the few existing works of Frutet the best are those once in the Convent of the Merced, and now in the collection of Don Julian Williams, British Consul at Seville. They con- sist of a large centre altar-piece, with figures of life-size, representing the Adoration of the Three Kings, remarkable for the variety and high finish of the heads ; and four doors or wings, on which are painted the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple, his Circumcision, a group of Apostles — amongst whom St. Paul stands foremost with his huge sword — and a group of mitred Ecclesiastics and Priests, excel- lent pictures, of which the two last are somewhat blemished by the hard execution and monotonous position of the hands. Hernando Esturmio, or Sturmio, of Ziriczea, resided at Seville about the middle of the cen- THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 127 tury. He is supposed to have been a foreigner, and was, perhaps, a German, whose real name was Sturm. In 1554, he valued for the Chapter certain works of art — as it appears from a docu- ment in their archives — and the year following, he painted for the Chapel of the Evangelists of the Cathedral, nine pictures on panel, of which one is signed “ Hernandus Sturmius , Ziriezcensis “ faciebat , 1555.” The centre compartment re- presents “ St. Gregory saying Mass,” the panel above it “ the Resurrection of our Lord,” and those at the sides and below, “ the Four Evange- “ lists and several Saints.” The figures are de- signed with some grace and freedom; the colour- ing is good, and affords, perhaps, the earliest ex- ample of the fine brown tones peculiar to the school of Seville. Of these various holy personages the most pleasing are “ Santa Rufina” and Santa “ Justa,” patronesses of Seville, whom the “ loyal “ and unconquered” city and its painters delight to honour and to depict. These Virgin-Martyrs were potters, in the gipsey-suburb of Triana in 287, who being inspired with holy frenzy, broke in pieces the statue of the great Venus of the Sevillians, as it was carried along in a solemn procession. For this outrage — on the predecessor in popular veneration of Our Lady “ de la An- “tigua,” and themselves — they were scourged with thistles, and sent to walk barefoot in the Sierra Morena, a discipline through which they con- tinued stedfast in the Christian faith. Being Legend of S^ a - RitfiiiaandSt a - Justa. 128 j CHAP. III.— REIGN OF brought back to Seville, Justa was starved to death in a dungeon, while Rufina was exposed in the amphitheatre to a hungry lion, who behaved himself like the gentle beasts of Androcles and Una, “ as he her wronged innocence did “ weet,” and left the Virgin-victim to be beaten to death by the more savage votaries of Venus. Burgos and an Asturian hermitage dispute with Seville the honour of possessing the bones of these Sister-Saints . 1 Sturmio has represented them in the usual conventional form : — as two blooming maidens, each of whom “ with bough “ of palm a crowned victrice stands ,” 2 and who uphold between them the Giralda, or Moorish belfry of the favoured city; on the ground lie some earthen pots, symbols of their lowly call- ing. Their hands are painted with great care, and their rings, brooches, and ear-rings are re- markable, not only for their exquisite finish, but for their beauty as pieces of jewelry, in which the gems are not less lustrous than Da Vinci’s rich ruby on the forehead of Lucrezia Crivelli, — “ La belle Feroniere ” of the Louvre . 3 The tower, in the hands of these pretty potters, also deserves notice, as being a carefully executed representa- tion of the Giralda, ere it had received its ornate crown of Christian masonry. f. de n gamy. These were the chief foreign auxiliaries of 1 Alfonso de Villegas, Flos Sanctorum. Folio, Gerona, 1788. p. C31. 2 Ben Jonsou, vol. is., p. 76. 3 Notice des Tableaux exposes dans le Musee Royal. No. 1091. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 129 Spanish art in this reign. Amongst the native leaders there were also men whose names have hardly been eclipsed by the glory of after-days. Felipe de Vigarny first deserves to be mentioned, as the reputed successful rival of Torrigiano. He was a native of Burgos, but the year of his birth is not known. His father was a Burgun- dian, and hence the son is frequently called Felipe de Borgona. At the beginning of the sixteenth century he had already so distinguished himself in sculpture, that he was called to Toledo by Cardi- nalXimenes,to superintend the erection of the new high altar in the Cathedral, for which he executed, in 1502, four historical bas-reliefs, and the por- traits of the Cardinal and Iris friend Antonio de Lebrija, the illustrious scholar of Alcala. He is supposed to have resided there for some years, after which he went to Granada, to construct the high altar of the Chapel Royal in the Cathedral. To him are attributed the curious bas-reliefs in painted wood, in that Chapel, representing the “ Surrender of the Alhambra,” and the “Baptism “ of the Moslem,” — curious, as authentic records of actual scenes, faces, and costumes, but so rude and uncouth that it seems very doubtful whether they were ever touched by his masterly hand. From Granada he returned to Toledo, but he probably revisited the former city to execute the monument of the Catholic Sovereigns. It is of white marble, and florid in design. On a sarcophagus adorned with scrolls and scutcheons, K 130 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF VI gamy’s in- fluence on Spa- ll ish art. 1 bas-reliefs, and lovely weeping cherubs, repose the figures of Ferdinand and Isabella, of which the faces are admirably-finished portraits. Much meaner dust lies inurned in more ostentatious sepulchres ; but though the Venetian ambas- sador Navigiero bestowed on it only the con- temptuous approval of an Italian, calling it “ well enough for Spain,” 1 this monument de- j serves to be ranked amongst the noblest of royal tombs and the most fairly earned of those — “ incisa notis marmora publicis “ Per qua; spiritus et vita redit bonis “ Post mortem ducibus .” 2 Till the return of Berreguete from Italy, Vi- garny was esteemed the best artist in Spain. He improved the Gothic style of drawing which obtained till his time in that country, by giving greater altitude to the human figure. Before his time, the face bore to the whole body the proportion of one to nine ; he intro- duced the proportion of one to nine and one- third. His last works were his carvings and alabaster sculpture in the choir of Toledo Cathe- 1 Writing of the Capilla de los Reyes Catolicos, in the Cathedral at Granada, he notices “le loro sepulture di marine, assai belle “per Spagna” — making no further comment upon them ; “ 11 Viaggio fatto in Spagna et in Francia dal magnifico M. Andrea Navagiero, fu oratore dell’ illu- strissimo Senato Veneto, alia Cesarea Maesta di Carlo V.,” 12mo., Vinegia, 1563, fol 23. Some writers hold this monument to have been made at Genoa, but from this remark of the Venetian it would seem to have been the work of a Spaniard. 2 Horat. Car. Lib. IV. viii., 13 — 15. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 131 dral, for which he executed one half of the upper stalls in competition with Berreguete, to whom he was held so nearly equal, that the inscription which records their rivalry declares that CERTAVERUNT TUM ARTIFICUM INGENIA, CERTABUNT SEMPER, SPECTATORUM JUDICIA. Vigarny died at Toledo in 1543, and was buried in the Cathedral near the choir. The name of this first great Castilian sculptor, may naturally lead us to glance at the peculiar style in which his art was practised in Spain. A large proportion of Spanish ecclesiastical carving was coloured to imitate life — and this not only in remote convents and rural churches, but in the polite cities and their wealthy cathedrals. This painted sculpture, which holds a middle place between sculpture and painting, is well deserving of notice, both for the genius it sometimes dis- plays, and as a national art hardly known beyond the limits of the Peninsula. The use of colour- in Spanish statuary is of very venerable an- tiquity, whether it be considered as a relic of heathen times or as a practice encouraged or introduced by the Church to aid the illusion with which she strove to invest her worship and move the spirits of the faithful. The close re- semblance which exists between the pomps and ceremonies of the ancient and modern super- stitions, — those of Egypt and Greece carried to Western Europe by the commerce of Carthage, Spanish paint- ed, sculpture. 132 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF and that of Papal Rome modified by lingering Paganism, — is a curious chapter in the history of religion. 1 In Spain image-worship reached a height hardly attained in any other part of Christendom, a height probably neither foreseen by its champions, those bold Bishops of Rome, the second and third Gregories, nor predicted by the fiercest Iconoclast who harangued the coun- cil of Byzantium. Besides the most holy effigies, heaven-descended, and not made with hands, 2 and of course plentifully endowed with miraculous power — such as the Black Lady of the Pillar at Zaragoza, and the Christ of the Vinestock at Val- ladolid — there were many sacred images which even before the hands which fashioned them were cold, began to make the blind see, the lame walk, and friars flourish and grow sleek. To supply these representations of saintly per- sonages, therefore, became an important and lucrative part of the business of the studio ; and that they should be as life-like as possible, the better to strike the imagination of the vulgar, was the natural desire of their monkish pur- chasers. St. Bernard, therefore, stood forth to heal, habited, like a brother of the order, in his own white robes ; St. Dominic scourged himself in effigy till the red blood flowed from his ■ See the admirable Essay on this subject, Hand-Book, pp. 107 — 114. 2 The “ tiKaofiara ayapo— oujra' 1 of the Eastern Church — for an account of which see Gibbon. Chap, xlix., vol. ix. pp. 117 — 121. 8vo. London, 1838. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 133 painted shoulders ; and the Virgin, copied from the loveliest models, was presented to her adorers, sweetly smiling, and gloriously apparelled “ in “ clothing of wrought gold.” Many of these figures, not only presided in their chapels through- out the year, but, decked with garlands, and illu- minated by tapers, were carried by Brotherhoods or Guilds instituted in their honor, in the reli- gious processions, once so frequent and splendid, and still favorite holiday shows, in the cities of Spain. For carvings intended for these pur- poses, clay or terra-cotta was sometimes used ; but wood was a more convenient and universal material, as being light, cheap, and easily coloured. Cedar, lime, and the indestructible “ alerce,” 1 were woods frequently employed, though the preference was generally given to the Sorian pine. The colouring was sometimes laid on canvas, with which the figure was covered, as with a skin ; 2 much care and labour was bestowed on it, and it was usually applied entirely by the hand of the master-artist him- self. The effects and gradation of tints were studied as carefully as in paintings on canvas, and distant views and groups were freely intro- duced in the larger compositions, which were in truth nothing more than pictures in relief, with the principal figures altogether detached from 1 The “ Thuya Articnlata.” It still grows on the hills of Barbary. Cook’s Sketches in Spain, vol. i. p. 5. 2 Bosarte. Viage, p. 58. 134 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF Colour not ad- missible in sta- tuary. their back grounds. The imitation of rich stuffs for draperies ( estofdr) was a nice and delicate branch of the art, and held by writers on the subject to be of no small difficulty and import- ance. 1 For single figures real draperies were sometimes used, especially for those of Madon- nas, of whom many possessed large and mag- nificent wardrobes, and caskets of jewels worthy of the Queens of the Mogul. In these cases only the head and extremities of the figure were finished, the rest being often left a mere mane- quin, or block. In works of this kind, there were several Spanish sculptors who displayed, as we shall see, no inconsiderable ability and taste. But in seeking after effect, by means like these, they undoubtedly mistook the genius of their art. They might have pleaded, perhaps, had they known it, the practice of Athenian artists in the days of Pericles ; but although there is evidence to prove that colour was used by those masters in their statuary, it is by no means certain that illusion was intended. 2 The mantles of variegated marbles with which the Roman sculptors decked the busts of their Caesars, — of which some specimens doubtless reached Spain ; and some full-length statues similarly draped — of which the colossal Apollo, with ample 1 Parheco. Arte de la Pintura, p. 362. 2 See the able article on Spanish art in the “ Foreign Quarterly Review,” No. xxvi., pp. 264 — 5. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 135 robes of bloomy porphyry, in the Museum of Naples, is perhaps the finest existing example — might be cited as instances of a similar, but more defensible deviation from the simplicity of a pure taste. But it is the business of the sculptor to deal with form alone, to mould the clay into beauty, and to breathe life into the colourless marble, with no other instruments than his modelling-stick or his chisel ; as it is the busi- ness of the painter to deal with colour, and with his pencil alone to deepen his airy distances, and cause rounded shapes to start gracefully from the flat surface of the canvas. Neither sculpture nor painting can invade the province of the other without loss, and a sacrifice of the dignity of art, for which no illusion, however perfect, can recompense. For if exact and deceptive imita- tion of nature be held to be the chief end of art, then are the startling waxen preparations of the anatomical school of Florence higher achieve- ments than the Venus “ that enchants the world,” in the Tribune, and “ the Lord of the unerring “ bow,” the glory of the Vatican; the fairyland (of pasteboard and gaslight) disclosed when the curtain rises on the scenes of a Parisian ballet, than the forest-vales of Poussin, and the stately and sunlit havens of Claude. Damian Forment, a Valencian by birth, was a sculptor of renown in this reign. Fie studied in Italy, and is supposed to have formed his style on the works of Donatello. In 1511 he was D. Forment. 136 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF employed to execute an alabaster altar-piece for the high altar of the Cathedral “ of the Pillar,” at Zaragoza — a work still existing, and reckoned one of the finest monuments of art in Arragon. It is designed in the florid Gothic style, and is divided into three compartments, or high- canopied niches, of which that in the centre is filled with “ the Assumption of the Virgin,” and those at the sides with her “ Nativity” and “ Purification ” — all in high relief. Above, around, and beneath these principal groups, are disposed a thousand figures and ornaments of graceful design, and elaborately carved. The artist was employed on this work nearly nine years, and received for his labour 1200 ducats. In 1520 he began his other great work — the retablo for the high altar of the Cathedral of Iluesca, also in alabaster, and in design somewhat like that at Zaragoza. The sculptures represent the death and passion of our Lord, and they, and their surrounding ornaments, display no less delicacy of hand than richness of invention. To this superb altar-piece, the thirteen last years of Ferment’s life were devoted ; when it was finished, he was invited by the Emperor to enter his service, which Avas, however, prevented by his death in 1533. The liberal patronage of the Church enabled him to leave an estate, en- tailed on his family, worth 60,000 Castilian ducats. Ilis school was thronged Avith scholars, of Avhom he never had fewer than tAvelve, and aaIio THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 137 received at liis hands both instruction and kind- ness. To the memory of one of them, Pedro Munoz, his countryman and friend, he erected a monument in the cloister of the Cathedral of Huesca, where his own ashes also repose, which commemorates both master and scholar in its simple and touching- inscription : D. 0. M. LEX MI NATVRjE, ET TE PETRE OEFENSA TVLERVNT NVMINA : QVOD POSSVM DO LAPIDEM ET LACHRYMAS. PETRO MONYOSIO PATRIA VALENTINO DAMIANVS FORMENT ARTE STATVARIA PHIDLE, PRAXITELISQVE jEMVLVS : ALVMNO SVO CARISSIMO, AC CLIENTILI SVO B. M. FLENS, POSVIT. VIX. AN. LXVII. MENS. X. DIES XXVIII. OB. KAL. JAN. MD. XXII. Pedro Machuca, painter, sculptor and architect, likewise studied in Italy. His birth-place is not known, but he resided chiefly at Granada. In painting he is said to have followed the style of Rafael, with what success Time, which has spared none of his pictures, has not permitted us to judge. As a sculptor, amongst his best works was the marble fountain, richly adorned with has reliefs on historical subjects, which yet exists, though in a very delapidated condition, near the Alhambra gate, to attest his skill and the munificence of its founder, the Marquess of Mondejar. Seville pos- sesses a better preserved proof of his powers, in the three fine alto-relievos, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity, and full of Italian grace and feeling, which are placed over the door of the church of P. Machuca. 138 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF | the Hospital de la Sangre, 1 and have escaped the brush of the whitewasher, who, in Andalusia, is no respecter of marbles. But his fame chiefly rests on his great architectural effort, that superb fragment of a palace that forms so fine a feature in distant prospects of Granada, crowning the hill, and contrasting with the red towers, of the Alhambra. The fear of earthquakes or the fickleness of royal taste, interrupted its building ; and though it was never roofed in, it has been a ruin for three centuries. But its sim- ple and majestic fronts, and the noble circular court and Doric colonnade within, will be ad- mired so long as the crumbling fabric shall with- stand the winters and rough weather of the Sierra Nevada. Its stately facades form a striking con- trast to the mean rough-cast walls that enshroud the delicate bowers of the Moslem. Since the Emperor had the rashness to let loose his archi- tects in the precincts of that enchanted palace — “ Del Rey chiquito la encantado estancia De alabastro azur y oro inestimable — ” a lie was fortunate in finding so skilful a master to undertake the dangerous changes. It is also well 1 Hand-Book for Spain, p. 282. Cean Bermudez, wlio lias written a tract on this Hospital, does not mention the name of tlie sculptor who executed these marbles ; hut remarks that their merit is such that they might be ascribed to Torrigiano, had he not died forty year's before the portal in question was built. See his “ Deseripcion Artistica del Hospital de la “ Sangre.” 12mo. Valencia, 1804. p. 22. 2 Vicente Espinel, quoted by Cean Bermudez, Arquitectos de Espafia, tom. i. p. 221. THE EMPEEOE O H A BEES V. 139 for Granada that the structure of its Castilian Caesar may claim a certain meed of praise, beside the last exquisite relic of its Arabian Sultans. Machuca was one of the first masters who introduced into Spain the Italian, or, as it was called the Greco-Romano, style of architecture. The rich pointed architecture of the Christian, having taken the place of the light towers and arcades of the Moor, in turn gave way to a style founded on the models of classical antiquity. Edifices of a foreign aspect now showed them- selves in street or market-place, or amongst con- ventual groves and gardens, rising upon the ruins of the Moorish mosque or palace, and contrasting with the grey religious structures of Castile. The first work on architecture in the Castilian language was written for the purpose of explain- ing the classical proportions. It was entitled, the Measurements of the Roman, and was composed by Diego de Sagredo , 1 chaplain to Queen Juana, a man of learning and observation, who had cul- tivated his taste by travel in Italy. Italian archi- tecture, thus introduced, rapidly gained ground, and soon blossomed into that florid style, known as the plateresque, or style of the silversmiths, which has never been surpassed in luxuriance of decoration. Engrafting the fanciful adornments of the old architecture on the simpler forms of the The origin and progress of Plateresque architecture. D. de Sagredo and his booh. i JSte&t&aa 6el Stomano nmaan'aa a las oficialts qtie qtttmn aegufr loa formacfones Oc las haara, tolumttaa, £ otroa flJifictoa antiguoa, (then a cut of a Corinthian capital over the words) ton pVthE Itgto, 4to. ®olrto; tn taaa hr Utamon IJftraa. 1520. 140 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF A. Berm- yuete. new, the plateresque builders covered their cor- nices with flowers, and wreathed their columns in garlands and arabesques, until the fronts of church or monastery rivalled in fretwork and chasing their own sacramental plate, “ as if the “ wealth within them had run o’er.” In interiors, as in the great sacristy of Seville Cathedral, this prodigality of decoration has a sumptuous effect, nor is it unpleasing in exteriors, when the build- ings are complete in themselves, and not patchings added to venerable piles. In these latter lay the chief sins of the new architects, sins which were doubly offensive in the works of their degenerate successors. Thus, in the Cathedral of V alencia all styles contend with such evenly-balanced forces, that two English travellers, bewildered in the con- fusion, describe it, the one as a large Gothic pile, 1 the other as a pleasing Grecian structure. 2 Nor were their fancies always in good taste. The Ca- thedral of Seville is encased in a mass of Greco- Romano buildings of which the heavy outlines are slightly broken, but hardly relieved, by tripods crested with flames flickering in solid stone. It would have been well, had contemporary archi- tects imitated the graceful simplicity of Machuca. Alonso Berruguete, who for his genius in the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, may be called the Spanish Michael Angelo, was born at Paredes de Nava, in Old Castile, about 1480. His early years were passed in the atmo- 1 Swinburne’s Travels in Spain ; London, 1779. 4to. ; p. 100. 2 Townsend’s Journey through Spain; 3 vols., 8vo. Lond.1791; iii.,257. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 141 sphere of art, for he was second son of the painter Pedro Berreguete, and one of his sisters — known as “ La Toledana,” was married to Jnan Gonsalez Becerril, a painter of Toledo. His parents, how- ever, designed him for the legal profession, and obtained for him the post of solicitor ( Escribano del Crimen ) in the Iloyal Chancery of V alladolid 1 — an office of which he still retained the title in 1526, 2 although he had probably long ceased to discharge its duties. He received his first instruc- tions in painting from his father ; and at the death of that master he passed into Italy to study in the school of Michael Angelo at Florence. There he early distinguished himself, both in painting and sculpture. In 1503 he made a copy of his master’s famous cartoon of the Battle of Pisa, executed in competition with that by Leonardo da Vinci, and with its rival destroyed in the fire of the Great Council Chamber. He accompanied Michael Angelo, in 1504, to Pome, where he was amongst the sculptors chosen by Bramante to model the Laocoon, for the purpose of having it cast in bronze — a trial of skill which sufficiently proves the proficiency of the Spaniard, though Sansovino gained the day. On his return to Florence, he was employed to complete, for the nuns of St. Jerome, an altar piece, left unfinished by Filippo Lippi at his death. He lived many years in Italy, in habits of friendship with all the chief artists 1 Bosarte. Viage, p. 156. 2 Cean Bermudez, L03 Arquitectos, tom ii. p. 109. 142 I CHAP. III.— REIGN OF of the time, especially Bandinelli and Andrea del Sarto. In 1520, lie returned to Spain, and resided some time at Zaragoza, where he executed a tomb and an altar for the church of Santa Engracia. Thence he went to Huesca to visit Da- mian Torment, who profited by his knowledge and experience, in his works for that Cathedral. The talents of Berreguete soon attracted the notice of Charles V., who appointed him one of his artists, and afterwards gave him a chamberlain’s key. Having married Dona Juana Pareda, a lady of Rioseco, he fixed his residence in Valladolid, where he engaged in many works for churches and monasteries. Of these, one of the finest was the high altar which he erected in the Church of San Benito el Real, attached to the great Convent of Benedictines. The original agreement between the abbot and the artist has been printed by Bosarte, 1 and bears date 8th November, 1526. It is there stipulated that the height of the altar shall be fourteen yards and a half, and its breadth ten yards ; that three sorts of wood shall be used in its construction, walnut ( nogal ) for the figures, and yew (teja) and pine for the other parts ; that the colours and gilding shall be of the finest quality ; and that the whole of the paintings and the heads and hands of all the carved figures shall be executed by Berreguete himself. The structure consisted of two stories, each supported by twelve columns, the lower row being C’orin- 1 Viage, p. 359. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 143 tliian ; between the columns were bas-reliefs, or saintly figures in niches ; and the cornices and every part susceptible of ornament, were covered with flowers, foliage, and animals. In the centre of the lower story stood St. Benedict — carved and painted as large as life — in the act of blessing ; on either hand were pictures representing the “ Nativity of our Lord ” and the “ Flight into “ Egypt.” In the upper story the Virgin attended by angels was soaring up to heaven; and the whole edifice was crowned with a crucifix. Ber- reguete spent six years in making this altar, with which, when it was finished, he expressed himself highly satisfied, in a letter to Andre Naxera, a brother sculptor. 1 The abbot, Alonso de Toro, however, does not seem to have shared in his satisfaction, for they had a long dispute about the price, which was at last fixed by three arbitrators (of whom Felipe de Vigarny was one) at 4,400 ducats. He seems to have been unwearied in the exercise of his profession, in the course of which he made several journies to Madrid, Toledo, Granada, and other cities. In 1529, he was em- ployed by Archbishop Fonseca, of Toledo, to execute the retablo for the chapel of the College of Santiago, founded at Salamanca by that prelate, and within two years, though occupied, as we have seen, at home, he produced a beautiful and elaborate work, adorned with eight pictures and Works in va- rious cities of Spain. Salamanca. 1 Bosarte, Viage, p. 370. 144 CHAP. III.— BEIGN OF Toledo. a variety of statues. At Toledo, he was chosen, in 1539, with Felipe de Vigarny, to carve the upper stalls of choir, of which he executed one- half, and likewise the archiepiscopal throne, over which hovers an airy and graceful figure, carved in dark walnut, representing our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, and remarkable for Palencia. its fine and floating drapery. The Convent of San Domingo, at Palencia, possessed a noble monument of his genius in the sepulchre of Juan de lloxas and Maria Sarmi, Marquess and Mar- chioness of Poza, who knelt in effigy beneath a towering canopy of marble, supported by columns and adorned with sacred sculptures. This fine tomb w T as finished in 1557. Monument of Card. Tavern at Toledo. His faculties remained unimpaired to a good old age; for when near his eightieth year, he went, with his son Alonso, to Toledo, to construct, for the noble Hospital of St. John Baptist, the monument of its founder, Cardinal Archbishop Juan de Tavera, for which the stipulated price was 1000 ducats. It is reckoned one of his finest works, and is placed in the centre of the chapel. On a richly decorated sarcophagus, the great churchman lies in his mitre and robes ; his gloved hands are crossed on his breast, and his fine and venerable features — worthy of a master’s chisel — wear the pure placid expression which belongs to “the dead “ that die in the Lord.” A portrait by El Greco hangs near, and vouches for the accuracy of the likeness. Whilst engaged in this work, Berre- THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 145 gucte resided in the hospital, and was lodged in a chamber beneath the clock — now a receptacle for dust and rubbish — where he died in 1561. His genius gained him wealth, as well as honours and fame; for, two years before his death, he pur- chased from the Crown the lordship of V entosa, near Valladolid, together with the customs of the town — possessions which were enjoyed by his family for several generations. Berreguete is universally allowed to have been the greatest artist of his age in Spain. He brought oil painting to a perfection unknown in the Pe- ninsula. For the stiff angular style of the earlier masters, and their lean haggard figures — whose ages could be guessed at only from their sizes — he substituted the free outlines and rounded con- tours of Italy. Pompeyo Guarico’s rule for draw- ing the human form, which gave nine times the length of the face to the whole figure, had been fol- lowed till Vigarny changed the proportion to nine times and one-third. Albert Durer made it ten. The practice of Berreguete, founded on his studies of the antique, fixed it at ten and one-third. 1 His statues, which are generally highly finished, dis- play much of the manner of his great master, in their grand and noble forms, and well devel- oped, though somewhat overcharged, anatomy. In painting, his best works were executed for the Cathedral of Palencia and the church of Ventosa; 1 Jovellanos. Oraeion en la Junta de la Real Acad, de S. Fernando. 14. Julio, 1781. p. 15. 4 to. Madrid, 1781. Genius and in- fluence of Ber- reguete. L 146 CHAP. III.— BEIGN OF (r. de Tor de vil- las. in marble and bronze, for the Cathedral and other public buildings at Toledo. As an architect, his luxuriant fancy seduced him into the flowery paths of his contemporaries ; and his facades and altars are usually fretted and garlanded, after the most approved plateresque fashion. But here, as indeed in the other arts, he lias sometimes been made answerable for the extravagances of others. It has been the lot of all great masters, who joined unwearied industry to prolific genius, to glean a few praises for merits, and still oftener to be made scapegoats for sins not their own. Thus almost every work of architecture, sculpture or painting produced in Castile between 1500 and 1560, which was good, or passed for such, and of which the parentage was doubtful, has, at some time or other, been ascribed to Berreguete. 1 Gaspar de Tordesillas was one of the ablest sculptors formed in the school of Berreguete. 1 Cn. Bermudez. Los Arquitectos, tom. ii. p. 13. I find a testimony to the fame of Berreguete — where it was little to be expected — in the Chronicle of honest Bernal Diaz del Castillo — friend of Cortes, and one of the Conquistadors of Mexico. Writing of certain Mexican artists of extraordinary skill, he says, that in his judgment they could not be sur- passed even by “ aquel tan nombrado pintor como fue el muy antiguo “ Apeles, y de los nuestros tiempos, que se dicen Berreguete y Micael Angel, “ ni de otro moderuo ahora nuevamente nombrado, natural de Burgos, que se dice, que en sus obras tan primas es otro Apeles.” — Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva Espana, tom iv. p. 428, 8vo Paris 1837. Who the Apelles of Burgos could be, is not very clear. Perhaps the valiant Captain — who wrote in 1572 in his old age — may have meant Vigarny, the sculptor of Burgos — or possibly Morales of Badajoz, or Campana of Brussels — both of whom must have been at the height of their reputation during his visits to Castile. 1 THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 147 One of his best works was the monument of the Comendador Pedro Gonzalez de Alderete, wrought in alabaster, for the parish church of Tordesillas — a sarcophagus supported by Caryatides, and rich with sculptured niches, on which lies the armed figure of the soldier, with his morion at his feet, and cherubs sleeping around him. 1 For the church of San Benito el Real, at Valladolid, he executed, in 1547, the rich plateresque retablo of the chapel of St. Anthony the Abbot, in which the painted statue of that saint was reckoned superior to the San Benito of the high altar — the work of Berreguete himself. 2 From some docu- ments belonging to a tedious law process respect- ing the tomb of Alderete, preserved by Cean Bermudez, 3 it appears that Tordesillas could not write, or even sign his name. Xamete was a sculptor who may have been either the scholar or the rival of Berreguete. Of his life nothing is known ; and it is a matter of dispute, whether his name be Catalonian, V alen- cian, Italian, or Moorish. He proved himself, however, one of the ablest artists of his day, by his magnificent portal of the Cathedral cloister at Cuenca, carved in Arcos stone, between 1546 and 1550, at the expense of Bishop Sebastian Ramirez. It is in the florid plateresque style ; it rises twenty-eight feet in height, and is sup- 1 Cean Bermudez, Los Arquitectos, &e., tom ii. p. 22. 2 Bosarte, Viage, p. 187. 3 Cean Bermudez, Los Arquitectos, &c. tom ii. p. 178. Xamete. 148 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF F. Gallegos. ported by Corinthian columns, and profusely adorned with sculpture, in which Tritons and Cupids, masks, heads of lions, harpies, and other heathen devices set off the statues of Judith and Jael, the Virgin and St. John, and bas-reliefs representing the Life of our Lord. Fernando Gallegos was born at Salamanca, between the middle and end of the fifteenth cen- J. de Villoldo. tury. Some authors say that he studied painting in Germany, in the school of Albert Durer, on account of the resemblance of their styles, in draw- ing and exact finish. Cean Bermudez, however, though of opinion that his paintings might pass for those of Durer, thinks it more probable that he learned his art under Pedro Berreguete, at Toledo. He mentions, with peculiar praise, his picture on panel in St. Clement’s Chapel in the Cathedral of Salamanca, representing the Virgin with the infant Saviour on her knees, and attended by St. Andrew and St. Christopher. The style of Gallegos had sometimes the softness of Rafael’s second manner, and some of his designs seem to have been borrowed from prints by Marc Antonio. 1 He died at Salamanca, at a great age, in 1550. Juan de Villoldo was a distinguished painter at Toledo about the same time. He studied in the school of his uncle, Alonzo Perez de Villoldo, a scholar of Juan de Borgona. His series of forty- five pictures on subjects of sacred history, executed 1 Cook’s Sketches of Spain, ii. 149. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 149 in 1547-8, for the Carbajal chapel in the church of St. Andrew at Madrid, by order of its restorer, Don Gutierre de Carbajal, Bishop of Plasencia, is commended by Cean Bermudez, as being designed with great correctness, and in a style of antique purity. He died sometime after 1551. Francisco Comontes was son of Inigo, and nephew of Antonio Comontes, both of whom were scholars of the elder Bincon. Inigo was the instructor of Francisco, who first distinguished himself as an artist, in the Cathedral of Toledo, in 1533, by executing the principal retablo of the splendid Chapel “ de Los Beyes Nuevos,” from the designs of Felipe de Vigarny. For the winter chapter-room he painted, in 1545, the portrait of Cardinal Archbishop Tavera, and in 1547 that of Archbishop Siliceo, for each of which he received 6375 maravedis. In 1547, he was named Painter to the Cathedral — an office which he held till the 10t.h of February, 1565 — the day of his death. Of his many works for various altars and chapels, some have been re- moved by succeeding chapters, to make way for novelties ; those which were considered the best were his highly-finished pictures, on panel, of the Virgin and St. Bartholomew, placed, in 1559, in a retablo, gilt by his own hands, in the Chapel of the Tower. Comontes was one of the best of the many artists of his age, whose whole lives and labours lay within the shadow of that great Toledan Church, whose genius was spent in its F. Comontes. 150 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF D. Correa T. Pelegret. service, and whose names were hardly known beyond its walls. Correa is an artist whose name has been pre- served by a series of pictures painted for the Bernardine Monastery of Yaldeiglesias, represent- ing passages from the lives of our Lord and St. Bernard. Some of these are now in the National Museum at Madrid, and bear the signature of “ D. Correa, 1550.” Cean Bermudez thought he detected the same hand in twelve pictures on the History of the Virgin, in the convent of San Vicente, at Plasencia. From the resemblance of Correa’s style to that of the early Florentine masters, it is very probable that he studied at Florence. His figures and draperies are often Perugino-like ; his skies, like the skies of St. Petersburgh, are of that uncertain hue which hovers between blue and green ; his colouring is rich, and his conceptions have much of grace and feeling. Tomas Pelegret was a Toledan by birth, and studied in Italy under Balthazar Peruzzi, and Polidoro Caravaggio, famous at Pome for their designs in chiaro-obscuro , representing buildings or street perspectives, bas-reliefs or groups of sculpture, cornices or other architectural orna- ments, with which it was then the fashion to adorn the facades, courts, and halls of palaces. On liis return to Spain — probably about 1530 — he settled at Zaragoza, where he decorated the facades of many palaces and churches with THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. paintings in the style of his masters, and enjoyed a high reputation. These works, however, have all perished by time, or in the troubles of the tur- bulent and ill-fated city. At Huesca he painted, about 1550, the Sacristy of the Cathedral, and the Monument for the Holy Week, works of much merit, in which he was assisted by one Cuevas, a native of the town, and his scholar, who excelled him in the grace and spirit of his figures. Cuevas died in his thirty-third year — doubtless before his master, who attained the age of eighty-four, and, though the date of his death is not known, must have lived far into the reign of Philip II. It is not certain whether he ever painted in oils, though some pictures in the Convent of Santa Engracia, at Zaragoza, were attributed to him. The decorative art which he practised did not survive him in Arragon. His facility of hand, and fecundity of invention must have been remarkable ; for even in the last century many of his drawings and designs — made for painters, sculptors, architects, goldsmiths, and other artists, were still to be found at Zaragoza. Ezpeleta was an Arragonese painter, and con- temporary with Pelegret, who excelled in illumi- nations and miniatures. He was born at Alagon, and died at the age of sixty, about the middle of the century, at Zaragoza, where he chiefly resided, and where he illuminated many clioir-books for the Cathedral with great delicacy. He likewise 151 Cuevas. Ezpeleta. 152 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF II. Yanez. 1031. attempted oil-painting, but his style was so dry and hard that he soon returned to his miniature and more congenial labours on vellum. Hernando Yanez was a painter of whom nothing is known beyond the fact that he painted, about 1531, a series of pictures on panel for the Chapel of the Albornoces — conspicuous for its portal over- hung by a skeleton of stone — in the Cathedral of Cuenca. He was employed for this purpose by Hon Gomez Carillo de Albornoz, prothonotary, treasurer, and canon of that church, a man of fine taste, who had visited Bologna and Borne, and who enriched the chapel of Iris house with many jewels and works of art. I)on Gomez died in 1536 ; in his will these pictures by Yanez were mentioned, and that artist was called “ a “ remarkable painter ” ( pintor singular). In the principal retablo the centre pieces represent the Nativity, Crucifixion, and Besurrection of our Blessed Lord ; and a pope, a bishop, and sundry prophets and saints fill up the side compartments. “ In all these figures,” says Cean Bermudez, “ there is expression and lofty character ; the “ drawing is correct, and the attitudes are “ highly devotional ; the colouring is good, “ and the execution elaborate, like that of many “ Italian pictures of the time.” In another altar are a “ Pieta, or Head Christ,” and an “ Adoration of the Kings,” which, in their fine drawing and composition, resemble the works of Leonardo de Vinci, and favour the THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 153 idea that Yanez may have studied in the school of that master. Pedro Pubiales, a native of Estremadura, ac- quired great distinction at Pome in the school of Francisco Salviati, whom he assisted in many of his works in that city. He was a friend of Vasari, who relates that he painted for the church of the Holy Ghost, a “ Conversion of St. “ Paul,” which was placed beside a “ Visitation of “ the Virgin” by Salviati, and that the work of the pupil could hardly be distinguished from that of the master, by its style and merits. 1 He likewise assisted Vasari himself in his allegorical frescos at the Palace of San Giorgio. 2 The learned Spaniard, Dr. Juan de Valverde, who was in Home in 1553-4, superintending the engraving of the plates for his book on anatomy, cites in that work, as examples of the value of anatomical knowledge in painting, “ Michael Angelo the Florentine, “ and Pedro Pubiales the Estremaduran, who by “ giving themselves to anatomy as well as paint- “ ing, have come to be the most excellent and “ famous painters that our great times have seen.” As no works of Pubiales are known to have P. Rubiales. existed in the cathedrals and galleries of Spain, it is probable that he lived and died abroad. The love of art and the munificence of its patrons kept pace with the increasing number 1 Vasari, tom. iii., p. 94. The latter fact must be taken on the authority of Cean Bermudez. 2 Id. p. 391. Patrons of art. 154 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF and excellence of its professors. The splendid The Church. Church was ever ready to encourage and reward ; her new and growing temples were each day demanding fresh embellishment, and opening wider fields for artistic enterprize. In 1538, the Chapter of Se ville. Chapter of Seville had already paid 90,000 ducats to the brothers Arnao, of Flanders, Carlos of Bruges, and other artists, for the gorgeous painted windows of their cathedral, which were not com- Abp. Tavern, of Toledo. pleted till twenty years later. The Cardinal Juan de Tavera was inferior in taste and magnificence to none of his predecessors on the Archiepiscopal throne of Toledo. He had for his confidential secre- tary, Bartolome Bustamente, distinguished in the university of Alcala for his scholarship, and one of the most classical architects of his day. By the prelate’s orders, this artist designed the Hos- pital of St. John Baptist, without the walls of Toledo — a majestic structure of granite, remark- able for its noble cloister, supported on Doric colonnades — of which the enemies of the princely founder were wont to say, that it was far too stately and sumptuous for the poor inmates, and would secure for the extravagant architect a warm place in purgatory. 2 It may have been to balk this prophecy, that Bustamente assumed in his old age the habit of the Jesuits ; in which garb, with his friend St. Francis Borgia, he 1 Ponz is. p. 4. See Cn. Bermudez’s remarks on his statements in the article on Arnao de Flandes, in his Dictionary. 2 Cn. Bermudez Los Arquitectos, tom. ii. p. 31 THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. visited the retired Emperor at San Yuste. The South had its Mecaenas in Francisco de los Cobos, Commander of Leon, and Secretary to Charles V. At his town of Ubeda, this statesman built, not only his own beautiful palace, which was, as we have seen, the cradle of fresco-painting in Anda- lusia, but also the noble Chapel of the Saviour, both from the designs of Pedro de Valdevira, who rivalled Berreguete in rich plateresque architecture. Men of rank no longer confined themselves to the mere patronage of the fine arts. Don Felipe de Guevara, a scion of the noble house of Onate, and Commander of Estriana in the Order of Santiago, was no less distinguished for his taste and talent in painting than for his scholarship, and for his valour as a cavalry officer in the expedi- tion to Tunis in 1535. He had accompanied the Emperor in his journey to Bologna in 1530, to receive the imperial crown from Clement VXL, and there first acquired the friendship of Titian. With that master, and others of Italy and Flan- ders, he lived in habits of familiar intercourse, and a careful study of their works made him an excellent amateur painter. He was also the author of “ Commentaries on Painting,” written in his old age to amuse the tedious hours of sick- ness : they consist chiefly of anecdotes of the painters of antiquity, gleaned from his classical reading, and interspersed with recollections of travel ; and in tone and style they will remind the 155 F. de los Cobos. Don F. de Guevara. 156 CHAP. III.— BEIGN OF English student of the Essays of our own Sir William Temple. They are dedicated to Philip II., whom Guevara exhorts to make his galleries accessible to lovers of art, “ for,” says the old scholarly soldier, “ painting and sculpture, in my “ opinion, are in some sort like riches, which “ Boethius hath said are fruitless and of no effect “ when heaped together and hidden, hut not so “ when they are shared and imparted.” 1 Like the philosopher of Sheen, Guevara is much a “ laudator temporis acti ,” and a defender of the divine right of ancient genius. He laments the modern practice of painting on canvas instead of panel, as making the art too easy, and its productions too cheap. 2 The MS. was long forgotten, and was at last found by Dean Josef de Boa, in a book shop at Plasencia, and published soon afterwards at Madrid, by Ponz in 1788. Guevara possessed a fine collection of Roman coins— used and praised by the learned Ambrosio Morales, in compiling his Antiquities of Spain — and he wrote a treatise on the subject, now unfortunately lost, which must have preceded those of Agustin and Ursino, and was probably the earliest essay of the kind in Castilian. 3 He died at Madrid, in 1563, and was buried in the chapel of his family, in the Church of St. Jerome. 1 Comentarios tie la Pintura de Don Felipe Guevara, con discurso y notas de Don Antonio Ponz. 8vo. Madrid, 1788, p. 4. Ponz — ecclesiastic though he was — has a hit, in a note on this passage, at the nunneries, “ where,” he says, “ he has heard some works of art exist, which few people “ ever see.” But French marshals and principles “ out change tout cela." 2 Id. p. 51. 8 Id. p. 244. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. The art of illumination flourished in convents and cathedrals long after the printing press had taken away the occupation of the copyist. Their great vellum missals and books of the choir em- ployed many skilful hands in the embellishment of their ample pages. Of Antonio cle Holanda, a famous Portuguese artist in this style, Charles V. said that the miniature portrait for which he had sat to him at Toledo, Avas better than that Avhich Titian painted at Bologna — a remark which his son Francisco, in his Avork on painting, avers to have been addressed to himself at Barcelona, in the presence of three Dukes. Diego de Arroya was another illuminator, Avhose delicate portraits in miniature gained him the place of painter- in-ordinary to the Emperor. He died at Madrid in 1551. Francisco de Holanda himself prac- tised his father’s art, as Avell as architecture, in the seiwice of John III., King of Portugal. Peturning from a pilgrimage to Santiago, Avhich he had made in the train of the Infant Don Luis of Portugal, he spent some days with his friend Bias de Perea, a Portuguese painter settled in Castile, and from this visit resulted Holanda’s “ Dialogue on DraAving from Nature ” ( sobre el sacar por el Natural J, Avhich he added to his “ Treatise on Painting ” — a work Avritten in Portuguese, and in 1563 translated into Castilian — of which translation the original MS. remains unpublished in the Library of the Academy of St. Ferdinand, at Madrid. 157 Painters of Il- luminations. A. de Holanda. D. de Arroya , F.de Holanda. 158 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF Artists in gold and silver. The goldsmiths of Spain had been famous for the beauty and splendour of their works, 1 even before the Genoese mariner had dreamed of a western world. The discovery of America sup- plied fresh vigour and double resources to their sumptuous craft. In those days of wealth and piety, when the hero of Mexico, fresh from the pillage of Montezuma, sent his proud offering of a golden culverin 2 to the Castilian Csesar, not a few of the ablest Spanish artists left their labours in bronze and marble, to work for the Church in the precious metals of the Indies. The reign of Charles saw revived the glories of Solomon. Almost in the words of the sacred chronicler, 3 it might be said that “ the kings of the west and the governors of the country brought gold and silver to the emperor, besides that which the merchants and chapmen brought ; and he made silver as stones in the streets of V alladolid and Leon ; it was nothing accounted in the days of Charles.” To the Church, her own adventurous missionaries, as Avell as the soldiers of fortune, lustful of barbarian treasure, and hoping for the pardon of their crimes, “ brought every man his present, vessels of silver and vessels of gold, raiment, harness, and spices.” The vast masses of bullion which came into the hands of the silversmiths of Spain would have i See p. 84. 2 Bernal Diaz del Castillo. Verdadera Historia, tom. iv., p. 84. 3 1 Kings, cli. x., and 1 Chronicles, eh. ix. THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 159 excited the wonder and envy of Cellini, even amidst the wealth of his royal workshop in the Tour cle Nesle, and their shrines, chalices, and crosiers might have vied in delicacy of work- manship with the fairest salt-cellars and vases of that vain-glorious Florentine. Of these artificers, one of the most skilful was Henrique d’Arphe, a native of Germany, who had settled early in the century at Leon, where he founded a family of goldsmiths, or rather sculptors and architects in plate. For the Cathedral of that city, he wrought in silver the celebrated Custodia, 1 of Gothic design, and ten feet in height, 3 consisting of five stories, profusely adorned with small saintly figures, and crowned with a tapering spire. This noble temple of silver, so worthy of the not less delicate temple of stone which it adorned, was melted down by the French in the War of Independence. In 1517, the artist was called to Toledo, to execute another Custodia, which happily still exists, having been saved to the Cathedral by the friendly arms of England. It is 1 I have already explained the meaning of this term, hut may here add the quaint stanza of Juan d'Arphe (grandson of Henrique), descriptive of the use and origin of the Custodia. (Varia Commensuracion Folio. Madrid, 1795, p. 287.) “ Custodia es Teraplo rico, fabricado “ Custodia” is a temple of rich plate, “ Para triunfo de Christo verdadero, Wrought for the glory of our Saviour true, “ Donde semuestraenpantransustanciado Where, into wafer transubstantiate, “ En que esta Dios y Hombre tolo entero, He shows his Godhead and his Manhood too, “ Del gran Sancta Sanctorum fabricado That holiest ark of old to imitate, “ Que Beseleel, Artifice tan vero, Fashion’d by Bezaleel, the cunning Jew, “ Escogido por Dios para este efecto, Chosen of God to work his sov’ran will, “ Fabrico, dandole el el intelecto.” And greatly gifted with celestial skill. 2 Ponz., tom. xi., p. 224. The Castilian foot is less than the English, by one inch. II. d'Arplie. 160 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF A . (TArphe. a Gothic edifice, nine feet high, and somewhat resembling the Scott Monument at Edinburgh, which, however, it far exceeds in richness of design and luxuriance of decoration. From an octagon base rise eight piers and pointed arches, supporting as many light pinnacles clustered round a beautiful filagree spire. Within the chamber beneath, is placed a smaller shrine, for the Host, formed of the purest gold, and blazing with gems. The whole is a dazzling mass of fretwork and pinnacles, flying buttresses, pierced parapets, and enriched niches, amongst which are distributed two hundred and sixty exquisite statuettes. Each ornament and chasing seems different from all the rest ; the eye is not cheated or wearied by the recurrence of the same moulds or models, but regaled with ever-new variety, the brilliant offspring of genius and toil. The price of this superb work is stated by Cean Bermudez to have been only 1,033,357 mara- vedis — or about £.415 — a sum which, even taking into account the higher value of money in those days, seems astonishingly small. In 1599, a plinth was added to the base, and the whole was parcel gilt, as it still remains — the most beautiful piece of plate in the world. A smaller Custodia of the same kind, and the work of the same hand, is preserved in the cathedral of Cordoba. Antonio d’Arphe, son of Henrique, discarded the Gothic, and adopted the Greco- Romano style, on which he engrafted many of THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. 161 the rich decorations of the former. His works were, therefore, exquisite models for the lovers of plateresque architecture. The best of them were the Custodia of the Cathedral of Santiago, that of the church of Medina de Rioseco, and the great processional reliquary (las andas ) of the Ca- thedral of Leon — all of which have fallen victims to French rapacity or Spanish indigence. Juan Ruiz, another excellent goldsmith, is supposed to have been a native of Cordova, where he learned his art, under the elder d’Arphe, when employed on the Custodia of that Cathedral. In 1533, he began his Greco-Romano Custodia, for the Cathedral of Jaen, which he took four years to complete, and which gave the name of “ Calle “ de la Custodia ” to the street where he had his workshop. Cuenca produced three famous sil- versmiths, the brothers Alonso and Francisco Becerril, and Cristobal, son of the latter, who made for the Cathedral its great Custodia, which was one of the most costly and celebrated pieces of church plate in Spain. They began it in 1528, and though ready for use in 1546, it was not finished till 1573. It was a three-storied edifice, of a florid classical design, crowned with a dome, and enriched with numberless groups and statues, and an inner shrine of jewelled gold ; it contained 616 marks of silver, and cost 17,725| ducats, a sum which can barely have paid the ingenious artists for the labour of forty-five years. In the W ar of Independence, this splen- J. Ruiz. A. F. & C. Becerril. M 162 CHAP. III.— REIGN OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V. clid prize fell into the hands of the French General Caulaincourt, by whom it was forthwith turned into five-franc pieces, bearing the image and superscription of Napoleon. CHAPTER IV. REIGN OF PHILIP II.— 1556-1598. HE Emperor’s love of art descended in full measure on his son Philip II. It is the redeeming feature in the forbid- ding character of that prince ; and in reviewing the bloody annals of his reign, it is refreshing to turn from the dismal exploits of viceroys and commanders, to the nobler and more enduring achievements of painters and architects. Despising the arts of courtesy practised by his father, as well as the golden opinions which they won, Philip valued the immortality conferred by the hand of Titian. Gloomy and morose in court and council, with his family, and even in his amours, he maintained towards his artists a gracious and familiar demeanour which might have gained him the imperial diadem, had it been extended to the Electoral Princes. Soon after his accession to the throne, having received a memorial from Titian, praying for the payment of his pension, which had fallen into arrears, he Philip II., his love of the arts. His urbanity and kindness to artists. Titian. 164 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. A. More. replied with promptitude and kindness, and addressed a peremptory order for payment, under his own hand, to the Viceroy of Milan. A similar wrong suffered by the imperial recluse of San Yuste remained unredressed, and his com- plaints unheeded. To Anthony More he is said to have shown still greater favour, in overlooking a gross breach of etiquette, and conniving at the bold Fleming’s escape from the scandalized familiars of the Inquisition. He delighted in the conversation of artists as well as friars ; to both he was always accessible ; and he would frequently enter the chapel or the studio, unexpected and unattended, to join in the matins, or the even- song, or to note the progress of the picture on the easel. His taste less general than his father’s. But while he devoted far more of his time and treasure than Charles to the promotion of the fine arts, his taste was less Catholic and expansive. The Emperor could appreciate the wit of Aretin as well as the pictures of Titian, the poetry of Garcilasso as well as the architectural designs of Machuca. Philip, on the contrary, though he wrote well, and was a purist in 'matters of style and grammar, had little knowledge or love of literature. His favourite reading was books of devotion and the writings of the martyr-mystic, Raymond Lully. 1 Mariana 1 Balthasar Porreno — Diclros y Hechos de el Sefior Rey Don Phelipe II. p. 165, srn. 4to, Madrid, 1748 — a work dedicated to the “ Most holy “ Empress of Heaven and Earth, Mary Mother of God." CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 165 dedicated to him his history, yet narrowly escaped the sharp criticism of the Inquisition. 1 Luis Ponce de Leon, in spite of his genius and high birth, languished in its dungeons during five years of this reign, for no other crime than translating the Canticles into classical Castilian verse 2 for the use of a friend who lacked Latin. Though the epic poet, Ercilla, entered life as page to Prince Philip, he was neglected by the King; 3 and if Jorge de Montemayor attended his early travels, it was in the capacity of a musician. 4 In that remarkable composition, 5 which records the dalliance of Philip of Austria and Anne of Eboli, 6 Titian has sufficiently indicated the 1 Bouterwek’s History of Spanish Literature, translated by Tliomasina Ross, v. i. p. 457. 2 Id. p. 240. 3 id. p. 407. 4 Id. p. 218. 5 Now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, at Cambridge. There are two pictures very similar in subject, by Titian, in the Queen of Spain’s gallery at Madrid, in one of which Venus plays with a little spaniel, and in the other with a Cupid ; in neither are the features of the musician like those of Philip II. They are not to be found in the Catalogue, but are kept in what is called the council-room, where royal visitors are served with refreshments, and where hang many tiresome repetitions of the foolish face of the Spanish Bourbons. 6 Mr. Ranke (Fiirsten and Volker von Siid-Europa in sechszelmten und siebzelmten Jahrhundert, 4 bander, 8vo. Berlin, 1837 ; band, i., p. 190, note 3) has treated the amours of Philip and the young wife of Ruy Gomez de Silva as a mere fable ; they have, however, been placed beyond a doubt by Don Salvador Bermudez de Castro, in his agreeable volume, Antonio Perez; estudios historicos, 8vo. Madrid, 1841, and are confirmed by the more recent French work, Antonio Perez et Philippe II., 8vo. Paris, 1845, by M. Mignet, who tells us (p. 33) that that fine and fascinating woman was not blind of an eye, according to the old slander of history, but merely squinted; and (p. 37) that her connexion with Philip was so notorious, that at court her son, the Duke of Pastrana, was universally held to stand in the same relation to His reputed father, the Prince of Eboli, that Philip Faulconbridge stood in to old Sir Robert. Favourite pur- suits. 166 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP 11. Painting . favourite recreations of the royal lover. Re- clining near the couch, whereon reposes the voluptuous and unveiled form of his high-born Venus, he touches the strings of a theorbo ; and a vista of trees in the back-ground is closed by a stately architectural fountain, like those of the gardens of Aranjuez. Music, painting, and architecture were the chief amusements of his leisure. Nurtured amongst the works of Titian, he could hardly have failed to acquire a fine perception of the beauties of painting. ITe is even said to have used the pencil with consider- able skill. In the choice of his painters, and in the allotment of their several tasks, he displayed much discernment and discrimination. A severe, though candid, critic, the faults of a picture no more eluded his eye than the errors of ortho- graphy or punctuation in a state-paper ; l nor was painter or secretary ever excused the task of correction. Architecture. Architecture, however, was Philip’s most che- rished pursuit, and the art of which he possessed most practical knowledge. In his progress to Portugal, in 1580, he spent fifteen days at Merida, with his favourite architect, Juan de Herrera, examining the bridge, aqueduct, temple, and other Roman remains. 2 At Madrid, in a tower of the Alcazar, he fitted up a cabinet with carved presses of walnut, wherein he kept the plans of 1 Porreno, p. 149 ; and Bermudez de Castro, Ant. Perez, p. 43. 2 Los Arquitectostom. ii. p. 139. CHAP. IY.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 167 his palaces and other architectural drawings. 1 Here he gave audience at a stated hour each day to his architects, whom he liked to have about his person, and two of whom, Herrera and Francisco de Mora, held the dignified post of Quarter- master general of the royal household, ( Aposen- tador mayor del palacio.) He loved to make designs of palaces, castles, and gardens, and when the plans of others were laid before him, we are told that he would add, take away, or alter with the judgment of a Vitruvius or Sebastian Serlio. 2 It is said that he made with his own hand the plan for the convent of the Trinity at Madrid, and that the original drawing was long preserved in the archives of the house. 3 This convent, now the National Museum, is a large building of brick, with a good inner court, designed in so plain and severe a style, as to manifest that the royal architect, if the design indeed be his, defied the plateresque builders, and all their fancies, and was equally austere in temper and in taste. The royal residences and establishments of Spain underwent constant alterations and addi- tions during the reign of Philip. He enlarged and embellished the Alcazar of Madrid and added a stately tower to the palace at Lisbon ; he built the royal mint of Segovia, and the chapel and great part of the palace of Aranjuez ; and to the hunting-seat of the Pardo he added four towers, some galleries, the fosse, and the gardens, in 1 Carducho, Dialogo viii. 2 Porreno, p. 161. 3 Id. p. 209. Architectural undertakings. 168 CHAP. IV.— EEIGN OF PHILIP II. Convent-palace of San Lorenzo del Escorial imitation, it is said, of a country-palace, which had pleased him during his short residence in the realms of his English Queen. 1 “ He was equally “ zealous,” says his panegyrist, Porreho, “ in “ building churches, colleges, and convents, as “ castles and batteries.” 2 On the site of the con- fiscated mansion of Secretary Perez he founded, at Madrid, the College of St. Isabel. At the same time that he displayed his munificence to Flanders in the rising Avails of the University of Douay, and to the Castiles, by erecting the Cathedral of Valladolid, and the Royal Monastery of the Es- corial, the Algerine rover might note from the Mediterranean the magnificent piety of the Ca- tholic King, in the aspiring and majestic toAver of the still unfinished Cathedral of Malaga. Such Avorks as these afforded ample scope for distinction to artists of all kinds. The great monument, hoAvever, of Philip’s reign is the Escorial, a monastery which casts into the shade every other architectural Avork of the age, and peculiarly deserves the attention of the student of Spanish art, not only for its own sake, but as opening in its vast Avails the finest field ever offered to the painters of Spain. This huge gridiron of granite — as it is commonly considered, of which the frame and bars are a palace-con- vent, and the handle a monastic-palace — Avas V thirty-one years in building, and cost upwards of six millions of ducats. To watch and hasten its 1 Porreno, p. 199. 2 Icl. cap. xiii. passim. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OP PHILIP II. 169 progress was, for many years, Philip’s ever- present care, and his chosen recreation. It were hard to decide which object lay nearer his heart, the aggrandisement of his house, or the com- pletion of the Escorial. His armies might pine for supplies, or mutiny for pay, but the sinews of war were never wanting to his architects. When he could steal a few hours from statecraft, he would climb the overhanging Guadarrama, and seated on a rock, still known as the “ King’s Chair,” would contemplate the maze of granite walls growing into order and grandeur at his feet. At all times and distances, at Burgos, Valladolid, or Lisbon, he was intent on the work. As old age and infirmities crept upon him, his anxiety became ever more feverish. Wars and intrigues, and the fortunes of the House of Austria, he could leave to his successors ; not so his favourite monastery. Treasure was, therefore, lavished, that time might be economised ; but his artists would be stinted of neither. Thus, although Leoni, the Italian sculptor, chiefly employed in the decorations of the church, had engaged to complete the high altar in four years, at the cost of 20,000 ducats, ten years passed away, the money was spent, and the work remained un- finished in his studio at Milan. The poor King, oppressed with gout and melancholy, wrote piteously from Madrid, entreating that some part of it might be sent, were it only a single statue. In thirteen years, instead of four, the Philip's anxiety for its completion. 170 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Remarkable events of Philip’s life connected u ith the Escorial. altar was at last finished ; much, however, re- mained to be done to the chapel. The adorn- ments of the gospel-side 1 were not completed for four years more, till April 1597, when the in- creasing maladies of the King made time doubly precious. Leoni was, therefore, compelled to bind himself to fit up the epistle-side in eighteen months, and spurred on by a promised largesse of 200 ducats for every month by which the wearisome time of expectation should be shortened. Thus urged, creative art kept pace with decaying nature, and the proud chapel, with its rich garniture, stood ready for the funeral rites of the founder in 1598. With the Escorial is blended much of the history of Philip II. He redeemed his vow to St. Lawrence, offered up amid the roar of battle at St. Quentin, by rearing this superb edifice in all the pomp and beauty of holiness on the site of a miserable convent, the chapel of which had once been a bed-chamber, and could boast no better altar-piece than a crucifix sketched in charcoal on the wall. 2 Whilst performing his devotions in the unfinished temple, he received tidings of the great naval victory at Lepanto, and returned thanks for the over- throw of the Turk. 3 Here he joined in the Te-Deum for the conquest of Portugal, and 1 Tlie gospel-side of a chapel is to the left hand of the spectator who faces the altar; the epistle-side to his right. 2 Porreno, p. 64. 3 Id, p 29. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 171 offered up solemn prayers for the discomfiture of the heretics of Holland, and for the success of his “ Invincible Armada.” Hence, too, he derived one of those lessons which Providence sometimes reads to conquerors ; for this his house of pride, planned in the hour of victory, was not complete until the decline of his power, and the very year of its consecration (1595) was memorable for the overthrow of the Spanish arms at Fontaine-Francoise. Here he performed those acts of humility and devotion which gained him the character, amongst friars and inquisitors, of a crowned Saint ; and enjoyed the converse of his artists, and monks, with so little of royal show and state, that being met in the cloister one day by a countryman, he was taken for a de- pendent of the establishment — an idea which the King humoured by showing the stranger the wonders of the place. From the Escorial, too, he issued the decrees which were law on the banks of the Po, and the shores of the Pacific ; and here in a little alcove adjoining the church, — on the wall of which hung a grim allegory of the Seven deadly Sins, by Jerome Bos, 2 — amidst the solemn sounds of the organ and the choir — and clasping to his breast the veil of our Lady of Monserrat 3 — he died. \r The Escorial is, without doubt, one of the 1 Porreno, p. 73. 2 Guevara (Comentarios, p. 43,) describes this picture ; and Ponz, in a note, mentions that it hung in the chamber where Philip died. 3 Porreno, p. 192. The Escorial 172 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. compared- with other great buildings. most interesting edifices in Europe. Castilian writers are never weary of extolling it, as an eighth wonder of the world, “ or rather” says Villegas, the Hagiologist, “ all the seven compre- “ hended in one.” In point of size it will bear comparison with the mightiest works of the Pharaohs or the Caesars, with Karnak and the V Colosseum ; and it is probably the greatest architectural undertaking ever conceived and executed by one man. No Egyptian or Homan builder is recorded to have completed a pile of which the doors, like those of the Escorial, if we may credit Fray Francisco de los Santos, required 1,250 pounds weight of iron to make their keys.” The church and palace on the 1 “ — o, por mejor decir, todas siete encerradas en una.” — Flos Sanc- torum, p. 381. 2 A few of tlie leading measurements of the Escorial will give a better idea, than any description can, of its magnitude. The monastery, or the gridiron itself, is a parallelogram of 740 feet by 580 ; die palace, or handle, affixed to one of the longer sides, projects about 200 feet, and has a front of about 100 ; the four spires, or feet of the instrument, at the comers are each 200 feet high ; the two spires rising above the entrance of the church which occupies the centre of the building 270, and its crowning dome 330, with an interior diameter of 06 ; the height of the pediment over the grand portal in the principal or western front is 145 feet ; and the general height of the monastery to the cornice, whence springs the high pitched roof, GO feet. The windows in the grand front exceed 200 in number, those in the palace-front are 376, and the whole number of external windows in the building about 1,100. The best works on the Escorial, to most of which my pages are in- debted, are the “ Descripcion del Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo del “ Escorial, unica maravilla del mundo, por el padre Fr. Francisco de los “ Santos, Professo de la misma real Casa, &c., y Historiador General de la “ Order de San Jeronimo,” Madrid, 1657 and 1681, folio, of which a small abridgment and translation “ by a servant of the Earl of Sandwich, in CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 173 Vatican Mount, have been three centuries and a half in growing to their present magnitude, under the rule of fifty Popes, with a treasury recruited by oblations from all parts of Christen- dom. Excepting its Pantheon, or Royal Ceme- tery — which was built in its present form by Philip IV. — the Escorial owes nothing of im- portance to the successors of Philip II. There is a peculiar grandeur in its five-fold purpose as a convent, a college, a church, a palace, and royal mausoleum. No great structure was ever more strongly stamped with the character of its founder, and the spirit of his age. Seated amidst the rocks and deserts of the Guadar- ramas, it was the fitting abode of the austere brotherhood of St. Jerome ; and its dim halls and cloisters are the scenes which imagination most loves to people with the ecstatic monk, and the iron-visaged inquisitor, and the dark and terrible figures of the ancient fanaticism. The “ His extraordinary embassy to Spain,” was pnblislied in London, in 4to., 1671, and of which the “ Descripcion,” by Fr. Andres Ximenes, another Jeronymite Friar, fol., Madrid, 1764, is little more than a reprint, with a few additional plans and drawings. Ponz devotes the greater part of his “ Viage,” tom. ii. , to the Escorial, and there is also a “ Descripcion “ Artistiea por Damien Bermejo,” 12mo., Madrid, 1820. Townsend, and other English Travellers, describe its splendours down to the French Invasion ; and the late Mr. Beckford’s account of his promenade through the building, with the proud Lord Prior, is one of the most graphic passages in his admirable travels (Letters from Spain, xxxi. ). The cream of all these writers, and an exact picture of the present condition of the monkless, kingless, palace convent, may be found in the brilliant and accurate Hand-book, pp. 809-820. An excellent collection of views of the Escorial, twelve in number, were drawn, and engraved by Josef Gomez j de Navia, and published, in 1800, at the Estamperia Real, at Madrid. 1 V Purposes for which the Es- corial was built. 174 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. cheerless prison-like palace seems adapted solely to shelter the old age of that relentless prince, who, in the prime of his manhood, wel- comed to Spain his young and beautiful bride, Isabella of Valois, with fire and faggot, and the human sacrifices of an Auto-de-fe. 1 Where is the mind in which the very name of the Es- corial does not awaken thought and evoke high associations ! For the student of History it stands like a land-mark on the hills of Cas- tile ; a relic of the days that are gone, when it was the pride of the Spaniard and the envy of the foreigner ; an outward and visible type of the glory and pre-eminence of Spain. 2 To the pious Catholic it is an object of affec- tionate reverence as the noblest monastic foun- dation ever consecrated by Iris Church “ to “ daily and nightly prayer and praise, to con- “ temptation and holiness, to alms’-deeds and “ study,” 3 and to the honour of his faith. The scholar may still regard it with interest as once the stately home of learning and research, and 1 Held at Toledo, 25th. February, 1560. See Llorente. Historia Critica de la Inquisition de Espana, tom. iv. p. 202, 12mo. Barcelona, 1836. 2 Thus Malherbe in his ode on occasion of Etienne de Lisle’s attempt on the life of Henry IV. makes the Escorial the symbol of the pride and glory of Spain. Invoking the divine favour and protection on the head of the hoy -Dauphin, afterwards Louis XIII., he thus winds up his aspi- rations for him and his royal parents : — “ Et pour achever leurs journees, Fais leur oulr cette nouvelle, Que les oracles ont bomees, Qu’il a rase l’Eseurial.” Dedans le trone imperial, Poesies. Paris, 1842, 12mo., p. 83. Avant que le ciel les appelle, 3 Porreno, p. 153. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 175 as a mine not yet exhausted of Arabian and Castilian lore ; and the artist as one of the greatest shrines of painting, for which Titian and Velasquez laboured, where Rubens and Murillo studied, and where a line of Kings for two centuries hived the treasures of Euro- pean art. Strange as it may seem, it has been disputed who planned this famous pile. The slender claims of certain Italians have been put forward by Italian writers ; but the most impudent assertion of all, was that of one Louis Fox or Foix, a French maker of water-pipes and pumps, employed at Toledo, who, on his return to Paris, gave himself out as the architect of the Escorial. His audacious story, told perhaps in jest, was re- peated by the President de Thou, and gained easy credence with Voltaire. 1 To the question, which is indeed sufficiently set at rest by inscriptions on the building, Ponz devotes a tedious letter in his volume on the Escorial, and decides it on clear documentary evidence in favour of two 1 And witli Lord John Russell, who, in the Preface to his tragedy of Don Carlos (8vo. London, 1822, p. i), quotes De Thou’s tale of the Infant’s love for his stepmother (Thuanus Lib. xliii., c. 8), “on the “ authority of Louis de Foix, a Parisian architect, employed by Philip to “ build the Escurial .” The play, however, eclipses the error of the preface, for the noble dramatist there (Act I., Sc. 2, p. 18) makes Philip boast, in 1568, of his magnanimous reply, when told of the loss of the Armada, exactly twenty years before that armament sailed from the Tagus — a most intolerable poetical licence, worthy of the imaginative pump- maker himself, to whose invention almost every European language owes a play or romance on the story of Don Carlos. Architects of the Escorial. 176 CHAP. IV.— EEIGN OF PHILIP II. J. B. de Toledo of his countrymen. The first of these, Juan Bautista de Toledo, was horn at Madrid, and after studying his profession at Rome, where he gained the name of the “ able Spaniard,” ( el valiente Espanol ), he spent the best part of his life at Naples, in the service of the Viceroy Don Pedro de Toledo. Besides the viceregal palace and the church of Santiago, he there designed that noble street, the main artery of the city, which still preserves in its name the memory of both the founder and the architect. On a \ summons from the King in 1559, he repaired to Madrid, leaving behind his wife, Ursula Jabarria, and his two daughters, who were after- wards lost at sea as they followed him to Spain. His yearly salary, as chief architect to the Crown, was at first no more than 220 ducats : Philip’s policy, with his Spanish artists at least, being to assign them moderate allowances until he had tested their abilities. Toledo soon began his plans of the Escorial, of which he saw the first stone laid on the 23rd April, 1563, and super- intended tlie works till his death, in 1567. The J. de Herrera. building was carried on, and the masonry finished in 1584, by his scholar, Juan de Herrera, an Asturian, to whom Ponz, on the authority of a medal, attributes the plan of the church. This architect was a scholar and a good mathema- tician ; he contrived a crane, on an improved principle, to facilitate the works ; and with the same end in view he caused the stones to be CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 177 dressed in the quarry — not without much oppo- sition from the change-hating masons — so that, under his rule in the Escorial, as in the temple of Solomon, “ there was no tool of iron heard in “ the house, when it was in building.” 1 Of the other architectural works of Herrera, the Cathe- dral of Valladolid, a stately temple in the Greco-llomano style — and the imposing but somewhat heavy Exchange ( Lonja ) at Seville, are amongst the most important. He executed a series of eleven plans, perspective views, and sectional drawings, of the Escorial — engraved in 1587 by Pedro Perret — of which he pub- lished, in 1589, a descriptive Catalogue or “ Summary.” 2 This excellent architect died in 1579 ; having been rewarded by the King for his long services with a pension of 1,000 ducats, the place of Aposentador-Mayor, and the Cross of Santiago. His original drawings, and those of Toledo, for the Escorial, long remained in the King’s Cabinet, in the Alcazar of Madrid, 1 1 Kings, cli. vi., v. 7. 2 Sumario y Breve Declaracion de los disenos y estampas de la Fabrica de San Lorencio el Real del Escurial. Sacado a luz por Juan de Herrera, Arcliitecto General de su Majestad y Aposentador de su Real Palacio. Con privilegio, en Madrid por la viuda de Alonso Gomez, Impresor del Rey nuestro Sefior, ano de 1589. sm. 8vo. containing 32 leaves, includ- ing the title, and beginning “ Lo que esta planta contiene en si,” and ending “ considera bien la medida de esta fabrica.” This is one of the rarest volumes in Spanish bibliography — of which see a notice in the “ Cartas Espanolas,” — a Madrid periodical — for July 12th, 1832, from the pen of Don Bartolome Jose Gallardo, by whom I was informed that he had seen only three copies of it — one of which is in the library of the British Museum. V N 178 CHAP. IV. — REIGN OF PHILIP II. Architectural merits of the Escorted. Many of them were rescued from the conflagra- tion in 1734, and dispersed, and were sometimes offered for sale till late in the century. 1 Like all other great works, the Escorial has been the theme of every variety of criticism ; the object of praise warm as the sun that glares upon it at midsummer, and of blame hitter as the wintry whirlwinds that sweep down from its Opinion of Fr. F. (le los Santos, snowy Sierra. Fray Francisco de los Santos, 2 its inmate and historian, conceived that its grand proportions and harmonious design must affect the eye as a service of solemn music affects the and of Cumberland. car, and dissolve the soul in ecstacy. Cumber- land, 3 on the other hand, quotes the good father with infinite contempt, and does not hesitate to describe his beloved pile as a “ graceless mass.” Exterior. But the lover of art, as he first beholds — from the road that winds downward through the pine- forest of Guadarrama, or from the ramparts of Madrid — the grey convent-palace enthroned on its terraces of rock, majestic amidst the majesty of nature, with the clear sunlight of Castile on its dome and clustering towers ; or, as he pauses before the awful portal that opens only to admit the royalty of Spain to the font or the tomb, will feel more sympathy with the enthusiasm of the Spanish friar, than with 1 Cean Bermudez; Los Arquitectos, tom. ii. p. 80. 2 Of the grand Court, he says that it “ toca en la vista, como la musica en el oydo, y causa una gustosa suspension eu la alma, que la recrea, eusanclia y engrandece.” p. 10. 3 Anecdotes, vol. i, p. 17. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 179 the flippancy of the English envoy. It is not till the first amazement and delight produced by the solid vastness of the building has abated, that the faults of the Escorial become visible. The eye then discovers that the windows are too small, and the projections wanting in boldness, and wishes for more relief and variety in the V long grey facades. Displeased with what he con- sidered the vicious style of contemporary Spanish architects, Toledo has fallen into the opposite errors. They delighted in sudden curves and unexpected angles, intricate mouldings and wreaths of flowers, twisted columns and broken V pediments, perplexing the eye with perpetual variety. He, on the other hand, had acquired a better taste amongst the purer models of Italy, and loved breadth and simplicity, and the grandeur of continuous lines and recurring forms. To majesty — certainly the first merit of a great building — he was content sometimes to sacrifice beauty ; and hence the monotonous sternness of the fronts of the Escorial. The V grand southern front, facing the mountain, is somewhat varied by the imposing height of its central portion, and by the state entrance ; that which looks over the plain to Madrid is the most faulty of them all, being broken, yet not relieved, by the palace — a mere excresence, in- ferior to the rest of the pile in elevation. Without, as within, the mean proportions of the royal residence contrast strangely with the regal i r 180 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Interior. magnificence of the monastery. The gridiron of St. Lawrence could hardly have been furnished with a more inconvenient or unsightly handle. It is not until the threshold of the Escorial is Patio (Iv los Evangelistas . crossed that the genius of the architect is fully comprehended. Then as the courts and cloisters successively unfold themselves, it is discerned that Toledo, to a feeling for form, fine as Pal- ladio’s, united much of the bold spirit of Michael Angelo. Perhaps no collegiate or conventual building in Europe can show a quadrangle equal- ling in chaste and solemn grandeur the court of the Evangelists, with its Doric cloisters and stately fountain, embosomed in the massive walls, and shadowed by the great dome, of the Escorial. Church. The church is one of the happiest examples of classical architecture adapted to Christian ends. So admirable are its proportions, that St. Peter’s itself — in spite of its unapproached magnitude, — does not at first sight impress the mind with a stronger sense of its vastness, or awaken a deeper feeling of awe. The sternness of the Doric design, and the sombre ashy hue of the granite pervading the pavement, the walls, and the overhanging depths of the dome, invest this church •with a grave reli- gious air, somewhat like that of a Gothic Cathedral, and never to be found amongst brilliant mosaics and many-coloured marbles, seen by the unsoftened light of day. All the Capilla del altar mayor. pomp of decoration, — the slabs of porphyry and CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 181 agate, and the capitals and cornices of burnished gold, — has been wisely reserved for the high altar and its chapel, placed apart and raised on many broad steps of dark jasper, “ ascending by degrees “ magnificent.” 1 There rises the lofty retablo of the four orders, gleaming with statues of gilded bronze and columns of precious marble. And there in marble oratories, on either hand, Charles and Philip, with their consorts and royal children, sculptured in bronze, kneel uncrowned before the holy place, forming a group of historical monu- ments, unsurpassed in interest and in execution, and worthy of a chapel which is perhaps the most splendid and beautiful in the world. Minutely to describe the Escorial in its palmy days, would be to review the elegant arts and manufactures of the age of Philip II., and to enumerate half the products of his superb mo- narchy — the first that could vaunt that the sun never set on its shores. Italy was ransacked for pictures and statues, models and designs ; the mountains of Sicily and Sardinia for jaspers and agate ; and every Sierra of Spain furnished its contribution of marble. Madrid, Florence, and Milan, supplied the sculptures of the altars : Guadalajara and Cuenca, gratings and balconies ; Zaragoza, the gates of brass ; Toledo and the Low Countries, lamps, candelabra, and bells ; the New World, the finer woods; and the Indies, both East and West, the gold and gems 1 Paradise Lost, B. iii., v. 203. V Materials and decorations of the Escorial brought from all parts of the world. 182 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Artists em- ployed in the decorations of the Escorial. of the Custoclia and the five hundred reliquaries. The tapestries were wrought in Flemish looms ; and for the sarcerdotal vestments there was scarce a nunnery in the empire, from the rich and noble orders of Brabant and Lombardy to the poor sisterhoods of the Apulian highlands, hut sent an offering of needlework to the honoured fathers of the Escorial. Of the artists employed in the subordinate parts of the building, Pompeyo Leoni most deserves notice, as the sculptor of the high altar and the royal monuments. Born in Italy, he came to Spain with his father, Leo Leoni, who had been sculptor to Charles V. ; he there amassed a fortune, became a patron of art, and died at G. Trczzo. Madrid in 1610. Giacomo Trezzo, 1 a Milanese, executed, from the designs of Herrera, the glo- rious C’ustodia, a domed temple, sixteen feet high, of gilt bronze and agate (for which Arias Montano wrote the Latin inscription) — a work which cost him seven years’ la- bour, and which was demolished, in 1808, in half that number of minutes, its metal being mistaken for gold by the French troopers of La B. Cellini. Houssaye. The matchless marble crucifix behind the prior’s seat, in the choir, was sculptured at Florence, in 1562, by Benvenuto Cellini, and was the offering with which the gallant artist sur- prised the Grand Duke Cosmo I. and his 1 Ilis name is still preserved, though in a corrupt form, in that of a street at Madrid, the “ Calle de Jacomctrenzo .” See Ponz. tom. ii. p. 53. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 183 Duchess when they honoured him with a visit . 1 The Duke afterwards presented it to Philip II. who caused it to be conveyed from Barcelona on men’s shoulders . 2 The figure is of life size, finely modelled, and well relieved by the black marble of the cross; the head droops on the shoulder ; “It is finished” has just parted from the lips, the eyes are closed, and the body, with all its muscles and anatomy developed, and still quivering with the last convulsion of the divine agony, hangs heavily on the arms, and settles into the stillness of death. Never was marble shaped into a sublimer image of the great sacrifice for man’s atonement. The chaste woodwork of the choir and library was carved by Josef Frecha ; and the indifferent colossal statues of St. Law- rence (over the great portal) and the Hebrew kings and Evangelists (in various external parts of the building), were hewn each from a single block of granite, by Juan Bautista Monegro, both of them Spaniards and sculptors of repute. It is now time that we should turn our attention to the painters employed by Philip. In their case only, he seems to have forgotten his usual Spanish predilections. His over- anxiety, perhaps, to secure perfection in all the furniture and decorations of his favourite edifice, induced him to bring to the Escorial, at vast cost, Flemish and Italian painters, of whom some J. Frecha. Foreign Paint- ers in the king's service. 1 B. Cellini ; Vita, tom. ii. p. 423. 2 Hand-Book, p. 817. For an anecdote of Philip’s reception of this noble marble, see chap. i. p. 30. 184 Italians. Titian. ? His “ Ccna.” “ Antiope." Portraits. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. doubtless infused new and valuable spirit into the school of Castile, while others might have learned far more at Toledo, Seville, or Valencia, than they were able to teach at Madrid. On the whole, Philip would have better attained the object which lay so near his heart, had he more fully entrusted to native genius the embellishment of his beloved monastery. In age, as in fame, the venerable name of Titian stands first on the list of Philip’s painters. Although he never set foot in Spain, he may fairly enough be ranked amongst the artists of the Escorial. For his noble “ Last Supper,” one of the grandest of his religious Avorks, on which his pencil lingered lovingly for seven years, Avas painted for the convent, and beheld many gene- rations of monks sit at the long table of the Refectory, from whence it has passed into the Queen of Spain’s gallery at Madrid. The greater part of the many pictures which he had executed for his imperial and royal friends were collected in the Escorial, filling long suites of conven- tual rooms Avith life and beauty. In the palace of the Pardo hung his famous picture, knoAvn as the “ Venus del Pardo,” but in reality represent- ing Jupiter disguised as Satyr, feasting his eyes on the beauties of the sleeping Antiope. The hall of portraits contained no less than eleven from his easel, — likenesses of the Emperor and Empress, Philip II., the great captains, Duke Em- manuel Philibert of Savoy and Fernando Duke CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. of Alba, and several princely personages of Ger- many, — all of which perished by fire in the next reign. The person of Philip — that “ little man “ with vast gigantic thoughts in him” 1 — and those marble features that brightened not at the news of Lepanto, nor grew darker on the announce- ment of the fate of the Armada, have been made familiar to the world by the pencil of this great master. In the days when he sat to Titian, liis face always haughty in expression, was not un- handsome ; his complexion was fresh and clear ; and his hands, which in the portraits usually dally with his sword-hilt, or twirl the silken tassels of his girdle, are remarkable for beauty and delicacy of form. Still the curling lip and cold grey eye betray the false and callous heart within ; and beneath the velvet and minivere of the princely gallant we can detect the sceptred-friar of the Escorial. Sofonisba Anguisciola , 2 a noble lady of Cre- mona, was one of six sisters so amiable, and so distinguished in arts and letters, that Vasari calls the house of their father Amilcar, “ l’albergo “ della pittura anzi de tutte le virtu .” 3 The year of her birth has not been noted by any of her numerous biographers, but we gather from her 185 Portraits of Philip II. Sofonisba An- guisciola. 1 Howell’s Letters, p. 166, 8vo. London, 1726. 2 The facts of this lady’s life, which have not been recorded by Cean Bermudez, I have taken for the most part from “ Le Vite de’ Pittori, “ Scoltori et Architetti Genovesi, e de' Forastieri che in Genova operarono ; “ con alcuni ritratti de gli stessi ; opera postuma dell’ Illustrissimo Signor “ Rafaelle Soprani, nobile Genovese.” 4to. Genova, 1684. 3 Vasari, tom. iii. p. 17. 186 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Journey to Spain. history that it must have been between 1530 and 1540. She displayed her taste for drawing at a very tender age, and soon became the best pupil in the school of Antonio Campi — a good painter of Cremona. One of her early sketches, of a boy with his hand caught in the claw of a lobster, and a little girl laughing at his plight, was in the possession of Vasari, and by him esteemed worthy of a place in a volume which he had filled with drawings by the most famous masters of that great age. Portraiture was her chief study ; and Vasari commends a picture, which he saw at her father’s house, of three of the sisters and an ancient housekeeper of the family playing at chess, as a work “ painted “ with so much skill and care, that the figures “ wanted only voice to be alive.” 1 He also praises a portrait which she painted of herself, and presented to Pope Julius III., 2 who died in 1555, which shows that she must have attracted the notice of princes while yet in her girlhood. At Milan, whither she accompanied her father, she painted the portrait of the Duke of Sessa, the Viceroy, who rewarded her with four pieces of brocade and various rich gifts. Her name having become famous in Italy, the King of Spain, in 1559, ordered the Duke of Alba, who was then at Pome, to invite her to the Court of Madrid, where she arrived the same year, with a train of two waiting gentlewomen, 1 Vasari, tom. iii. p. 15. 2 Id. p. 133. CHAP. IV.— KEIGN OF PHILIP II. 187 two ushers, and two lackies, and was received with the highest distinction, and lodged in the palace. The first work undertaken by Sofonisba after reposing from the fatigues of her journey, was the portrait of the King, who was so pleased with the performance, that he rewarded her with a diamond worth 1,500 ducats, and a pension of 200 ducats. Her next sitters were the young Queen Elizabeth of Valois, known in Spain as Isabel of the Peace, then in the bloom of bridal beauty, and the unhappy boy, Don Carlos. By the desire of the Pope, Pius IV., she made a second portrait of the Queen, sent to his holiness with a dutiful letter, which Vasari has preserved, as well as the gracious reply of the Pontiff, who assures “ his dear daughter in “ Christ ” that her painting shall be placed amongst his most precious treasures. While in Spain she received from Cremona a portrait of her mother, Bianca, painted by her sister Europa, which was no less approved by the critics of the Castilian court, than grateful to her filial feeling, as a “ faithful remembrancer of one so “ dear,” 1 from whom she probably was parted for ever. It is possible that her sister Lucia may have sent, at the same time, her admirable por- trait of Pietro Maria — a famous Cremonese phy- sician — a grave elderly personage in a furred robe,— praised by Vasari, and worthy of the best Florentine master, which now adorns the 1 Cowper’s Lines on receiving Iris mother’s portrait. 188 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Marriages. Queen of Spain’s gallery, where, strange to say, it is the sole specimen of the powers of the highly-gifted Anguisciolas. 1 Sofonisba held the post of lady in waiting to the Queen, and was for some time governess to her daughter, the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, an appointment which proves that she must have resided in Spain for some years after 1566, the year of that princess’s birth. Her royal patrons at last married their fair artist, now arrived at a mature age, to Don Fabrizio de Moncada, a noble Sicilian, giving her a dowry of 12,000, and a pension of 1,000, ducats, besides many rich presents in tapestries and jewels. The newly- wedded pair retired to Palermo, where the husband died some years after ; Sofonisba was then invited back to the Court of Madrid, but excused herself, on account of her desire to see Cremona and her kindred once more. Embarking, for this purpose, on board of a Genoese galley, she was entertained with so gallant a courtesy by the captain, Orazio Lomellini, one of the merchant princes of the “ proud city,” that she fell in love uitli him out of sheer gratitude, and, if her biographer belie her not, 2 offered him her hand in marriage, which he accepted. It is not recorded whether 1 Catologo, No. 720. 2 “ Dal quale,” says Soprani (p. 309), meaning the seducing Orazio, “ durante il viaggio recevfe tali gratie e tanti favori die obligata si stiino, “ no solo a dalle segni di aggradhnento, ma molto piu a dedicarle se “ stessa, con offerirsele sposa. Al die havemlo acconsentito quel generoso “ Signor, si celebrarono con reciproca sodisfattione le nozze.” CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 189 she ever revisited her native Cremona. At Ge- noa she continued to pursue her art, and her house became the resort of all the polished and intellectual society of the republic. Nor was she forgotten by her royal friends of the House of Austria. On hearing of her second nuptials, their Catholic Majesties added 400 crowns to her pension. The Empress of Germany paid her a visit, on her way to Spain, and accepted a little picture, one of the most finished and beau- tiful of her works. She was also visited by her former charge, the Infanta — now the wife of the Arch-Duke Albert, and with him co-sovereign of Flanders. That Princess spent many hours in talking with her of old times and her family affairs, and honoured her by sitting for her portrait, for which, when it was finished, she presented her with a gold chain enriched with jewels, as a memorial of her friendship. Thus courted in the society of Genoa, and caressed by royalty, she lived to an extreme old age. A medal was struck in her honour at Bologna; artists listened reverentially to the opinions, and poets sang the praises of “ — la bella e saggia dipintrice La nobil Sofonisba da Cremona.” 1 Though deprived of sight in her latter years, she retained to the last her other faculties, her love of art, and her relish for the society of its 1 Graziani, quoted by Grasselli. Abecedario Biografico dei Pittori Scnltori ed Architette Cremonese, p. 22, 8vo. Milano, 1827. 190 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Saying of Vandyck. Works. Portraits. professors. Vandyck was frequently her guest during- his residence at Genoa in 1620 or 1621, and used to say of her that he had been more enlightened in painting by a blind woman than by his own master — no mean praise from the favourite scholar of Rubens. The works of Sofonisba are now rarely to be met with. In 1821, one only was known to exist at Cremona — a small picture of the “Virgin “ giving suck to her Divine Infant” — in the col- lection of the Signors Bresciani-Carena, which was engraved by Cerasa for a work entitled “ La “ Pittura Cremonese,” published in that year. 1 In portraiture, her skill was little inferior to that of Titian. Of this evidence is afforded by that beautiful portrait of herself— probably one of those seen by Vasari, in the wardrobe of Cardinal di Monte, at Rome, and at Piacenza, in the house of the Archdeacon, or that noticed by Soprani 2 in the palace of Giovanni Geronimo Lomellini, at Genoa, — which is now no mean gem amongst the treasures of the galleries and libraries at Althorp. She lias here drawn herself in what the Germans conveniently name a “ knee-piece,” and perhaps rather under life- size. Her head is small and finely formed, and well set on a graceful neck, and its dark hair drest smoothly and simply; her features are quite Italian and regular, her complexion a clear olive, and her black eyes large and liquid. The l Grasselli. p. 22. 2 Soprani, p. 310. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 191 dark close-fitting dress is relieved only by small white frills at the throat and wrists, and two white tassels hanging on her breast ; and her delicate and most exquisitely painted hands seen over the keys of a spinnet. To her right, in deep shadow, stands an old woman, — perhaps she who played at chess with her sisters, — wearing a kerchief twisted turban-wise round her head, and resembling a St. Elizabeth or a St. Anne, in a religious composition of the Caracci. The whole picture is painted in the clear firm manner of the best pencils of Florence. Another Sofonisba is mentioned by Palomino, but by no other authority, amongst the foreign painters of this reign. Sofonisba Gentilesca, says that writer, 1 was a lady illustrious in art, who came from France in the train of Queen Isabel of the Peace, to Avhose household she belonged. She painted miniature-portraits with remarkable skill, and had for sitters their Majesties, the Infant Don Carlos, and many ladies of the Court of Madrid, where she died in 1587. Sofonisba Gen- tilesca. Giovanni Battista Gastello was born at Bergamo, early in the sixteenth century, and became the scholar of Aurelio Buso, a Cremonese painter, by whom he was brought to Genoa. There he obtained the patronage of the family of Pallavicina, who sent him to Borne, from whence he returned a painter and architect of great skill. At Genoa he painted many works, in conjunction 1 Palomino, tom. iii., p. 3S6. Costello el Beryamasco. 192 CHAP. IV. — DEIGN OF PHILIP II. N. Granelo. with Luca Cambiaso — the most famous artist of the proud city. Of these, one of the most noted was the “ Last Judgment,” in the Church of the Nunziata di Portoria, of which Cambiaso painted the multitudes expecting their doom, and the Bergamese, the Judge and his attendant angels, which was reckoned the finest part of the composition. 1 Gastello drew and composed in the style of the Roman school, and his colouring had something of the splendour of the Venetian masters. lie painted many works in fresco — representing architectural perspectives, then fashionable decorations of the stately halls of Genoa. The Grillo palace possessed many good specimens of his powers in this style, and of his fine taste in architecture, especially in the chamber in which he painted the “ Banquet “ of Dido and JEneas.” Invited to Spain in 1567, he fixed his residence at Madrid, and received from the King an annual salary of 300 crowns, besides payment for his works. In the palace of Madrid, he painted several ceilings ; and he also designed the great staircase of the Escorial — by which he proved himself a compeer worthy of Toledo and Herrera. Dying at Madrid, in 1569, he left behind him a young son, Fabrizio, and a step-son, Nicolao Granelo, who had also been his scholar. Granelo was named painter to the King in 1571 — with the slender allowance of fifteen ducats a month, and the 1 Laiizi. Storia Pittorica della Italia, tom. v.,p. 302. Bvo. Bassano, 1818. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. younger Castello, having acquired his art from his brother, received the same appointment in 1584, with the yet smaller monthly salary of 600 maravedis. At the Escorial they painted in concert several ceilings, and in the gallery known as the hall of battles, the “ Moorish rout at “ Higueruelas” — borrowing from an old paint- ing of that subject found at Segovia 1 — and the “ Battle of St. Quentin,” frescos which deserve little praise, and for stiffness are worthy of the venerable days of Dello. They were afterwards employed to paint in fresco three other battles, in the armoury of the ducal palace at Alba de Tormes. Granelo died at Madrid in 1593; and Fabrizio Castello in 1617, having been continued in his post of painter by Philip III. Florence furnished to Madrid an excellent painter in the person of Bomulo Cincinato — who had studied under Francisco de Salviati, at Borne. He was sent to Spain, in 1567, by Don Pedro deBequesens, Spanish ambassador at Borne, and was engaged for the King’s service, for three years — at the monthly salary of twenty ducats. He was first employed in painting some frescos in the Alcazar of Madrid ; and afterwards in various works at the Escorial, of which some of the best were the pictures of two oratories in the principal cloister. One of these represented the “ Transfiguration of our Lord ; ” and here he introduced a youth under the influence of a 1 See chap. ii. p. 80. 193 F. Castello. R. Cincinato. O 194 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. demon, in which he imitated the similar figure in Rafael’s great Transfiguration. For the spaces over the seats of the choir, he painted four large canvases, in imitation of fresco ; of which, one had for its subject the tutelar of the monastery St. Lawrence, Archdeacon of Rome, following his Bishop, St. Sixtus, to prison ; and another, the same saint in the presence of the Roman Prefect, who demands of him the treasures of his church, and is shewn, in reply, a company of the Christian poor. The remaining two pictures represented passages in the life of St. Jerome. In 1571, Cincinato was allowed six months’ leave to go to Cuenca, where he painted, for the Jesuits’ church, three altar-pictures, 1 repre- senting St. Peter, St. Paul, and the “ Circum- “ cision of Christ,” now in the Academy of St. Ferdinand at Madrid. The “ Circumcision ” is well composed, the draperies are broad and graceful ; the male heads have the noble air which belongs to the school of Rome ; hut the heads of the Virgin and the other women are not so pleasing. The High Priest, in a rohe of curious pale blue, is the most conspicuous figure ; he is seated with his back to the spectator, and performs the operation with a long, sharp-pointed knife, like the murderous weapons still made at Albacete for the girdles of the peasantry. The background is filled up with a high arch, sup- ported on pillars, and crossed by an airy gallery, 1 Ponz., tom. iii.,^pp. 97-98. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. in which three figures are standing. This “ Circumcision ” is reckoned Cincinato’s master- piece, and was so considered by himself ; for, when his friends praised his works at the Escorial, he would say — “ there is a shin at “ Cuenca that is worth them all.” This cele- brated shin belongs to the High Priest’s left leg, which is thrust out behind him, as he sits with his back turned, so as to display the heel and ancle. It is an accurate representation of a rather clumsy model. Cincinato was afterwards employed by the Duke of Infantado to paint a variety of frescos in his palace at Guadalajara. About 1591 he became a cripple, and disabled from pursuing his profession ; but the king per- mitted him to enjoy his pension till 1600, when he died at Madrid, “ universally deplored by the “ artists,” says Palomino, 1 “ for his amiable “ manners and eminent ability,” and leaving behind him two sons, whose names will appear in a later reign, With Pomulo Cincinato, the Spanish ambas- sador sent from Pome, in 1567, Patricio Caxesi, or Caxes, a native of Arezzo, whom he had engaged for the king’s service, on the same terms as his companion. They at first painted together in the Alcazar of Madrid ; Caxes was not, how- ever, employed at the Escorial, nor does he seem greatly to have distinguished himself as a painter. The Queen of Spain’s gallery possesses 1 Pal. tom iii., p. 403, 195 “ El zancujo" at Cuenca. P, Caxes. 196 CHAP. IV.— BEIGN OF PHILIP II. only one of liis works — a large picture of the Madonna, with the Infant Saviour asleep on her lap, and surrounded by adoring angels ; the sleeping babe is pretty, but the rest unpleasing, and poorly executed. Having some taste for architecture, in 1570 he was employed to design a high altar for the Church of San Felipe el Real, at Madrid. He long laboured on a trans- lation into Castilian of Vignola’s book on the Five Orders, which was at last published in 1593, in folio, with an architectural title page, designed and engraved by himself, and an epistle dedica- tory to Prince Philip, who afterwards mounted the throne, as the third monarch of the name. By order of that prince he painted certain works at the Pardo in 1608 ; and he died at an advanced age, in 1612, leaving a son, by whom he was eclipsed. Antonio and Vincenzo Campi were the second and third sons of Galeazzo Campi, a painter of reputation at Cremona, whose profession they followed under his instruction, and that of their elder brother, Cfiulio. They visited Spain in 1583, and were for some time in the service of the King. The best works of Antonio, in his native city, were a “Holy Family,” — in which the divine child was represented as playing with a dove, — painted in 1567 for the church of St. Peter; and the “ Decollation of St. John Baptist,” and other pictures, executed, with the stucco bas-relief orna- ments of a chapel, in 1577 — 1581, for the church CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 197 of St. Sigismund. 1 At the Escorial he painted, for the Vicar’s chamber, a large picture, on panel, of the “ great Doctor,” St. Jerome, wearing, in defiance of all civil chronology, the purple robe of a cardinal, and seated with a pen in his right hand, and his eyes fixed on a crucifix ; his left arm resting on an open volume, and its hand twined in his bushy beard ; near him were his inkhorn, red hat, and the usual skull and domesticated lion. 2 Antonio was like- wise a writer of some reputation, and printed, in 1585, a “Chronicle of Cremona,” enriched with some fine engravings by Agostino Caracci, his friend and admirer, and dedicated to Philip II. Pope Gregory XIII. also employed him as an architect, and decorated him with the order of Christ. As a painter, grace was his distin- guishing merit, and Coreggio the model of his imitation. 3 The works of Vincenzo Campi at the Escorial, or at least their names, have not been preserved. For his brother’s book, he engraved the topographical plan of Cremona ; and his best 1 Grasselli, p. 80. 2 Fray Francisco rle los Santos (Descripcion del Escorial, p. 68), describes the Saint’s beard as “ muy poblada " — “ well peopled,” an express sion which, though it is merely equivalent to “ thick,” sounds alarming to English ears. He states the height of the panel at four yards, and its width at two. In the Museo Real, at Madrid, there is a picture exactly answering the above description, except in its measurement which is given ( Catalogo No. 459), as 7 feet 8 inches high, by 5 feet 1 inch wide, and ascribed to Bernardino Campi. The Friar and the Catologue-maker doubtless mean the same picture — the former probably being wrong in his figures, and the latter in the name of the artist. 3 Lanzi, tom iv., p. 187. 198 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. L. Cambiaso. picture in that city, was a “ Dead Christ, in the “ arms of the Virgin,” executed for the church of San Facio. Though his colouring was good, he was inferior to his brothers in invention and power of drawing ; his best historical works were generally of a small size ; and he excelled, in portraiture and in painting fruit and flowers. 1 He died in 1591. 2 Luca Cambiaso, 3 one of the most famous and most diffuse of the painters of the Escorial, is also esteemed the head of the school of Genoa. His parents having retired from that city on the approach of the Constable Bourbon’s army, in 1527, he was born on the 18th of October of the same year, at Moneglia, — a white town that sparkles on its hill-top on the eastern shore of the Ligurian gulf, — and was called after the Evangelist painter, to whom the day is dedicated. He began to paint at ten year’s old, under the eye of his father, Giovanni Cambiaso, who evinced good taste in setting him to copy certain works of the correct and noble Mantegna. His progress was so rapid that, at the age of seventeen, he was entrusted to decorate some facades and chambers of the Doria palace, at Genoa, where he displayed his rash facility of hand, by painting the story of Niobe, on a space of wall fifty palms long, and high in proportion, 1 Grasselli, p. 81. 2 Lanzi, tom. v., p. 138. 3 For the life of this artist I am in many particulars indebted to Soprani, pp. 3-5 to 51, where his portrait is engraved. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 199 without cartoons or any drawing larger than his first hasty sketch on a single sheet of paper. While he was engaged on this work, there came one morning to look at it some Floren- tine artists ; who, seeing a lad enter soon after and commence painting with prodigious fury, called out to him to desist. His mode, how- ever, of handling the brushes and the colours, which they had imagined it was his business merely to clean or pound, soon convinced them that this daring youngster was no other than Luca himself ; whereupon they crossed themselves and declared that he it was who should one day eclipse Michael Angelo. Cambiaso early acquired great skill in fore-shortening, which he seized every occasion, however difficult, of displaying, quite regardless, if aware, of Rafael’s precept, that it should be used sparingly, in order to cause the greater wonder and delight. 1 His knowledge of perspective, composition, and colours, was much improved by the instructions of Gastello, in con- junction with whom, as has been already men- tioned, he painted for twelve years, “in which “ space of time,” says Soprani, “ was produced the “ flower of his works.” Amongst his best pictures, of this epoch, were the “Martyrdom of St. George,” in the church of that Saint, at Genoa, remark- able for its composition, light and shade, and force of expression ; and the “ Rape of the Sabines,” 1 Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della Pittura, 12mo., Vinegia, 1557, fol. 36. a work said to have been composed from notes left by Rafael. 200 CHAP. IV.— EEIGN OF PHILIP II. Death of his wife, and its effects. in the palace of the Imperiali, at Terralba, a large work full of life and motion, passionate ravishers and reluctant damsels, fine horses and glimpses of noble architecture, and with several episodes heightening the effect of the main story. Of this latter picture the fastidious Mengs said, that he had never been more vividly reminded, by any other work, of the chambers of the Vatican. 1 While in the zenith of his fame and pros- perity Cambiaso had the misfortune to lose his wife ; a loss which he endeavoured to remedy in some degree by committing the management of his household and children to her sister. This lady, by whose assistance he hoped to lighten his sorrows and cares, proved, however a fertile source of distress ; for, as she plied the needle, or whipped the boys, she displayed so close a resemblance to the dear departed, that the wi- dower conceived for her a violent passion, which the canons of the Church did not permit him to gratify by marriage. In 1575, the year of jubilee, he, therefore, set out for Rome to crave a dispensation from the Pope. Passing through Florence he was entertained by Signor Giovanni Battista Paggi, a young Genoese noble, and amateur painter, who carried him, by the desire of the Grand Duke, Francesco I., to meet his Highness in the Gardens of the Prato. The interview was arranged without the knowledge 1 Lanzi, tom y., pp. 30. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. of Cambiaso, who was a man of shy and retiring disposition, and being unexpectedly ushered into the presence of royalty, was utterly confounded by the surprise, and by the tine speeches and compliments of the Duke. The circumstance shows, however, the renown which he had ac- quired. Arriving at Rome, he had an audience, and kissed the holy feet, of Gregory XIII., to whom he presented two fine pictures as a peace- offering, and then, not without blushing, un- folded his case. But the Pontiff, although he graciously accepted the pictures, was not to be moved by the prayers of the painter, who was therefore obliged to return home, having taken nothing by his journey but the papal benedic- tion and advice that he should dismiss the beloved sister-in-law from his house ; which, like a good son of the Church, he did, with many tears. Thus disappointed he sought to forget his sorrows in his art, which he pursued with an invention so inexhaustible, and hands so dex- terous, that he sometimes painted with two pencils at the same time. His fame obtained for him an order from the King of Spain to paint the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence for the high altar of the Escorial church — a subject which he treated so much to the royal satis- faction, that he received an invitation to the Spanish court. Being averse to leave home, he was only induced to comply with Philip’s 201 Industry. Invitation to Spain. 202 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Works at the Escorial. request by the entreaties of his friends, and by the hope that Castilian interest at Rome might perhaps enable him to accomplish the marriage after which he was still yearning. He arrived, therefore, at Madrid in 1583, attended by his son, Orazio, and another scholar, Lazaro Tavarone, both of them good fresco painters, and was sent to the Escorial with an annual salary of 500 ducats, besides the price of his works, which were to be paid for on a valuation. The vault of the choir was assigned to him as the field of his first labour, for which he made a sketch of the required subject, “ the Glory of “ the Blessed in heaven.” This was submitted to Philip, who rejected it, “ not understand- “ ing,” says Soprani, “ Cambiaso’s extravagant “ foreshortenings and figures hovering in the “ air; and listening to the counsels of his “ monks, who recommended that the heavenly “ host should be drawn up according to their “ hierarchies and degrees in due theological “ order.” A design, “ more pious than pic. “ turesque,” being at last agreed on, the artist fell to work with his wonted fury, and so speedily covered vast spaces with a multitude of figures, that the King, according to the expres- sive Italian phrase, “ remained stupid,” not 1 Soprani (page 49) says lie received “la somma de scuti cinqueeente “ il mese per il proprio manteniento” — which seems more than is pro- bable, while that in the test seems rather less when compared with the allowances given to artists of similar reputation at the Escorial. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 203 being able to believe that the master, with only one assistant, could have accomplished so much. Philip and his fourth Queen, Anna of Austria, (who was also his niece) often visited Cambiaso when at work ; and the artist, immersed in his task, sometimes felt a hand laid on his shoulder, which proved to be that of the King of the Spains and the Indies, a discovery that at first must have caused no small discomposure to the man who had so quailed before the ad- vances of a mere Grand Duke. His Majesty one day remarking that the head of St. Anne, amongst the blessed, was too youthful, the painter, with four strokes of his pencil, so entirely altered its air, and so seamed the face with wrinkles, that the royal critic once more “ remained stupid,” not knowing whether he had judged amiss, or the change had been effected by magic. By means of thus painting at full speed, frequently without sketches, and sometimes with both hands at once, Cambiaso clothed the vault with its immense fresco, in about fifteen months. Though sprinkled over with noble heads and fine figures, the compo- sition, of which the colours are still fresh, cannot be called pleasing. The failure must be mainly attributed to the unlucky meddling of the friars, who have marshalled “ The helmed Cherubim And sworded Seraphim ” 1 1 Milton. Hymn on Christ's Nativity, stanza xi. 204 CHAP. IV.— EEIGN OF PHILIP II. Disappoint- ment, sickness, death. with exact military precision, ranged the celestial choir in rows like the fiddlers of a sublunary orchestra, and accommodated the congregation of the righteous with long benches, like the congregation of a metliodist meeting. The artist pour tray ed himself standing with Fray Antonio de Villacastin, master of the works, who had probably no small hand in the design, on the threshold of the heavenly mansions. The King was so well pleased with the fresco that he paid Cambiaso 12,000 ducats ; being 3000 more than the award of the valuers. The condescensions of Philip now emboldened the love-sick artist to think of craving the royal interposition with the Pope in behalf of his long- wished for marriage. He was cautioned, however, by his acquintances at Court, against preferring so impious a petition, which they said would infallibly cost him the favour of the pious monarch. This fresh disappointment, added to the fatigue and ill effects of painting for many hours together in constrained attitudes, brought on a severe illness, in which he was carefully at- tended by the royal physicians. But, in spite of their skill, an abcess gathered in his chest, for which they hit on the singular remedy of causing some of his friends to burst suddenly into his room, and reHle him as he lay, in the hope that a hearty fit of rage might break the obstruction. The poor man’s spirit, however, had sunk under chagrin and disease ; he heard, CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 205 but heeded not ; the rough messengers of mercy confessed the deception with tears; and the patient expired soon after of a broken heart, and an unbroken imposthume, to the great regret of the King. Besides his great fresco, Cambiaso found time to paint, at the Escorial, two others for the grand staircase, representing “The Bisen Saviour ap- “ pearing to the Apostles,” and several altar- pieces in oil-colours, of which “ The Martyrdom “ of St. Ursula and the Eleven ThousandVirgins,” and the “ Triumph of the Archangel Michael,” were so indifferent that the King would not permit them to be placed in the proposed sites. So careless and hasty was their execution, that Father Siguenza said of them, that they seemed to have been done, like the coarse daubs sold in the streets, for a dinner. “ The Martyrdom of St. “ Lawrence,” painted at Genoa, for some time occupied the chief place in the high altar, but was removed after the artist’s death to make room for another by Zuccaro. Cambiaso was a man of amiable character, and liberal to poor artists, and on one occasion gave a dowry to the portion- less daughter of a brother painter. His works suffered much from the careless haste of their execution ; his drawings were easily recognized amongst collectors, by their free bold style, and were so infinite in number and so negligently pre- served, that in his own house they were often used by his maid-servant for kindling fires. Of some Works at the Escorial. Character ; Merits as an artist. 206 CHAP. IV.— EEIGN OF PHILIP II. 0. Cambiaso. of them which fell in the way of Tintoretto, who rivalled the Genoese in rapidity, that artist re- marked that they might he of service to an ex- perienced painter, but were enough to ruin the style of a beginner. 1 The younger Cambiaso was employed for a short time at the Escorial, in painting with the sons of Castello the Bergamese, hut returned to Italy in 1586, receiving 50 ducats to defray the L. Tumi-one. cost of the journey. His companion, Lazaro Tavarone, was named painter to the King in 1585, with a monthly salary of 20 ducats, and had a hand in the ungainly frescos in the hall of battles. 2 He afterwards assisted Tibaldi, Costello el Ge- novese . and finally received, in 1590, 200 ducats for his travelling expenses to Genoa, where he arrived, says Lanzi, “ rich in drawings by his master, “ ready money, and honour.” 3 Cambiaso had been accompanied or followed by a tliircl disciple, Giovanni Battista Castello, 4 a skilful painter of illuminations, who was employed upon the choir-books of the Escorial. He was called in Castile the “ Genoese,” to distinguish him I Bidolfi, part ii., p. 59. 2 See p. 193. 3 Lanzi, tom. v., p. 304. 4 Cean Bermudez mentions a fourth pupil of Cambiaso — one “ Juan “Bautista Scorza,” as his companion hi Spam, whom I take, however, to be identical with this Genoese Castello, from the curious coincidence of the facts of their lives. Both were painters of illuminations, and died at Genoa, in 1637, aged ninety ; and each of them is said to have had a son, “ who, from a mere merchant, became a prince in Sicily.” “ Scorza” may have been a nickname of Castello, and by some mistake converted into a rival artist. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 207 from Gastello of Bergamo ; 1 and he returned to Genoa about the end of the century. On the death of Cambiaso, Philip invited Paul Veronese to the Escorial, but that fine master could not be induced to quit Venice. The Count of Olivarez, Spanish ambassador at the Vatican, then sent over Federigo Zuccaro, a painter whose reputation, acquired not only in Italy, but in England, France and Flanders, exceeded his merits as much as it fell short of his inordinate vanity. He was the son of Ottaviano Zuccaro, a second-rate painter of San Angiolo in Vado, in the duchy of Urbino, and was born there in 1543. Having learned some- what from his father, he was sent, at an early age, to study at Pome, under his elder brother Taddeo, who had earned considerable distinction as a painter of frescos. There he made rapid progress, and soon despised the fraternal counsels ; for Taddeo having presumed to correct some parts of a fresco with which his scholar was adorning the front of a house, the retouchings were im- mediately cut out of the plaster by the exaspe- rated tyro. A consequent quarrel led to a separation between the brothers, who, however, were afterwards reconciled ; for Taddeo dying in 1566, was buried near Rafael, in the Pantheon ; and Federigo inscribed a boastful and fulsome epitaph on his tomb. The frescos of the cupola of Santa Maria in Fiori, at Florence, being left 1 See p. 191. F. Zuccaro. 208 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Travels. unfinished by the elder brother at his death, they were completed by the younger, much to the satisfaction of the Grand Duke, and probably were the cause of his being appointed by Gregory XIII. to execute some paintings in the Pauline Chapel at the Vatican. Sustaining, however, some real or imaginary injury from certain of his acquaintance, Zuccaro took his revenge by paint- ing an allegory on the subject of calumny, wherein he pourtrayed the offenders with the auricular head-gear of Midas, which he irreve- rently hung over the portal of St. Luke’s church, on a day of festival ; an outrage for which he lost the papal favour, and was forced to leave Pome. His patron, the Cardinal of Lorraine, befriended him in this difficulty, and sent him to Paris, where he obtained employment for some time, and whence he went to Antwerp, to make cartoons for the tapestry- workers. He after- wards visited Holland, and also passed into England, where, says Horace Walpole, 1 he arrived in 1574, but did not long remain. It appears, however, that he was in this country in 1580, that being the date on his portrait — now at Hamp- ton Court — of Queen Elizabeth’s huge porter — “ the jolter-headed giant ” of the pleasures of Kenilworth in Scott’s romance. He likewise painted the Queen herself, and her prisoner, the unhappy Mary of Scotland. Two of his por- traits of the English princess are now at Hainp- 1 Works, vol. iii., p. 121, 4to. London, 1798. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 209 ton Court, and one of them — that wherein she is drawn at full length, fantastically attired, and musing in a forest — is inscribed with some mys- terious Latin mottos, and some bad English verses of her own composition. 1 Many old English houses still possess portraits by Zuccaro, of their members who figured at the Court of Elizabeth. From London, the roving artist seems to have moved southward to Venice, where he painted with Paul Veronese and Tintoretto, in the Great Council chamber of the Doge’s palace. Thence he ventured to return to Pome ; where he found the Pope’s anger mollified by time and distance, and was per- mitted to finish his labours in the Pauline Chapel. It was now that he attracted the notice of Olivarez, who sent him, in 1585, to Spain, as the best artist that Pome could furnish. He was engaged at the large annual salary of 2000 crowns, and arriving at the Escorial early in 1586, was received by the prior with almost regal honours. His first works were six paintings on canvas for the high altar, — “ The martyrdom of “ St. Lawrence,” “ Christ at the Column,” and “ Christ bearing his Cross,” for the compart- ments of the second story ; and the “ Assump- “ tion of the Virgin,” “ Our Lord’s Pesurrection,” and the “ Descent of the Holy Ghost,” for those of the third, which were all fixed in their places 1 Ibid, and also Mrs. Jameson’s agreeable Hand-Book to the Public Galleries, p. 406. Journey to Spain. Works at the Escorial. P 210 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Criticism of Philip II.' before the King saw them. But observing that neither the courtiers, nor the monks, said any- thing in praise of these pictures, but preserved a doubtful silence, Zuccaro bestowed far greater pains on the “ Nativity of the Saviour,” and the “ Adoration of the Kings,” intended for the lowest division of the altar, which lay more fully, than the others, within the ken of criticism. When finished he submitted them to the inspec- tion of the King, confident of applause, and mo- destly remarking that the force of painting could no farther go. Philip, however, was neither to be blinded by his fame, nor awed by the assurance of this spoiled favourite of courts. Looking at the pictures for some time in contemptuous silence — in which Titian has left evidence that his aspect must have been sufficiently chilling — he, at length, enquired whether those were eggs in the basket of a little shepherdess, in the “ Nativity,” who seemed hastening to lay her offering at the feet of the Virgin-mother. The artist answering yes ; the King quietly hinted that the said eggs, besides being ill-painted, were somewhat out of place in the basket of a damsel, running at full speed, and purporting to be a shepherdess coming at midnight from the fold, unless, indeed, her flock consisted of fowls ; and, turning on his heel, left the Italian not a little disconcerted by the imusual event of meeting with criticism which was not flattery. Condemned frescos. In fresco painting, to which he next applied CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 211 himself, Znccaro was not more fortunate. Six pieces, which he executed in the cloisters, were condemned by the King, and afterwards effaced, excepting one representing the “ Incarnation of “ our Lord.” Having laid the blame of this failure on his disciples who had assisted in the work, he was ordered to execute, entirely with his own hand, the “ Mystery of the Conception,” which proved, however, as unsatisfactory as the rest. It must be admitted that Philip behaved on the occasion with great kindness and generosity : dissembling his displeasure, and, having borne with the artist for three years, he finally sent him away rejoicing, with payment, says Palomino, at the rate of 6000 ducats a year, 1 or, according to Cean Bermudez, with a present of 900 over and above his pension, a gold chain, a string of pearls, and undiminished self-esteem. His “ St. Law- “ rence,” was dismissed from the high altar to a small chapel of the palace, and the “ Nativity” and “ Epiphany” to the hall of the convent ; while his other pictures, which their lofty position rendered less obnoxious, were suffered to retain their places. On the painter’s depar- ture, his friend, Fray Antonio de Villacastin, kissed the King’s hand, and thanked him for the munificence he had shown. “ It is not Zuccaro “who is to blame,” replied Philip, “but those who “brought him hither.” Zuccaro’s failure in Spain does not appear to have damaged his reputation in 1 Palomino, tom. iii., p. 402. Remark of Philip II. 212 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. B. Carducho. Italy. There he was caressed by the great, and employed by the church as before, founded, and was chosen first president of the Academy of St. Luke, at Home, under the patronage of Sixtus V., built himself a fine house there on the Pincian hill, became a member of the literary Academy, “ dell’ Insensate,” under the whimsical title of “ 11 Sonnachioso;” published several works on the arts, 1 and dying at Ancona, in 1609, was buried there with great pomp. His portrait, engraved in Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting in England, represents him in the prime of life as a hand- some man, with regular features, and a fair com- plexion. Zuccaro brought with him, from Italy, his Florentine disciple, Bartolomeo Oarducci, or Car- ducho, as he was called in Spain, who was born in 1560, and who practised in Castile, during two reigns, the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, of which he had studied the two last under Bartolomeo Ammanati, at Florence. Works at the Escorial. lie was retained by Philip II. at the yearly salary of 50,000 maravedis, (somewhat under £.20) besides the price of his works,— slender emoluments, which, however, he declined to re- sign, although invited to the court of France by Henry IV. At the Escorial he painted several altar-pieces in oils ; and the frescos which fill 1 Of these the best is entitled, “ L’Idea de’ Pittori, Scultori et Architetti “ del Cavalier Federigo Zuccaro, folio. Torino, 1607,” in which (p. 5) he informs us of his adoption of the style of “ The Drowsy.” CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 213 the spaces between the book-cases and the cor- nice of the library, and which illustrate, and are not unworthy of Tibaldi’s allegorical ceiling that overhangs them. Each compartment relates to the science allegorized immediately above it ; and some of them display a curious choice of subject. Thus the force of eloquence is symbolized by a Hercules, out of whose mouth proceed chains of silver and gold to bind the nations ; and Arith- metic is represented by the wise King of Israel, seated at a table and resolving the problems pro- posed by the Queen of Sheba. lie likewise painted for the church of San Felipe el Real, a “ Descent from the Cross,” which reminded Cumberland of the style of Rafael. 1 On the death of his royal master, Carducho was confirmed in his post of painter by Philip III., whose esteem he enjoyed, and at whose court he lived and laboured at Valladolid till 1606. He was then sent to the palace of the Pardo to paint the ceiling and model the plaster ornaments of the southern gallery ; and died there in 1608. His works were distinguished by their accurate drawing, harmonious colouring, and imitation of the antique. A fastidious taste led him to touch and retouch his pictures repeatedly, in order to attain his own high ideal of excellence, of which he was wont to say that he wished those profoundly versed in art, and not the vulgar herd, to judge. “ Prudence and disinterested- * Anecdotes, vol. i., p. 122. 214 CHAP. IV.— BEIGN OF PHILIP II. Good-natured criticism. “ ness” a rare and happy combination, “ were” says Cean Bermudez, “ his peculiar virtues.” Expressing, one day, his admiration of a picture, newly finished by a brother artist, a scholar of his own drew his attention to a badly drawn and misplaced foot. 1 did not observe it;” replied he, “ it is so concealed by the difficult excellence “ of tlxis bosom, and those hands,” — a piece of kindly criticism that deserves to be recorded. Carducho left two daughters, but no sons. The honours of his name, however, were worthily worn and extended by his younger brother and disciple, Vincenzio, who became one of the most eminent painters in Castile. P. Tibaldi. Pellegrino Tibaldi was born at Valdelsa, a village in the Milanese, where his father followed the trade of a mason, in 1522, or, according to another account, in 1527. Being early removed to Bologna, he there studied painting, sculp- ture, and architecture, the first, it is said, under the elder Ramenghi, a pupil of Rafael. In 1547, he went to seek improvement in the galleries and churches of Rome, where he addicted him- self to the study of Michael Angelo, and to the imitation of his style. Having painted some works in the castle of St. Angelo, he returned to Bologna, and there executed in the Institute a series of frescos, on subjects taken from the Odyssey, which fixed his reputation. He after- wards went to Loretto to paint the chapel of the Cardinal of Augsburg, and also painted some CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 215 esteemed works in the Merchants’ House, at Ancona. Twenty years of his life were devoted to the study and practice of architecture and sculpture; he was chosen by St. Charles Borromeo to build his college, or “ Palace of Wisdom,” at Pavia; and at Milan he became intendant of works in the renowned Cathedral, which, begun in the days of the old Visconti, owes its splendid crest of marble spires to the magnificence of Napoleon. Here he designed the choir; and he has also left other proofs of his architec- tural powers in the churches of Milan. In sculp- ture his name stood so high that some of his plaster designs were used as models by Annibal Caracci, in painting the gallery of the Farnese palace. Invited to Spain by Philip II., this distin- guished master arrived, in 1586, at the Escorial, where his first works were some frescos, in the Camarin, or little chamber behind the high altar, representing “ Abraham paying tithe to Melchi- “ zedic,” and “ Elias fed by an Angel in the “ Desert.” The King was much pleased with these specimens of Tibaldi’s powers, and directed him to supply the place of Zuccaro’s condemned frescos in the great cloister, with others on sub- jects belonging to the legend of the Blessed Virgin. For the same cloister he painted several other works, amongst which three oil pictures, adorning an oratory, and representing “ The “ Raising of the Cross,” “ The Crucifixion,” and Invitation tv Spain. 216 CHAP. IV.— BEIGN OF PHILIP II. Frescos in Ihc Library. “ Our Lord taken down from the Cross,” were remarkable for the skill of their difficult fore- shortenings. lie also painted in oils, for the high altar, the “ Martyrdom of St. Lawrence,” the “ Nativity,” and “ Epiphany,” which still exist there, having superseded those by Zuccaro. This gorgeous altar must have been built under an evil star, for these pictures were little better than their predecessors. St. Lawrence, extended on his grid- iron, is ill painted, and far too large ; for had he really been of that gigantic stature, the pigmy Roman cooks, who stand around, and whom he facetiously requested to turn him that both sides might be equally broiled and fit for eating, 1 would have found their functions dangerous as well as difficult. The King approved of his work when he saw it on the easel, but was disappointed with its effect in the altar. Tibaldi’s greatest achieve- ment at the Escorial was the fresco of the ceiling (194 feet long by 32 wide) of the noble library, where the books still glitter in their cases, with their gilt edges turned outwards, as they were left by the first librarian, Arias Montano. This ceiling is divided into seven compartments, each of which contains an allegorical representation of a science. It displays a profusion of various and beautiful figures, brilliantly coloured, and of col- ossal size ; the design is adapted with admirable 1 “ Mira miserable,” said the valorous martyr to his executioner, “ que “ ya tienes assada una parte de mi cuerpo : buelvele, paraque la otra se “ asse, paraque sazonadas mis carnes puedas comer de ellas,” &c. Vil- i legas, Flos Sanctorum, p. 380. CHAP. IV.— KEIGN OF PHILIP II. 217 skill to the archings of the roof ; and the whole affords a proof of the artist’s acquaintance with the frescos of the great Florentine. The Caracci were wont to call Tibaldi, on account of the com- bined grandeur and softness of his style, “ the “ reformed Michael Angelo,” 1 a proud but hardly merited title, for he had not proved the giant’s armour which he had assumed, and when he copied the exaggerated forms of his illustrious model, the mighty soul which inspired them was too often wanting. For his labours at the Escorial, Philip rewarded Tibaldi with 100,000 crowns, 2 and the dignity of Marquess in the Milanese states, by the title of Valdelsa, the hamlet where his father had carried the hod. He did not long enjoy these gifts, for he died soon after at Milan, in 1592. Flanders, as well as Italy, furnished to the King of Spain its contingent of painters. Sir Anthony More, one of the best portrait-painters of his day, and no less famous in London than at his native Utrecht (where he was born in 1512), was the scholar of John Schoorel, and afterwards travelled in Italy. Cardinal Granvelle introduced him to the service of Charles V., by whom he was sent to Portugal to paint some of the royal family. He had previously painted Prince Philip, and his I Lanzi, tom. v. p. 46. 3 Pacheco (p. 94) states the sum at 50,000 crowns, in which he is followed by Palomino (tom. iii. p. 408) ; Cean Bermudez, however, whom I have taken as my authority, is home out in his statement by Malvasia ; Vite dei Pittori Bolognesi, tom. i. p. 170, 4to. Bologna, 1078. Flemish artists. A. Mure. 218 CHAP. IV.— EEIGN OF PHILIP II. In England. pencil was the means of making that marrying monarch and the two first of his four queens, the Maries of Portugal and England, acquainted with each other’s persons. In England, More was mu- nificently entertained, and probably received his knighthood ; he frequently painted Queen Mary, who presented him with a hundred pounds and a gold chain, and allowed him a hundred pounds a quarter whilst he remained in her service ; and he was largely employed by the Howards and the Russells and other grandees of the court. 1 His portraits of the Queen accord with the earlier ones by Holbein, and represent her as a woman not handsome, yet not unpleasing, of a fair com- plexion and dignified presence, and bearing in her somewhat pensive eyes nothing akin to the horrible epithet which history — -justly, perhaps, but most invidiously — has wedded to her name. One of these, a half-length, is in the Queen of Spain’s gallery; another, a fine full-length picture, adorns the collection of the Duke of Wellington, at Apsley House. More was much about the person of Philip, then King of Eng- land and Naples, and probably painted that portrait of him, — in armour, and bareheaded, out of deference to the Queen — which poor Mary, who privately suspected her husband of cowardice, begged for, in her joy and surprise at hearing of 1 For this life I have consulted Horace Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting Works, in England. — Vol. iii. p. 106 ; and Descamps, Vie des Peintres Fla- mandes, &c. tom. i. p 98, CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 219 his presence at the field of St. Quentin. 1 When Philip went to Spain to take possession of the throne, More followed him. to Madrid, and for some time basked in the full sunshine of royal favour. All of a sudden, however, he withdrew to Brussels with a haste that betokened disgrace and alarm, and for some cause which has never been satisfactorily explained. One account is, that the King, visiting More according to custom, laid his hand upon his shoulder as he stood at the easel, a familiarity which the artist returned by rudely rapping the royal knuckles with his maul- stick, or according to another version of the story daubing them with carmine. The attendants stood aghast, and the story getting wind, the officers of the Inquisition prepared to apprehend the playful Fleming. Philip, however, treated the matter as a jest, good naturedly gave the painter warning of his danger, and enabled him to escape ; and some time after even invited him back to Court, an invitation with which More did not think it safe to comply. Neither Palo- mino nor Cean Bermudez, however, mention this coarse and dangerous pleasantry, and they allege the jealousy and dislike of the courtiers as the cause of the painter’s sudden evasion. The former 2 asserts that More was so much an object of royal favour and courtly envy, that he had 1 Gregorio Leti ; Vie d’Elizabeth, Reine d’Angleterre, tom. i. p. 307) 8vo. Amsterdam, 1703. 2 Palomino, tom. iii. p. 361. In Spain. 220 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. like to have been cast into the prison of the In- quisition, on a charge of bewitching the King. The latter writer describes him as being “ very “ much the courtier, and living like a gentleman of “ grave and majestic manners,” — a sort of person not likely to play tricks on a King of Spain. What- ever were his reasons for leaving Madrid, he was kindly received at Brussels by the Duke of Alba, governor of the Low Countries, and painted the portraits of that iron commander and some of his mistresses. To the artist’s sons lucrative posts were given by the Duke, who is even said to have suppressed the letters which invited him back to Madrid, that he might not be deprived of his society and services. 1 His declining years were spent in ease and opulence — the fruits of successful toil at the Courts of England, Portugal, and Spain; and he died, aged seventy-six, at Antwerp, in 1588. The hall of portraits, in the palace of the Pardo, contained sixteen of his pictures of royal and noble personages, which perished with those of Titian. Though he chiefly addicted himself to portraiture, he exe- cuted some pictures on religious subjects, and was engaged when he died in painting the “ Circum- “ cision of our Lord,” for the Cathedral of Ant- werp. His works are usually finished with great care, and sometimes are coloured in the rich style of Titian. In the long gallery at Althorp, there is a fine specimen of his powers, in the por- 1 Descamps. CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 221 trait of himself; from which we learn that he was a tall stately man, with a good, though somewhat rugged countenance, and red hair and beard ; that he wore a dark doublet with sleeves of shining black satin, and a heavy gold chain passed twice round his neck ; and that he went attended by a huge brindled wolf-hound. Michael Coxein or Coxie 1 was born at Mechlin in 1497, and first studied there under Van Orlay, and afterwards went to Rome. Thence he re- turned with an Italian wife, and a portfolio filled with sketches from the works of Rafael, which, as occasion served, he reproduced as his OAvn, a piece of audacious larceny at last exposed by his countryman Jerome Cock, who published an engraving from the school of Athens, and thus wdiispered to the Flemish churchmen the source whence Coxie had stolen saintly figures for their shrines. Philip II. employed him to make a copy of V an Eyck’s picture, at Ghent, of the “ Triumph of the Lamb a work which the dexterous plagiary carried with him to Madrid, where it was placed over the altar of the chapel of the Alcazar. At the Escorial he painted several pictures for various altars and oratories, such as “ Christ and the Virgin interceding with “ the Father Eternal,” “ St. Joachim and St. “ Anne,” and “ David cutting off Goliah’s head.” He likewise painted the “ Resurrection of our “ Lord” for the barefooted Carmelites of Medina 1 Descamps, tom. i., p. 57. M. Coxie. 222 CHAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. A. Pupiler. del Campo. Returning to Mechlin with consider- able wealth he built himself three houses, and adorned them with his own pictures. He re- tained his faculties and industry to the age of ninety-five, and died in 1597, of a fall from a scaffold while painting in the Hotel de Ville, at Antwerp. Notwithstanding his pilferings, he was an artist of considerable skill, and left in the church of our Lady, at Antwerp, a “ Holy “ Family,” which was praised by Rubens. The Royal gallery of Madrid possesses two of his works, of which one is “ the Death of the “ Virgin,” 1 a large panel, bought for a great sum by Philip II. Rom the Cathedral of St. Gudule, at Brussels. The other is “ St. Cecilia playing “ on the organ,” 2 a composition in which imi- tation of Rafael is very evident, especially in his occasional poverty of colour; the saints’ hands are clumsy, the heads common-place, and none of the figures pleasing, except a pretty little amber- haired angel in the act of singing. Antonio Pupiler was a Fleming whom Philip took into his service, in 1556, at the salary of 350 crowns annually, and employed at the Pardo, and afterwards, in 1567, to copy a retablo at Louvaine. It is not known whether he returned U. SUtcnheyl. to Spain, nor have any of his works survived the ravages of time, and the fire at the Pardo. In Ulric Staenlreyl, a soldier of his German body-guard, Philip II. found an artist conversant 1 Catalogo, No. 1598. 2 Id. No. 499. CIIAP. IV.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 223 with painting on glass ; and he accordingly, in 1566, employed him in that capacity, with an annual salary of 260 ducats, and exemption from military duty. fc— -a fiy' 1 cJF flfil mo /il ill ill ltd >j "1 f 1 A rtists of Castile. L. Morales. CHAPTER V. REIGN OF PHILIP II. 1050— 1598.— continued. ASTILE in this long reign produced many painters, who were neither ex- celled in skill, nor have been eclipsed in fame, by the ablest of their Italian or Flemish rivals. First in age, and perhaps also in reputation, comes Luis Morales, upon whom the admiration of his country, or the devotional character of his works, has conferred the title of “ the Divine.” He is the first Spaniard whose genius and good fortune have obtained him a place amongst the great painters of Europe. Like many of those who have most strongly influenced the mind or taste of their age, he lived and laboured in ob- scurity, and the records of his life are meagre and contradictory. Born at Badajoz about 1509, he is absurdly said by Palomino 1 to have been a pupil of Campana, at Seville, a master who 1 Pal. tom. iii. p. 384. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 225 did not arrive in Spain till 1548. Cean Bermudez, with more probability, supposes him to have studied his art at Toledo, or Valladolid; and he seems to have practised it for the greater part of his life in Estremadura, chiefly painting for churches, and for the oratories of private mansions. By a baptismal entry in the regis- ter of the Cathedral of Frexenal, a small town on the Andalusian border, it appears that he was residing there in November 1554, when his son Cristobal was baptized in that church, and that the name of his wife was Leonora de Chaves. In or shortly before 1564, he was commanded to repair to court, by Philip II., to paint some pictures for the newly- founded monastery of the Escorial. Presenting himself in magnificent attire, little suited to his condition, his ostentation is said to have displeased the King, who at first ordered his dis- missal, with a sum of money, hut was mollified by the gallant painter’s declaration that he had spent all he had in order to appear in a manner befitting the dignity of his Majesty. 1 He seems, however, to have painted during his residence at court, only a single picture, “ Christ going to “ Calvary,” given by Philip to the church of the Jeronymites, at Madrid ; nor did any work of his form part of the original decorations of the Escorial. After his return to Estremadura his fortunes began to decline. As old age drew on, 1 Pal. tom. i. p. 178. Visits the Es- corial. Q 226 CHAP. V. — EEIGN OF PHILIP II. Lust interview with tin ■ King. he lost the steadiness of hand, so necessary in his profession ; his eyesight failed him ; and he fell into extreme poverty. By a writing, discovered by Cean Bermudez, in the archives of the Cathe- dral of Frexenal, we find him, in February 1575, selling, for 100 ducats, some vines which lie possessed in the Vega of Merida. His wretchedness was somewhat relieved, in 1581, by the timely visit of the King to Badajoz, as he returned from taking possession of his newly- acquired kingdom beyond the Guadiana. The poor, disabled painter, appearing in the royal presence in a garb very different from that in which he had flourished at the Escorial, attracted the notice of Philip. “ You are very old, Mo- “ rales,” said he. “ Yes, sire, and very poor,” replied the artist. Turning to his treasurer, the King immediately ordered the old man a pension of 200 ducats out of the crown rents of the city “ for his dinner ;” when Morales inter- posed with the question, “ and for supper, sire V’ — a stroke of dexterous begging, which Philip, being in a humour to be pleased, rewarded with another hundred ducats. “ Here may be seen,” says Palomino, t; the liberality of that great “ monarch, and the discreet wit of the vassal in “ profiting by the occasion, and speaking at the “ right time, which is a great felicity.” 1 Morales did not long enjoy the royal bounty ; for he died five years afterwards, in 1586. Badajoz lias 1 Pal. tom. iii., p. 385. CHAP. V. — REIGN OF PHILIP II. 227 done honour to the memory of its great painter, by naming after him the street in which he lived. 1 Morales was the first artist born and bred in Spain who invested the religious thought and feeling of his native land with the beauties of Italian expression. Pure and graceful in design, and rich in the harmonies of colour, his works might have been painted in the schools of Pome, amongst the models of ancient art, and in the inspiring companionship of Pafael and Fra Bas- tiano. But, as pictures by the great foreign masters were rarely to be met with out of the royal collections, it is probable that his acquaint- ance with the creations of Italian art began and ended with his short residence at court, when his style was, doubtless, as mature as his age. He may, indeed, have benefitted in his youth by the instructions of travelled artists, and may have been numbered amongst the scholars of Berre- guete. Nothing, however, is certain, except that he far excelled any painter who could possibly have been his instructor. He stands, therefore, in art amongst the few of whom it can be said that each “ was author of himself, And knew no other kin.” 2 He discovered for himself many of the secrets of his craft, and triumphed over its difficulties by the mere force of genius. At the distance of three centuries we may still regret that his noble 1 Ponz, tom. viii., p. 1C2. 2 Coriolanus, Act i. Sc. 3. Self-taught genius. 228 CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Subjects /mil style. pencil, not excelled at the Escorial, and not un- worthy of the Vatican, should have been doomed to ill-requited and inglorious toil in the wilds of Estremadura. The subjects of Morales are always devotional ; and those few by which he is known out of Spain, generally of a doleful cast. It is not, however, with the ghastly sufferings of the body that, like Spagnoletto. he chiefly deals, but with the nobler sorrows of the soul. The Virgin, whom he offers to the contemplation of the pious, is never the fair young mother, smiling on the beauty of her Babe divine, but the drooping Mater Dolorosa, wan and weary with unutterable anguish. His Christ is in every feature “ the Man of Sorrows “ and acquainted with grief,” wrung with the agonies of the garden, or bearing on his brow the damps and paleness of death. Here the prostration of physical force and the wasting frame is drawn with terrible truth, as if Morales had groped His way into the vaults of the Inquisition, and there chosen for a model some lean heretic Carthusian (if such there were) writhing in the grasp of the tormentor. Our Lord fainting under his Cross was a theme which often engaged his pencil, and finely displayed his powers. His con- ception of this sublime subject recalled to the recollection of Cumberland, 1 Rafael's famous “Spasimo,” and his execution, the manner of Da Vinci. The Louvre possesses a very fine picture 1 Anecdotes, Vol. i., p. 7G. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 229 of this kind, by his hand, in which the head of the Saviour much resembles that striking head of “ Christ with the crown of thorns.” in the Queen of Spain’s gallery, 1 perhaps, the finest of all his works, for richness of colour and intensity of feeling. So few of his larger works have found their way out of his native province, that it has been said that he never painted a full-length figure. This, however, is disproved by his “ Crucifixion,” overlooked by the French in stripping the Cathedral of Badajoz ; and still more by the altars of the once proud temple of the military monks at Alcantara, and of the village church of Arroyo del Puerco, a desolate hamlet on the road from Alcantara to Truxillo. The first of these contains a St. Michael and St. John, and other pictures by Morales ; the second, sixteen of his grandest works, which, though noticed in the Dictionary of Cean Bermudez, — Soult’s hand-book for Spain, — escaped the keen glance and iron gripe of that picture-pilfering commander, whose troops long occupied the place. The best of them are the grand “ Christ and “ Joseph of Arimathea,” “ St. John,” and “Christ “ bound” — three-quarter length — “ Christ at the “ Column,” and the “ Descent from the Cross.” “ Though chilled and dirty, they are, at least, “ pure,” 2 and uninjured either by care or neglect. “ The Saviour’s Circumcision,” in the Queen of 1 Catalogo, No. 120. 2 Hand-book, p. 546, which contains the single account of these fine pictures which I have met with in any foreign work on Spain. Cean Ber- 230 CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Careful finish. Spain’s gallery, 1 though defective in composition, and injured by the stiffness of some of the figures, is remarkable for the serene beauty of the female heads, especially of the taper-bearing maidens, who attend upon the Blessed Virgin. The works of Morales were always painted on panel. The labour bestowed on their execution, fully accounts for their scarcity. His pencil lin- gered on a head, or on a fold of drapery, with the fond and fastidious care of the early Florentine masters. He finished his faces with a smoothness sometimes excessive, and in the curious elabora- tion of the hair, he was rivalled neither by Durer, delighting in hyacinthine ringlets, nor by Denner, matchless in depicting the stubbly chins of grey- beards, and old women. Like Pannegiano, he worked on the amber locks of his cherubs till “they curled like the little rings of the vine;” 2 eacli particular hair was expressed, and the whole seemed ready to wave at a breath. 3 His colouring, rich though sober, is sometimes cold and greyish ; and in his full-length figures the drawing is too often incorrect. But the fine feeling of his countenances, and the roundness of his forms, give his works a charm which seldom belongs to those of his Spanish contemporaries. mudez, wlio. probably, never saw them, merely notices them in bis list of (lie works of Morales as “ sixteen historical subjects and I find no mention at all of their existence in Ponz. 1 Catalogo, No. 110. 2 .Tererny Taylor, Sermon on Marriage. Works, vol. v. p. 259 — 15 vols. Svo. London, 1828. 3 Palomino, tom. iii., p. 384. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 231 He had few disciples, and those few, — amongst whom was his son, possibly the Cristobal whose birth has been recorded, — were mere feeble imi- tators of his style, who exaggerated his faults, and were devoid of his inspiration. Their dismal Madonnas, and chalky Eccehomos have, how- ever, frequently been laid at his door, to the damage of his reputation. The best of the band was Juan Labrador, who chose a humbler walk of art, and painted fruit and flower pieces, which were admired for their truth and brilliancy of colour, and their fresh-gathered leaves empearled with transparent dew-drops. He died at Madrid in 1600. Alonso Sanchez Coello, 1 the first of the great Spanish portrait-painters, and the Velasquez of the court of Philip II., has been erroneously called by several writers a Portuguese. Cean Bermudez, however, reclaims him for Spain, and on the authority of the heralds of Santiago, asserts that he was born at Benifayro, in Valencia, early in the sixteenth century. 2 Nothing of his early history has been preserved, nor is it known where he acquired the rudiments of his art. His style, however, appears to have been formed on Italian models, and he left several careful and excellent copies of the works of Titian. In 1541, he was Scholars. Morales the younger. J. Labrador. A. Sanchez Coello. 1 Paclieco, p. 589, and Palomino, tom. i., p. 178 — ii. , p. 388. 2 To the fact of his being a Spaniard, a doubting and reluctant assent is given by Dom Cyrillo Volkmar Machado,— the Portuguese Pilkington, — in his “ Collecyao de Memorias relativas a’s vidas dos Pintores, e Escultores, “ Architetos, e Gravadores Portuguezes, e dos Estrangeiros, que estiverao “ em Portugal — 4to. Lisboa, 1823,” p. 06. 232 CHAP. V. — EEIGN OF PHILIP II. Favour with Philip II. residing at Madrid, where lie married Doha Luisa Reynalte. In 1552, he accompanied Anthony More to Lisbon, and there entered the service of the Infant Don Juan of Portugal. On the death of this prince, he was recommended by his widow, the Spanish Infanta Juana, daughter of Charles V., to her brother Philip ; and returning to Spain, he became painter-in-ordinary to that monarch, on More’s hasty retreat from Madrid. There his genius and address obtained for him a distin- guished position at court; he enjoyed the full confidence of the King, and was usually in at- tendance on his person. Philip was wont to call him “ his Portuguese Titian,” in allusion to his residence at Lisbon ; and from any royal progress, in which the favourite painter did not accompany him, he would write to him as his “ beloved son “ Alonso Sanchez Coello.” At Madrid the artist V was lodged in the treasury buildings contiguous to the palace, and connected with it by a private door, of which Philip kept a key, and by which he sometimes surprised him at table in the midst of his family. At other times, the King, loosely arrayed in a morning gown, 1 would steal softly into the studio, and laying his hand on the painter’s shoulder, compel him to remain seated and pursue his labours, whilst he looked on, or lounged over other pictures. These familiarities, more flattering perhaps than agreeable, Sanchez 1 This morning gown affords Cumberland an opportunity of making a singular blunder, which I have noticed in the Preface. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 233 Coello appears to have received with all due modesty, never forgetting, as was alleged of More, the awful distance which separated even the most playful King of Spain and the Indies from his painter-in-ordinary. More fortunate than the Fleming, he was the favourite, not only of the monarch, but also of the court and of the whole royal house and its allies. The Popes Gregory XIII. and Sixtus V., Cardinal Alex- ander Farnese, and the Dukes of Florence and Savoy bestowed on him tokens of their admira- tion. “ Seventeen royal personages,” says Pa- checo, “honoured him with their esteem, and “ would sometimes recreate and refresh them- “ selves under his roof, with his wife and chil- dren.” His table was never without some noble- Royal and nolle friend. man or worshipful gentleman for a guest; and the Infant Don Carlos, the Archbishops of Toledo and Seville, Cardinal Granvelle, and Don Juan of Austria, the hero of Lepanto, were amongst his familiar friends. The two large court-yards of his house were often thronged with the horses, litters, coaches, and chairs of the nobility and the ambassadors. To maintain this expensive hospitality, his pencil must have commanded a noble revenue. At his death in 1590, according to Palomino, the 75th year of his age, he left a fortune of 55,000 ducats, part of which went to endow an hospital for orphans at Valladolid. An anecdote related by Porreno, 1 the biographer i Dichos y Hechas, p. 329. Anecdote of Philip II. 234 CHAP. V.— BEIGN OF PHILIP II. Praise of Lope tie Vetjti. of Philip II., shows how high the artist stood in the estimation of the court. Don Diego de Cordoba, chancing to see exposed for sale some wretched portraits of the King, in a fit of loyal indignation rushed into the royal presence, and besought his Majesty to follow the example of Alexander the Great, and “ grant to Alonso San- “ chez, or some other famous painter,” the exclu- sive right of depicting his gracious countenance. “ Let the poor daubsters live,” said the King, “ so long as they misrepresent our faces, and not “ our behaviour.” Lope de Vega, who, amongst the myriad subjects of his fluent pen, frequently sang the praises of painting and its professors, has given an honourable place in the ninth silva of his “ Laurel de Apolo” to “ el EspaTiol Prothogenes famoso El noble Alonso Sanchez, queen vidioso Dejara al mas antiguo y celebrado De quien hoy ha quedado Horando su memoria Eternos quadros de divina historia.” 1 The noble, fam’d Prothogenes of Spain, Alonso Sanchez, from whose hand remain Pictures, the masters most renown’d of old With looks of envious wonder might behold, Eternal scenes of history divine, Wherein for aye his memory shall shine. Isabella San- chez Coello. Amongst the disciples of this Spanish Pro- thogenes was his daughter Dona Isabel, bom in 1 Obras Sueltas de Fray Lope Felix de Vega Carpio, xix. tomes, 4to. Madrid, 1776, tom. i., p. 171. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 235 1564, in her childhood the playmate of the Infants and Infantas of Spain, and, in after life, equally distinguished as a painter and musician. She married Don Francisco de Herrera y Saa- vedra, Regidor of Madrid, and knight of San- tiago, by whom she had a son, Don Antonio, like- wise a member of that noble order. She died, like her father, at Madrid, in 1612, and was buried in her husband’s family chapel in the church of San Juan. Sanchez Coello almost rivals Titian himself in the number of royal and noble personages, whose favour he enjoyed, and whose countenances he delineated. In 1582, he executed, for the hall of portraits at the Pardo, no less than ten pieces, amongst which were an Emperor, a Queen, and five Archdukes, Infantas, and royal Princes. He painted the King many times, both on foot and on horseback, and in every variety of cos- tume. But time, which so frequently avenges the victims, and persecutes the favourites of for- tune, has dealt very hardly with his works, most of which perished in the flames of the Pardo and the Alcazar of Madrid. Of his many portraits of the Queen of Spain’s famous ancestor, Philip II., her gallery does not possess one. Sufficient spe- cimens, however, of his powers exist there to vin- dicate his fame. His portraits of the Infant Don Carlos 1 and his half-sister Isabella Clara Eugenia 2 are fine works of art, and no less valuable, from 1 Catalogo, No. 152. • 2 Ibid. No. 154. A. Sanchez Coello’ s por- traits. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 236 Inf D. Carlos Infa, Isabella Clara Eugenia the impress of fidelity which they bear, as illus- trations of history. In Carlos we find little to heighten the pathos of his story; and, indeed, the pencil of Coello, like the prose of the historian, furnishes a strong contrast to the touching poetry of Schiller. The unhappy prince appears in his 17th or 18th year ; and with the pallid features of his father, he has also his cold grey eye, and sus- picious dissatisfied expression. Both the head and the dress — a cloth of gold doublet, short-furred mantle, barrette, and trunk hose — recall Titian’s early portraits of Philip. The hands, of which one rests on the sword hilt, the other on his hip, are delicately shaped, and finely painted. The In- fanta Isabella, — afterwards that resolute Arch- duchess, whose linen, unchanged during the three years’ siege of Ostend, gave the name to the tawny tint, still known to French dyers and grooms as the “ couleur Isabelle,” — seems about the same age as her brother. As she was only two years old at the time of his death, her portrait must have been painted many years after its com- panion. Her countenance, both in features and expression, strongly resembles her father’s, who loved her above all his other children, and spoke of her on his death-bed as “ the light and mirror “of his eyes;” and her swarthy complexion somewhat justifies the sarcasms of Pierre Le- roy, and the Huguenot wits, in the “ Satyre “ Menippee.” These hereditary peculiarities are far too strong for beauty, even “ in the April CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 237 “ of her prime her face, indeed, appears to better advantage when invested with the dig- nity of matronly years on the canvas of her friend and counsellor Rubens, 1 or still later, when she had exchanged the weeds of a widow for those of a Chanoinesse, and sat for her portrait to Vandyck. 2 But though in neither of these royal portraits was Sanchez Coello fortunate in his subject, they, on that account, perhaps, the more display his masterly skill. He has supplied the place of beauty, as far as possible, by something little less winning, and far more difficult to be caught and described, — that air of refinement and repose which belongs to gentle blood and deli- cate nurture. To the graceful design and fine colouring of these pictures, Titian himself could hardly have added anything, beyond a softer outline, and somewhat more roundness of form. Amongst the master’s other portraits in this royal collection, a picture 3 of the heroine of Ostend, and her sister, deserves notice, and likewise that of Queen Isabel of the Peace, 4 to whose sweet face he has hardly done justice, but whose black dress is magnificent, and her jewellery, especially the knots of pearl at the opening of the robe, worthy the imitation of the most tasteful and Q. Isabel de la Paz. sumptuous of queens. The student of history will also look with interest on the well-painted head 5 of a dark, handsome, bright-eyed man, 1 In the Musee, at Brussells. 2 Louvre, No. 430. 3 Catalogo, No. 193. 4 Ibid. No. 530. 5 Ibid, No. 200. Ant. Perez. 238 CHAP. V.— KEIGN OF PHILIP II. P a in Is Tri- umphal arches, with I). de Urbina. wearing a small black cap and white plume, and the cross of Santiago on his breast; for it is the gay, ambitious, intriguing, banquet-giving, irresistible, but unfortunate, Antonio Perez, the Bolingbroke of Castile. In the Louvre there is a portrait, 1 attributed to Sanchez Coello, of Don Juan, the bold bastard of Austria, and the terror of the Turk. In 1570, the Court portrait-painter was em- ployed with Diego de Urbina to execute the paintings for the decoration of the triumphal arches, under which Doha Anna of Austria, passed into the capital of her hoary uncle and Religious pic- tures. bridegroom. Notwithstanding his avocations in the palace, lie found time to paint, between 1574 and 1577, for the parish church of Espinar, a village in the territory of Segovia, nine pictures for the high altar, with the gilding and adorn- ment of which he was also intrusted. For these works, and for a curtain or architectural drop- scene, with which the altar was veiled during the two last weeks of Lent, he was paid 3,350 ducats. In 1580, he executed a large composition of the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian for the church of St. Jerome, at Madrid, where it was seen by Cum- berland, who praises its “ great majesty of design, “ bold relief, and strong masterly expression.” 2 For the Escorial he painted, by the King’s desire, in 1582. five altar-pictures, each containing a pair of saints, and likewise an excellent portrait of his 1 Louvre. Gal. Espagn. No. 69. 2 Anecdotes, vol. L p. 89. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP IT. friend, Father Sigiienza, the historian of the order of St. Jerome, which has been well engraved by Fernando Selma. In 1585, he painted a portrait of Ignatius Loyola, from waxen casts taken from the dead body twenty-nine years before, and from the recollections of Father Ribadeneyra, the Hagiologist, which was reckoned the best repre- sentation ever made of the stern and melancholy countenance of the great first Jesuit. The fate of this interesting picture is not known ; but it may have been the original of that striking por- trait which hangs in the church of San Miguel, at Seville. In the Royal gallery of Madrid there is one fair specimen of Sanchez Coello’s powers of treating sacred subjects, in his “ Marriage of “ St. Catherine.” 1 The composition and colouring are good ; and although the Divine Babe is more like a small man than a child, and his mystical bride unhappily resembles an Austrian Infanta, these defects are atoned for by the exceeding grace and beauty of Mary and her attendant angels. The picture is painted on cork, and is signed “ AlONSVS SANTIYS F.” Sanchez Coello had a number of scholars, of whom Pantoja de la Cruz was the most famous. Cristobal Lopez became painter to King John III., of Portugal, from whom he received the order of Aviz ; and, after having executed many portraits of that prince and his family, and some good pictures for the chapel royal at Belem, died at 1 Catalogo, No. 501. 239 Portrait of St. Ign. Loyola. Scholars, C. Lopez. 240 CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. J. tie Urbina, Lisbon in 1594. 1 Juan de Urbina is said to have painted with reputation at the Escorial ; none of his works, however, have been preserved to our times, and his name lives only in books and in the verse of Lope de Vega, wdio calls him “ Generoso Urbina,” and laments his death as a heavy loss to his royal patron — “ A1 sol del mundo, al immortal Felipe.” 2 Giov. Narduck, or Fr. J. de la Miseria. Another artist of the same school was Gio- vanni Narduck, or perhaps Narducci, an Italian, whose history is somewhat curious. Born about 1526, in the Neapolitan county of Molica, he acquired some knowledge of paint- ing at Naples ; whence, being of a devout temper, he made a pilgrimage to the various shrines of Italy, and afterwards to Santiago of Compostella. In the course of his Spanish travels he passed some time with a society of hermits, who dwelt amongst the mountains of Cordoba, and with one of whom, a noble Italian named Ambrosio Mariano, he formed a close friendship. Mariano, a retired doctor of laws, being sent to Madrid on some affairs of the fraternity, was accompanied thither by Narduck, who, while the business w 7 as pending, betook himself once more to the pencil, and entered the school of Sanchez Coello. Here his piety recom- mended him to the esteem of the devout Infanta 1 Palomino (tom. iii. p. 363) gives 1570 as the date of his death, but I follow the Portuguese writer, Machado, who says of Lopez (Vidas dos Pin- tores, p. 67), “ pintou quadros de historia com maneira boa, e larga. ’ 2 Laurel de Apolo. Silva ix. CHAP V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 241 Juana, sister of Philip II., and other religious ladies ; and Dona Leonor de Mascarenas, gover- ness to Don Carlos, and a Dorcas amongst courtly dames, employed him to paint certain devotional pictures, which he executed to her entire satisfac- tion. At her house he became known to Santa Teresa de Jesus, who persuaded him and his friend Mariano to assume, in 1560, the Carmelite robe in one of her reformed convents at Pastrana, where Narduck exchanged his secular name for the humble title of Fray Juan de la Miseria, and left as a specimen of his artistic powers, an “ Ecce- “ homo. ” Removing some time after to a cloister at Madrid, he there closed a long life of devotion in October 1616. His body was embalmed, and was kept in the sacristy of the chapel of S. Bruno, beneath a copious and eulogistic epitaph. It is doubtful whether any of his works still exist. Of Santa Teresa he made two portraits, one for Doha Leonor ; the other, says Pacheco, belonged to the Carmelite nuns of Seville; he likewise pourtrayed S. Luis Beltran, and the holy Friar Nicolas Fac- tor, whose name we shall meet with again amongst the artists of V alencia. Gaspar Becerra, painter, sculptor, and archi- tect, was son of Antonio Becerra, and Leonor Pa- dilla, and was born in 1520, at Baeza, in the king- dom of Jaen, revered by Spanish Martyrologists as the birth-place of St. Ursula, and her eleven thousand virgins. He seems to have gone early to Italy, and to have passed many of G. Becerra. R 242 CHAP. V. — REIGN OF PHILIP II. fVorks in Italy. his best years in study at Home, where he may have been a scholar of Michael Angelo. Cean Bermudez had seen a pencil-sketch by him of part of the “ Last Judgment.” Amongst the artists who assisted Daniel de Volterra in the embellishment of the llovere chapel in the church of the Trinita de’ Monti, Vasari records that “ Bizzera the Spaniard” 1 executed a painting of the “ Nativity of the Virgin,” and that Pel- legrino Tibaldi, afterwards famous at the Escorial, was one of his fellow-labourers. He likewise worked under the eye of Vasari himself, who enumerates him and his countryman Rubiales amongst “ his young men” who aided him in the historical and allegorical frescos with which he adorned the hall of the Cancelloria in the palace of Cardinal Farnese. Perhaps the young Spaniards may have accompanied their chief to the reunions of artists and men of letters, which were held at the supper-table of the Cardinal, where a casual remark of “ Monsignor Giovio ” first suggested to Vasari’s mind the idea of writing his delightful “ Lives of the Painters.” 2 For Dr. Juan de Val verde’s work on anatomy, published in 1554, Becerra designed the plates, 3 1 Vasari, tom. iii. p. 102. Cean Bermudez has fallen into a slight error in relating that Becerra’s work was placed beside one of Daniel de Volterra. Its companion, says Vasari, was “ Christ presented to Simeon,” painted by Gio. Paolo Bosetti of Volterra. 2 Vasari, tom. iii. p. 391. 3 Llagnno (Arquitectos tom. iii. p. 107) doubts this fact, which, he says, is not confirmed by any notice of Becerra in Valverde’s book ; Cean Ber- mudez, however, remarks in his note on the passage, that it may be true for CHAP. V. — EEIGN OF PHILIP II. 243 and he likewise executed about the same time two statues as anatomical studies, of which casts were used as models in the studios. In 1556 he married Doha Paula Velasquez, daughter of a Spaniard of Tordesillas, and soon afterwards returned to Spain. He remained for some time at Zaragoza, where he lived with the younger Morlanes, the sculptor, to whom he presented some of his drawings, and a small bas-relief in alabaster of “ The Resurrection of our Lord,” which may still be seen over a tomb in the old Cathedral Return to Spain. of the “ Sen.” It was not long before his abilities became known to Philip II., who took him into his service, in 1562, as sculptor, with a yearly salary of 200 ducats, and in August 1563, named him one of his painters-in- ordinary, when his salary was raised to 600 ducats. In the Alcazar of Madrid he painted several corridors and chambers ; and, in conjunc- tion with Gastello the Bergamese, the king’s cabinet in the southern tower, and two adjoin- ing passages, — of which the lower parts, within the reach of hands, had greatly suffered, when Pa- lomino 1 saw them, “ from careless sweepers and “ pranksome pages,” and which finally perished in the flames of the palace. Of the chambers, which he painted at the Pardo, one survived the all that. Llaguno gives 1550 as the date of the publication of the “ Anatomy,” which Brunet — always deficient in Spanish bibliography — does not mention in the last edition of his bulky “ Manuel de Libraire.” 1 Palomino, tom. iii. p. 365. Goes to court. 244 CHAP. V. — EEIGN OF PHILIP II. Religious Works. fire there, and its frescos, representing the story of Perseus and Andromeda, were praised by Cean Bermudez for their good drawing, spirited attitudes, and noble expression. When the artist was making his designs for the Pardo, the King coming to observe his progress, and finding only a single figure — a Mercury — fin- ished, exclaimed disappointedly, “ And is this all “ you have done !” — “ a remark,” says Palomino, “ which much disconcerted the draughtsman, and “ proves that kings do not love delay, even when “ conducing to greater perfection.” 1 Becerra was employed by the Infanta Juana, Princess-Dowager of Brazil, to design and exe- cute the high altar for the church of the con- vent of Barefooted nuns, which she founded at Madrid in 1559. It is a chaste structure of the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders of architecture, adorned with painted sculptures of the Virgin and angels, and of the Crucifixion and Resur- rection of our Lord, of which the Crucifixion is the best. He also painted several pictures for this and other altars on slabs of marble, which are still to he seen in the church. “ His most heroical “ work of sculpture and the crown of Iris studies,” says Palomino, 2 was the image of Our Lady, carved for the Queen Isabella of the Peace. This princess bore, it seems, a peculiar affection to the religious order of St. Francis de Paula, to which belonged her confessor Fray Diego de Valbuena, 1 Palomino, tom. iii. p. 365. Do. tom iiL p. 365. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 245 whom she sent soon after her nuptials with a donative to the friars of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem; 1 and upon that monk’s representation that his convent was in need of a statue of the Virgin, she ordered her master-of-the-horse, Don Fadrique de Portugal, to cause one to be executed by the best sculptor in Spain. Becerra, being chosen, was instructed to take for his model a picture in the Queen’s oratory ; and the brother- hood of Fray Diego offered up solemn prayers for the happy conclusion of his labours. Being himself very devoutly inclined towards St. Fran- cis, of whose holy austerities he had heard in the misogynist’s native Calabria, he addressed himself to the work with great alacrity and earnest- ness ; but succeeded so ill, that at the end of a year he produced an image, which did not satisfy himself, and which was at once rejected by the Queen. His next attempt was better, for it pleased not only Don Fadrique and the friars, but also his artist-friends, who pronounced it worthy of the disciple of Michael Angelo. The Queen, however, decided otherwise, and threat- ened to employ another hand, if he should fail a third time. The Franciscans thereupon betook themselves to redoubled masses and fasting, and the poor sculptor returned to his studio and racked his memory and imagination for ideas of angelic grace and divine beauty. Sitting one 1 Gonzalez Davila: Tlieatro de las Grandezas de la Villa de Madrid, folio. Madrid, 1G23, p. 250. Carves for the Queen the figure of Nuestra Seuora de la Soledad. 246 CHAP. V. — REIGN OF PHILIP II. winter’s night over his drawings, and fatigued with anxious thought, he fell into a slumber, from which he was aroused by an unknown voice saying to him, “ Awake and rise, and out “ of that log of wood blazing on the hearth “ shape the thought within thee, and thou shalt “ obtain the desired image.” He immediately bestirred himself, plucked the indicated brand from the burning, and having quenched it, fell to work at dawn; and the auspicious block proving an excellent piece of timber soon grew beneath his chisel into “ a miracle of art,” “ and became,” says Palomino, “ the portentous “ image of Our Lady of Solitude, to this day had “ in reverence, in which are expressed beauty, “ grief, love, tenderness, constancy, and resigna- “ tion, and which, above all, is the refuge of our “ sorrows, the succour in our ills, the solace of “ our toil, and the dispenser of heavenly mercies.” When the carving was brought to the Queen in 1565, she at last acknowledged that she had been well served, and Becerra was accordingly well paid. The Virgin was dressed by her Majesty in a suit of those doleful weeds, introduced by poor Queen Juana to express her mighty woe at the death of her handsome and worthless lord, and worn by all Castilian widows of rank, until Queen Anna Maria of Neuburg, loath to disfigure herself for the sake of the defunct Charles II. , had the boldness to set a more becoming fashion. Thus dismally draped, Our Lady of Solitude CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 247 presided in her peculiar chapel in the convent of the Minim Fathers at Madrid, 1 and became renowned for her miraculous powers, “ which “ brought her masters much gam.” Her history and achievements were printed by Fray Antonio de Arcos in 16 40, 2 and she remained, albeit darkened in complexion by time, 3 a star of Cas- tilian devotion till the War of Independence. In that stormy time, it is possible that Becerra’s celebrated billet — so exactly realizing the Hebrew prophet’s description 4 of the tree-stock “ which “ shall he for a man to burn, whereof he will take “ and warm himself, and of the residue make a “ graven image, and fall down thereto,” — after two centuries and a half of worship, may have fulfilled its original destiny, beneath the flesh-pot of some godless dragoon of Murat. The time of Becerra was not wholly engrossed in the service of royalty. For the Cathedral of Works in va- rious cities : Granada he carved a good Crucifix of life size, and for the church of St. Jerome in the same city a celebrated “ Entombment of our Lord ” and a Granada. pretty little “Infant Saviour.” Valladolid, Sala- manca, Bribiesca and Bioseco possessed specimens both of his painting and statuary in their churches and convents; in the church of St. Jerome, at Zamora, there was a celebrated skeleton carved 1 Cumberland (vol. ii. p. 39) erroneously sets up this famous image at Valladolid. 2 Historia de la Imagen de Nuestra Senora de la Soledad, 4to. Ma- drid, 1040. 3 Ponz, tom v. p. 293. 4 Isaiah, chap. xliv. v. 15 17. Valladolid , 248 Burgos. Segovia. dslorga. CHAP. V. — REIGN OF PHILIP II. by him, wrapped in a winding sheet, and grasp- ing a scythe ; and at Burgos, the Cathedral still retains his exquisite little figure of St. Sebastian, which was reckoned so good that it was twice stolen from its chapel, and on one of these occa- sions had reached Cadiz before it could be reco- vered. 1 The convent of Santa Cruz, at Segovia, possessed a picture by him on panel, representing a young maiden reclining on the ground with a pot of ointment by her side, that bespoke her a Magdalene. Although one of those fair creatures whose allurements tended rather to sin than to penitence, she was highly admired by Bosarte, who speaks with rapture of the grace of her head, the beauty of her arms and feet, and the fine cast of her drapery. 2 In 1569 he completed the mighty high altar of the Cathedral of Astorga, which, though out of keeping with that Gothic pile, is a grand and imposing work, and is reckoned his master- piece of architectural design and sculptural deco- ration. It consists of three lofty stories of the Doric, Corinthian, and Composite orders, covered with elaborate ornament, and with bas-reliefs illus- trating the lives of the Holy Virgin and our Blessed Lord, and statues of saints and saintly virtues, of which some are not unworthy of Michael Angelo. This noble retablo has been cruelly repainted, and had suffered much from the washings and scrapings of a quack-restorer, even in the days of Ponz, who nevertheless re- l Cook’s Sketches, yoI. ii, p. 143. 2 Bosarte, Viage, p. 77. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 249 marks that, as Velasquez can be fully appreciated only at Madrid, and Murillo at Seville, so Becerra can be judged of fairly, only in the Cathedral of Astorga. 1 The Chapter paid for this work in all 30,000 ducats, of which about 11,000 fell to the share of Becerra. Returning to Madrid, he died in 1570, at the premature age of fifty, in the full vigour of his genius and in the sunshine of his fortune. From his will 2 it appears that his wife, Paula Velasquez, bore him no children, or that none survived him ; to that lady he bequeathed 1100 ducats, all his clothes and jewels, and half of his funds accumulated since their marriage ; to his brother, Juan Becerra, apparently a sculptor and his assistant, he gave 200 ducats and direc- tions to complete certain of his works ; and his mother, Leonor Padilla, was left residuary legatee. He further ordered that “ his body, habited in the “ robes of St. Francis de Paula, should be interred “ in the chapel which he had purchased in the “ church of the convent of Victory,” where it was accordingly laid in the keeping of his own “ Lady of Solitude.” 3 Of Becerra’s paintings few good specimens seem to have been preserved. He executed no pictures for the Escorial, nor does his name appear in the Catalogue of the Queen of Spain’s gallery; and his works in the church of the Royal Barefooted Nuns at Madrid were common- 1 Ponz, tom. xi, p. 263-4. See also Hand-book, p. 592. 2 Printed by Cean Bermudez, Arquitectos, tom. ii. p. 261-3. 3 Ibid. p. 111. Merits as a painter. 250 CHAP. V. — EEIGN OF PHILIP II. as a sculptor. place. The bust of a “ Sybil holding tablets in “ her left hand,” said to be painted by him, and once in the collection of Mr. Coesvelt, is now in the palace of the Hermitage at St. Petersburgh; 1 and amongst the Standish drawings in the Louvre there are four executed with the pen attributed to him. 2 Cean Bermudez says that he followed the excellent Italian method of painting no work without cartoons of the full size required ; and that his sketches, usually made with black or red chalk, and highly finished, were of great rarity and value. Pacheco considered that as a sculptor Becerra eclipsed the fame of Berreguete, 3 to whom Cean Bermudez also esteems him supe- rior in spirit and grandeur of style. Scholars, HI. Burroso. Of his scholars, Miguel Barroso, born at Consue- gra in 1538, became most distinguished in painting. Ilis earliest independent work of which any no- tice has been preserved, was a picture executed for the Hospital of St. John Baptist, at Toledo, in 1585. In 1589 he was named one of the King’s painters, with an annual salary of 100 ducats, and painted some frescos in the chief cloister of the Escorial, of which that representing the “ Coming “ of the Holy Ghost” was considered the best. His drawing was correct, but his invention feeble; he was a man of learning and general accom- plishments, understood something of music and 1 Livret de la Galerie Imperiale de l’Ennitage de St. Petersbourg. Ibid. 1838, 8vo. Salle XLI. No. 107, p. 428. 2 Catalogue de la Collection Standisb, 1842. Dessins, Nos. 299-301. 3 Pacheco, p. 242. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 251 architecture, and was a friend of Father Sigiienza. He did not long survive his promotion to the King’s service, but died the year after, in 1590, at the Escorial. Bartolome del Rio Bernuis was a promising young disciple in the same school, at the time of Becerra’s death. He chiefly practised his art at Toledo, where he held during the last twenty years of his life, from 1607 to 1627, the post of painter to the Chapter. Francisco Lopez and Geronimo Vasquez were also scholars of Be- cerra, and painted with some credit during this reign, the first at Madrid, the second at Valla- dolid. Miguel Ribas, Miguel Martinez, and Juan Ruiz cle Castaneda were sculptors formed under Becerra’s eye, who aided him in his works, and attained some distinction after his death. Juan Fernandez Navarrete, was an artist whose genius was no less remarkable than his infirmities, and whose name — El Mudo, the dumb painter — is as familiar to Europe, as his works are unknown. Born in 1526, at Logrono, of respectable — Palomino says noble 1 — parents, he was attacked in his third year by an acute dis- order, which deprived him of the sense of hearing, and consequently of the faculty of speech. Cut off from the usual channels of converse, and living a century before his countryman, Bonet, 2 had in- Rio Bernuis. E. Lopez. G. Vasquez. M. Ribas, M. Martinez, J. R. de Cas- taneda. J. Fernandez Navarrete. 1 Palomino, tom. iii. , p. 370 2 Juan Pablo Bonet, Secretary to the Constable of Castile, one of the earliest, if not the first writer on the subject. His “ Reduction de “ las letras y Arte para ensenar a ablar los Mudos,” 4to. Madrid, 1020, pp. 308, — with 12 leaves of licenses, encomiastic verses, &c,, and 2 leaves 252 CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Ft. V. ,k S. Domingo. vented tlie art of speaking on the fingers, he was compelled to express his wants and his thoughts by rough sketches in chalk or charcoal — a prac- tice in which he early displayed great readiness of hand, and learned to draw as other children learn to speak. Taking advantage of this bent of his inclination, Iris father placed him in a neighbouring monastery of Jeronymites, at Es- trella, under the care of Fray Vicente de Santo Domingo, one of the fraternity, who had acquired some knowledge of painting at Toledo, and who left behind him a few pictures at Estrella, and in the convent of Santa Catalina, at Talavera de la Reyna, where he died. This worthy monk, after teaching him all that he himself knew, advised his parents to send him for further improvement to Italy, whither El Mudo, as he was called, accord- El Mudo in Italy. ingly went while still a stripling. It is probable that he remained there several years ; he visited Florence, Rome, Naples, and Milan, and is said to have studied for a considerable time in the school of Titian, at Venice. It was, perhaps, at Rome or Milan that he was known to Pellegrino Tibaldi, who used to remark, when admiring, many years afterwards, El Mudo’s works at the Escorial, that in Italy he painted nothing worthy of much notice. He had acquired, however, sufficient reputation to attract the notice of Don of lades, an elegantly engraved title by Diego de Astor, 8 plates of the Abecedario Demonstrative, and a folding sheet of Greek contractions, — is a rare and very curious volume. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 253 Luis Manrique, Grand Almoner to the King of Spain, through whose recommendation lie was called to Madrid, and on the 6th of March, 1568, appointed painter to his Majesty, with a yearly allowance of 200 ducats, besides the price of his works. As a specimen of his abilities, he brought with him a small picture on the subject of “ Our “ Lord’s Baptism,” — “ admirably painted,” says Cean Bermudez, “ though in a style different “ from that which he afterwards followed,” which greatly pleased the King, and became in due time an ornament of the Prior’s cell in the Escorial. He was first employed there to paint on the folding doors of an altar, some figures of prophets, in black and white, and to make a copy of a large and excellent picture of the “ Crucifixion,” which was highly approved by the King, who ordered it to be placed in the royal chapel, in the wood of Segovia. During the first three years of his engagement, his health being feeble, he was per- mitted to reside at Logrono. There he found time to paint for his early friends, the monks of Estrella, four noble pictures, of one of which, re- presenting St. Michael, Cean Bermudez remarks that it was the finest figure of that Archangel in Castile. He returned, in 1571, to the Escorial, bringing with him four pictures — “ The As- “ sumption of the Virgin,” “ The Martyrdom of “ St. James the Great,” “ St. Philip,” and a “ Repenting St. Jerome.” Being dissatisfied with the “ Assumption,” in which he thought the Works at the Escorial. 254 CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Blessed Mary was lost amongst the crowd of angels, he wished to cancel it, but this the King would not permit. The heads of the Virgin and one of the apostles standing below in the fore- ground, were portraits of the painter’s parents, his mother being remarkable, for her beauty. In the “ Martyrdom,” it is said that he revenged himself for some affront received from Santoyo, the royal Secretary, by bestowing the face of that minister on one of the tormentors of the apostle ; and that, notwithstanding Santoyo’s complaints, Philip would not suffer the picture to be altered, excusing himself on the ground of its great excellence. 1 According to another account, however, the original of the execu- tioner was merely a young official of Lo- groho. For these pictures El Mudo was paid 500 ducats, and they were placed in the Sacristy of the Escorial. He passed the next five years at Madrid, the buildings of the Escorial not being in sufficient order to receive artists. His pencil seems to have been less rapid than those of some of Iris contemporaries, or his labours must have been interrupted by ill health; for in 1575, he had completed only four new works, — the “ Na- “ tivity of our Lord,” “ Christ scourged at “ the Column,” the “ Holy Family,” and “ St. “ John writing the Apocalypse,” for which he received 800 ducats. Of these works, the last perished by fire, with the “ St. Philip” and 1 Palomino, tom. iiL p. 371. CIIAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 255 “ Assumption” above mentioned. The “ Na- “ tivity” was remarkable for the skill with which El Mudo has introduced three different lights, proceeding from the body of the Divine Infant, — after the fashion first set by Coreggio in his famous “ Notte,” now at Dresden, — the glory above, and a candle held by St. Joseph. The adoring shepherds also were so finely treated that Tibaldi never looked at the picture without ex- claiming “ 0 ! gli belli pastori !” In the “ Holy “Family” the heads were noble and expressive, and a cat and dog in the foreground stood spitting and snarling over a bone with laughable truth and spirit. “ The Scourging of Christ ” was admirable for the skilful foreshortening of our Lord’s figure, of which a front view was given. In 1576, El Mudo painted one of his most celebrated works, “ Abraham receiving the three “ Angels,” which was hung over an altar in the entrance-hall of the convent, where strangers were received by the fathers. The figures were of life-size ; beneath a leafy tree the Patriarch bowed himself to the ground, entreating the travellers to repose themselves from the noontide heat, and taste of his cheer; the three angels, symbolizing the persons of the most Holy Trinity, and all clad in the same fashion, smiled benignly with countenances of heavenly beauty, and ac- cepted his proffered hospitality ; and in the back- ground, half concealed by the tent-door, was seen the laughing countenance of ancient Sarah. “This Picture of “ Abraham ” in the “ Red- “ bimiento .” 256 CHAP. V.— DEIGN OF PHILIP II. Altar-pieces for the church. “ picture so appropriate to the place it fills,” says Fray Andres Ximenes, “ though the first of the “ master’s works that usually meets the eye, “ might for its excellence be viewed the last, “ and is well worth coming many a league to “ see.” 1 El Mudo was paid 500 ducats for it. In August of the same year he undertook to paint thirty-two large pictures for the side altars of the church. The contract between him and Sickness and death. the Prior Julian de Tricio, curious for its minuteness, is printed at full length by Cean Bermudez. The price agreed on was 200 ducats for each painting, each being executed on a single piece of canvas, and the whole were to be finished in four years. It was stipulated that if any saint were introduced more than once in the senes, he should in all cases appear with the same features and drapery; and that wherever an authentic portrait was to be had, it was to be scrupulously copied. AH accessories that had no reference to devotion were excluded, and dogs and cats were expressly forbidden, probably in allusion to the excellent, but indecorous, episode in the “ Holy Family.” Of these pictures, the artist unhappily lived to finish only eight. Towards the close of 1578 his health be- gan to decline, and he vainly sought for relief in excursions to Segovia and some of the neigh- bouring villages. In February 1579, he removed to Toledo, where he died on the 28tli of March, 1 Ximenes, Descripcion del Escorial, p. 44. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 257 in the fifty-third year of his age. Shortly before his death, he confessed himself three times to the curate of the parish of San Vicente, by means of signs, which that churchman declared were as intelligible as speech. Calling for pen and paper, he then disposed of his modest gains in a tes- tament, which is curious, and short enough to be given entire : — “ Jesus, Nuestra Senora. “ Albacea, Nicolas de Vergara. “ Anima, Pobres, 200 ducados. “ Hermano frayle, 200 ducados : Pobres. “ Hija monja, 600 ducados. “ Estrella, Hermanos, 500 ducados : Misa. “ Maria Fernandez, 100 ducados. “ Padre, Misa, 200 ducados. “ Mozo, 40 ducados. Juan Fernandez.” Then follows an explanation of this concise will, supplied by the witnesses. The first and second clauses imply that he died in the Catholic faith, leaving Vergara for his executor; the third pro- vides for the expenses of his burial, and for alms on the occasion ; the fourth gives the sum named, to his brother Fray Bautista, for his life, and afterwards to the poor of an hospital at Lo- grono ; the fifth allots a dowry to his natural daughter, a child of four years old at Segovia, and directs that she is to take the veil, “ and “ that as early as possible,” as the testator con- trived to say to the curate, Luis Hurtado, “ there “ being no hope of a girl of her condition getting “ married with so slender a portion the sixth remembers his old friends the Jerony mites at Testament. j s 258 CHAP. V. — REIGN OF PHILIP II. H is quickness and intelli- gence. Estrella, on condition of their remembering him in their masses, and giving a resting place to his bones within their walls ; the seventh alludes to a married cousin living at Logrono ; the eighth establishes masses for the souls of his parents in the family chapel at Logrono ; and the ninth is a bequest to one Adam Mimoso, who had been his serving-man for a year and a half. He was buried at Toledo, in the church of San Juan de los Reyes ; and although Cean Bermudez cites an agreement entered into between Doha Cata- lina Ximenes and Diego Fernandez, mother and brother of El Mudo, and the prior and monks of Estrella. — that his remains should be brought thither at the cost of the former, received at the door of the court, with the cross by the latter, and interred in the church, at the foot of the steps leading to the high altar, and that on the payment to the convent of 300 ducats, the office of the dead should be sung for his soul every St. John Baptist’s day, — it does not appear that the removal of his bones ever took place. “ El Mudo,” says Cean Bermudez, “was a man “ of uncommon talent, and in no ordinary degree “ versed in sacred and profane history and in “ mythology. He read and wrote, played at “ cards, and expressed his meaning by signs “ with singular clearness, to the admiration of all Offers to copy Titian's “ Ccna .” “ who conversed with him.” When Titian’s celebrated picture of the “ Last Supper” arrived at the Escorial, it was found to be too large for its CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 259 destined place in the Refectory. The King haying ordered it to be cut, El Mudo manifested a lively indignation, and by means of signs offered, at the risk of his head, in six months to finish an exact copy of it, of the required size ; at the same time making the sign of the cross on his breast, to signify that he expected an order of knighthood as the reward of doing in six months, what had cost Titian the labour of seven years. Philip was, however, too impatient to wait for a copy, and the canvas of Titian, to the great grief of his scholar, was forthwith submitted to most sacri- legious shears. Indeed, it was not until Navar- rete had gone to the tomb, that the King fully understood his worth. When, however, his foreign Zuccaros, engaged at immense salaries, began to cover the walls of the Escorial with some very bad paintings, he became sensible that a far finer hand lay cold at Toledo, and frequently declared that amongst all his Italian artists, there was none that could equal his dumb Spaniard. El Mudo imitated with success many of the chief beauties of his Venetian master ; and for his splendid colouring alone well deserved his title of “ the Spanish Titian.” Ilis works have a free- dom and boldness of design that belonged to none of his contemporaries of Castile ; and it has been well remarked that he “ spoke by his pencil with “ the bravura of Rubens without his coarseness.” 1 Amongst the unfinished pictures found in his 1 Hand-book, ?p.PI 3. Style and merits. 260 CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Portraits. Verses of Lope de Vega. studio at his death, were several portraits, of which those of the Duke of Medina Celi and Giovanni Andrea Doria were the most interesting. A beautiful head of a woman at Bowood, painted hy El Mudo, — and said to be that of Doha Maria Pacheco, wife of Padilla, the ill-fated leader of the malcontents at Toledo in 1522, — is a gem even in the collection of Lord Lansdowne ; brown Castile never produced a lovelier face, nor a more delicately painted head ; but as a portrait, it must either be ideal or a copy, since the brave lady died two years before the painter’s birth. Of his few pictures on this side the Py- renees, “ the Holy Family,” in the private gallery of the King of Holland also deserves notice ; the Virgin and Babe are seated near a column, and St. Joseph appears behind ; and the whole compo- sition is full of grace and Venetian richness of colour. The Saints and Apostles who figure in eight of the side altars of the Escorial, his last works, are excellent examples of his style. Their grand and simple forms and noble heads, and their draperies falling in broad masses of rich warm colour, are worthy of the majestic temple which they adorn. Lope de Vega, in the Laurel de Apolo, laments for the death of El Mudo, whom he lauds as the Spanish artist best able to cope with Italian rivals. Of his works he says, “ Ningun rostro pinto que fuese mudo” — “No countenance he painted that was dumb.” athoughtwhichhealso expandedinto thisepigram: CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 261 “ No quiso el cielo que hablase, Porque con mi ententlimiento Diese mayor sentimiento A las cosas que pintase Y tanta vida les di Con el pincel singular Que como no pude hablar Hice que hablasen por mi.” Speech heaven denied to him whose dumbness threw A deeper sense and charm o’er all he drew; And, mute himself, his breathing pencil lent Canvas a voice, than mine more eloquent. Luis de Carbajal was born at Toledo in 1534, and was uterine brother of Juan Bautista Mone- gro, a sculptor of some repute. He studied painting in the school of Juan deVilloldo, whom he may have accompanied as a boy to Madrid, when that master was employed in the Bishop of Plasencia’s chapel in the church of S. Andres. 1 At least he early removed to the capital, and there acquired some eminence in his art, and the post of painter to the King, in which capacity the first picture he is recorded to have executed was a “Magdalene,” finished in 1570, for the cloister of the Infirmary at the Escorial. On the death of El Mudo, Carbajal and Sanchez Coello were appointed to complete the series of pictures for the side altars of the church, of which seven were accordingly painted by Carbajal, who has imi- tated, with some success, the grand manner of the Dumb master. He painted several other easel 1 See chap. iii. p. 148. L.de Carbajal. 262 CHAP. V. — EEIGN OF PHILIP II. Portrait of At/j). Carranza tie Miranda. pictures for the monastery, and likewise some frescos in the great cloister, where so many famous Italians came to display their artistic powers. He afterwards passed some time at Toledo, where he painted several pictures with Bias del Prado, for the church of the Minim Fathers ; and where he also left in the winter chapter-room of the Cathedral the portrait of Archbishop Don Bar- tolome Carranza de Miranda. This portrait was probably executed before the prelate’s incarcera- tion in 1558, or at least before his removal to Pome in 1566. It deserves notice as the likeness of a man whose cause divided the Council of Trent, agitated the whole Spanish realm, and rang through Catholic Europe ; who remarkably ex- emplified in his own person the contradictions of the human heart, and the vicissitudes of human fortune ; who, when a simple professor at Valla- dolid, sold his library to feed the poor, and was reckoned a model of charity and meekness, and yet, as a royal confessor, sitting at the ear of Mary Tudor, sent many a martyr to the flames at Smithfield ; who, becoming Primate of Spain, spent his last eighteen years in the prisons of the Inquisition, on a charge, amongst others, of having preached before the court of England the heresy of Philip Melancthon ; and who was finally buried in a Boman convent, by the order of the Pontiff who had condemned him, beneath an epitaph, which declared him to have been a man “ illustrious in lineage, life, eloquence, alms- CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 263 “ deeds, and doctrine.” 1 The date of Carbajal’s death is unknown, but he must have lived to a good old age, for we find him, so late in the next reign as 1613, at work with other artists on certain ceilings at the Pardo. Bias del Prado was likewise a Toledan, and B ■ del Prado - one of the ablest artists who ever, to use the stately words of Don Juan de Butron, 2 “ imbibed “ genius from the gilded waters of the Tagus.” The date of his birth is very uncertain ; and Palomino and Cean Bermudez differ in their j statements by nearly fifty years, for the former asserts that he was born in 1497, and died in 1557, whilst the latter proves from documents in the Cathedral archives at Toledo, that he was alive near the close of the century. He was probably born about 1540 ; the chapter employed him in 1586, and named him its second painter in 1591. His principal works were the pictures that he painted in 1591 with Carbajal for the Minims i at Toledo; a large altar-piece, representing St. Bias and other personages, for the chapel of that saint in the Cathedral, besides some smaller pictures ; a “Holy Family” for the sumptuous Jeronymite house at Guadalupe ; and some paintings in the 1 The life of tliis unfortunate archbishop was written by Pedro Salazar de Mendoza. An able sketch of it, with an abstract of his celebrated cause, (which filled twenty-four folio volumes, each containing from 1000 to 1200 leaves, of the records of the Inquisition,) may be found in “Llorente, Inquisicion de Espana,” tom. vi. p. 65 top. 216. His portrait, engraved by Barcelon, may be found amongst the “ Retratos de los Es- “ panoles Ilustres, folio. Madrid, 1791,” a work printed in the royal press, and of some value, which would have been greatly enhanced, had the names of the painters been appended to the portraits. 2 Discursos Apologeticos, p. 122. 264 CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Sent to the Court of Morocco. churches and convents at Madrid, amongst which was a “ Descent from the Cross ” in the church of S. Pedro, which has been praised by Cumberland. 1 In 1593, the Emperor of Morocco applied to Philip II. for the loan of a painter, as Pedro the Cruel some ages before had borrowed the plasterers of the Sultan of Granada. 2 The Catholic King returned answer, that they had in Spain two sorts of painters — the ordinary and the excellent, and desired to know which his Infidel brother pre- ferred. “ Kings should always have the best,” replied the haughty Moor ; and the Spaniard accordingly sent Bias del Prado to Fez. 3 There he painted various works for the palace, and a portrait of the African monarch’s daughter, to the great satisfaction of her father, who, though an indifferent Mussulman, was a generous prince, for having kept the artist in his service for several years, he finally sent him away with many rich gifts. Returning to Castile with considerable wealth, Bias del Prado indulged himself in a traveller’s whim of wearing the Moorish dress, and eating in the Oriental fashion, reclining amongst cushions. Pacheco, who may have known him either at Toledo or when he passed through Seville, on his way to Barbary, relates that he painted fruit-pieces with great truth and taste. He died probably about 1600. The Academy of St. Fer- dinand at Madrid possesses a fine work by him, 1 Anecdotes, i. p. P2G . 2 Cliap. ii., p. 74. 3 Lope de Vega ; “ Memorial Informative ” appended to Carducho’s “ Dialogos,” p. 1G5. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. of which the subject is the “ Virgin and Infant “ Saviour” seated amongst clouds, which seem to hang round the upper part of a brick tower, whilst a woman in nun’s weeds, and a man in a black dress are kneeling in prayer beneath. The features of Mary are somewhat too Toledan and coarse ; but the adorers and a lovely child be- tween them are fine subjects finely treated, with very careful execution, and a rich though sober colouring. A still finer picture by Bias del Prado hangs in the Queen of Spain’s gallery, representing the “Virgin, Babe, and St. Joseph” enthroned, attended by St. John and St. Ildefonso, and adored by Alonso de Villegas the historian of the Calendar, by whom the painting was pro- bably given to some shrine. The Virgin here shows nothing of the Gothic blood of Castile ; her features are of Italian delicacy, and her pure brow and eyes, bent kindly on the suppliant, might have been painted by Andrea del Sarto, delighting in downcast eyelids. The head of St. Joseph is Bafaelesque, and the drawing and tone of the whole composition displays a knowledge of the best models. The portrait of the black-robed chaplain 1 — with his harsh face full of lines and wrinkles, and his stiff hands pressed rigidly palm to palm — is very charac- teristic of the tedious writer whose pen dwells with most complacency on those thoughts and deeds 265 Works now existing at Madrid. Portrait of Fr A. de Villegas. 1 This priest’s portrait, engraved by Ballester, in the “ Espanoles “ Ilustres,” seems to be taken from this picture. 266 CHAP. V. — REIGN OF PHILIP II. ■I. Pantoja de la Cruz. of holy men, that most tend to mar the beauty of holiness. The following inscription in white letters at the bottom of the picture — b. maeie IOANNI EVANGELISTS ET ILDEFONSO BLAS DEL PRADO PICTORE M. ALFONSVS DE VILLEGAS PATRONIS D. ANO 1539 — seems to have been traced long after it had left the easel. As Villegas was not born till 1533, it is probable that the date ought to be 1589. Juan Pantoja de la Cruz was born at Madrid in 1551. He studied painting in the school of Alonso Sanchez Coello, and soon became suf- ficiently distinguished to obtain the posts of painter to the King, and gentleman of the chamber ( ayuda de cdmara ). Palomino, who possessed the original sketches of the noble monuments of Charles V. and Philip II. in the church of the Escorial, says 1 that these were executed for Pompeyo Leoni by Pantoja. Oil- paintings of these monuments, likewise by him, existed at the Escorial in the time of Cean Ber- mudez. Whilst Sanchez Coello lived, Pantoja seems to have shared the royal favour with him, and after his death, to have enjoyed it in still fuller measure. He made many portraits of Philip II. and his family, most of which have perished in the fires of the palaces. The National Museum at Madrid possesses a fine example of his powers in the portrait of Isa- bella of the Peace, whose dark hair, large brilliant black eyes, and rich complexion, afford 1 Palomino, tom. iii. p. 413. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 267 an agreeable relief to the monotonous grey eyes and pale cheeks of the house of Austria. The head is full of beauty and life ; the dress of black velvet, though closed to the throat, is becoming, the hoop or “ guar dainf ante” of the Castilian court, introduced in the Emperor’s reign, not having as yet expanded into its full amplitude ; a small ruff encircles the neck, and the robe is garnished with a profusion of gold chains and jewelry, all admirably designed and painted. Unless there be some mistake in the date of the painter’s birth, this portrait was probably copied from one by his master, as Queen Isa- bella died in 1568 ; when Pantoja was only seven- teen years of age. He must often, however, have seen her on public occasions, and perhaps may have noted her sweet smiles in some of her visits to the studio of Sanchez Coello. Of his many portraits of her lord, one only is to be found in the Queen of Spain’s gallery. But that one 1 is well worthy of note, for it shows how the crowned monk of the Escorial looked when on the brink of the grave. In Pantoja’s worn, sickly, sour old man, with lack-lustre restless eyes, protruding under-lip, and “ pallid cheeks and ashy hue, In which sad death his portraiture hath writ,” 2 wearing a rusty sugar-loaf hat, and holding in his hand a common brown rosary, we see the last stage of the sumptuous prince whose youth- 1 Catalogo, No. 277. 2 Spenser’s Dapbnaicla, v. 302-3. ) 268 CHAP. V. — EEIGN OF PHILIP II. Paint* Philip III. anti his family in two sacred compo- sitions. ful bearing has been made immortal by the pencil of Titian. About the same time, or perhaps a little earlier, Pantoja painted for the convent of St. Mary, at Naxera, the portrait of Ruy Perez de Ribera, which was esteemed one of his best, and those of the Princess of Brazil and the Empress Mary, tor the Royal Barefooted nuns of Madrid, amongst whom these royal ladies ended their days. He also pourtrayed Francisco de Salinas, the famous blind musical professor of Salamanca, and author of a Latin treatise on Music, who enjoyed the favour of the Duke of Alba, and the poetical praises of Fray Luis de Leon. 1 This portrait, which represents Salinas playing on an organ, has been engraved by Esteve. 2 On the accession of Philip III., Pantoja re- tained Iris post and favour at Court. In 1603 he executed, by the King’s order, for the chapel- royal of the Treasury, two large compositions representing the Nativities of the Virgin and our Lord, into which he introduced the por- traits of many members of the royal family. In the former, St. Anne is dimly seen reclining in a state bed, with crimson hangings ; in the fore- ground stands a graceful damsel bathing the new born babe. In the latter, the Virgin has the features of Queen Margaret, and the Austrian lip and hanging cheek may be detected in several of the surrounding shepherds and peasant girls. 1 See liis fine Orta V., Obras, tom. vi., p. 15. 8vo., Madrid, 1810. 2 Amongst die “Espanoles Ilustres.” CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 269 Both pictures are signed jvan pantoja de la +, 1603 ; they are now in the Royal Gal- lery at Madrid. Pantoja afterwards painted a portrait of Philip III. on horseback, which was sent to Florence as the model for the noble equestrian statue in bronze, begun by Giovanni di Bologna, the Flemish sculptor, and finished, after his death, by his scholar Pietro Tacca. The statue of Henry IV. of France, torn from its pe- destal on the Pont Neuf at Paris, and melted down in the great Revolution, was likewise commenced by Bologna, and completed by Tacca, and the horse was said closely to resemble the pacing steed which the Castilian King still bestrides in the garden of the royal Casa del Campo, near Madrid; where the work was placed, in 1616, by Antonio Guidi, Tacca’s nephew. 1 The date of Pantoja’s death is uncertain, but it must have taken place in or before 1609, 2 for Lope de Vega, in his “ Jerusalem Conquistada,” Canto xix., published in that year, laments him and some other painters in these lines — “ A1 pie de un lauro tres sepulcros veo En cuyo bronce perdurable escucho ; Apeles yace aqui, Zeuxis, Cleoneo, Juan de la Cruz, Caravajal, Carducho, Murieron ya. Que funebre trofeo Muerte cruel !” Besides his portraits and other works painted 1 Ponz, tom. vi., p. 141-2. 2 Palomino and Cean Bermudez say 1010, an error, for the cor- rection of which I am indebted to the “ Cartas Espanolas,” for August 9th, 1832, p. 160. Style and works. 270 CHAP. V. — REIGN OF PHILIP II. Portrait of an eagle. for the royal family, Pantoja cle la Cruz executed various altar-pieces for churches and religious houses. His style much resembles that of his master, Sanchez Coello, and is more remarkable for care and finish than for force and freedom ; his drawing is good and his colouring rich and pleasing. The portrait of Queen Margaret in the royal collection at Madrid, 1 which is probably one of his latest, is certainly one of his best pictures, being executed in a bolder and broader manner than is usual with him. Of his skill in painting animals an anecdote has been preserved by Francisco Velez de Arciniega, a writer on medicine and natural history. 2 One of the King’s fowlers having caught a fine eagle of the bearded kind in the royal chase near the Pardo ; his majesty commanded Pantoja to paint it ; which he did so effectively, that the sitter, getting loose, flew at the canvas, and tore it to shreds with his beak and talons, and the work Other Court artists. had to be done over again. The bird, which was of a reddish black colour, was afterwards kept in the hospital of Anton-Martin, at Madrid, where Arciniega often saw him, and admired “ his grave and composed manner of gazing, “ which showed no little grandeur and authority.” Such were the chief Spanish artists who flourished under the patronage of Philip II. There are still a few who deserve a passing 1 Catalogo, No. 222. 2 Historia de los Animales mas recibidos en el uso de la Medecina, por Francisco Velez de Arciniega, Boticario. Madrid, 161-3, 4to. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. notice, although their works have rarely sur- vived. Teotlosio Mingot, a Catalonian, and Ge- ronimo Cabrera, painted certain frescos in the Queen’s apartments at the Pardo about 1570. According to Palomino, Mingot studied in Italy, and likewise worked with Becerra in the Alcazar of Madrid; he died in 1590, aged 39. Diego de Urbina was a native of Madrid, and one of the King’s painters ; he may perhaps have been the scholar of Sanchez Coello, whom he assisted in painting the triumphal arches for the entrance of Queen Anna into the capital in 1570. In 1572 he painted for the royal monastery of Santa Cruz, six pictures on subjects taken from the history of the Virgin and our blessed Lord, and on the finding of the true cross by the Empress Helena, and he designed the retablo in which they were placed. The paintings, though de- fective in drawing, displayed some power of colouring ; the sculpture was in the grand style of Becerra. The chapter of Burgos employed him, with Gregorio Martinez, to paint and gild for their cathedral the retablo of the high altar, a sumptuous work which was completed in 1594, and brought the artists the sum of 11,000 ducats. Antonio Segura was a painter and architect, em- ployed in 1580 to carve a retablo for the Jerony- mites of San Yuste, and to copy for it Titian’s “ Glory,” then removed to the Escorial. He accom- plished his task so much to the King’s satisfaction, as to be named master of the works at the Alcazar 271 T. Mingot, and G. Cabrera. D. de Urbina. A. Segura. 272 CHAP. V. — REIGN OF PHILIP II. JR.de Holanda. of Madrid, and at the Pardo, under Francisco de Mora, a post which he held till his death in 1605. Rodrigo de Holanda became painter to Philip II. in 1591, with an allowance of 100 ducats, which J. Gomez. in 1599 was continued to him when paralysis had deprived him of the use of his limbs, by Philip III., in consideration of his good services. In 1593, Juan Gomez was named as one of the royal painters with the like salary. For the church of the Escorial he painted from a design by Tibaldi, a large picture of St. Ursula and her virgins, a pleasing work, which replaced an unsatisfactory composition on the same subject by Cambiaso ; he also retouched Zuccaro’s “ Annunciation” and E. Jordan. “ St. Jerome and he painted a good original pic- ture, representing “ Our Lord, Mary Magdalene, “ and St. John,” for the Carmelite friars of Segovia. He died in 1597, leaving a widow, Francisca, sister to the architect Mora, and seven children. To the first the King gave a pension of 100 ducats, and one of the latter, Juan Gomez de Mora, suc- ceeded his uncle as master of the royal works. Esteban Jordan was a painter and sculptor in the royal service ; his best work was a high altar, carved for the Benedictines of Monserrate. Painters of Illuminations. Fr.A. de Leon. The art of illumination was carried to high perfection at the Escorial ; and Fray Andres de Leon, under whose direction it was practised there, was one of the most skilful painters of miniature in Spain. He had learned somewhat of the use of the pencil from Fray Cristobal de Truxillo, an indif- CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 273 ferent master, in the Jeronymite monastery of Me- jorada, whence he was translated, in 1568, to the Escorial. There he distinguished himself by the beauty and splendour of his illuminative drawings, especially in the “ Liber Capitularius , ” which were sometimes taken for the works of the Italian Clovio. He likewise painted some little pictures, which hung in the chamber of lleliques. Fray Julian Fuente del Saz was his scholar, and little inferior to him in skill. Fray Martin dc Palencia was a Benedictine monk of the convent of San Millan at Suso. Between 1570 and 1580 he resided for some time at Avila and Madrid, where he was employed by Philip II. in illuminating various books and parchments for the Escorial, and received an annual salary of 100 ducats, raised to 150 during his stay in the capital. Few artists ever excelled him in the richness of his em- bellishments and the beauty of his dainty devices, of which he left many valuable specimens in a precious volume of “ Prayers for Processions,” written on vellum, and long preserved by the Benedictines of Suso. In this sumptuous reign the embroiderers took rank amongst artists. That nothing might be wanting to the splendour of the Escorial, the King established in the convent a school of embroidery, under the direction of Fray Lorenzo di Monserrate and Diego Itutiner, where exquisite needle-work, for vestments and altar-cloths, was wrought from the designs of Tibaldi and other great painters. Fr. J. Fuente del Saz. Fr. M. de Palencia. Embroiderers. Fr.L. de Mon- serrate. D. Itutiner. T 274 CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. Castilian artists em- ployed by the -Church. N. de Vergara, the elder. Meanwhile the Castilian artists of the Church kept pace, in numbers and skill, with those of the Court. Nicolas de Vergara, the elder, w r as one of the chief artists of Toledo at the accession of Philip II. From his profound knowledge of draw- ing, the grandeur of his figures, and his refined taste in ornament, he is supposed to have studied at Florence or Pome. The chapter of Toledo chose him for their painter and sculptor in 1542, and many of the windows of the Cathedral were painted by him or under his direction. ITe was likewise engaged with Berreguete in superintend- ing the embellishments of the tomb of Cardinal Ximenes, at Alcala de Henares. For the Ca- thedral-cloister, at Toledo, he made sketches for certain frescos representing scenes in the infernal regions, which, however, were never executed ; and he designed the rich silver urn, made by the goldsmith Merino, for the precious remains of St. Eugenius. He died at Toledo, in 1574, and the painted windows of the Cathedral, which he left incomplete, were finished by his sons and scholars, Nicolas and Juan, in 1580. N. de Vergara, the younger, and J. de Vergara. Nicolas de Vergara, the younger, had been ap- pointed, in 1573, sculptor to the chapter ; and three years afterwards was named master of works to the Cathedral. For the choir he exe- cuted, in bronze and iron, the beautiful lateral lecterns ; and lie designed the new Sagrario, or chapel of the Host, which was finished in the next reign by Monegro. He seems to have been CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP IJ. 275 a man of ready and elegant fancy in all matters of sculpture and architecture, both great and small ; for we find him designing, in 1573, the bronze ornaments for the choir-hooks of the Escorial, and in 1575, a church for the Bernardine nuns at Toledo; giving a plan, in 1590, of a sumptuous ark of silver to enshrine the bones of S ta - Leo- cadia, and, in 1595, of a chapel to contain the Host and the reliques of the rich Jeronymites at Guadalupe. He died at Toledo, in 1606, greatly lamented by his friends, and the lovers of art. Luis dc Velasco was a painter of considerable eminence, although he has had the misfortune to have escaped the notice of Palomino and Ponz, who have not only omitted all mention of his name, but have even attributed his works to Bias del Prado. Pie was living at Toledo in 1564, and in 1581 he was chosen painter to the chapter. His best works were an “ Incarnation of the “ Saviour,” hung over a door in the cloister ; and three pictures in an altar, likewise in the cloister, representing “ The Virgin and Babe “ attended by Saints and Angels, and adored by “ an Armed Knight,” a noble and beautiful work, “ St. Damian,” and “ St. Cosmo.” These three paintings were executed in 1585, by order of the Archbishop, Cardinal Quiroga, by whom Velasco was paid 419,788 maravedis for his labour. He likewise painted, in 1594, the portrait of that prelate, and in 1599, that of Archbishop Garcia de Loaysa, for the winter chapter-room. | L. dc Velasco. | 1 276 CHAP. V.— BEIGN OF PHILIP II. I. de Helle. In his drawing and colouring Velasco displayed considerable acquaintance with antique sculp- ture, and with the works of the best Italian painters. lie died in 1606, leaving a son, who became painter to Philip III. Isaac de Ilelle was a painter in the employ of the chapter of Toledo, and by the orders of that body executed, in 1568, certain paintings for the cloister of the Cathedral. In the sacristy there likewise hung a picture, painted by him on panel, representing the Bishop, St. Nicasius, sick in bed, visited by another saint or apostle. It was so good that it sometimes passed for the work of Berreguete, and displayed something of the bold manner of Michael Angelo. D Theotocopuli “ El Greco." Domenico Theotocopuli, painter, sculptor, and architect, more familiarly known as “ the Greek,” — El Griego , or El Greco , — holds a high place amongst the worthies of Toledo. Contemporary with him there were two other Greek artists in Spain, Pedro Serafin, a painter at Barcelona, and Nicolas de la Torre, a Candiote painter of illumi- nations, employed at the Escorial, each of whom was sometimes called El Griego. Of his early history nothing has been preserved, except the tradition that he studied in the school of Titian. Hence it is probable that he was born at Venice, of one of the Greek families who had taken refuge beneath St. Mark’s wing, from the sword of the Turk, at the fall of Constantinople. He was born, says Palomino, in 1548 ; and it is pos- . HLAdJard. iOom i n ico \ >h co tocopufi. CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 277 sible that he may have been the son of a certain Domenico dalle Greche, who engraved, in 1549, a drawing of Titian’s, representing “ Pharoah “ and his host overthrown in the Ped Sea or he may have been a native of Corfu, or one of the Greek islands, like his contemporary and fellow-painter, Antonio V assilacchi ; for, not un- mindful of his race and language, he frequently inscribed his name in the Greek character, on works painted in Castile. The first authentic notice of his life that remains to us, is that he was residing in Toledo in 1577, when he began, for the Cathedral, his great picture of “ The “ Parting of our Lord’s Raiment,” a work, still adorning the sacristy, on which he was em- ployed for ten years, and which Cumberland thought worthy of the pencil of Titian. 2 The august figure of the Saviour arrayed in a red robe, occupies the centre of the canvas ; the head with its long dark locks is superb, and the noble and beautiful countenance seems to mourn for the madness of them who “knew not what they did;” his right arm is folded on his bosom, seemingly unconscious of the rope, which encircles his wrist, and is violently dragged downwards by two executioners in front. Around and behind him appears a throng of priests and warriors, amongst whom the Greek himself figures as the Centurion in black armour. He 1 The plate is inscribed “ In Venetia, p. Domeneco dalle Greche, dipin- “ tore Venetiano, MDXLIX.” See Weigel’s “ Kunst Catalog. Sechste “ Abtheilung, No. 7371, Leipsig, 1844.” 2 Anecdotes, vol. i. p. 158. Works at To- ledo. “El Despojo de las Vestiduras del ISenoT.” 278 CHAP. V.— BEIGN OF PHILIP II, Paints “ St. Maurice" for the Escorial. has likewise painted his beautiful daughter — dis- tinguished by the white drapery on her head — as one of the three Maries in the foreground ; at least, if her portrait in the Louvre he authentic. In drawing and composition, this picture is truly admirable ; and the colouring is, on the whole, rich and effective, although it is here and there laid on in that spotted, streaky manner, which afterwards became the great and prominent defect of El Greco’s style. He likewise carved the retablo, in which this picture once hung ; but, on the sacristy being rebuilt, it was re- moved, and the present marble retablo was erected in its place. For the painting he was paid, by the chapter, 119,000, and for the sculpture 200,600, maravedis. In the sacristy of the Hospital of St. John Baptist there hangs a small copy of the “ Parting of the Raiment,” or more probably a repetition by the master, or the original sketch, for it differs in the colour of some of the draperies from the picture at the Cathedral ; it is in a very ruinous condition, and will soon be mere rags and dust. Whilst thus engaged in the service of the Cathedral, El Greco received the royal commands to paint, for one of the altars of the Escorial church, a picture on the subject of St. Maurice and his Christian legion, who feared God rather than the Emperor Maximian, and preferred death to idolatry. Unluckily for the artist, it seems that his friends had been in the habit of commending CHAP. V.— REIGN OF PHILIP II. 279 his works, by declaring that they might pass for those of Titian — a praise which by no means satisfied the Greek’s ambitious soul, and only prompted him to invent a style altogether new, and peculiar to himself. Proceeding on this principle, he addressed himself to the Martyr- dom of the pious Soldiery with great diligence, and presently produced a picture, in an artistic point of view, little less extravagant and atrocious than the massacre which it recorded. The one must have disturbed the established ideas and opinions of the artists assembled at the Escorial, almost as rudely as the other troubled the repose of the secluded Valais. Dry, hard, and harsh in colouring, the painting was full of strange and distracting flashes of light, utterly destructive of unity and breadth ; nor did the admirable heads occurring here and there do much to counteract its general disagreeable Produces a disagreeable picture ; effect. The King was greatly disappointed when he saw it ; he ordered the stipulated which dis- pleases the King. price, of which the amount has not been preserved, to be paid, hut would not permit the picture to be hung in the church. It was there- fore degraded to a more obscure part of the building, and placed in the chapel of the college. El Greco does not appear to have been in very flourishing circumstances when he began to work for his royal patron ; for an order is extant, ad- dressed by Philip II. to the prior of the Escorial, and dated the 25th of April, 1580, authorising 280 CHAP. V. — BEIGN OF PHILIP II. Toledo. “ El Entierro del Coude de Or