SPAIN A STUDY OF HER LIFE AND ARTS Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/spainstudyofherlOOtyle Nuestra Senora La Blanca, Toledo Cathedral. PAIN A STUDY OF HER LIFE AND ARTS BY ROYALL TYLER ILLUSTRATED WITH PLANS AND WITH MANY REPRODUCTIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK MITCHELL KENNERLEY LONDON : GRANT RICHARDS 1909 WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND PREFACE The object of this book is to give some account of the various schools of art which are represented by existing monuments in Spain, and of the manner of their adoption. In order to do this I have attempted to discover the nationality of the artists themselves, or, failing that, of their em- ployers, and also to suggest some of the other agencies which brought about the importation of foreign styles. The study of medieeval art in Spain is puzzling at the best; but it is utterly impossible if the fact that the Peninsula was the world's end, into which every nationality was shaken at one time or another, is not taken into account. For this reason I have called the book a study of Spain's life and arts. It would, of course, be foolish to try to give a complete catalogue of these works in a volume such as the present one, or in twenty ; and I need hardly apologise for passing by certain ancient churches with a word, or ignoring others alto- gether. I do not pretend to have visited every building of importance in Spain. I believe, however, that enough examples are described to give an idea of each style as it is now to be studied in the 5 PREFACE country. I would beg the reader to have patience with the descriptions of churches. I know that they are dry and monotonous; I have been appalled by constantly recurring quadripartite vaults and apses roofed with semi-domes. Let the reader reflect that if they are bad to read they are a thousand times worse to write, and that they are intended to be useful, not beautiful. However good one's memory is, it is impossible to keep the detail of many churches in one's head ; and in the confident hope that these bald statements of facts will be valuable aids to the memory, and facilitate that most delightful pursuit, the comparison of distant works of art, I have made them the base of this book. At first sight it will doubtless strike many readers that I give ridiculously small space — one chapter — to Andalusia. I am aware that in doing so I am running counter to the general opinion that regards the South as the most interesting part of Spain ; and I have given my reasons at some length elsewhere. Here I would only ex- plain that the book is written on existing monu- ments, not on those that once existed or are said to have existed ; and, this being the case, I cannot give much space to the half-dozen buildings which, transformed to a great extent by restorations, are all the Moslems left on Spanish soil. The two great kingdoms into which Spain was divided during the best periods of her existence 6 PREFACE are Castile and Aragon. It is consequently to their cities, which are richer in every branch of Christian art, with the one exception of Sevillian painting, than those of the south, that I have given most of my space. Castile and Aragon are the least visited parts of Spain, and by far the most interesting. I hope that I may convince English lovers of Christian art of this fact, that they may visit the Romanesque and Gothic churches of Catalonia, the little Asturian and Mozarabe basilicas, and mediaeval cities such as Soria, El Burgo de Osma, Ciudad-Rodrigo, and Santiago de Compostela, to say nothing of the better-known capitals like Burgos, Salamanca, and Toledo. The days when Spanish travel was dan- gerous are past; and though trains are slow and hotels uncomfortable, travellers will often find that the tales of Spanish dirt they have heard were exaggerated. I have avoided making the alphabetical list of artists unnecessarily long by only including in it those men whose work is mentioned in the course of the book. I have tried not to use Spanish words except when a translation would have been misleading as in the case of the term " coro," the English equivalent of which is " choir." The choir, properly speaking, lies east of the crossing of the church, whereas coro is used to designate the spot in the nave into which the stalls were moved in almost all Spanish cathedrals in the early sixteenth 7 PREFACE century, or is even applied to a western gallery if the stalls have been placed there. The choir proper is called capilla mayor in Spanish. I have to express my warmest thanks to my friend Miguel Utrillo, editor of Forma, for the ground plans and the great majority of the photo- graphs reproduced, and for his encouragement and help, without which I should have hardly under- taken the book. I must also thank T. R. Castle for much valuable assistance. Paris, 1909. 8 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Preface . . ... 5 I. Spain and Europe . . 17 II. Asturias . . ... 34 Oviedo . . ... 43 III. Galicia . . ... 55 IV. Castile and Leon . . 78 V. SoriAj Segovia, and Avila . . .102 El Burgo de Osma . . . 107 Segovia . . . Ill Avila . . . . 118 VI. Salamanca and Zamora . . 128 ClUDAD-RoDRIGO . ... 144 Plasencia . . . 148 Zamora . . . 150 Toro . . . 155 VII. Burgos . . . . 157 VIII. Leon and Palencia . . . 179 Astorga . . . . 191 Palencia . . . 193 IX. Toledo — the Town . . . 198 The Monuments . ... 205 X. The Escorial and Valladolid . . . 223 Valladolid . . ... 228 XI. Madrid . . . 234 The Museums . ... 252 XII. New Castile and Estremadura . . . 260 Siguenza . . . . . 261 Estremadura . ... 268 Merida . . ... 270 9 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAUE XIII. The Basque Provinces and Navarre . . 273 Pamplona . . ... 280 Tudela . . ... 286 XIV. Aragon . . . . 293 Zaragoza . . ... 296 huesca and jaca . ... 306 Tarazona and Veruela . . .311 XV. Catalonia . . ... 320 Art in Catalonia . ... 340 XVI. Barcelona — the City . ... 359 XVII. The Provinces of Barcelona and Gerona . 398 Gerona . . ... 407 XVIII. Tarragona and L£rida . ... 422 PoBLET AND SANTAS CrEUS . . .431 Lerida . . ... 442 XIX. The Kingdom of Valencia . . . 452 The City of Valencia . . . 468 XX. Andalusia . . ... 490 C6rdova . . ... 499 Seville . . ... 504 Granada . . ... 523 XXI. Sale in Bankruptcy . ... 529 Chronological List of Kings . ... 540 Alphabetical List of Architects, Painters, Sculptors, etc., mentioned in the Book . . . 547 Books Recommended . . ... 564 Index . . . ... 567 Plans . . . ... 589 i o LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Nuestra Senora La Blanca, Toledo Cathedral . Frontispiece Window in San Salvador . . . ... 52 Church of San Salvador de Val-de-Dios . . 52 The Portico de la Gloria, Santiago Cathedral . 64 Archiepiscopal Palace, Alcala de Henares . . 96 Wooden Statue of the Virgen, at Murcia, by Francisco Zarcillo (Early Eighteenth Century) . . . . 100 Cloister of San Juan de Duero, Soria . ... 104 West Front of Santo Tome, Soria . . ... 104 The Fountain of Life, the Prado . . . . 114 Alcazar, Segovia (before the fire) . . . . 118 Castle of Coca . . . . ... 118 Door leading into Cloister, Burgos Cathedral . . .124 North Door, Avila Cathedral . . . . 124 Figure of the Virgin, Toledo Cathedral (French, Thirteenth Century) . . . . ... 140 The Virgen de la Vega, Salamanca Cathedral . . . 140 Facade of Salamanca University . . ... 142 Ciudad-Rodrigo Cathedral . . ... 144 West Door, Ciudad-Rodrigo Cathedral . . . 146 Tracery in Windows, Ciudad-Rodrigo Cathedral . . . 148 Choir-stalls, Ciudad-Rodrigo Cathedral . . . . 148 Choir-stalls, Plascenia Cathedral, by Rodrigo Aleman (Late Fifteenth Century) . . . ... 150 Zamora Cathedral . . . . . 152 Romanesque Door at Segovia . . . . ] 56 Door of the Colegiata at Toro . . ... 156 Retablo of Santa Ana, Burgos Cathedral . . . 170 Tomb by Gil de Siloe, Burgos Museum . . . 171 Burgos Cathedral, showing fifteenth-century additions . . 172 Altar Frontal from Sto. Domingo de Silos (Burgos Museum) . . 173 South Door of Santa Maria, Aranda de Duero . . .176 Leon Cathedral . . . . ... 182 i i LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Nave of Leon Cathedral . . . . . 183 West Porch, Leon Cathedral . . . . 186 View of Toledo, by El Greco (Coll. Durand-Ruel) . . 204 Retablo by El Greco, Hospital de Tavera, Toledo . . 205 El Transito, Toledo . . . ... 208 Sinagogue, N.S. La Blanca, Toledo . ... 209 Moorish Window, Toledo . . ... 209 Choir-screen, Toledo Cathedral . . . . 216 Statuary in Doorway, Toledo Cathedral . ... 216 Tomb of Don Alvaro de Luna, Toledo Cathedral . . .217 Lectern, Toledo Cathedral . . . . 218 Embroidered Cope, Toledo Cathedral . . . 219 Wooden Statue of St. Francis, attributed to Alonso Cano, Toledo Cathedral . . . . ... 232 Figures in wood, by Alonso Berruguete, about 1526, Valladolid Museum . . . . ... 233 Figure of St. Jerome, by Gaspar Becerra, Burgos Cathedral . . 233 Flemish Tapestry in the Royal Collection, Madrid . . . 256 Flemish Tapestry in the Royal Collection, Madrid . . . 257 Graeco-Phcenician Statue (Archaeological Museum, Madrid) . . 258 Capilla de la Anunciacion, Sigiienza Cathedral . . . 266 Tomb in Sigiienza Cathedral . . ... 267 Ivory Casket, Pamplona Cathedral . ... 282 Paintings representing the foundation of NS. del Pilar, Zaragoza . 302 Details of the Aljaferia, Zaragoza . . ... 304 An Aragonese Mudejar Tower . . ... 305 Detail of the Apse of the Seo, Zaragoza . ... 305 Chapter-house, Veruela . . . . . 316 Cloister, Vallbona de las Monjas . . . . 316 Antependia, Barcelona Museum . . ... 350 St. George and the Princess (Catalan, Fifteenth Century. Coll. Cabot) . . . . ... 351 Catalan Glass (Coll. Cabot) . . ... 354 North Door of the Cathedral, Barcelona . ... 366 West Front of San Pablo del Campo, Barcelona . . 366 Tomb of Sta. Eulalia, Barcelona Cathedral . . . 367 Reja in the Cloister, Barcelona Cathedral . ... 367 Pieta by Bartolome Bermejo, Barcelona Cathedral . . . 382 The Martyrdom of San Medin, by Maestro Alfonso (Barcelona Museum) . . . . ... 383 Nave of Barcelona Cathedral . . ... 386 King Martin's Throne, and Custodia, Barcelona Cathedral . . 387 Courtyard of the Diputacion, Barcelona . ... 388 12 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Chapel Royal of Sta. Agueda, Barcelona . ... 388 Door of St. George's Chapel in the Casa de la Diputacion, Barcelona 389 Dalmatic, Barcelona Museum . . ... 390 Altar Frontal by Antonio Sadurni, XV Century, Barcelona Museum 391 Church of the Holy Family, Barcelona . . . 396 Apse of San Cugat . . . ... 396 The Guardian Angel, on the Facade of the Casa de la Ciudad, Barcelona . . . . ... 397 St. George, Patron of Catalonia, over the door of the Diputacion, Barcelona . . . . ... 397 Tapestry of the Creation, Gerona Cathedral . ... 416 Pages from the Book of the Apocalypse, Gerona Cathedral . . 417 Custodia, Gerona Cathedral . . ... 418 Retablo of the High Altar, Gerona Cathedral . . .418 Figure known as Statue of Charlemagne, Gerona Cathedral . .419 Doorway of Ripoll . . . ... 420 Nave, Tarragona Cathedral . . ... 422 Cloister and Apse, Tarragona Cathedral . ... 422 West Front, Tarragona Cathedral . . ... 423 Detail of West Door, Tarragona Cathedral . . . 423 Retablo of High Altar, Tarragona Cathedral . . . 424 Retablo de los Concelleres, Barcelona Museum . . . 424 Capital, Tarragona Cathedral . . ... 425 Cloister Door, Tarragona Cathedral . ... 425 Arch of Bara, near Tarragona . . ... 430 Cyclopean Walls, Tarragona . . ... 431 Great Gateway, Poblet . . . ... 440 Facade of King Martin's Palace, Poblet . . . 440 Royal Tombs at Santas Creus . . . . 441 Siege of Lerida in 1644 (from an old print) . ... 442 Cope of Moorish Silk, New Cathedral, Lerida . . . 444 Romanesque House, Lerida . . ... 445 Puerta dels Fillols, Cathedral, Lerida . ... 445 Romanesque Tower, Andorra . . ... 450 Cathedral, Seo de Urgel . . . ... 450 Capitals at El Estany . . . ... 451 Lonja de la Seda, Valencia . . ... 468 Puerta del Palau, Valencia Cathedral . ... 469 Paintings in the High Altar, Valencia Cathedral (by Ferrando de los Llanos, and Ferrando del Almedina) . . . 474 Valencian Plate, XV Century (Coll. Kelekian) . . 484 Valencian Plate, dated 1603 (Coll. Kelekian) . . . 484 Persian Plate, XII-XIII Century (Coll. Kelekian) . . 485 J 3 LIST OF PLANS PAGE Persian Cup, XII-XIII Century (Coll. Kelekian) . . 485 Bridge, Cordova . . . ... 498 Door and Interior of the Cathedral, Cordova . . . 500 The Alhambra Vase . . . ... 504 Animal in inlaid copper from the ruins of Azzahra (Cordova Museum) . . . . ... 504 Valencian Plate, XV Century (Coll. Kelekian) . . 505 Persian Bowl, XII-XIII Century (Boston Museum of Fine Arts) . 505 Seville Cathedral . . . . . 508 Procession leaving the Cathedral, Seville . ... 509 Collapse of the Central Vaults, Seville Cathedral . . 510 Reja of Seville Cathedral, taken just after the collapse of the cen- tral vaults . . . . ... 511 Retablo of High Altar, Seville Cathedral . . . 512 Ayuntamiento, Seville . . . ... 513 Charles V's Palace, Granada . . ... 513 Cafe Cantante, Seville . . . . . 520 View of the Alhambra . . . ... 522 The Alhambra, Granada . . , ... 524 LIST OF PLANS PAGE S. Salvador de Val de Dios . . ... 589 Sta. Cristina de Lena . . . ... 589 S. Miguel de Linio . . . ... 589 Sta. Maria de Naranco . . . ... 590 Cath., Santiago . . . ... 590 Sta. Maria de Sar . . . ... 591 Sta. Maria, La Coruna . . ... 591 Santiago, La Coruna . . . ... 591 Cath., Lugo . . . . ... 591 Cath.,Orense . . . . ... 592 Cath.,Tuy . . . . ... 592 Cath., Segovia . . . . ... 593 S. Juan de Duero, Soria . . . ... 594 Vera Cruz, Segovia . . . ... 594 El Parral, Segovia . . . ... 594 San Millan, Segovia . . ... 595 S. Vicente, Avila . . . • . . 595 Cath.,Avila . . . . ... 596 4 LIST OF PLANS PAGE Salamanca. Old and New Caths. . . ... 597 Cath., Ciudad-Rodrigo . . ... 598 Colegiata, Toro . . . ... 598 Cath., Zamora . . ... 599 S. Esteban, Burgos . . . ... 599 Cath., Burgos . . . ... 600 Las Huelgas, Burgos . . ... 601 TheEscorial . . . ... 602 Sto. Cristo de la Luz, Toledo . . . . 602 S. Miguel de Escalada . . . . . 603 Cath., Leon . . . . . . 604 S. Juan de Banos . . . ... 605 Sta. Maria la Antigua, Valladolid . . ... 605 S. Miguel, Palencia . . . ... 606 Sta. Eulalia, Merida . . . ... 606 Veruela . . . . ... 607 Cath. , Palma de Mallorca . . ... 608 Cath., Seo de Urgel . . . ... 609 Capilla de Santa Agueda, Barcelona . ... 610 Poblet . . . . ... 611 S. Benet de Bages . . . ... 612 S. Cugat del Valles . . . ... 613 Santas Creus . . . ... 614 Sta. Maria de Ripoll . . . ... 615 S. Pedro el Viejo, Huesca . . ... 615 Los Templarios, Eunate . . . ... 616 S. Pablo del Campo . . . . . 616 Sta. Maria, Tarrassa . . . . . 617 S. Miguel, Tarrassa . . . ... 617 S. Pedro de Galligans . . . . . 617 Mosque, Cordova . . . . . 618 Cath., Seville . . . ... 619 Alcazar, Sevilla . . . ... 620 Cath., Granada . . . ... 620 *5 A I SPAIN AND EUROPE The curious history of the relations between Spain and Europe may be divided into two periods, of which the first ends with the fall of old Spain in the Napoleonic Wars. English students of Spanish literature know how keenly the Elizabethans followed Spanish affairs ; writers no less than politicians were con- cerned with the country which Charles V had made the most powerful in Europe ; and Spanish books were eagerly translated into English soon after they appeared. Everyone who has read Fielding and Sterne must have been struck by the familiarity of Englishmen of their time with Cer- vantes and Quevedo. English opinion with regard to Spain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is clearly enough shown in the Spanish characters presented by the Restoration dramatists, such as the old Spanish merchant in Wycherley's Gentleman Dancing Master. Full of strange oaths, eaten up by his personal vanity, mon- strously grave and sententious, the hidalgo paces across the stage as the escudero did through the B 17 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS streets of Toledo ; he who preferred starving him- self and his wretched servant Lazarillo in the capital to living in plenty at home in Old Castile, where he was obliged to take off his hat to another hidalgo. The type was borrowed straight from the Spanish novels, and was by no means ex- aggerated. Spain was a difficult country to enter ; a few merchants who traded with the seaports and the diplomatic agents who saw Madrid brought home reports that the hidalgo was sitting down to his last crust served on a gold dish ; but the English conception of Spain remained the same that the Elizabethans had formed, until a new series of events brought the two peoples into close contact for a moment. The Peninsular War took great English armies to Spain, and sent home hundreds of educated men who had seen with their own eyes the miser- able condition of the people, the remains of a glorious past, and the natural resources that made a prosperous future possible. Their accounts raised ambitions in many breasts, and gradually Spain was attacked by invaders whom she on her part met, one and all, with the same policy of passive resistance. At the same time another agency, whose influence it would be hard to over- state, helped to form a new conception of the country, widely different from the former one. The German founders of the Romantic Move- ment had already gone to Spain for their models ; 18 SPAIN AND EUROPE Tieck and Schlegel ranked Calderdn, whose un- moral conception of religion was like their own, as high as Shakespeare, if not higher. Soon after- wards the younger generation discovered in the legends of the wars between Moors and Christians, and in the Andalusia of brigands, smugglers, and gypsies, an inexhaustible source of inspiration. The Romantic imagination turned more naturally to Spain than to Italy. Even the Germans who, from the days when the barbarians sacked Rome down to our own times when other barbarians descend with their alpenstocks and Germania- Gesundheit-Lodenrocke upon the cities of Italy and people Capri with blue-eyed bastards, have always looked wistfully southwards : Kennst Du das Land wo die Citronen bliihen ? even the Germans found in Spain something far more mysterious, where their fancy might revel in imaginary pasts with less fear of stumbling against facts. The English and French came close on their heels. Heine with his Almanzor, Grill- parzer with Der T?*aum ein Leben, a reversed paraphrase of Calderdn's famous La Vida es Sueno, Washington Irving with his Tales of the Alhambra, Southey, Byron, Victor Hugo, Merimee, Theophile Gautier, Longfellow — all of them ran riot in a Spain of their own imagining. It is needless to repeat what it was that these imaginative gentlemen found — for people 19 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS always find what they look for. Christian knights and Moorish maidens, the fairy moonlit courts of the Alhambra, the terrors of the Inquisition, despairing lovers cruelly separated from their cloistered fair ones. Then, as chivalry began to pall, the Spain of brigands, smugglers, and sinuous dancers with great flashing black eyes and red flowers in their raven locks ; the Spain, in short, of Merimee's and Bizet's Carmen. This conception, tenaciously clung to still as numberless recent books show, is as false as the other. Not that all these wild creatures never existed ; they did and to a certain extent still do exist ; but, with all their picturesquely mingled savagery, chivalry, and superstition, they have a predominant trait which their European observers have overlooked : that brutal, witty, materialistic Iberian scepticism that runs through Spanish letters from Juvenal to Larra, with whom Spanish letters may be said to have died. It is a disconcerting quality, this to which I have had to give so long a name ; the Romanticists, long and short tailed, must have run up against it often enough in their wanderings in Spain, just as they, doubtless, had often to make wry faces over a strong dose of garlic in their soup ; but they found the one thing as unpalatable as the other. They also found it so difficult to conciliate this quality with their view of Spain that they preferred to ignore it altogether, and have thus given us a false picture. 20 SPAIN AND EUROPE There was more excuse for the early Romantic writers, for they took their Cid from the later chroniclers who laid no emphasis on the fact that, in the early Poema del Cid, the hero again and again professes and proves his readiness to fight for anyone who will give him good pay. They drew most of their ideas from a period of reaction against the everlasting Spanish temper: that period which is known in Spain as the Golden Age, and is most completely represented in letters by Calderdn and in painting by Murillo. For that brief moment the Spaniards flew from one extreme to the other, and, instead of realism like that of the author of Lazarillo and Cervantes, we get the inhuman characters of Calderdn with their endless vapour- ing speeches in that octosyllabic metre, the noisy obviousness of whose rhyme becomes intolerable. The myriads of play-writers of that age tortured their brains for an idea far enough removed from humanity to be worthy of their muse ; and when they had found it they worked the poor bloodless thing until it sank exhausted to the ground, much as the later Italian writers of opera work a melody. It was doubtless the study of the products of this Golden Age which led Borrow to remark in his Bible in Spain, thereby deeply shocking many a reader, that Spanish is a noble language with- out a literature worthy of it. Little wonder that the early Romanticists should have seen a false Spain when we read El Magico Pro- 21 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS digioso or La Devotion de la Cruz, in which they found it ! But the later writers, who have had a more general knowledge of the country and its litera- ture, how have they managed to miss the under- lying Spanish characteristic ? A few of them have caught sight of it ; but there is such a thick romantic haze lying over Spain when seen from Europe that almost all have become romantic in connection with that in reality most materialistic of lands. So utterly unromantic are the Spaniards that they have never understood that point of view except as a plaything ; witness their Romantic school of letters which was imported from abroad and never became truly national. While Merimee was writing his Carmen the Spaniards were play- ing at constitutions and going wild with en- thusiasm over the works of Jeremy Bentham. Since those days they have paid the same com- pliment to Herbert Spencer, Conan Doyle, and H. G. Wells. But the reading public in Spain is small and foreign in its tastes. As for the people, they are much as they were in the time of Cervantes, except that they have divested themselves to a certain extent of their faith in God and king. Love of country is entirely swamped in them by local prejudice. Their town or parish is far more important to them than Spain at large. Mr. Havelock Ellis, in his in- teresting book, The Soul of Spain, quotes, as an 22 SPAIN AND EUROPE illustration of the deep patriotism he sees running through all classes, a couplet sung by La Tortajada, who represents this legendary land of Carmen on European music-hall stages : — " Patria mia, yo te adoro, y no te olvido un instante." 1 I cannot resist the temptation of quoting another, a copla de tientos, sung not by La Tortajada at the Palace Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, but by Juana Vargas la Macarrona at La Venta de Eritana : — " Mi madre fue una gitana, y mi padre un caballero, de esos que pelan borricos frente al matadero." Few Spaniards have ever understood what it is that brings Europeans to Spain, and those few have looked on the visits of the foreigners who flock to Seville and Granada in Holy Week as an insult rather than a compliment. The Italians are quicker ; for, whilst no Spaniard, except a handful of wretched gypsies at Granada, cursed and denied for the bad gypsies they are by their brethren throughout Spain, have deliberately gone about 1 Land of my fathers, I adore thee, And never forget thee for an instant. 2 My mother was a gypsy And my father was a gentleman. The sort that clip donkeys Opposite the slaughter-house. 23 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS making themselves picturesque as a financial operation, in Italy night is made hideous by serenaders in costume under the windows of every tourist hotel. There is a tale about Carducci driving over the Brenner and offering a lift to two Germans whom he met by the way. Just after they had crossed the frontier some little ragamuffins came running out, begging. The Germans threw them ha'pence, laughing at the "picturesque little rascals." Carducci immediately had his driver pull up and invited the Germans to get out of his carriage. D. Miguel de Unamuno, Rector of Salamanca University, says, " Above all we must have done with this horrible picturesque- mongery." Enough has been said, I think, to show what has been the Spain looked for by foreigners during the last century, and how far it ever resembled the Spain of the Spaniards. I shall now say a few words about two men who distinctly stood outside the main current. The British and Foreign Bible Society, fired by sad tales of spiritual desolation given by Peninsular War heroes, seized the opportunity presented by the final suppression of the Inquisition, and sent that truly extraordinary man George Borrow to distribute Bibles to the dwellers in darkness. Borrow spent several years of the thirties travelling from one end of the country to the other, and afterwards wrote his Bible in 24 SPAIN AND EUROPE Spain, which remains to this day the truest book on the subject ever written. It is not often that Borrow deigns to mention the arts or any litera- ture but his own ; but when he does so, he in- variably brings out some amazing piece of criticism, wholly independent of the aesthetic ideas prevalent at the time. His statement, already mentioned, to the effect that Spanish literature is unworthy of the language is a good instance ; another is his appreciation of one of El Greco's greatest pictures, "The Burial of the Count of Orgaz." This is one of the very few mentions of painting in The Bible in Spain; Borrow calls El Greco a 44 most extra- ordinary genius," and says that the picture in question would be cheap at £5000. How far he was in advance of his time may be judged from a footnote in the 1899 edition, in which the editor puts Borrow right and calls in Professor Justi to tell us that the picture is a poor affair. How many of the wild tales Borrow tells are true, it is im- possible to say ; even if they are all creations of his brain, they reveal an essentially truer concep- tion of Spain than any mere collection of facts could convey. A few years later Richard Ford began writ- ing his Gatherings in Spain and the handbook which still forms the base of Murray's excellent Guide. As a guide-book Ford's work has never been replaced ; he knew his ground thoroughly, had a vast amount of classical reading, a close 25 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS acquaintance with his hero Wellington's cam- paigns, a command of English and a spirited style. He regarded Spaniards as a God-forsaken people, in- habiting a country endowed with a fine climate and splendid scenery, and, above all, with having been the scene of the soul-stirring deeds of those lords of creation, Wellington's Englishmen ; in short, a land where there are remains of classical antiquity, and wild animals to kill, worthy of the passing attention of an English gentleman in the intervals of what should be the main object of every right- minded tour through Spain : a careful examination of every battlefield of the Peninsular War. The little essays he devotes to the cities clearly indi- cate his point of view ; he speaks much about what happened there under the Romans, gives a passing word to the Moors, and then makes straight for the glowing episodes of the War. If he mentions the Spaniards themselves, it is to scold them or to crack a joke about Santa Teresa and Bedlam, or some miracle of the Virgin. The only Spaniards whom he considers to be worth an educated man's attention are the peasants, and he naturally ranks Andalusia far above the other provinces. What Ford has to say about the life on the roads in the days before railways is most enter- taining, and shows what enormous changes have taken place since he wrote. Spain is no longer the land of muleteers, brigands, and posting-houses that 26 SPAIN AND EUROPE he knew. The travellers who visit it to-day are also a different sort from those old English gentle- men who did not come in great numbers but did the thing in style, with their own horses and carriages, bedding and servants, and usually went to the length of learning something of the language and history of the country before starting. A com- parison of the first editions of Murray's Guide Book with those that are published now will show what an enormous change for the worse has taken place in the mentality of the average traveller. None of the above writers made a special study of Spanish art ; their books contain poetic descrip- tions of mighty Gothic fanes, from which it is impossible to make out plan, design, or period. So much so that when, in the sixties, George Street began travelling through the country to write his Gothic Architecture in Spain, he never knew what was awaiting him until he had examined the building. It was an adventurous undertaking before there were railways, the journey to far Compostela on the chance of finding something of the Romanesque cathedral of which he had read in the Spanish ecclesiologists. It is little short of miraculous that, having so few means of discover- ing what there was and where to find it, Street could have seen as much as he did. His book, though it contains no account of the very im- portant Romanesque monuments of upper Cata- lonia, of the three Catalan Cistercian houses, or 27 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of any of the Visigothic, Mozarabe, or Asturian churches in the north, is by far the best ever published in English on Spanish architecture. The numerous books that have since appeared on the subject in English owe everything of value they contain to him, and often forget to acknowledge it. I feel no hesitation in confessing that I am deeply indebted to him ; and, at the same time, I would point out other sound work that has been done in the field since Street's day out of England, and in which portions of it unknown to him have been explored. The monumental works of Villanueva, Pons, Cean Bermudez, Madoz, and Llaguna y Amirola are well known. They have long served as the only sources available for facts regarding Spanish architecture, and in them Stirling and Head found most of their material for their books on Spanish painting. There are also a few more or less didactic books on the arts, dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; but little is to be gleaned from them. For many years it seemed that no one dared to undertake the enormous task of ex- ploring the cathedral and other archives, and that no more than what the above worthies tell us would ever be known of how the Spanish churches were built. Little by little, however, local sages have begun ransacking and, later, publishing the results. There are now hundreds of mono- graphs, from the three huge volumes by Sr. 28 SPAIN AND EUROPE Gestoso on Seville to the modest pamphlet on San Baudilio de Casillas de Berlanga. The archives have really been made to yield a rich harvest of facts. To take advantage of the labours of these diligent men is quite a different affair from pillaging Street with his terse style and care- ful index. The Spaniard who has spent fifteen or twenty years in unearthing and deciphering docu- ments does not propose to leave the fruit of his toil within the reach of every passer-by. He writes a book, yes ; but he makes it as long as possible, never by any chance includes an index, suppresses all page headings that might give a clue, and, when he has spun out as much artistic rhapsodising as he has in him, leads one an end- less game of hide-and-seek before he will relinquish the architect's name and date — if he really has them. His idea is that anyone who wishes to make use of his book shall have to work as hard as he had to write it. Those who have laboured through the indexless Pons, or Sr. Villamil's or Sr. Gestoso's bulky volumes, or the long series of £Jspa?ia, sus Monu- mentos, etc., will know what I mean. Such enor- mously valuable information is to be got out of these works, however, that there is nothing for it but to read them. Herr Justi's two interesting volumes of Miscellaneen that have recently ap- peared show that he has not been afraid to do so ; and thousands of people will read his book who 29 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS never heard of Sr. Marti y Monsd, the author of a huge tome of Estudios Historico-Artisticos that represents a vast amount of original research. Several important works have been published in Spanish, however ; enough to show that Spaniards are determined not to let foreigners do all the ex- ploration of their country's past. Sr. Cruzada Villaamil's magnificent work on Velazquez was, un- fortunately, privately printed, and has remained practically unknown. If it had been translated and made accessible to the public, the numerous books that have appeared on the subject in the last twenty years need never have been written. Sr. Cossio's work on El Greco gives all that is known, or is likely to be known, of the painter's life, and a complete list of his works ; Srs. de Alcahali and Sanpere y Miquel have published useful accounts of the Valencian and Catalan primitives. Finally, an official publication, Los Monumentos Arquitectonicos de Espana, is now in course of publication, and though the first parts seem to have many of the traditional Spanish faults of long-windedness and lack of method, each part is to be done by a different man and will give the sum of what is known about the monu- ments. At its present rate, however, it will be a good century before half the collection has ap- peared. The best and most useful book on Spanish architecture in existence is Sr. Lamperez's Historia de la Arquitectura Cristiana Espanola en la Edad 30 SPAIN AND EUROPE Media, the first volume of which appeared in 1908 — soon to be completed with a second. Sr. Lamperez has been about this work for years, and he is in every way suited to his task. His directness and unselfishness in making his necessarily complicated volumes as accessible as possible to the student are beyond all praise, especially in Spain. The great defect in the rapidly increasing library of English books on Spain seems to me to be that, instead of benefiting by what the Spaniards have done in research, their authors have gone on repeating the few known facts about the few stock places of interest, and filling in the gaps with more or less interesting personal appreciations. There is also the question of North versus South ; and most foreigners seem still to agree with Ford that Andalusia must take precedence over the other Spanish kingdoms. In a book written entirely from the opposite point of view, I must briefly give my reasons for neglecting the south. Andalusia is a delightful place to visit in the spring ; its sky and sun and picturesque life make it much more alluring to the stranger than the grim old kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. It was also the home of the Moor, who has cast a glamour over Cordova, Seville, and Granada for all time. And then there is the traditional attrac- tion of what the Spaniards call Espana Negra — Black Spain — brigands, Carmens, etc., which no longer exist except in the brains of foreigners. 31 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS But how few outward and visible signs of its past Andalusia contains ! Without going into the ques- tion of the intrinsic value of Spanish Moslem art after it had shaken off the Byzantine influence, it is astonishing how little of it there is left. The mosque at Cordova, fragments of the Alcazar at Seville, and the Alhambra ; there is little else, and even these buildings have suffered from atrocious restoration. The thirteenth century was half over before the Christians reached Seville, and Granada fell in 1492. The conquerors built little at first, and long continued employing Moorish work- men. In all Andalusia there is only one im- portant Gothic church, the cathedral of Seville, and that is important only because of its size. At Granada there are a few grand Renaissance buildings ; but, as far as Christian art is concerned, Castile contains better examples of everything Andalusia has to show. The one exception is the Sevillian school of painting, which is represented at Seville by a small number of pictures, most of which are wretchedly preserved. The serious part of Spain, where the Spanish races were formed and lived and worked during the most fruitful periods of their existence, is not Andalusia, but the kingdoms of Castile and Ara- gon. Full of magnificent churches, and works of the arts of all the great creative peoples — French, Italian, German, and Flemish — they are the most 3 2 SPAIN AND EUROPE astoundingly mediaeval countries left in Europe. Few museums ; everything that has remained is in its original surroundings. Their cities are petrified episodes from that mediaeval life which it is so hard to conceive when we live in London and Paris, and have to patch it together out of books and show-cases of museums. c 33 II ASTURIAS The principality of Asturias, once a kingdom, is comprised in the modern province of Oviedo. It is bounded east and west by the Rias de Tina- mayor and Rivadeo, to the south by the peaks of the Cordillera Cantabrica. The great mountains have in all ages been a last barrier against the invader, for which reason the Romans left few traces in Asturias. The little principality played a mighty part in early Spanish history ; for it was in the fertile moist valleys of its Atlantic slope that the scattered Visigothic monarchy took refuge early in the eighth century. Thanks to the humble position into which it sank as soon as the kings forced their way down into Leon, Asturias has preserved a number of monuments dating from the days of its greatness. So little remains of the art of the Visigoths that its importance is usually minimised. In Spain there are a few vestiges dating from before the Moorish invasion, the study of which has been much neglected, but which furnish documents able to knock the bottom out of at least one 34 ASTURIAS important archaeological dogma. Tt is true that these remains are not to be looked for in Asturias. However, ninth - century Asturian architecture owed so much to this people that something must be said about it here. Among all the hordes that invaded Spain in the fifth century the Visi- goths, natives of Dacia, the modern Roumania, were already Christians, and by far the most advanced in the arts of war and peace. The former enabled them to subdue the other bar- barians, the latter to develop a style of art in which they were greatly helped by frequent inter- course between the Spanish, the African, and the Eastern churches. The Arian heresy had struck deep roots in Spain ; but King Recared renounced it in 589, firmly upheld by the Roman-Spanish clergy of Seville, who had kept alive the tradition of Latin letters. Under the strong theocratic monarchy of the Visigoths there existed in Spain a higher degree of civilisation than in any other of the Western countries, which were torn by con- tinual wars. Of the buildings of this age the most important existing are San Juan de Banos, a basilica of debased Roman forms, and the Byzantine bap- tistery, San Miguel de Tarrassa. Sr. Lamperez adds another class of Byzantine basilicas, repre- sented by Santa Comba de Bande (Orense) and San Pedro de la Nave (Zamora), which I have not been able to visit. These churches have 35 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS naturally lost much of their primitive form and all their decoration ; we know, however, from the accounts of San Isidoro of Seville that magni- ficent mosaics, marbles, and rare stones were used in them. The votive crowns of Guarrazar, some of which are in the Cluny and others in the Armoury at Madrid, prove that splendid works of art were made in this period. Yet more important are some funeral monuments of the second or third century in the museum at Leon, upon which the horseshoe arch appears as a decorative motive, and a double horseshoe window, of the form known as ajimez, of the Visigothic ducal palace in the museum at Merida. It is furthermore stated in Arab chronicles that some of the eighth - century windows of the Mosque of Cordova were taken from Visigothic buildings. The meaning of the above is plain. The horse- shoe arch, so long looked upon as an infallible sign of Moslem influence — we have all heard how the Arabs reproduced in it the form of their horses' shoes — is found in use in Spain before the first Moslem invasion. The Infidels admittedly had no art of their own when they landed on Spanish soil. Visigothic windows were made use of in their first buildings ; therefore the horseshoe arch is not in its origin a Moslem element of construction. It came to Spain from the East as a decorative motive, probably symbolic, and in 36 ASTURIAS Spain it was applied to windows and doors in Visigothic buildings, whence it was appropriated by the Moslems. After the rout of Rodrigo's army by the in- vaders in the early part of the eighth century, Pelayo laid the foundations of the new Spanish monarchy with what remained of the old. Indeed, it was a struggle for life, this first beginning in the rough mountains, and only the fittest sur- vived. The Christians had lost all but the bones of their saints, which they took with them up to Asturias, and for which they built their first churches in the Visigothic style of those that had sheltered them at Toledo. The reign of Alfonso el Casto opened a period, nearly coin- ciding with the ninth century, in which Asturian architecture developed forms of its own. At the same time the less warlike elements of Christian Spain were living peacefully under the Arabs and building churches in a style evolved out of the Visigothic and known as Mozarabe, few traces of which remain in the regions where it was born. When persecutions began in the ninth century crowds of monks fled from the South to Leon and Castile and built themselves churches in a modification of the same style, which was called Mozarabe (Mostarab = Arabicised) from the fact that its authors had lived under Arab rule. Plenty of these have survived. I shall speak of them at greater length in other chapters. Both 37 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS the Asturian and, even more, the Mozarabe styles appeared to be on the point of blossoming out into vigorous national schools when, in the eleventh century, they were swamped by the introduction of much more advanced French architecture, which coincided with the subjection of the Spanish monasteries, all of which were already of the Benedictine order, to the rule of Cluny, and the invasion of Spain by French queens and bishops and their retinues. The first king of any of the realms which later became united in Castile to marry a foreigner was Alfonso el Casto (died 843), who took to wife Bertha, a Frenchwoman. The experiences of this lady with her chaste husband presumably gave Spanish princes a bad name abroad, for no more foreign queens came until another Alfonso, sixth of that name (died 1108), redeemed the reputation of his house by marrying five wives, one of whom was Moorish and the others French, in rapid succession. After this the Spanish queens are, almost without exception, foreigners. The tiny Asturian churches which make a journey to these mountains so interesting may be divided roughly into two classes : the Latin basilica of three naves and three apses, with a wooden roof ; and the Byzantine basilica of a form approaching that of the Greek cross and roofed with stone. The first class is represented by San Salvador de Val-de-Dios, San Salvador de Priesca, and Santul- 38 ASTURIAS lano at Oviedo ; the second by San Miguel de Linio. Besides the churches which can be thus classified there are others, such as Santa Maria de Naranco and Santa Cristina de Lena, of rect- angular plan with porticoes added on to the sides. The interior decorations have for the most part vanished ; whether or not mosaics were used is unknown. Mural paintings still exist in the Royal Pantheon at Leon ; but this building hardly comes under the heading Asturian. However, enough carving remains, notably at San Miguel de Linio, Santa Maria de Naranco, and Santa Cristina de Lena, to show that the tradition of Visigothic decoration, as we know it in the crowns of Guar- razar, was closely followed in Asturias. Sr. Lam- perez has shown that some of the bases and capitals of San Miguel de Linio exactly reproduce designs existing in these crowns. The case is probably the same with the horseshoe-arched windows, which are as common as the plain semi- circular ones in these buildings, though the form may have reached some parts of the region through Mozarabe refugees. Many of the churches have buttresses built on to the outside of the walls to resist the thrust of the roof — an important innova- tion, but one which also appears in the sixth- century African churches. My duty here calls me to warn the reader that certain French archaeologists flatly deny the authen- ticity of all the Visigothic and Asturian churches, 39 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS which they do not hesitate to ascribe to the latter part of the twelfth century. Though anxious to avoid controversy, I must briefly mention the reasons adduced by the Frenchmen and other reasons for disregarding their views. M. Enlart, Directeur du Musee de Sculpture Comparee and collaborator in M. Andre Michel's Histoire de V Art, says that Spain has no monu- ment of the Visigothic period whose authenticity is established. M. Marignan, author of a mono- graph entitled Les Premieres Eglises Chretiennes en Espagne (1902), states that all the churches attributed to the Visigothic and Asturian periods are in reality of the twelfth and thirteenth cen- turies. According to M. Marignan, the Arab invaders must have destroyed all existing churches, and San Juan de Banos cannot be Visigothic because it has a rectangular apse and is built not of brick but of stone. It may be answered that the Moslems overran the north of Africa and have held sway there ever since ; and still a number of basilicas exist there, which the French will admit to be of the Constantinian age. As for the second and third points, M. Marignan evidently demands that in all lands art shall con- form to the rules that prevail in France. Rect- angular apses are more frequent than any others in the early periods of Spanish architecture, and why should brick be used in regions where the materials to make it are lacking? San Juan 40 ASTURIAS de Banos also has a consecration stone which states that it was built by Recces vinto in 661. M. Marignan simply dismisses this inscription as false, which need not distress the other camp as the German Hiibner admits it as genuine. Finally it would seem that neither M. Marignan nor M. Enlart knew San Miguel de Tarrassa, and that M. Marignan had never seen San Juan de Banos, which he condemned on the evidence of plans and photographs. To return to the Asturian churches ; M. Marig- nan will not admit them to be earlier than the latter part of the twelfth century, because : their walls are not built of brick like contemporary structures in France ; they have rectangular apses ; they have horseshoe arches ; they have exterior buttresses, unknown in France at the time ; the character of the ornamentation proves them to be of later date ; nothing like them exists in France. All these objections have already been answered except the last, which no one but a French archaeologist would make, and no one but a French archaeologist will wish to hear answered. The church of San Salvador de Val-de-Dios has a consecration stone with the date 893, which M. Marignan rejects and Herr Hiibner admits. Such, very briefly, are the outlines of the case for the early Spanish churches. Those who wish to go into the subject thoroughly must do so in Volume I of Sr. Lamperez's Historia de la Arqui- 41 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS tectura Cristiana Espanola (Madrid, 1908). Sr. Lamperez knows his subject through and through; not only that, he has a wide knowledge of all schools of architecture, and a gift for lucid ex- position, The French had better take care. It is natural that they should have been ruffled by the assertions of Spanish writers of the last century that Spanish owed nothing to French Gothic. The men who made these statements did not know what they were talking about. Sr. Lamperez shows no wish to repudiate the enormous debt which Spain owes to France for her great pointed cathedrals ; but when French archaeologists try to rob him of his little Visigothic, Mozarabe, and Asturian churches they may burn their fingers. Except for its primitive churches Asturias is poor in monuments. There are two or three houses of the Cister of no great importance, and the cathedral of Oviedo. After the removal of the capital to Leon, the mountain principality sank gradually back into its old course of life. In the succeeding centuries it played a small part in Spanish affairs. In modern times its wealth in minerals and timber has given it prosperity, and would make it rich if good means of communica- tion existed. The Asturians are tenacious and close-fisted ; like the Basques, they go to America, make fortunes, and return again. They once spoke their own tongue, called Bable, which has now died out in most of the valleys but still lives in 42 OVIEDO the inability of the people to speak good Castilian. Gijon for some twenty years gave promise of becoming a large manufacturing centre ; but it fell a prey to a series of so-called Socialist strikes, and 1900 saw its ruin. In the way of art it has nothing but the great Asturian Jovellanos' collec- tion of Spanish and Italian drawings, which are attributed to great masters and are worthy of study. Manufactories exist all along the coast from Gijon to Santander ; but, on the one hand, the whole body of workmen is obliged to say the Rosary every evening, and, on the other, there is constant fear of strikes. The seaside towns are much frequented by summer visitors from Madrid ; the Castilians, accustomed to bare plains and bald mountains, find themselves in paradise in the hills and dales of Asturias, Galicia, and the Basque provinces. OVIEDO Oviedo is the capital of the province and the see of a bishop. By reason of the many relics preserved there its cathedral is the holy church of Spain. The existing cathedral was begun late in the fourteenth century to replace the primitive As- turian building, of which the Camara Santa, where the relics are preserved, is all that remains. It is a fine cruciform church with nave and aisles of five 43 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS bays, transepts, choir and choir aisle, with chapels opening out of it. There is a triforium and a six-light window with flamboyant tracery in each bay of the nave. Those on the north side are blocked up ; the others have effective fifteenth- century glass. The side chapels are modernised and have bad retablos ; and the choir aisle was transformed in the neo-classic period. The groin- ing of the nave is sexpartite, that of the aisles quadripartite ; there is no lantern, but a bay of elaborate groining over the crossing. The apse is groined into nine bays, and has five three-light clerestory windows with good glass, and seven more in the lower row. All but two of the latter are obscured by the retablo. In the west end and in the end walls of the transepts there are large circular windows. The main arches are well moulded ; but the capitals are very shallow, as usual in this period. From the north transept a fine door covered with German-looking sculpture opens into a large neo-classic chapel with Gothic groining. This is El Pantedn Real del Rey Casto (Alfonso II), who lies buried here with most of the early kings of Asturias. Behind the high altar is a magnificent carved wood retablo of the fifteenth century, almost cer- tainly by northern hands. It has been hideously marred at great expense by being repainted and gilded. The church has a non- Spanish look, for the coro, which until a very few years ago was in 44 OVIEDO the first bays of the nave, has been moved to its proper place in the choir, making of Oviedo the only Spanish cathedral with an unbroken nave. The exterior is shut in by houses and has an unfinished look, except for the grand late Gothic buttressed and pinnacled tower which rises at the west end. The west front has a portico and a good main door which it was intended to cover with carving. South of the church is a very creditable cloister with three openings on each side full of excellent perpendicular tracery. A door in the west wall of the south transept opens into a staircase which leads up to the Camara Santa. Of the group of buildings finished by Alfonso el Casto this alone remains. Chron- iclers and other writers give accounts of the others ; the basilica of San Salvador seems to have closely resembled the church of Santullano, and of the Royal Pantheon of Santa Maria we know from Morales — that sixteenth-century traveller who enormously preferred the little Asturian churches to Burgos and Toledo — that it had three apses and was richly decorated with marbles. Both these have been replaced by the more modern buildings described above. The Camara Santa, or Capilla de San Miguel, was originally built for the very purpose which it serves to-day : to guard the relics. Alfonso el Casto also built a castle on the site of the bishop's palace to give them still surer protection. In spite of the modifications it 45 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS has undergone at various periods the Camara Santa still shows part of its original fabric. It consists of a waggon-vaulted crypt, and a rectangular upper story of three divisions corresponding to those which are found in most of the Asturian churches : a narthex, an antechamber, and an apse. The first is wholly transformed ; the second was furnished with bases, on which stand statues of saints, in the reign of Alfonso VI (died 1108), of which period is the front visible from outside ; the third has kept its primitive form with its round entrance arch and barbaric capitals. The name of the man who built the original San Sal- vador is known. He was one Tioda, and he may have been the architect of the Camara Santa as well. In the apse stands the great chest of cedar wood in which a stupendous collection of relics, "the number of which," in the words of the Breve Sumario sold in the cathedral, "God alone knows," was brought from Jerusalem to Oviedo by way of Cartagena, Seville, and Toledo. Even more interesting than the relics themselves are the coffers and caskets in which they are contained. Two sides of the great cedar ark are covered with silver plates with remains of gilding, figures in relief, and a border in which Cufic letters are used as a decorative motive. These plates probably date from the time of Alfonso VI, when the box was repaired. The casket contain- 4 6 OVIEDO ing relics of Santa Eulalia of Merida is also covered with silver-gilt plates with a border of Cufic characters. There are several ivories and smaller caskets of varying interest ; but the pearls of the Camara Santa are the two crosses known as the Cruces de los Angeles and de la Victoria. The first is of wood covered with gold plates decorated with filigree and stones, many of which are Roman engraved gems. It has the form of a Maltese cross. The name is owed to the tradi- tion that it was made by angels in this cathedral ; but incredulous people say that the story was invented to cover the fact that the makers were infidels. It bears the inscription : 44 OfFert Adefon- sus humilis servus Christi. Hoc opus perfectum est in Era DCCCXLVI " (a.d. 808). The other cross is also of wood, covered with gold plates and studded with stones. It bears the inscription : 44 Offerunt famuli Christi Adefonsus Princeps et Scemena Regina. Hoc opus perfectum est . . . operatum est in Castello Gauzon anno regni nostri XLII discurrenti Era DCCCCXLVI " (a.d. 908). It is called de la Victoria because the wooden body of the cross was carried before Pelayo at the battle of Covadonga. The archaeological impor- tance of these crosses, in particular that of the angels, needs no mention. Oviedo has little more to show. The university is comparatively modern ; it celebrated its tercen- tenary the other day. In a private collection 47 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS there is a series of Apostles by El Greco, which originally belonged to the church of San Pelayo in this city. In the suburbs of the town, however, outside the line of the walls, that untiring builder of fanes, Alfonso el Casto, founded the little church of San Julian de los Prados, vulgarly known as Santullano, which, though disfigured by paint and plaster in the interior, is valuable for the exterior of its apse and its ground plan. This is that of the Latin basilica : nave and aisles, tran- septs, wooden roofs (reformed), and three square apses. There is a vestibule at the west end, and two rooms are added on to the ends of the tran- septs, which Sr. Lamperez suggests may have been the diaconicum and gazophylaciwn. On the hill which overlooks Oviedo from the north are two little, churches founded by Ramiro I in 848. One of them, San Miguel de Linio, is mentioned by early chroniclers, who also speak of a palace existing near by. The other, Santa Maria de Naranco, was supposed by several writers to have been the palace in question ; but a document of the year 858 has come to light, in which it is mentioned as a church, and a consecration stone has been found, the inscription upon which would seem to state that the church was rebuilt in 848, the former edifice having become unserviceable by reason of its great age ! San Miguel at present consists of a vestibule with two lateral compartments, from which stairs 4 8 OVIEDO lead up to the coro, and part of a nave and aisles. We have an elaborate and enthusiastic but not very clear account of it as it was in the late sixteenth century in Morales' Viage Sac?~o, from which it seems that at that time the plan was square, with vestibule, sanctuary, and lateral rooms, forming a Greek cross — that is to say, the usual Byzantine type. Morales also mentions a tower at the west end which has disappeared. The crippled church is still of the greatest interest because of the elaborate carvings on the bases and jambs, and the stone slabs, pierced in typical Visi- gothic designs, in the windows. The designs of the carvings on the jambs have been much dis- cussed. The Spaniards have taken them to repre- sent martyrdoms, but a French writer points out that the figures were obviously copied from a con- sular diptych. We have the consul in his chair, and, in the other compartments, scenes in the arena. Be this as it may, Sr. Lamperez has proved that much of the line ornament is exactly like that of the crowns of Guarrazar. Santa Maria is a rectangular building, with two rooms added on to the ends by way of vestibule and sanctuary, and two more joined on to the middle of the long sides which serve as porticoes. Served, that is to say, for one of them is gone now. Underneath is a crypt of the same form. The fact that the church is not built east and west gave colour to the theory that it originally had d 49 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS another destination ; but the consecration stone seems to put an end to the controversy. The side walls were originally simply round-arched arcades which, still visible in the interior, have at some time been blocked up. The church was therefore open to the four winds — if, indeed, it was a church, which, in spite of documents and conse- cration stones, the fact that it is not oriented, coupled with the very strange arrangement by which all the building between the vestibule and the sanctuary was an open gallery, makes it diffi- cult of belief. The columns which support the arcade, and their capitals, are elaborately carved, the latter with rather Moorish-looking beasts. The waggon vault has cross-ribs ; under every second one a large carved medallion is let into the wall as if suspended from the corbels from which spring the ribs. This curious form of ornamentation may well be derived from the custom of hanging bucklers upon the wall, as Sr. Lamperez suggests. The vestibule and the sanctuary are separated from the main body of the nave by three arches. All the furniture is modern and shabby, but the church is preserved to the cult, unlike its neighbour San Miguel. Crowning a hillock which overlooks the railway between the stations of Campomanes and Pola de Lena, stands the little hermitage of Santa Cristina de Lena, which closely resembles Santa Maria de 5° OVIEDO Naranco, with which it forms a class apart in Asturian architecture. No mention of this church is known to exist in the chronicles ; until the last century it was unknown to archaeologists. On one of the stones which form a sort of screen in the middle arch of the three which separate the narthex from the main body, a fragmentary in- scription has been found which speaks of an Abbot Flainus. This would seem to be the Flagino of whom mention is made at Oviedo in the first years of the tenth century. Whether or not he consecrated it, the hermitage probably dates from that time. In plan Santa Cristina resembles Santa Maria de Naranco, with the difference that it is built east and west, from which latter side it is entered, thus leaving the rooms added on to the long sides to their proper liturgical use as diaconicum, or treasury, and gazo- phylacium, or place of offerings. The main body of the church is divided into two parts, one of which, the analogio, or place of the priests, has its floor raised several feet above that of the others, from which it is also separated by a sort of screen carried by three round arches. In the middle one of these are three slabs richly carved in the style of the Visigothic remains in the museum at Merida. The sanctuary is contained in the room added on to the east end. The exterior has two buttresses on each face, and there are two old windows, one in the east and one in the north 5 1 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS wall. The latter is composed of three little horse- shoe arches. At a distance of several miles from the railway, between Lieres and Villaviciosa, is a valley in which Don Alfonso el Magno founded a Bene- dictine monastery, known as Val-de-Dios. The house passed to the Cistercians later, as we shall see. Of the original foundation the church of San Salvador alone remains. An inscription in the lateral porch states that it was consecrated by the Bishops of Lugo, Astorga, Coimbra, Zaragoza, Iria Flavia, and two others, in the year Era 931, that is, a.d. 893. This church, small even among its tiny Asturian fellows, belongs to the Latin class of basilica. It has a nave and aisles divided by round arches, three apses, a narthex, over which is the coro, a lateral porch on the south side, and exterior buttresses. More important still, the nave and aisles are roofed with real waggon vaults which here make their first appearance in a Spanish church of the Latin basilica type. Further, the composite pier is here for the first time present in the lateral perch, where we see three engaged columns on the face of each of the buttresses. The windows have shafts and horseshoe arches. It rejoices the heart to see so small a church thus provided with all the elements of a cathedral. When the Cistercians came to Val-de-Dios they were naturally not content with San Salvador, and 52 OVIEDO built themselves the church which a curious inscription in the tympanum of a door in the north transept states to have been built by one Gualterius, and consecrated Era 1256 (a.d. 1218). It is a rather rough example of the Cistercian type, and has a nave and aisles of five bays of quadripartite groining, transepts, and three parallel apses. There is no lantern over the crossing. Nave and aisles are lighted by round-headed win- dows. The main arches are pointed, and all the detail is severe. The church was sacked like all those of its order in the 1830's, but was not sacked thoroughly enough, for the apses and the west faces of the columns, which in the absence of side chapels are fitted with altars, are still disfigured by coarse eighteenth-century retablos. The exterior of the apses is good of its kind ; the windows have shafts and capitals on the outside, and a corbelled cornice runs along under the roof. The later monks, who so flagrantly broke the rules of their order in the interior, also had the inten- tion of building a tower. The west front is obscured by a modern porch, within which a deeply moulded round-arched door with shafts and capitals in its jambs leads into the church. None of the old monastic buildings have survived. The three-storied cloister dates from the seven- teenth century ; and there is no trace of the usual Cistercian chapter-house, lavatory, or dormitories. The traveller will be urged by patriotic Astu- 53 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS rians to push on to see San Salvador de Priesca, which lies some eight miles beyond Villaviciosa in the direction of Santander. Before undertaking the journey let him consider that the church pre- sents no features with which, supposing him to know those described in this book, he is not already acquainted, and that the road, especially if it rains, which it is fairly safe to do, is the worst in Europe. If he does go, he may stop at Amandi, just outside Villaviciosa, and see the interior of the apse of the parish church, which has two rows of arcading, the shafts of which have very elaborately carved scriptural and other capitals, probably of the twelfth century. A journey to Cangas de Onis and Covadonga, how- ever interesting these places may be for their historical memories, is disappointing as far as monuments are concerned. San Salvador de Val-de-Dios marks the highest point which Asturian architecture reached before the fate common to all the Spanish schools over- took it, and it was superseded by a foreign im- portation. 54 Ill GALICIA Old Galicia is divided into the modern provinces of La Coruna, Lugo, Pontevedra, and Orense. It is bounded on the east by Asturias and Leon, on the south by Portugal. The great river Mirio rises near the Asturian border and flows down to the sea past Lugo, Orense, and Tuy, forming the Portuguese frontier on the last part of its course. Its territory is mountainous, like that of Asturias ; the rock-bound capes of Ortegal and Finisterre have for ages been the terror, and the splendid ports of Vigo and Coruna the joy, of seamen. The climate varies from extreme cold in the mountains to moist mildness in the well- populated fertile river valleys, every inch of which is made to give yield. The people are of a different race from the Asturian ; they speak a language of their own which resembles Portuguese and the tongue in which the first Castilian poetry was written. They are hard-working ; in harvest time they go down to the corn-growing lands of Castile and come back with their wages ; and they also emigrate to America, always returning 55 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS when they have made their pile. They are so suspicious and tight-fisted that gypsies, who find it impossible to live in their country, say that a Gallego is more careful of the birth, breeding, and antecedents of the donkey he intends to buy than another man is of those of the woman he intends to marry. The one thing in which they are extravagant is fireworks, of which they are in- ordinately fond. To a certain extent in Asturias, and much more in Galicia, there are ghosts. Ghosts are almost unknown in the rest of Spain ; so their existence here may be safely taken as indicating the pre- sence of another race. The Suevi did establish themselves in these mountains, and the base of the population is probably Celtic. At any rate, we have here sprites, elves, little people of all sorts, things resembling wraiths even, to match those of Brittany, Ireland, and Cornwall. Galicia is profoundly different from Castile, Aragon, and the south in every respect. The misty grey moun- tains and tracts of untilled bog might well be in Ireland ; the difference between the temper of its strange bagpipe-playing, esterina-seeing people and that of the Castilians, whose vast plains have never sheltered the little people, could not be greater. It would be dangerous to go further and try to trace a parallel between Galicia and Ireland. Elements are not wanting, however. There are the Milesian traditions in Ireland of 56 GALICIA people who came thither from Spain in very far- away times. The Gallegos play the bagpipes and dance a sort of jig. Their muneiras recall Irish airs. Then we have the fairies and the little people. Both nations are in the habit of emi- grating to America, both live on potatoes, and both produce large numbers of politicians. Finally, the Gallegos complain of the treatment they re- ceive at the hands of the central government, whilst the rest of Spain is convinced that they get a much better time of it than they deserve. At any rate, Galicia occupies a position with regard to Madrid more analogous to that of Ireland with regard to England than Catalonia does, and Spanish journalists have made capital out of that parallel, forgetting that Catalonia is essentially a manufacturing country and that her sons do not shine in politics. Phoenicians and Romans came and went, leaving Galicia much as they found it. The Suevi, how- ever, established themselves firmly there in the early years of the fifth century, and resisted in- vaders and missionaries alike for over another century and a half. Galicia was thus pagan long after the rest of Spain had been Christianised ; and its pagan spirit still lives in the petty deities that haunt the country. The Arabs never got a foothold in these mountains, and the history of Galicia in more modem times may be said to consist of one date, 812 a.d., in which year the 57 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS tomb of S. James the Greater was discovered where the town of Santiago de Compostela now stands. There is a tradition in Spain that S. James came to that country in the year 33 ; that he preached along the great Roman roads and founded the chapel of N.S. del Pilar at Zaragoza. After the apostle's death in Palestine, seven of his Spanish disciples brought his body to Spain, and gave it burial in far Galicia, wishing, perhaps, to make sure of that stubborn region by entrust- ing so precious a relic to its soil. How Santiago led the Christians to victory at the battle of Clavijo is well known ; in almost every Spanish church there is some representation of him on his white charger killing Moors. It was natural that the interest taken by this celestial person in Spain should find an echo in the hearts of the people. Pilgrims soon began to flock to Santiago ; at first from other regions of Spain, and soon after from all Christendom. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when as many pilgrims went to Com- postela as to Rome, the number of foreign kings, princes, and great folk who visited the shrine of the apostle was enormous. Sr. Lopez Ferreiro, in his bulky history, gives the roads by which they came. The camino frances, or French road, entered Spain by Roncesvalles or by Aspe, both branches meeting at Puente-la-Reina and continuing by Estella, Logrono, Burgos, Castrojeriz, Sahagun, Astorga, 58 SANTIAGO Ponferrada, Villafranca del Bierzo, Puertomarin, to Compostela. The pilgrims from southern Italy and the East came by sea to Tortosa, and up the Ebro as far as Logrono, where they joined the French road. A pilgrimage to Santiago in those days was a serious affair, and those who undertook it often remained long in Spain and visited holy places such as Oviedo, Zaragoza, and Montserrat before returning home. Others stayed on indefi- nitely. These great crowds of pilgrims led a con- tinual current of foreign influences into Spain and diffused it over the face of the country. Not only the pilgrims ; still more the hordes of Syrian and Armenian dealers in relics, and purveyors of every sort of commodity, who did a roaring trade all along the roads and filled Santiago with their booths, must have brought something of the arts of the many lands in which they, wanderers as they have always been, had tarried. To this day most of those gypsies of commerce, the antiquity dealers, who are not Jews, are Armenians and Syrians : they have antiquity-dealing in their blood to an extent that makes it vain for the European to compete with them. They did the same in former times, selling relics and works of art as keepsakes to the Santiago pilgrims. What a place it must have been in the middle ages, this Santiago de Compostela ! What a thing this mediaeval civilisation that sent all the nations and languages of Christendom to the world's end 59 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS to adore the bones of St. James ! What would Galicia have been without it ? As it is, it possesses in the cathedral of Santiago one of the grandest monuments of the Christian world. So great was the shadow that this mighty church cast over Galicia that the nascent regional style withered in it ; and not merely the other three Galician cathe- drals but nearly every Galician parish church built down to the time of the Renaissance has to some extent reproduced its forms. First and foremost, therefore, enormously outweighing in importance all the other monuments of the province put together, we have the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, begun in the latter part of the eleventh century. The church built by Alfonso III, destroyed by Almanzor — though the sepulchre of Santiago escaped — and restored immediately after the raid, had already become too small for the crowds that flocked to Santiago by the middle of the eleventh century. In 1071 Bishop Diego Pelaez began preparing for the construction of the actual church, which the Codex of Calixtus II says was begun fifty-nine years after the death of Alfonso I of Aragon, sixty-two after that of Henry I of England, and sixty-three after that of Louis VI of France ; that is to say, in 1074 or 1075. Bishop Pelaez had important resources in the alms given by pilgrims, in addition to which he had granted to him an exemption from tribute for all those 6o SANTIAGO employed upon the church, the right to coin money and, probably, to use prisoner and convict labour. He organised two committees, one ad- ministrative, composed of Abbot Gundesindo, the treasurer Sigerido, and one Vicarto, and the other technical, composed of Bernardo, the master of the works, and Roberto. As to how the work went on, we have the date 1078 carved on the Puerta de Platerias, and the consecration seems to have taken place in 1128, though the whole cannot have been complete till well on into the thirteenth century. The Portico de la Gloria was built between 1168 and 1188, and its builder Mathaeus was still master of the works in 1217. In plan the church forms a Latin cross with a nave and aisles of eleven bays in length, transepts with aisles of five bays, a semicircular central apse with a choir aisle round it, every second bay of which has a semicircular apsidal chapel opening out of it. There were also two apsidal chapels in each transept. The central and transept naves are roofed with round and the aisles with quadri- partite vaults. There is a late lantern over the crossing. As the choir had to be occupied by the tomb of the apostle, the coro was originally placed where it now stands in the nave, to which spot it was moved in most Spanish cathedrals in the early sixteenth century. The main arches are carried on clustered columns. Above the aisles runs a gallery or 6! SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS triforium, the vault of which serves as a sort of buttress to resist the thrust of that of the nave, and which has a double opening in each bay. The windows lighting this gallery, like those now blocked up in the aisles, are simple round-headed lights. There are no side chapels in the main aisles. The character of the interior, as far as the Romanesque work goes, is sober with its round- headed arches, clustered columns, and cold granite masonry. The capitals alone are carved, and very well carved. In the eighteenth century the monstrous painted and gilt high altar, with its huge top-heavy angels playing trumpets, was put up, and two of the facades were rebuilt ; the cloister was built in the middle of the sixteenth, but is still of a debased Gothic. It will be seen that on the exterior hardly a stone of the Roman- esque building is visible. Only a tiny bit of the apse has remained unhidden. Of the three facades, the southern, La Puerta de Platerias, has been least altered. It once had four doors, corresponding : two to the transept nave and one to each of the aisles. Of these, the two central ones, with the fine windows above them, remain, the others having been built over by the clock tower on one side and, on the other, by the west cloister wall of Renaissance work, which does not harmonise with the rest. The facade had two towers, which have also disappeared. The old work in this front — carved shafts, capitals, 62 SANTIAGO large figures of saints, all of softly coloured marble — is earlier than that in the west doorway and rather more primitive in character, though of the most exquisite finish and delicacy. The north front, de la Azabacheria, opens into the square in which the traders had their booths in old times. It was entirely modernised in the eighteenth cen- tury after plans by \ T entura Rodriguez. At the same period the architect Novoa built the Chur- rigueresque west front, El Obradoiro, with its great towers, which hides behind it the Portico de la Gloria. From the west front a bold quadruple flight of steps leads down to the broad Plaza Mayor, the other sides of which are formed by the Seminary, the Hospital de los Reyes, and San Geronimo, large plain buildings all of them. The grey stone of the towers of the cathedral is covered by a golden yellow lichen, which gives it a most tender tone. Stone mellows much faster in this moist climate than in Castile. It seems that there was no west porch until Bishop Suarez de Deza contracted with Maestro Mateo to build the existing one in 1168. The work had to be begun from the foundations, for the fall of the ground towards the Plaza made it necessary to build the curious square crypt with a semicircular apse ending in a square chapel. Above this crypt three doors open from the nave and aisles into a groined porch, on to the outer side of which is built the modern western facade. 63 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS These three doors form the famous Portico de la Gloria, which is covered with sculpture, represent- ing, according to Street and most of the authorities, the Last Judgment ; though Sr. Lopez Fer- reiro takes it to be a rendering of the words of Jacob on awakening from his dream, ' 6 This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven" (Gen. xxviii. 17). The bases rest on monstrous heads ; that of the shaft dividing the central door has a man kneeling in prayer towards the high altar. This is said to be the figure of Mateo himself, who in twenty years carved this door with his own hands and signed his work under the lintel of the central opening : — ►& ANNO AB INCARNATIONE DNI I M° C°- LXXXVIII™ : ERA. I> CCXX 11 vi A : die k-l aprilis i super : liniharia : principalium i portalium : ecclesiae i beati i iacobi : sunt i collocata i per i magistrum i matheum i qui i a i fundamentis : ipsorum : portalium i eresit: magisterium. In the tympanum of the central door sits our Lord surrounded by the evangelists with their emblematic beasts, angels, and the souls of the just. The whole of the archivolt is covered by twenty-four elders with their musical instruments. The orders of the arches on the sides are richly carved, and the jambs of all three doors have 6 4 SANTIAGO large figures of saints. In the centre, on a shaft wonderfully carved with the tree of Jesse, sits Santiago, his pilgrim's staff in hand. The door is perfectly preserved ; it even has traces of the original colouring, though we shall probably live to see the whole thing white-washed by order of the blind archbishop or the chapter. So far I have limited myself to a description of the church without going into the question of styles. Controversy, marked by the usual excesses on both sides, has raged round this building as round few others in Spain. Almost all the foreigners who have examined it — Street, Fer- gusson, Enlart, and others — have called it an imitation of Saint Sernin at Toulouse, or of other churches of that region. Murray's guide- book goes so far as to say that "it is both in plan and design an exact repetition of the church of Saint Sernin at Toulouse which was founded twenty-two years previously." This is too flagrant a misstatement to be allowed to pass. As for the plan, Saint Sernin has two aisles on each side of its nave, Santiago only one — a fairly radical difference. In design they differ in that the round arches are much more stilted in Santiago than in the other. As for the twenty-two years which elapsed between the beginnings of the two churches, San- tiago was begun in 1074 or 1075 or, at latest, 1078, and consecrated in 1128, whilst the Archaso- E 6 5 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS logical Congress of Toulouse, 1899, pronounced that Saint Sernin was begun in 1080, consecrated in 1096, and was still unfinished in 1140. In the other camp Sr. Lopez Ferreiro, author of the voluminous but useful history of Santiago, and Sr. Casanova, in a monograph on the same subject, insist that this great church is a product of the soil of Galicia, which, as they affirm, possessed a number of monuments of earlier date that clearly showed how the style originated. These monuments, they regretfully admit, have vanished. These two gentlemen, it is to be feared, confuse patriotism with archaeology. Though the dates make it impossible to regard Santiago as an imitation of Saint Sernin, there are no antecedents for it in Galicia. It is true that the system of a vault of a quarter of a circle, used over the aisles to resist the thrust of the central vault, is seen in the little church of Santa Maria de la Corticela, which is built under the shelter of the cathedral ; but there is no reason for believing with the Gallegos that La Corticela is older than the great church. Santiago belongs to the Angevin school and was probably the work of French builders. Nothing of Bernardo's nation- ality is known. It would be pleasant to think that Maestro Mateo was a Gallego ; but he must have had his training at any rate in France. When it has been admitted that this church is of foreign descent, one may go on to say that 66 SANTIAGO it is finer than anything in the home of its race. It is superior to Saint Sernin in point of material; for it is all of granite, whilst the French church is of stone and brick. It also has certain features of its own, such as the form of the main arches. The treasure which had accumulated here in nearly a thousand years, and which fell to the French looters in the War of Independence, was enormous. Much still remains ; for gold and silver was what the French were after, and they left a large number of splendid early crosses and other objects in copper. There are the gold- plated cross of Alfonso III like that of the Victory at Oviedo, the beautiful fourteenth-cen- tury silver bust which contains the head of St. James the son of Alphasus, and the silver-gilt custodia by Antonio de Arfe, only one other piece of whose work has survived. All these, though of precious metal, escaped the French. Two splendid specimens of sixteenth - century bronze work are the pulpits by J.-B. Celma. There are many gorgeous vestments ; a series of chasubles, among others, with orphreys embroidered by Santa Isabel of Portugal and her ladies, and given to this church. This saint is not to be confused with the Empress Isabel of Portugal, Charles V's beautiful but unsainted wife. She was an Ara- gonese princess who became queen of Portugal in the early fourteenth century. To-day Santiago is a clerical and university town 67 SPAIN : HER LIFE AND ARTS of small civil importance. It is not even the capital of a province. Not many pilgrims now come to visit the apostle except on his feast day, July 25th, when a number of incredible beings with long matted hair, pilgrims' staffs, hats, gourds, and cloaks, and covered with cockle-shells and medals, always appear. Many of them have been to the Holy Land and Rome ; they carry tin boxes with papers signed by persons in authority to show that their tales are true. I have talked with one who carried a hand-made map of the places he had been to, which looked like a mediaeval chart. On his way to Mont Saint- Michel the French caught him and put him in prison ; otherwise he had received kind treatment in all lands. The feast is kept at Santiago with great splen- dour. The pilgrims are fed for nothing for three days at the hospital. Processions take place in the streets, led by the cathedral clergy and the cathedral bag-pipers. At night there is a magni- ficent display of fireworks ; the whole west front of the cathedral is lit up, and makes such a frame- work for the final set-piece as never was seen. Enormous fire-balloons with "Viva el Senor Santiago ! " and " Viva el Patron de Espana ! " in six-foot letters mount up slowly amid the rush and whir of thousands of rockets and Roman candles. At mass the Bota-fumeiro, a silver incense-burner five feet high, is suspended by a long rope from 68 SANTIAGO the lantern and swung to and fro until it nearly touches the vault at both ends of the transepts. The music is frightful beyond all power of descrip- tion. Four pairs of giants representing Europe, Asia, Africa, and America come forth, march in procession round the church, and then dance to the bag-pipes in the capilla mayor in front of the high altar. The cloisters are hung with tapestries, some of them after designs by Goya and Teniers. The other churches of Santiago are not impor- tant, neither is Enrique de Egas' hospital. The cathedral is so superb in every way, and the Por- tico de la Gloria such a triumph of twelfth-century sculpture, that few will care to look at these paltry Romanesque and Gothic fragments. The little Colegiata de Santa Maria de Sar outside the town is worth examination, however. Built during the first half of the twelfth century, it has preserved its round waggon-vaulted nave and aisles of five bays, and its three semicircular apses panelled with arcading on the inside, all of the purest Roman- esque ; preserved them with the aid of enormous exterior buttresses, for the walls were not strong enough to resist the thrust of the vaults, and were already out of plumb in the fifteenth century. The curious symmetry with which the piers slant has given rise to the legend that the building was originally so built. Of the cloister only one wing remains. The coupled shafts, the carved capitals, abaci, and moulded round arches are surpassed in 69 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS perfection by those of no other cloister in Spain. The detail recalls that of the Portico de la Gloria. It is fortunate that part of this early cloister remains at Santiago, since the cathedral has lost the one that was built for it in the twelfth century. Seen from the Paseo de Santa Susana, Santiago presents a lordly appearance. The lofty towers of the cathedral and the huge buildings that surround it form a group which no other Spanish city can rival, as far as their exterior goes. The landscape is low in tone, grey buildings backed by pine-clad hills. Having examined the cathedral of Santiago we may turn to the other churches of Galicia which were built in its likeness. First among these is the cathedral of Lugo, a town which contains little else of interest, except for the mighty walls, originally Roman, which surround it. In the year 1129 Bishop D. Pedro Peregrino of Lugo contracted with Maestro Raimundo de Monforte, who agreed to build the cathedral and to see to it that his son should continue the work if he were unable to do so. The Bishop D. Pedro was probably fired by the example of Santiago, which was nearing completion at this time. But he had to do without the alms, aids, and exemptions of all sorts that Compostela enjoyed. He also had to employ a local archi- tect, and we shall see that the difference in the results was considerable. 70 LUGO The church was finished in 1177 ; but it has been much transformed since. It at present con- sists of nave and aisles of ten bays, transepts, choir, choir aisle, and chevet chapels. Of this, the nave and transepts belong to the old church, and clearly show the imitation of Santiago. The nave and transepts are roofed with a pointed waggon vault. The aisles, roofed with a round waggon vault in the eastern bays, are continued with quadripartite. The round vault explains the very low main arches, the first five of which, in- cluding those enclosing the coro, are now blocked up. The triforium, which has a double-pointed opening in each bay and is lighted, like the aisles, by simple round-headed windows, is roofed with a squat round waggon vault. There is no lantern over the crossing. Thus far the old church. It will be noticed that the architect did not know his own mind, witness the diversity in the vaults ; and the detail is rough. What the original east end was like it is not known ; for in 1308 it was entirely rebuilt. The choir aisle has two bays of good bold sexpartite, and the rest of quadripartite groining ; and this work is good early, with a tendency towards middle, pointed. The upper part of the choir was ruined in the eighteenth century, when the Lady- chapel and the west front were added. All the eighteenth- century work is poor. In the way of sculpture or carving all that remains is the fine 71 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Christ in the attitude of blessing in the north doorway, and the early Gothic wrought - iron hinges in the same. Such is the cathedral of Lugo, the eldest daughter of Santiago. It is thoroughly Spanish, this church, with its changes of plan and con- fusion of styles and periods. It once contained good champleve enamels, the best of which vanished simultaneously with two canons a few years ago. The next of the Compostela family is the cathedral of Tuy. The town lies on a hill over- looking the River Mino, and was formerly an im- portant border fortress. It now rejoices in the possession of a militant bishop, who occasionally makes a foray from his castellated church, as on the occasion a few years ago when he so frightened a Liberal Government with one of his famous circular letters that Ministers dropped their Civil Marriage Bill and ran. Founded in remote times, old Tuy did not stand on the site of the present town, which was built in the latter part of the twelfth century. The cathedral was in course of construction in 1180, but who its architects were it is unknown. As it stands to-day it presents a warlike ap- pearance. The west front has a battlemented porch and flanking towers, and a fine tall Ro- manesque tower guards the north door. Like Lugo, this church belongs to several different 72 TUY periods. Sn plan it consists of nave and aisles of four, transepts with aisle of three, bays, and three rectangular apses. The first part to be finished was the east end, the transepts and apses, that is to say. All that now remains of this twelfth -century work is the lower part of the transepts and begin- ning of the choir ; for the rest was modernised in the last years of the fifteenth century. This fragment of the original church shows that it was begun as an imitation of Santiago. It is exactly the same in all respects, except in scale and technical perfection. Round main arches, triforium or gallery, with a half-barrel to resist the thrust of the main vault, and even the lower part of a lantern, which was probably never completed. The piers are also like those at Santiago. When this much was done the money seems to have given out, and the work stood still until the time of Bishop Egea (1218-39), who finished the upper part of the east end and added the nave and aisles in a pure thirteenth-century French style. The triforium was then continued into the new part, and provided with a blind arcade of five pointed openings with good stiff leaf capitals in each bay. This triforium is exactly like that of Meaux Cathedral. At the same time the church was entirely closed in with quadripartite vaults, which are not satisfactory, as in the original plan the nave was intended to be covered with a round waggon vault. 73 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS In the fifteenth century the west front was built with its moulded doorway, four saints standing on shafts in both the jambs, and sculptured corbels supporting the tympanum. It looks like transi- tion work, and is taken for such by nearly every- one. Records prove it to belong to the last Gothic period in point of time, which shows how Galicia lagged behind. The interior was marred by great braces which were carried across the nave after a terrible earthquake in the sixteenth century. The furniture is not re- markable. The boldly groined cloister to the south of the cathedral has double arches carried on coupled shafts with good leaf capitals. It is all of the earliest pointed work and resembles nothing that is to be found in Galicia. In the lower part of the town stands the church of Santo Domingo, which has preserved fairly unspoiled the exterior of a good early pointed east end. The old city of Orense, long famous for its warm baths, lies on a hill overlooking the fertile valley of the Mino, which is here crossed by a grand thirteenth-century bridge. It is a pleasant cleanly town, paved, like Tuy and Santiago, with great blocks of stone. The cathedral was begun in 1132 and consecrated in 1194, but the part then finished was only the east end, including the transepts. The vaults and the whole of the nave 74 ORENSE and aisles, with the west porch, were added under Bishop D. Pedro Seguino (1218-48). The octagonal lantern over the crossing was begun in 1499. The imitation of Santiago is less obvious in this plan than in those of Lugo and Tuy. Here we have nave and aisles of eight bays, transepts, and, originally, three semicircular apses, for the actual chevet is an addition of the sixteenth century. The main arches are pointed, there is no triforium, the nave is lighted by lancet windows, and all the groining is quadripartite. The part in which the builders of this church followed Santiago most closely is in the great triple doorway under the west porch. This is nearly a copy of the Portico de la Gloria and inferior to it in every respect, but is interesting for that very reason and because of its well-preserved polychromy. The doorways of the north and south transepts are round-arched, moulded, and adorned with rather rough sculpture. Built into a modern addition are a few arches of the transition cloister with well-carved figure capitals. Finer in quality than any of the carving in the cathedral is that in the great transition cloister of San Francisco, now a barracks. The east end, it has already been said, is modern- ised. A few years ago a splendid copper and champleve enamel altar-front was found in a rubbish heap in one of the dependencies of the cathedral. It certainly once adorned the high 75 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS altar. In the treasury there is a silver proces- sional cross of the fifteenth century, which was very fine until the other day, when a patriotic son of Orense, who had made a fortune in America, spent an enormous sum in having it set with large semi-precious stones ; for which purpose many of the little pinnacles were cut off and the whole freshly gilt. There are a few good tombs in the side chapels and a vast amount of coarse wood sculpture. The famous Santo Cristo looks like that of Burgos, and has a similar history. Before leaving Galicia there are two more fine churches to be noticed at the seaport of La Coruna. This very ancient town was founded by the Phoe- nicians, who left their lighthouse on the coast not far away. It was taken and sacked by Drake less than a year after the Invincible Armada sailed from its harbour. The church of Santiago at La Coruna is known to have existed in 1161 ; mention is made of it in a document. It at present consists of a very broad nave, with a wooden roof carried on three pointed arches, from which three round arches open into the eastern apses. Street remarks on the great width of the church ; Sr. Lamperez holds that the original plan was of nave and aisles, and that the present roof was the early sixteenth- century rebuilding referred to in an inscription. This seems very probable. Of the old church there remains the exterior. The apse is fine solid 76 LA CORUNA Romanesque, and there is a good doorway set out from the west front, with a figure of the tutelar in its tympanum, sculpture in the jambs, and a corbelled cornice above. Santa Maria del Campo is another curious illus- tration of the persistence of archaic forms in Galicia. Street took it to be of the twelfth century and by the same architect as the above- mentioned Santiago. A church existed on this spot at that period; but inscriptions have been discovered which prove the actual building to date from the fourteenth. It has five bays of nave and aisles roofed with waggon vaults, pointed in the nave and round in the aisles. The chancel has a bay of sexpartite vaulting, and the apse is semi- circular. The capitals are rudely carved. The west front was interesting before the restoration, which swept away the porch shown in Street's drawing, and ruined all the detail. There are a few more interesting churches in Galicia ; but those described above will serve to give a general idea of the architecture of a pro- vince which was literally the world's end in the Middle Ages, and owed all to its possession of the sepulchre of Santiago. 77 IV CASTILE AND LEON In the two preceding chapters we have seen something of the life and arts of the struggling Christian monarchy in the first centuries of the Reconquest. Though the court was fixed at Leon during the first half of the tenth, and though the Counts of Castile soon began to hold their own against the Moors, the varying fortunes of war made it impossible that important monuments should be built in the disputed territory. It has always been foreign influence that has stimulated the production of art in Spain, and the battle- fields of Castile and Leon in the tenth and early eleventh centuries had little to attract foreigners. Almanzor's terrible raids made property so in- secure that the most princely grants were empty rewards. Towards the middle of the eleventh century, however, the tide turned. The sterility of northern Spanish life in the preceding period has been attributed by many writers to the millenary terror, but, it seems, with insufficient grounds. None of the contemporary writers allude to it, and no 78 CASTILE AND LEON mention of it exists in the councils. It was simply that the whole activity of the nation was absorbed in driving the invaders out of Leon and Old Castile, and until that was accomplished there was no time for the pursuits of peace. The moment arrived when Fernando I united the northern kingdoms and made a series of concentrated attacks upon the Moors, which opened the way for the final campaigns of his son, Alfonso VI. It is true that, with inexplicable lack of states- manship, Fernando undid at his death what he had spent his life in achieving, and left his king- dom divided between his children ; but Alfonso VI soon succeeded in consolidating his rule at home, availing himself of fratricide or any other means that might recommend themselves to him. Thus he was able to subdue Toledo, and, holding a strong point in the valley of the Tagus, to carry on the all-important work of colonising the central plains without danger of Moorish interruptions. I have already mentioned the fact that Alfonso VI married several French wives, and that he filled the sees of Spain with French bishops of the rule of Cluny, to which the Spanish monasteries were then subjected. He also married his daughter and heiress Urraca to a foreigner, Raimundo of Burgundy, who died before the King, but spent a busy life in bringing settlers from France to replenish the desert cities of Salamanca, Avila, and Segovia. A brief period of unrest set in 79 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS while the fickle Urraca ruled, but the reign of Alfonso VII, the Emperor, saw further steps taken towards the making a Christian country of Castile. At his death the two kingdoms were again separated for three-quarters of a century, but were united for evermore under Fernando III the Saint. The cities of Old Castile and Leon, that is to say of the territory reaching from the Cordillera Cantabrica to the Guadarrama, had their rebirth at or about the beginning of the twelfth century, and grew and flourished exceedingly for some hundred and fifty years, until the Andalusian con- quests of Fernando el Santo laid open the smiling southern towns of Seville and Cordova to the Christians. It is with these cities, which, left stranded by the tide of national life flowing south- wards in the wake of Fernando's victorious armies, have retained to a great extent their early mediaeval aspect, that I shall be concerned in the course of the next half-dozen chapters. The Castile of the conquerors of Toledo still lives in the grand old " Poema del Cid," probably composed during the century that followed the Campeador's death. The story opens with the banishment of the Cid, who makes provision for his long journey by pawning a chest full of sand to the Jews of Burgos, an incident worth record- ing as one of the rare occasions when a Christian gentleman got the better of a Hebrew pawn- 80 CASTILE AND LEON broker. The Campeador, however, as we see him in the artless Poema, has an eye to the main chance that would put any Jew to the blush. He is not the romantic hero of latter- day poets, but the man who, by way of punish- ing his sons-in-law, the Infantes de Carrion, for stripping their wives and leaving them in the wood of Corpus to be eaten by bears, has them up before the King and gets himself paid enormous damages. Such were the Castilian knights who freed that barren land from the Moors. The cities had always enjoyed a high degree of liberty, for in the earlier times of the Reconquest they had their origin in border fortresses, upon whose loyalty the very crown of the King depended. During the lifetime of Alfonso V I they were kept in order ; but their chance presented itself in the years of unrest that followed, when there was no strong arm to hold the sceptre. They were slow to learn to turn their position to advantage, but gradually came to understand how to make their weight felt through Cortes, the parliaments of the realm. In the twelfth and part of the thirteenth centuries they more than held their own against crown and nobles alike, and attained a condition of prosperity and security that made possible the erection of the numerous remarkable buildings of that period which I shall presently describe. It should be remembered, in considering these F Si SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS monuments, how very new a country Castile was when they were built. It is true that a high degree of civilisation had existed under the Visi- goths ; but the Moslem invasion had obliterated it. It is thus natural that the much more ad- vanced arts of France, brought by the great numbers of clergy that came under Alfonso VI, should have entirely superseded the timid national styles as we see them in the few surviving Astu- rian and Mozarabe churches. It should also be noticed that a large part of the population of Castile was of foreign origin, especially in the towns ; the race had not yet been formed, and it would be unreasonable to expect from it the production of buildings such as San Isidoro at Leon, San Vicente at Avila, or the churches of the Salamantine region. In the chapter on Galicia I have spoken of the crowds of pilgrims that came to Santiago from all Christian lands ; many puzzling Eastern and Italian features which appear in Castilian architecture may be explained by the presence of pilgrims, and, still more, of the army of Armenian and Syrian camp - followers who traded in all sorts of relics and supplies along the great roads. For many years, then, the main artistic influences at work in Castile were the Burgundian, brought by the monks of Cluny, and the southern French (Aquitaine and Anjou) brought by bishops of the same order who came from those provinces. It 82 CASTILE AND LEON would be a mistake to suppose that Romanesque in Castile has no features of its own ; the domes of the Salamantine churches are a case in point, and are probably due to Eastern relations. The exterior galleries of the Segovian group are also peculiar. The Mudejar, or conquered Moorish population, seems to have been large in several Old Castilian towns, and though its influence was never as strong there as at Toledo, it is un- doubtedly to be traced in the coupled ribs in vaults such as those of La Vera Cruz and San Millan at Segovia. As these styles were of foreign origin, and were in- troduced at hazard into various parts of the country, it is not surprising that no distinctive Castilian Romanesque should have sprung up. Each region, each city almost, had some great church that had usually been erected by foreigners, and whose forms were reproduced in other buildings of the locality. This state of things lasted until the time of Fer- nando el Santo, a reign of as great importance in archaeology as in political history. Towards the end of the twelfth century already, the Benedictines had had to cede the royal favour to the monks of St. Bernard, the white Cister- cian friars. The results of this change immediately made themselves felt, for richly endowed churches were built by the new-comers in a style which they brought with them straight from France, and with which pointed architecture made its entry into 83 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Spain. As the Cluny builders had distinguished themselves by extraordinary richness of ornament- ation in carved doorways, capitals, and cornices, and by their lofty steeples, so the Cistercians made the difference between themselves and the un- reformed patent in the unadorned severity of their churches and the lowness of their towers. The convent church of Las Huelgas at Burgos is a magnificent example ; though one of the richest royal foundations on Spanish soil and of the most perfect finish, it has very little sculpture. The Cistercian influence was vigorous in Spain throughout the thirteenth century ; the cathedrals of El Burgo de Osma and of Sigiienza, particularly the latter, owe much to it. The time was fast approaching, however, when the power of the great secular churchmen should overrule that of the orders. Towards 1220 Bishop Mauricio of Burgos made his famous journey to Spier, passing through France on the way. The marvels of the mighty cathedrals that were then springing up at Paris, Rheims, Chartres, Bourges are very reasonably supposed to have decided him to introduce the new French style at home; and so it was that the third great artistic invasion of Spain took place. Fernando el Santo seems also to have been a devoted admirer of the grand French Gothic, and his reign saw the foundation of the three cathedrals by which it is represented in Spain: Burgos, Toledo, and Leon. 8 4 CASTILE AND LEON How foreign French Gothic was to Castile may be clearly seen by a glance at the humbler churches contemporary with these great cathedrals and abbeys. Everywhere the Spaniards went on build- ing in some form of Romanesque ; the towns of the Salamantine region continued their churches un- moved by what was happening at Burgos ; and at Toledo the Mudejar style was used, under the very shadow of one of the greatest Gothic cathedrals in Christendom, for another three centuries. A few, very few, buildings show evident signs of the influence of Burgos ; but the fashion in which different styles have lived side by side on Spanish soil is truly extraordinary. It foreshadows the man- ner Spaniards have of living to-day, in little cliques entirely shut off the one from the other, and which seem to have not the slightest curiosity of what is happening over the way. The end of San Fernando's long and glorious reign brought the great days of Castile to a close. Its history during the fourteenth and half of the fifteenth centuries is not brilliant. The land was full of civil wars ; the Black Prince, a rabble of French gentlemen of fortune, and the bloodthirsty Trastamaras left no peace from one end of the kingdom to the other, and the towns were torn by everlasting feuds between the nobles, or between different factions of the citizens. The population had not had time to amalgamate properly ; the discordant elements were at each other's throats 85 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS immediately the central authority showed signs of weakness. There are very few important works of this period. While Castile abounds in Roman- esque and early and late pointed churches, there is hardly a single important example of the middle- pointed style in all its territory. At Toledo we find grand sculpture making its appearance in the cathedral, but it is entirely French, as were the manners and dress of the court. Middle-pointed features are to be seen in older churches that were repaired at this period, but the churches that were begun in the fourteenth century, like the cathedral of Palencia, dragged on very slowly, and did not near completion until a hundred years or more later. With D. Juan II (1407 54) things went rather better. D. Alvaro de Luna, the great Constable, ruled Castile with a firm hand, and the King devoted much of his time to the arts. His court was a brilliant one, and under him a new period of church building began. The architects and sculptors were again foreigners ; this time they came, not from France, but from the Low Countries, Burgundy and Germany. It seemed that Castile was never to have an art of its own. During this period commercial relations between Spain and the Netherlands made it easy for Spaniards to fall in love with northern art, and to bring, first pictures, and then painters and architects, home with them. We even know of an English painter, Jorge Ingles, 86 CASTILE AND LEON who painted the portraits of D. Inigo Lopez de Mendoza and his wife that still exist at Buitrago. At the same time the King patronised Jan Van Eyck, and took the first step for the introduction of the Italian Renaissance into Castile by ordering the great marble retablo of El Paular from Genoa. Italian painters also came ; we have the author of the frescoes in the cathedral at Leon, Nicolas Florentino, who painted the retablo of the old cathedral at Salamanca, and others whose names are known but whose works have vanished. In fact, it seemed for a moment to be uncertain whether the Italians, or the Flemings and Germans, were to capture the Spanish market, when sud- denly Spanish opinion declared itself strongly in favour of the arts of the North. Towards the middle of the century a family of German archi- tects called Colonia appeared at Burgos, whither they are supposed to have been brought by Bishop Alonso de Cartagena, who had travelled through Germany on his way to the Council of Basle. German influence was probably already at work when the Colonias arrived ; but it soon dominated everything at the Old Castilian capital to such an extent that the thirteenth-century French cathe- dral was rebuilt by the new-comers ; and from that moment on not a church escaped them. And this victory was not confined to architec- ture ; it was complete all along the line. The Spaniards, who had been left cold by the simple 87 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS elegance and true proportions of the best French Gothic, found in the endless intricacy and florid ornamentation dear to the Germans something to which their hearts responded at once. The Nor- therners were skilful wood-carvers as well, and their altarpieces of Gothic pinnacles, canopies, and groups of figures immediately became more popu- lar in Spain than they ever had at home. The reign of Enrique IV, the Impotent, was a troubled time in Castile ; the nobles, the great prelates, the military orders, the cities with their inter-municipal armed forces, all got out of hand, and power appeared to be vested anywhere but in the crown. When, however, Isabella came to the throne in 1472, a new period began. Her mar- riage with Ferdinand of Aragon united the two kingdoms ; and the joint sovereigns turned all their attention to setting up a strong government. Opinions have varied greatly as to the character of the Catholic Kings, as Ferdinand and Isabella are always called in Spain. Whether the work was theirs or not, their reign saw a firmer central power established in Castile than the country had known since the times of Fernando el Santo. Whether the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews were necessary are questions into which I cannot go here ; but I would point out in passing that sovereigns sometimes have to bear the odium of acts that are imposed upon them by the popular will, and that this has often been the case in Spain. 88 CASTILE AND LEON There can be little doubt that the expulsion of the Moriscos was due to the fact that the Christian population had so strong a racial hatred for them that it was impossible for the two peoples to live side by side. The case of the Jews was in many ways similar. The attitude of the noisy section of the Spanish Church must not be taken to mean that it was the priests who stirred up all the bitter feeling. The bitter feeling was there already and there were churchmen ready to take advantage of it. No one will accuse the Church of making trouble between Asiatics and white men in Califor- nia at the present day, and yet there is antagonism enough. In short, however autocratic the form, no government can thrive, or ever has done so, with which the bulk of the people is not in sympathy. When justice is done, a large share of the blame which the Catholic Kings have had to bear for certain acts, and still more that which Charles V and Philip II have had to endure for the insane fiscal policy of the sixteenth century, will be trans- ferred to the pig-headed representatives of the towns in Cortes and to their constituents. Mod- ern constitutional historians, particularly in Spain, are fond of praising the Castilian Cortes and de- nouncing the tyrants who crushed them. They seem to forget that, even after the Comunero rising was broken at Villalar, Charles V was anxious to give the country proper representation 89 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS in Parliament ; but that he was unable to do so because the few cities, under twenty in number, who were still represented, flatly refused to share their privileges with other towns. And as for the fatal delusion that the possession of specie consti- tutes wealth, it was deeply ingrained in the very souls of the Spaniards. It is absurd to imagine that Charles V, a Fleming who had had long experience with his, financially, extremely advanced Northern cities, and with Italian ideas and practice on the subject, could have been in favour of pro- hibiting the exportation of gold from Spain. On the other hand, we find Cortes making a pathetic plea for the adoption of that measure with every batch of grievances they present. The firm rule of Ferdinand and Isabella gave the country prosperity ; and the new school, founded earlier in the century by Northern archi- tects, bore fruit in the florid Castilian style, known in Spain as Gothic of the Catholic Kings. So popular did it become, and so wealthy were the great Churchmen of the day, that there is hardly a town in the kingdom but has some church with its mighty doorway running up to the roof, and covered with escutcheons and every sort of orna- mentation. It is curious that this style should strike foreigners as being essentially Spanish, and even as bearing traces of Moorish influence. It is Spanish merely in that Castile is the only country in which it is to be found ; for if one 90 CASTILE AND LEON analyses the detail, one finds that it is all German and Flemish. As for the Moorish influence, it had very little share in these works ; the impres- sion is probably conveyed by the disposition, for doorways were a favourite place for display with the Moors, and the Castilian churches are often a shapeless jumble of walls in which a single great portal stands out like some strange monu- mental arch. In spite of the vast amount of building that was done during this period, the Spaniards were slow in producing architects of their own. The Colonias, the Egas, Juan Guas> and many others of the most famous, were Germans or Flemings, and it is only towards the end of the fifteenth century that Spanish names gain the majority with the Hontanons, Siloes, Gumiels, Covarrubias, Ibarras, etc. With the interior decorations it is the same story ; the carvers, gilders, glaziers, painters, and smiths are almost all foreigners. It is due to the wealth of Spain at the period, and to the paralysis that has come over the country since, that her churches are such matchless museums of the industrial arts. It may be imagined that the best German and Flemish craftsmen, those who were much sought after at home, would not care to undertake the long and adventurous journey to Spain. Jan Van Eyck did pass through the kingdom, but he had been summoned by a royal patron. Most of those 91 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS who came probably had, in the way of fame, much to gain and little to lose. Certainly the school of painting which made its appearance in Castile in the fifteenth century has all the look of having been founded by one set of sign-painters and continued by another. A great number of the best Flemish primitives have been found in Spain ; certain masters like Bosch and Patinir are better represented there than anywhere else ; but it is known that most of these pictures were sent by the court during the reigns of Philip I and Charles V. Isabella the Catholic also had a collection of pictures, the best of which were Flemish. Those by her own countrymen like Antonio Rincon were probably not remarkable ; and the Flemish painters who found their way to Castile were nearly all inferior men. Most of the works which appear in the market and in private collections in Spain, attributed to Van der Weyden, Memling, Gherard David, the master of Flemalle, and other such names, are obviously thinly disguised copies of well-known pictures. The ambulant painters prob- ably brought with them designs by their masters, which they palmed off on the Spaniards as their own. In the cathedral of Seville there is a little painting, the composition of which is exactly like Schoenegauer's " Death of the Virgin " ; and at Leon there is a big picture similar to it in every respect except in size. Many a woodcut of 92 CASTILE AND LEON Diirer's was turned to account in the same way ; and for no other reason these Spanish primitives always look better in photographs than in the life. It was mainly from vagabond second-hand craftsmen, attracted to Spain by tales of her wealth, that the early Castilian painters learned their art. Of late years Spanish and other writers have talked much about this school, saying that if it were the object of careful study, enough pictorial evidence could be got together to prove that the painters of these Castilian-Flemish altarpieces were possessed of embryonic qualities which developed later and dazzled the world in El Greco and Velazquez. With a full share of prejudice in favour of Castile, I must confess that I think there is exaggeration here. Many of the altar- pieces are beautiful in some dusky side chapel in a Castilian church ; there they tempt one to scramble up on the altar and strike matches. Fernando Gallegos painted sumptuous draperies that are a joy to the eye ; but when one knows his best work and the date at which he did it, one hopes that they will leave the Spanish Van Eyck in the cathedral of Zamora. The very title Spanish Van Eyck has something damning about it. Juan de Juanes, a poor painter, is the Spanish Raphael. Nearer our own times we have one Chinnery, the Lawrence of India. One is re- minded of Saxon Switzerlands and Cornish Rivieras. 93 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS As long as there is no representative array of Castilian primitives in the Prado, there will be writers to say that somewhere wonderful pictures exist which show that the Castilian school had an independent existence from the first. When the patriots succeed in getting it, it will go hard if that very room does not furnish conclusive evi- dence that there is no trace of any such thing. The Catalans also have primitives, better primi- tives than the Castilians, though the two best of them are Cordovese. But, good or bad, the Catalans cannot claim that their early painters founded a great Renaissance school, for there never was one in Catalonia. Thus it is amiable and touching in a Catalan that he should praise his primitives ; he cannot have any very black designs in doing so. But when a Castilian does the same, one is usually justified in suspecting him of trying to inveigle one into the admission that his primitives were the fathers of El Greco and Velazquez, and in treating him accordingly. With wood-carving and sculpture the case is different ; though here again all the models are foreign. Gil de Siloe, who carved the great re- tablo at Miraflores, was actually a Spaniard, but all the finest work of the age might well pass for Bur- gundian, Flemish or German. For many years the farther the Spanish pupils wander from their masters the worse they fare. In any case there was a much greater demand for carved, painted, and gilt re- 94 CASTILE AND LEON tablos than for painting in Castile at this time. The retablos make a braver show ; in a sense they are more like real life ; and the least intelligent observer must notice that they cost a mint of money, a quality which recommends itself to the Spanish mind. The Spaniard likes to feel that he is getting his money's worth, and is inclined to be sceptical of the value of works of art the materials of which are not precious ; and, to tell the truth, he is amply borne out in this by the dizzy fluctuations that constantly occur in the price and esteem of painted pictures. This explains why there is so much more fine fifteenth and sixteenth century sculpture than painting in Castile. The laws of supply and demand give a perfectly satis- factory reason why the Spanish temperament ex- pressed itself in sculpture as it never did in painting. It is true that the Hapsburgs were lovers and patrons of painting. But the nation? Surely if the enormously rich Spanish chapters had wanted painting they would have obtained it. Such pic- tures as they did get were the feeble copies of the Italians and Flemings that make such a poor show beside the gorgeous tapestries, wrought-iron rejas, carved choir-stalls and retablos with which Spanish churches still abound after centuries of spoliation. El Greco is a great exception ; but it cannot be too often repeated that he was a Greek by birth, a Venetian by training, and thirty years old when 95 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS he came to Spain. He also had trouble about getting paid for his pictures. Even he had to turn retablo-maker in self-defence. It would be interesting to know what El Greco, who had probably been brought up in the Orthodox Church, and signed in Greek to the end of his days, secretly thought of himself turned maker of graven images. Heaven knows that there were enough good painters to be had in the six- teenth century, if the bishops and chapters had not greatly preferred to give their first thought to carving and, above all, the industrial arts that made for splendour, and let painting take its chance. To that desire for magnificence which more than anything else influenced the Spaniards of this age was added a strong aversion from the Italian Renaissance. The new style was very slow in penetrating Castile. For three-quarters of a cen- tury after it made its first appearance in the re tablo at El Paular, near Segovia, its influence was confined to decoration. The delicate carving that is the main feature of the style known in Spain as Plateresque found admirers, and was used freely on tombs and facades ; but the important lesson the Renaissance had to teach the Spaniards : simplicity and purity of line and restraint in detail, went unheeded. Gradually, however, both sides made concessions, and the new style, re- presented almost entirely by men of Spanish 96 CASTILE AND LEON birth and Italian training, like Alonso Berruguete, Pedro Ibarra, and Gaspar Becerra, superseded the Flemish and German influences that had lorded it in Spain for a hundred years. The concessions were nevertheless important. The Spaniards would still have brilliantly coloured retablos ; as late as the middle of the sixteenth century the particularly stubborn canons of Sala- manca insisted on having the west front of their new Gothic cathedral covered with sculpture, and got two pupils of Michael Angelo, Becerra and Juan de Juni, who must have heartily despised their barbarian patrons, to do it. And in out-of- the-way places Gothic buildings were still being erected long after this. The style struck such roots in Spain that one finds it cropping up in the labels of windows or in groining as late as the end of the seventeenth century. It reminds one of the manner in which negro blood is said to assert itself where its very presence is unsuspected. There are not many buildings in Spain in which sober Renaissance prevails. The finest are Car- dinal Fonseca's foundations, the Colegio del Arzobispo at Salamanca, and the archiepiscopal palace at Alcala de Henares, both of which have beautifully proportioned, sparingly ornamented patios. Later, towards the end of the century, we have Juan de Herrera's noble austere work in the Escorial and the cathedral of Valladolid. Herrera imparted the grave dignity of his Spanish g 97 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS mountains to his churches; but he owed his oppor- tunities to royal patronage, and has never been popular with his fellow-countrymen. The same may be said of the good painters who worked at the court of the Hapsburgs. The nation at large cared nothing for them, no, not for Velazquez himself. As the Spanish mind turned more and more towards the theatrical display of devotion, the artists who had the best chance of ensuring a livelihood were wood - sculptors who made retablos and great groups representing scenes from the Passion, which were, and are, carried through the streets in procession in Holy Week. Berruguete and Becerra had had a certain classical sobriety; but their successors realised that what was required of them were lay figures for the sacred drama, which should counterfeit real life as closely as possible. Here again the Spaniards expected something definite from their works of art, quite apart from artistic merit. These Passion groups, pasos as they are called, are most astonish- ingly realistic scenes. The draperies are painted to represent real stuffs, and the figures are often dressed into the bargain. The beards appear to be the sport of a gale, unless, as is often the case, they are made of real hair. The object is con- stantly to create in the crowd the illusion that it is assisting at Christ's Death and Passion. Silver was so plentiful at this time that it played a great part in church decoration. The 98 CASTILE AND LEON custodia, that peculiarly Spanish vessel of which I have given some account in another chapter, became larger until it assumed the proportions of a tower. The most distinguished of the families of silversmiths that worked in Castile was that of Arfe, which made custodias for Spanish cathedrals for nearly a hundred years. The founder of the dynasty was Enrique de Arfe (Harfe), who came from Germany early in the six- teenth century and always worked in the Gothic style. His son Antonio has left a very few pieces, but his grandson Juan made dozens of custodias and crosses in a severe classic manner. Juan was also a scholar, and left a book on his art, in which he says that he and his grandfather melted down an infinite number of old crosses and church vessels. In spite of the miserable poverty of the country in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies, churches and palaces were then built which dwarf all that had gone before. Salamanca, half destroyed by the French as it was, has a score of great piles of this period, such as the Jesuit Seminary, the palace of Monterrey, and the church of the Agustinas. The prevailing style was a Spanish adaptation of the Greeco -Roman brought from Italy. The golden stone of Salamanca is so beautiful as to save any architecture with the help of time, and in the very lines of these build- ings there is a certain grandeur and appropriate- 99 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS ness. In essentials they are like the erections of the Catholic Kings, vast expanses of bare wall and monstrous overladen portals and facades. The decorative motives and the system of construction alone have changed. The church interiors become darker ; the win- dows are small and heavily curtained. In the chapels glow the writhing, tortured forms of gilded retablos, and on the altars are images, dressed in purple robes, of the Virgin of Sorrows, with her silver heart pierced by seven silver swords. In Holy Week enormous pasos like those of Zarcillo at Murcia are carried through the streets. In the older churches, where there is not enough money for works such as Sabatini's Lady -chapel at El Burgo de Osma, or the marble facing applied at Valencia, the lines of the original fabric are hidden under coats of gilded and painted plaster, as at Tarazona. Spanish industrial art is agonising, choked by costly metals and stones. In this age of decadence the Spanish spirit asserted itself more strongly than ever before ; triumphing over ingenuous artists who had seen the Italians pursuing beauty for its own sake, it forced them to bend their necks in the service of the display of devotion or riches. Industrial art, indeed, died in the seventeenth century. The Bourbons tried to introduce glass- blowing, the manufacture of porcelain and pottery, and silk-weaving. It was all in vain. The manu- IOO Wooden Statue of the Virgen, at Murcia, by Francisco Zarcillo. Early EigJiteentJi Century. CASTILE AND LEON factories turned out Moustiers ware at Alcora, or Capo de Monte porcelain at the Buen Retiro, languished, and died. Tapestry was also made at the royal manufactory at Madrid for a time. The Bourbons built themselves French palaces at La Granja near Segovia and at Aranjuez ; but the Spaniards looked on listlessly. Architects, painters, and decorators were employed in plenty ; but all, or nearly all, were foreigners. The importers of every new style had been foreigners, it is true ; but formerly the Spaniards had had energy and enthusiasm enough to encourage and imitate their labours. In the midst of the desolation rose up Francisco de Goya, who, as much moralist as painter, left a complete picture of the society of his day. On one side the royal family which, in order not to caricature it, he had to flatter grossly, and the Condesas and Marquesas in their pretty French dresses. On the other the terrible episodes of the war and the yet more terrible Caprichos. But the seed Goya sowed fell among thorns in Spain, where he has had imitators whose work is some- times good enough to be passed off as his own — forgers rather than pupils. It has been left to the French to understand him and to take advantage of the secrets his matchless eye had stolen from life. IOI SORIA, SEGOVIA, AND AVILA Soria is a good example of the city of Old Castile. It lies on the Duero at a point where that river runs north and south on its course from the mountains of Neila before turning westward. Though the capital of a province, it is a still town at the end of a branch railway that goes nowhere. Like most of its peers it knew prosperity in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, and had a brief moment of life in the times of Ferdinand and Isabella, from which periods its monument date. The most curious of these is the ruined monastery of San Juan de Duero, founded at an uncertain date by the Knights of St. John as a refuge for travellers and pilgrims. The church consists of a single nave which has lost its roof, a chancel with a pointed waggon vault, and a semicircular apse. At the entrance to the chancel are two round-arched baldachins carried on twin coupled shafts with capitals, which probably served as side altars. These baldachins are groined, the ribs springing from sculptured heads ; and the capitals are SORIA carved with scenes of the martyrdom of the Innocents. One of their outer roofs is round, the other pyramidal. As Sr. Lamperez says, the form of these two erections is extremely rare in Spain and suggests the East. The capitals also have an oriental appearance, which may be explained by the constant intercourse which existed between the knights of the order in the West and those at Jerusalem. Even stranger is the cloister south of the church. All its roofs are gone ; nothing but the arcading remains, and half of the north side of that has disappeared. There are four different types of arch in the cloister, and these do not correspond to the four sides, but to the angles. Dividing it in half north and south, the north side is formed by Romanesque arches with coarse capitals of the ordinary sort, and the south by two more of very curious intersecting arches without capitals. I know of no other instance in Spain of the use of arches like these except as a decorative motive. They are obviously due to Moorish influence ; M. Berteaux, in M. Andre Michel's Histoi?*e de VArt, points out their resemblance to those of Amalfi and other Siculo- Arabic monuments. The church and its cloister probably date from the early thirteenth century. San Juan de Duero lies outside the town on the other side of the river. In the town itself stands Santo Tome, formerly known as Santo Domingo. 103 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS This church has suffered many alterations in the interior ; but its original plan seems to have pre- sented a nave and aisles of four bays, transepts, and east end composed of three parallel apses or, possibly, of a choir, choir aisle and chapels. All that now remains are the three western bays ; the rest was clumsily transformed in the last Gothic period, which may have lasted well into the sixteenth century at Soria. The main arches of the original part are round, and are carried on engaged shafts with fine sculptured capitals. The nave has a pointed, the aisles round vaults. There are no lights in the nave, as its vault and those of the aisles spring from the same level ; but the aisles have round- headed windows. The church has no good furniture and is disfigured in every way ; but it has preserved intact its chief glory — its west front. This is the finest of its kind in Spain. It is beautiful in every way ; even its stone is of a deeper golden colour than is to be found in any other building in Soria. The great door is richly moulded and carved, the shafts in the jambs have exquisite capitals, and in a vesica-shaped aureole in the tympanum sits God the Father with Our Lord in His arms, surrounded by angels. Above the sculptured cornice comes a great wheel window set deep in the wall, the orders of which are profusely carved. Finally, two rows of arcading run straight across the whole front ; their capitals are on a level of merit with those of the door. 104 West Front of Santo Tome, Soria. SORIA This perfect facade, with what remains of the interior, declares the style of the church. It belongs to the Poitevin family ; the facade itself resembles those of Notre Dame la Grande at Poi- tiers and Sainte Croix at Bordeaux without being a copy of either. The date of Santo Tome may be placed at the end of the twelfth or the begin- ning of the following century. The great church of Soria to-day is San Pedro, " La lnsigne Colegiata," a large rambling late Gothic building of no particular importance. Its cloister, however, of which only three sides re- main, dates from the Romanesque period and is a fair example. It has several good doors, and one of its walls shows fast disappearing traces of an early fresco of the Adoration of the Magi. In the sacristy are kept a few vestments with orphreys embroidered in gold thread, said to have been made at the neighbouring village of Calatanazor. Yet another monument of the great days of Soria is to be seen in the fine door of San Nicolas, in which intersecting arches, reminiscent of those of the cloister of San Juan de Duero, are used as a decorative motive. The convent of La Merced has a fair late Gothic church ; and the facade of the Hermitage of La Virgen del Miron is a good example of simple Spanish Baroque. At a distance of a few miles lie the ruins of Numancia, where the Germans have lately been making excavations. 105 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS The province is wild and thinly populated. A journey by coach or on horseback in any direction from Soria will show Castile unchanged. The peasants are tanned by the sun, racked by the cold, storm-beaten, toil-worn, and innocent of letters. Their cunning hard-bitten faces and lean underfed bodies are those of mediaeval villeins such as we see in old paintings and illuminations. It is a sort of human being that has vanished from more prosperous countries. The monuments of the Sorian region are few ; but it has been seen that they are unexpected and strange. One of the strangest is the little hermitage of San Baudilio, eight kilometres from the village of Berlanga de Duero. In plan the building is square, with a square apse on its east side. The interior has a gallery in the west end supported on a double row of horseshoe arches ; and in the centre there is a column from which radiate eight more arches of the same type, which carry the vaulting. The walls and vaults are covered with well-preserved paintings of hunting scenes, and others of the Life and Passion of Our Lord in a most curious style. The animals, which are represented in a very lively manner, and the detail, recall the East; but it is difficult to say who the authors may have been and whence they may have come. The character of the architec- ture — particularly the vault — seems to point to Moslem builders. Most of the archaeologists who 1 06 EL BURGO DE OSMA have examined it since its discovery a few years ago content themselves with saying that it shows signs of Moorish influence ; Sr. Lamperez, how- ever, does not hesitate to state that it is the work of Moors come direct from Cordova or Toledo. Everyone seems to be agreed that the paintings are of the twelfth century. EL BURGO DE OSMA El Burgo de Osma, the cathedral city whose dignity Soria has disputed for centuries, lies in the southern part of the province. It is a very ancient town, but the monuments of its antiquity are few, though its arcaded streets and old houses give it a certain air. There seems to have been a cathedral on the site of the present one in the eleventh century ; why it was destroyed no one knows. However, in 1232 Bishop Juan Domin- guez founded the existing building, which is par- ticularly interesting in that it shows that, at the moment when the splendid French churches of Burgos and Toledo had been under construction for some time, the Spaniards were beginning a cathedral in a much more primitive style — even at El Burgo de Osma, hardly more than a day's journey from Burgos. This cathedral consists of a nave and aisles of five bays, transepts of two, a choir, and an apse 107 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS groined in seven compartments. Judging from the style of the rest, it seems probable that here, as at Sigiienza, there was originally no choir aisle, and that the east end had the usual Spanish arrangement of three apses. This part seems to have been entirely rebuilt in the seventeenth cen- tury ; and from an even later period should date the enormous marble Lady-chapel which leads out of it and shows good work of its kind, with chiselled bronze ornaments. The chapter must have had money at a time when Castile was poverty-stricken, for there is another colossal marble chapel with boastful display of bronze built over a room which opens out of the south transept, and a huge square tower at the west end. All these additions seriously detract from the general view of the interior, and almost entirely hide the old exterior ; but in them- selves they have a certain interest. The scale of the church is not grand, but the work is of the best early pointed. The main columns have bold bases and splendid clustered shafts with well- carved capitals. The groining is quadripartite with moulded ribs. The clere- story windows in nave and transepts consist of two pointed lights with a circle at their head, enclosed in a pointed arch, and in both transepts there are fine rose windows. The choir itself is old and has simple pointed openings. The detail through- out bears a strong resemblance to that of the nave of Sigiienza Cathedral. 1 08 EL BURGO DE OSMA It will have been gathered from the foregoing that very little of the old exterior is now visible. Fortunately the north door was spared, though it has been enclosed under an enormous Renaissance arch. Here the influence of the French school founded at Burgos is obvious ; and if the figures in the jambs, the scenes of the death of the Virgin in the tympanum, and the carving of the orders of the arch are by a Spaniard, he must have been the most brilliant native sculptor of his day ; though the outer figures in the jambs show a falling off, and are probably of later date and by another hand. A few patches of the old fabric are still to be seen peeping out from behind later additions, and the whole is amusing, if only as an illustration of the small respect Spanish chapters have ever had for the arts of the past. South of the church there is a large cloister with five open- ings, full of rich late Gothic tracery, in each side. The coro occupies the third and fourth bays west from the crossing. It has a very fair reja dated 1550 ; but that of the capilla mayor, which appears to be rather earlier in date and is still Gothic in design, is far finer. There is hardly a richer one in all Spain. The retablo behind the high altar is also one of the most magnificent in the country. It is carved in wood and brilliantly painted and gilt, and is the work of Juan de Juni. It was paid for in 1556 by Bishop D. Pedro Alvarez de Acosta, who is said to be represented 109 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS in it among the apostles. In the trascoro there is another smaller retablo by the same sculptor. All the detail in these two is very delicate and en- tirely Italian in feeling; only the flesh has been a little repainted. The finest monument in the church is the tomb of a bishop which stands in the south transept. The efiigy lies on a couch round which are a number of little sleeping figures ; and under a cusped row of arcading round the sides there are spirited scenes, some of which are taken from Holy Scripture, and others from the hunting field. The character of the work is of the thirteenth century. In the sacristy there are a few good vestments with gold orphreys made at Calatanazor. Formerly this cathedral possessed a magnificent series of Flemish tapestries, which were sold to a dealer by Sr. Guisasola, the present Archbishop of Valencia, when he was Bishop of El Burgo de Osma. With the proceeds he filled the windows of the church with glass from Munich, which now poisons the light that passes through it. It is rather curious that, in the brief note on the above church given in M. Andre Michel's His- ioire de FAri, the authors should confuse El Burgo de Osma with the town of Osuna in Andalusia, in which the traveller will seek in vain for an early pointed cathedral. no SEGOVIA SEGOVIA The city of Segovia lies at the foot of the Guadarrama, on the banks of the shallow Eresma, which rushes through the gorge at the base of the Alcazar. It has many beauties : its mighty aque- duct, walls, churches, houses, and, above all, the colours of the stone of which it was built and of the earth of the plain that surrounds it. It is always beautiful — in scorching summer, icy winter, and treacherous spring, but most of all in autumn, when the trees, in which it is richer than other Castilian cities, are turning. Its day of greatness was the thirteenth century, when it had thirty parishes, and created a belated Romanesque style which has several distinctive features. Juan II, in the fifteenth, gave it the honour of being a royal residence ; but ruin overtook it after the revolt of the Comuneros, which it had supported. Cloth-spinning made it prosperous ; but few looms have worked there for centuries past. Its last great building is the cathedral, which might serve as a gravestone to the thriving, industrial, Jew- harbouring mediaeval town. The most complete of its existing churches is San Millan, which lies in a suburb to the south of the city. In plan it consists of nave and aisles, three semicircular apses, and a transept that does not project beyond the aisles. Over the crossing in SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS there is a low lantern. Running along the north and south sides there are galleries of round arches, within which are two doors, and whose capitals and cornices are richly sculptured. The west front is very simple ; it has a well-moulded door leading into the nave, and a round-headed window above. The apses are well preserved, and afford a good example of the style. The interior has lost its original roof ; and authorities disagree as to what it may have been. The nave and aisles are separated by round columns and clustered piers alternately, and the latter run up higher than the level from which the lantern over the crossing springs, which makes it improbable that the nave ever had a vault. Street, however, believes it to have had a cylindrical one ; and other architects speak in favour of groining, which is made incredible by the alternating columns. Sr. Lamperez says that the most prob- able explanation is that of a wooden roof, and calls attention to the fragments of beams carved in Moslem designs which are preserved in the sacristy. Sr. Lamperez is probably right, and in view of the carving on these beams, it is in- teresting to notice that the lantern, which has suffered less than the nave, preserves coupled cross- ribs leaving a cavity in the middle. This is a typical Moslem vault, and points to the theory that carpenters and experts in closing vaults were often Moors at this period, to support which there 112 SEGOVIA is much evidence. The capitals in the interior are covered with deeply carved scenes, civil and religious. The main Segovian feature, the exterior gallery, is even better represented in San Martin, where it runs round the north, south, and west sides. In detail this gallery is very delicate, and there are also the remains of a fine sculptured door ; but the tower and the rest of the church have been sadly reformed. San Esteban also has an exterior gallery, and, until six years ago, it possessed a magnificent steeple. When this beautiful work with its moulded arcading and varied detail was struck by lightning the finest example of a class perished. It is now being slowly restored. San Juan de los Caballeros, now the atelier of the painter Zuloaga, has nave and aisles, three apses, the usual exterior gallery, and, alone in its class in this respect, projecting transepts. The tower was once a rival of that of San Esteban, but only the lower part remains. The title it owes to the fact that it was the church of the noble Segovian families, which perhaps explains the extraordinary richness of its capitals. Outside the town, on rising ground, stands the Templars' church, La Vera Cruz. An inscription gives the date of its termination as Era 1246 (a.d. 1208) ; the Templars were abolished by Clement V in 1312 a.d., and their church went to the Knights of Saint John. This is one of the H 113 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS most curious buildings in all Spain, and it is a rare chance that it should be dated, thus fixing the period of much similar work at Segovia. It is twelve-sided in plan, and within there is a small walled chamber of two stages, round which the nave, which is roofed with a round vault, forms a sort of aisle. To the east are three semicircular apses. The upper stage of the central chamber has a vault with coupled cross-ribs of the Moslem type, like that in San Millan, and the lower a dome. In the upper stage there is a sepulchre. The work is very good and massive throughout, and there are two finely moulded round-arched doors south and west. This church, like the others of its order, was built in imitation of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. As Sr. Lamperez points out, it is remarkable as showing no Cistercian influences ; for the fact that that order gave the Templars their constitution is often reflected in the Tem- plars' architecture. There are many more Romanesque churches at Segovia : San Lorenzo, San Andres, San Quirce, San Salvador, San Justo, San Clemente ; but they repeat the same architectural features that have been noticed in the more important ones already described, and they are all in a poor state of pre- servation, for many of them were sacked and burnt in the Comunero rising. Five years ago the curious Mudejar church of Corpus Cristi was 114 The Fountain of Life, the Prado. SEGOVIA entirely destroyed by fire. It has been badly rebuilt. The church of the former Geroniinite monastery of El Parral takes us down to the second period of the prosperity of Segovia, that at which Juan II held his Court at the Alcazar. It was founded by Juan Pacheco, Marques de Villena, in 1447, and was slowly built. Several architects were employed upon it, but the bulk of the work was probably done by the Fleming Juan Guas (Waas), maestro mayor of Toledo Cathedral. The church is of very curious plan ; it looks almost as if it had been left without an east end. The western bays of the nave are occupied by a coro-gallery and are very dark, while the eastern are lighted by large windows. The detail through- out is mediocre, and the choir stalls have been taken to Madrid. The most interesting fact about El Parral is that the Fountain of Life, that extraordinarily beautiful primitive, catalogued as by Van Eyck, in the Prado, was painted for its sacristy, and only came to Madrid in 1836. Whether or not this picture is a copy of one by Van Eyck it is difficult to say. Van Eyck was entertained at the Alcazar by Juan II on his way to Portugal ; and it may be that the original pic- ture, which in the church records is called " La Historia de la Dedicacidn de la Iglesia," was painted by him then. That the existing one is not his work n 5 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS is certain ; the touch is not his. Most curious is the subject, which represents a sort of tower, closely resembling, as Professor Justi remarks, the form of a custodia, from which flow the waters of life. On one side a group of Churchmen, on the other a group of Jews tearing their sacred books. The drawing and painting are Flemish; the subject is intimately connected with the social state of Castile in the fifteenth century. In the chapter on Burgos I have mentioned the Cartagena family which, of Jewish origin, gave two bishops, father and son, to that see. Alonso de Cartagena was a great personage at Juan IPs Court ; and he was a rabid anti-Semite, as befitted one of his family history, which leads Professor Justi to suggest that he may have planned the picture. It does not greatly matter ; what it would be interesting to know is whether any Spanish fifteenth-century painter ever learned to handle the brush as the author of this one did, or whether the man was a Fleming whose subject was prescribed for him. The Alcazar is a modern building, the old one having been destroyed some forty years ago ; but it has a magnificent position at the top of its crag and produces a great effect. There are several good private houses in the town, and we must not leave it without looking at the cathedral. This is the last of the great Spanish Gothic churches, for it was begun in 1522 and took nearly three-quar- ters of a century in building. The architects were 116 SEGOVIA Juan Gil de Hontanon and his son Rodrigo, and in it they closely followed the plan they had made for Salamanca, though here they used a chevet instead of a square east end. In plan the Segovian church consists of a nave and aisles of five bays flanked by side chapels, short transepts, a short choir, seven-sided apse, choir aisle, and chapels. The coro occupies the second and third bays west from the crossing. The exterior has the same pinnacles, buttresses, and parapets as Salamanca Cathedral ; but a great difference is marked by the sparingness in orna- mentation here. All the doorways are very simple ; those in the west front are pagan ; and the in- terior, with its enormous towering main columns and broad aisles, is truly grand. There is no tri- forium ; the small clerestory windows are plain triplets, and the glass, which is either dirty white or of rich reds and yellows dating from the latter part of the sixteenth century, is harmonious. The altar is a plain pagan erection ; the stalls of the coro are very late Gothic ; all the rejas are good ; and the walls have not been whitewashed or painted. The furniture is not particularly interesting ; there is little more than a group by Juan de Juni and a series of late Brussels tapestries, but everything belongs approximately to the same period, which is certainly not indispensable in a church interior, but is so rare in Spain as to be pleasing when met with. 117 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS A few miles from Segovia lies the Carthusian convent of El Paular, the church of which is said to have been built by a Moorish architect called Abderrahman about the middle of the fifteenth century. Soon afterwards the fine Genoese retablo, one of the earliest works of the Italian Renais- sance to land on Spanish soil, was brought to the monastery. La Granja, a summer residence of the Court, was once the property of the monks of El Paular. Philip V bought it from them and built there a splendid palace in the style of Ver- sailles, enriched with very beautiful gardens, foun- tains, and terraces. The impression made by these French pleasure grounds in the mountains of Castile is a strange one. The region abounds in unknown and wonderful remains of the Middle Ages, such as the walled towns of Madrigal de las Altas Torres and Sepul- veda, and castles like Turegano and Coca. AVILA He who, after seeing Soria and Segovia, would know another aspect of the Castile of the re- conquerors, may find it in Avila. Soria and Segovia are golden ; Avila is granite-grey. Its old walls with their towers, dating mainly from the times of Don Raimundo of Burgundy, el Conde Repoblador, are still complete, and hills 118 Castle of Coca. AVILA strewn with huge granite boulders rise up beyond them. Avila was a city of noble families of pure blood ; it did not encourage the presence of large and thriving Moorish communities, which gave prosperity to Soria and Segovia. Like the equally proud Leonese cities of Sala- manca and Zamora, however, Avila has adopted many foreign sons. D. Raimundo of Burgundy, first husband of the scapegrace Da. Urraca, daughter of Alfonso VI, brought French knights to repeople it as he did to Segovia ; so many of its nobles must have had other than Gothic blood in their veins. At the close of the eleventh century, when these foreign settlers came, the earliest monuments of the town were begun ; and they bear evidence of the hands of Frenchmen. It is known that Frenchmen worked on the walls ; and when we come to the two most important Romanesque churches we shall see their influence equally strongly marked. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries church building went on merrily ; but the common fate of all the early Castilian cities overtook Avila afterwards, and when Santa Teresa, who was born there in 1515, was a girl, it probably had almost as little air of life about it as to-day. The Jews had already been expelled. The city still bred soldiers and saints who fought for the faith at home and in America, but was already decreasing in popu- lation and wealth. n 9 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Chief among its Romanesque churches is San Vicente, which lies outside the walls to the north of the cathedral. The building was probably begun towards the close of the eleventh century, at which time we know that D. Raimundo brought masons from France ; and the style of the east end suggests that it was planned by a Burgundian. How much of the church was built at that time it is difficult to say ; in the thirteenth century it stood in need of repairs, and the nave and aisles probably received their present form at the latter date. Their style is widely different from that of the east end. San Vicente consists of a nave and aisles of six bays with a groined western porch, transepts, and three semicircular apses. The transepts have round vaults, but over the crossing there is an octagonal lantern carried on pendentives, which must be of later date, and the nave and aisles have quadripartite vaulting, though the main arches are round. In the nave there is a triforium of two round-arched openings in each bay, and, above, a clerestory of round-headed windows. The columns and ribs are large and massive ; the former have acanthus capitals. It is probable that the lantern and, with the exception of the porch, the whole of the church west from the crossing dates from the thirteenth century, the time at which San Vicente is said to have been rebuilt. Street thinks this is improbable ; but the I20 AVI LA style of the east end makes it almost certain that the original builders intended to roof the nave with a waggon vault like that of the transepts. The triforium also suggests that the nave is the work of men of the Angevin school who had departed from the style in which San Vicente was begun. It must always be remembered that Spain lingers many years behind the rest of Europe in point of style. The exterior has suffered little from time and stands out proudly, showing its splendid, solid, fortress-like apses and buttressed transepts with- out the undergrowth which usually obscures these old Spanish churches. Along the south side is a curious gallery of round arches which dates from the fifteenth century, but is probably a last example of the Segovian cloister. The towers to the west are unfinished ; one of them has a poor fifteenth- century top. Under these is a magnifi- cent groined porch and sculptured doorway. The door is round-arched, and each division has a smaller round arch enclosed in the tympanum. The orders are richly carved with leaf designs ; the tympana of the smaller arches have scenes ; and in the jambs and on the dividing shaft are large statues of saints. Above is a fine sculptured cornice. Sr. Lamperez is of the opinion that this doorway is a blood relation of the great Portico de la Gloria at Santiago ; but the character of the carving on the orders of the arch, and even that I 2 I SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of the statues, hardly bears out this theory, which rests mainly on the general composition. What- ever its origin, it is one of the finest examples of twelfth-century art in Castile. The interior has little of interest save the truly extraordinary tomb of San Vicente, Santa Sabina, and Santa Cristeta, the patrons, which stands on detached shafts under a late fifteenth - century baldachin. Its canopy is carried on clustered shafts on which are cusped arches, and the whole is covered with carving, the lower part having sculptured scenes of the lives of the three martyrs. The character of the work seems to be Italian, and its date the early thirteenth century. For many years past San Vicente has been under restoration at the hand of Sr. Repulles. The sculpture throughout is being renewed, and it looks as if much more of the old work than is at all necessary were being taken away and replaced by copies. It would be interesting to know what is going to become of all this very valuable sculpture, and why so important a monu- ment as the west doorway has been touched at all. San Vicente may have needed a constructive restoration ; but this tampering with the doorway is gratuitous and altogether mysterious. Also outside the walls, at the south-eastern extremity of the town, stands another grand Romanesque church, San Pedro. The ground plan is similar to that of San Vicente, and, though I 22 AV1LA its date is unknown, it probably represents the type of church to which San Vicente would have belonged had the original plan been followed, for in San Pedro we find no triforium. The exterior of the apses shows good work, and the west front has a fine great wheel window and a deeply moulded door. The churches of San Martin and San Segundo both preserve a certain amount of Romanesque work, but nothing of great import- ance. The cathedral of San Salvador is so built that its east end forms part of the city wall. The date usually given as that of the foundation is 1091 ; but the exterior of the apse is the only part of the building which can be said to go back so far. In plan it has a nave and aisles of five bays, transepts, choir, and double choir aisle, with nine semicircular chapels in the thickness of the wall, which has all the solidity of a work of defence. South of the church there is a cloister. The planning of the chevet is very peculiar. When it was built and by whom it is not known ; the records of Avila are exceedingly meagre even for Spain. This part of the building, with its graceful shafts, lofty triforium of twin horseshoe openings, and round-headed clerestory windows, has naturally to be supported by double flying buttresses. It seems, judging by the style, to date from the end of the twelfth century ; its fragility contrasts with the massive strength of 123 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS the almost contemporary San Vicente and San Pedro, and, still more violently, with the fortress- like exterior wall. The horseshoe lights of the triforium and the strangely improvident system of construction suggest that it is the work of a Castilian architect. The nave and aisles are again different in style and of a later period. It seems that they were given their present form in the first half of the fourteenth century. Here the triforium dis- appears, and in the nave and transepts we have a clerestory of enormous six-light windows, many of which have been blocked up. The cloister is very dilapidated ; but it appears to be of the same period as the nave. On its east side there is a large late Gothic chapel, and, between it and the south transept, the sacristy. This is a square room with pendentives thrown across the angles to bring the vault to an octagon, and in each side there are four pointed lights. The sacristy is entered through a sort of vestibule, which is also curiously groined. The detail in these two rooms is very good : they can hardly be later than the thirteenth century. The doors by which the cathedral is entered are two : one in the west front which has two enormous figures of wild men on either side of it, and another opening into the second bay of the north aisle. The latter is a grand doorway with statues in its jambs and a richly carved tympanum. 124 AVILA The orders of the arch, also, are covered with sculpture. The work resembles that in the cathe- dral of Leon. It would be interesting to know whether Leonese builders, formed in the school of the Frenchmen who built the cathedral, were sent to Avila. This doorway certainly looks as if such were the case, and the same men may also have pierced the great clerestory windows in the nave in imitation of those at Leon. Such windows could hardly have been the invention of Castilians, for the object of church builders in Castile is rather to shut out than to admit light. It is typical of the slowness which Spaniards have always shown in adapting architectural forms to their needs that they should have thoughtlessly imitated the great French open nave here at Avila, and found themselves reduced to blocking up the windows afterwards. The exterior, when viewed from the north-west, so that the fine tower with its buttresses and ball enrichments and the north transept front with its circular window are the predominant features, gives the impression of middle pointed work, and no nearer approach to one exists in Castile ; though Avila is so mixed in style that it can hardly be classified at all. Street says that, seen from this side, the whole might pass for an English four- teenth-century church. The interior of this cathedral is of a strange colour, for, while those of the clerestory windows I2 5 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS in the nave which have not been blocked up are rilled with dirty white glass and the stone is grey, the transepts have richly coloured panes of the sixteenth century by Alberto and Nicolas de Holanda, and the masonry in the choir looks as if it had been daubed with red paint. It appears that this is due to the decomposition of the stone ; but the result is that the light in the nave is cold and grey, while that in the east end is reddish, often further accentuated by red velvet hangings. Behind the high altar is a great retablo with scenes from the Nativity and the Passion painted by Pedro Berruguete, Santos Cruz, and Juan de Borgona. The coro, which occupies one bay west from the crossing, has good sixteenth-century stalls. This period, the age of Alfonso Berruguete, Pedro's son, gave almost all its furniture to the church. The tomb of Bishop Alfonso de Madrigal, El Tostado, by the younger Berruguete, stands in the choir aisle ; and there is more good work by him in the sacristy, where a huge classical silver custodia by Juan, the last of the Arfes, and a few fair pieces of plate are also preserved. In one of the chevet chapels there is a portrait by El Greco, but so dirty and so badly hung that it cannot be seen. The Italian Renaissance work of the Berruguete school in the cathedral is good enough, but it can- not stand beside the tombs of the Infante Don Juan, son of the Catholic Kings, and his attendants, in the Dominican convent of Santo Tomas outside 126 AVILA the city to the south. They are by Domenico Fancelli of Settignano, generally known in Spain as Domenico Florentino, the author of the royal tombs at Granada. He was one of the greatest of the Renaissance sculptors who ever worked on Spanish soil. Avila has many more buildings which are worth examining, and the town itself is beautiful and wonderful. When seen from the rocky hill beside which the old road to Salamanca passes it is like a city in an illuminated book, all contained within its walls. 127 VI SALAMANCA AND ZAMORA The southern part of the kingdom of Leon, the plain which stretches from the valley of the Duero to the Sierra de Gata and the Pena de Francia on the borders of Estremadura, looks upon the famous university town of Salamanca as its capital. Sala- manca is a lordly, grave, and beautiful city. Seen from the other side of the old Roman bridge, it rises up from the Tormes, tier upon tier of strong houses, with the great new cathedral at the top sheltering the old cathedral, which nestles against its south side. It is a golden city ; for the stone of which it is built, white when quarried, soon takes on a rich tone. The streets are still full of churches, colleges, and great sixteenth-century palaces, though the French destroyed nearly half of them during the War of Independence. With more life than any of the Castilian cities except Madrid and Valladolid, Salamanca is not noisy or bustling or squalid. It is not for nothing that its people have spacious houses, squares, and streets ; they seem to have preserved the dignity 128 SALAMANCA which was once associated with the name of Castile. The country round about is inhabited by Charros, a race of tall strongly built men, the only peasants left in Spain who wear their old costume, not because they cannot afford to buy new clothes, but because they prefer it. In the plaza of Sala- manca one is always sure to see one of them, dressed in his astrakhan jacket, knee-breeches and top-boots, with his cloak hanging from his shoulder, pacing like a king, with three or four seedy little townsmen running along beside him on their trodden-over heels. The Charros have preserved their music and customs. On feast days they dance all the after- noon in some square or village threshing floor; rain, snow, and wind are powerless to drive them from it. The music is strange and wild, played on the dulzaina and tamboril, a sort of fife and drum. The dance is danced by couples facing one another, holding their bodies absolutely erect and stiff and their hands high, all the agility going to their feet. I have seen exactly the same dance to the same music on the same instruments danced by Kabyles — not in the desert, but in the Maritime Exhibi- tion at Bordeaux. They sing romances also and charradas, curious mixtures of tales of chivalry, fifteenth-century bucolic verse, and ingenuous accounts of everything that has happened in the i 129 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS land. The impression left by Wellington's soldiers is recorded in the following : — * Ay del Ingles, que no bebe vino ni come tocino ni fuma de anis ! Y si estuviera en la cama con tigo la noche, quisiera dormir." 1 In carnival and on other great feasts they perform many elaborate ceremonies in connection with the dances, ceremonies which practically amount to pastoral plays. A complete collection of the songs, words and music, of the region has been published. It is the Cancionero Salmantino by D. Damaso Ledesma, organist of Salamanca Cathedral. It was not until the latter half of the eleventh century that the southern part of Leon was secure from Moorish raids. Alfonso VI then married his daughter Urraca to D. Raimundo of Burgundy, who set about colonising it ; for these plains must have been bare of inhabitants after the raging wars of three centuries. D. Raimundo brought Basques, Gascons, and other Frenchmen in plenty, so that the population here has a strong non-Spanish strain. The Pena de Francia, south of Salamanca, takes its name from these foreigners, and the Salamanca 1 Alas for the Englishman, Who drinks no wine And eats no bacon And smokes no anise ! And if he were to go to bed with you At night, he would want to sleep. 130 SALAMANCA greyhound is still called a galgo, probably a cor- ruption of galico = French. At the same time Alfonso VI kept up constant relations with France; for he was five times married, and four of his wives came from that nation. He filled the sees of Castile and Leon with French bishops, and the predominating influence in the Church was that of the Benedictine monks of Cluny, to which order these bishops belonged, and who had their central Spanish house in the great monastery of Sahagun. The reigns of Alfonso VI, Dona Urraca, and Alfonso VII, the Emperor, saw Castile and Leon united for a time, and in this period the churches for which the Salamantine region is famous were begun. These are the old cathedral and San Martin at Salamanca, the cathedrals of Ciudad- Rodrigo and Zamora, the collegiate church of Toro, and one or two others of minor importance. Both the main influences that went to the forma- tion of the school were foreign ; the first the Burgundian, and the second that of Aquitaine, represented by Bishop Jeronimo of Perigueux. These churches were consequently planned on the Burgundian system, and altered subsequently in their upper portions according to the notions of the builders of Aquitaine. The most remarkable feature of the school, however, is the dome raised on an arcaded stage, of which the old cathedral of Salamanca affords the best example. Neither the Burgundian school nor that of Aquitaine can 131 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS show anything to match these domes ; the influence that brought them must be the Eastern, for it is inconceivable that such a complicated architectural arrangement should have been invented in the upstart city Salamanca was in those days. From the completion of these churches down to the age of the Catholic Kings architecture gave hardly a sign of life in the region. The present character of Salamanca itself is that of a city of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at which period churches, convents, and palaces were rapidly built. Though throughout the Middle Ages the university gave it a constant stream of life, the fourteenth and a good part of the next century were made hideous by the everlasting feuds of the nobles, who kept the town divided against itself to such an extent that the grass is said to have grown high in the streets which separated the quarters where the rival factions lived. What a place Salamanca had come to be by the beginning of the eighteenth may best be judged from the account of it Torres Villarroel, for a time Professor of Alchemy in the university, gives in his autobio- graphy. Until forty years ago the students used to fight bulls once or twice a week in the Plaza Mayor, and all traffic and business was suspended on those occasions. It is now hard to imagine such scenes taking place in the tranquil square, with its little plantation of shrubbery in the middle. We owe the very existence of the beautiful old 132 SALAMANCA cathedral to the wisdom of the experts — Anton de Egas, Covarrubias, Hontafion and others — who in 1512 presented a report on the site which the new cathedral should occupy. They encroached on the older building a little, it is true, but they only suppressed its northern wall. The dates usually given for the foundation and consecration of this church are incorrect, and exact information is missing. It is certain, how- ever, from recorded exemptions and gifts made for the work, that it was in progress during the last two-thirds of the twelfth century. Its founder is supposed to have been the Cid's almoner, Jeronimo of Perigueux, who died bishop of this see in 1120, and whose name has been read off an inscription by nearly all the authorities, even including the grave and sententious tome in the series Espaiia, Sus Monumentos y Artes, as Jeronimo Visquid — visquio in reality being Old Castilian for vixit = he lived. One cannot help being reminded of the painters Pinocit and Fecit. In plan it consists of nave and aisle of five bays, a western porch, transepts, three semicircular apses, and the dome on a double stage of arcading over the crossing. The groining is quadripartite through- out ; but it seems that the original plan was to close the nave and transepts with a waggon vault ; for there is no support in the transept piers for groining ribs, and but slight indication of it in those of the nave. The main arches are all pointed, 133 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS but the windows that light the nave are round- headed. The capitals are severe but perfect, and there are statues in front of the corbels from which spring the groining ribs. It seems, then, that the original plan here was that of the Burgundian church so often met with in Spain from the latter part of the eleventh century on : a nave and aisles, with waggon vaulting in the former and quadri- partite in the latter, such as we find partially pre- served here in Salamanca in the old church of San Martin. Later the plan was suddenly changed, more suddenly than at San Vicente at Avila, where provision is made for the ribs in all the piers. Here the lack of sufficient support is masked by the above-mentioned statues. The dome over the crossing is still more mys- terious in its origin. Above the pechinas (curvi- lateral triangles, formed by the arches where they meet, to receive the annulet) rises a double story of open arcading, the lower round-arched, the upper cusped ; and above that the dome, which is ribbed on the inside. To resist the thrust, four heavy pinnacles are placed outside, and the whole exterior is given the form of a low crocketed spire by the addition of a stilted second dome over the first. Rashly putting together the facts that there had been a bishop of Salamanca who came from Perigueux, and that there are domes resembling this one in many churches of that region of France, many writers have rushed to the conclusion that 134 SALAMANCA this most beautiful element of the old cathedral must be due to French influence. Street first calls attention to the fact that in the French examples there is nothing to be compared to it, for the French domes are supported by no story of pierced arcading, and are consequently dark, whilst this one is splendidly lighted. Sr. Lamperez makes a very ingenious suggestion which offers a reasonable explanation of how this element reached Salamanca. Bishop Jeronimo spent some time at Cardena near Burgos. Now, the monastery of Silos, also near Burgos, is said by a sixteenth-century chronicler to have had a lantern exactly similar to that of Salamanca, and which had been erected some time between 1041 and 1073, being probably due to the relations which then existed between Silos and Monte Casino, where a school of artists from Constanti- nople was kept up. May Bishop Jeronimo not have seen and admired the dome of Silos, and taken steps to procure workmen to build him one like it at Salamanca, though he must have died long before its completion ? There is nothing in the least improbable about the suggestion ; for, however this dome came, it is like nothing of its age in the western countries. As Sr. Lamperez says, those who have praised Brunelleschi for the invention of the double dome at Santa Maria del Fiore should know that this arrangement existed in Spain two hundred years before Brunelleschi i35 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS was born. On the other hand, it has strong points of resemblance with the church of the Holy- Apostles at Salonica and with certain Siculo- Byzantine monuments. As for the ribbed dome, it is a feature which is also to be met with in the churches of SS. Sergius and Bacchus and the Theotocos at Constantinople. Thus the fact of a direct Byzantine influence acting upon this regional school of Romanesque architecture — for, in spite of obvious transition elements, the main lines are Romanesque — is well established. Spain is full of instances of the wonderful ubiquitousness of mediaeval artists; but there is none more striking than this. The vaults, the dome, and the cloister, which is entered from the south transept by a richly orna- mented door, are probably the latest portions of the church. Deformed as it was in neoclassic times, this cloister may yet be discovered to have preserved some of its arches and capitals. The garden in the centre has for years been used by the canons as a rabbit preserve. These animals have been allowed to burrow at will, and have probably done serious harm to the foundations. In connection with it, Sr. Gomez Moreno has dis- covered the name of the one architect of the old cathedral whose name is known. He was Maestro Pedro, and he worked here in 1175. Opening out of the cloister are several chapels, of which the most remarkable is known as the capilla mozarabe, 136 SALAMANCA on its east side. In this chapel the rito momrabe, or special ritual, which was used by the Christians living under Moslem rule, is performed on certain occasions. In Toledo Cathedral, it will be remem- bered, there is a chapel where it is performed every day. This chapel is square below and brought to an octagon above by pendentives thrown across the angles. It is roofed with a dome which has parallel ribs, not unlike those used in La Vera Cruz and San Millan at Segovia, San Baudilio de Casillas de Berlanga (Soria), and other Spanish buildings, and which is Moorish in origin. Of the remaining chapels, the most remarkable are those of Anaya, in a graceful late pointed style, and Santa Barbara, of slightly earlier date. In the Middle Ages many of the university ceremonies were held in the cloister and its chapels ; and the memory of sacristans is charged with untrust- worthy tales of those times. Of the exterior of the old cathedral very little is to be seen ; but, fortunately, this little is the apse and the dome, or Torre del Gallo, as it is called from the iron weather-cock which surmounts it. The detail in the capitals and mouldings is restrained but exquisite, and the colour of the stone of the richest gold. No stronger contrast could be imagined than that offered by this com- pact masterpiece of twelfth-century art and the loose rank ornamentation that runs over the facade of the neighbouring new cathedral. 137 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Though the old cathedral has for long years been abandoned by the cult, it still contains many remarkable works of art. First let it be noticed that, when this church was a cathedral, chapters were content with the space provided for stalls in the choir. There is no trace of there ever having been a coro in the nave here, and the general effect gains enormously thereby. In a chapel entered from the west end of the south aisle, which has been entirely devoid of windows for the last four centuries or so — since the building of the new cathedral — there are well- preserved and extraordinarily interesting frescoes. The name and date of their author are known ; he was one Sanchez de Segovia and he may be said to be the earliest Castilian painter on record, for he executed this work in Era 1300 (a.d. 1262). The retablo of the high altar has about half a hundred scenes, each under a cusped arch, by Nicolas Florentino — a good painter, apparently of the early fifteenth century. The middle panels of the two bottom tiers are by Fernando Gallegos, of whom more presently. On the altar there is a curious early stone Virgin and Child, and the vault has a fresco of the Last Judgment by the author of the retablo. There are several good sculptured tombs of various dates ; but by far the finest is that of the Archbishop of Seville, D. Diego de Anaya, in the chapel which still bears his name. The wrought-iron rail which surrounds it is the 138 SALAMANCA most delicate example of the art in the kingdom. The tomb itself is well carved, as also those of other members of the family in the same chapel. In this and in one of the apsidal chapels there are very curious early organs. Among a number of inferior primitive and other paintings scattered through the old and new cathedrals, three or four small altarpieces will be noticed to be of sound German workman- ship. They are the work of Fernando Gallegos, a son of Salamanca, called by Ford the Spanish Van Eyck. He lived in the latter fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and he is said to have studied under Diirer. Whether this be true or not, he must have learned painting entirely from Ger- many ; for his technique, drawing, colour, and even the types of his personages are typical of that school. Without having any personal character he is certainly the cream of the Castilian primi- tives. His most important work is in the cathedral of Zamora. When the chapter of Salamanca decided to build a new cathedral it summoned the most famous architects of the day to fix upon the plan. The conference, it has already been said, took place in 1512, and the work was begun by Juan Gil de Hontanon in the following year. The cathedral was not ready for service for fifty years, however, and not finished for a hundred. The 139 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS differences between this enormous church and that of Segovia are so slight that I shall not give a full description of it. The main point is that the east end here is square, which detracts from the effect of the whole as a Gothic building. The cim- borium or lantern is a late, overladen structure. The tower, however, is very lofty and has a cer- tain grandeur. The western facade is still Gothic in its main lines ; but it was finished at a time when there were no more Gothic sculptors, so Juan de Juni and Gaspar Becerra, two products of the Italian Renaissance, executed the large scenes with which it is covered. The effect of all this carving is weak and disappointing. Both the sculptors were men of power ; but it looks as if the Salamanca canons' thirst for magnificence had left them indifferent. The interior could hardly miss being grand, such are its proportions ; indeed, it is too large. Many of the windows are broken, and on cold winter mornings icy blasts rage through the bleak aisles and shake showers of glass down on to the heads of the few stragglers who have come in to Mass. The choir stalls are not remarkable, neither is any of the furniture. In the side chapels there are a few good azulejos — Moorish tiles — and a fair copy of Titian's Entombment by Navarrete. The most precious objects in the church are the Cid's coffer and enamel crucifix, and the magnificent Virgen de la Vega, which was kept for some years in 140 SALAMANCA San Esteban after leaving her own desecrated con- vent, and has finally taken refuge here. This twelfth-century image of gilt copper, stones, and enamel of the finest workmanship is said, probably erroneously, to have been brought from Constanti- nople. It is, at any rate, the most stupendous work of the silversmith's art of its period in the country. The oldest church left in Salamanca to-day is San Martin, close to the Plaza Mayor. Unfortun- ately, it is entirely buried under houses, so that the outside is lost to sight. The only date known in connection with it is that of 1103, when it was founded by colonists from Toro. It consists of nave and aisles of four bays, and three semi- circular apses. The nave has a waggon vault, and the aisles quadripartite groining ; though it is evident from the treatment of the piers that this is a modification, and that there were originally intended to be no ribs. The vaults and the main arches are pointed, the doors and the windows round-arched. San Martin, in spite of the altera- tions it has undergone, clearly shows the origin of the Salamantine school. Close to the spot where once stood the Gate of Zamora is San Marcos, one of the few churches of round plan in Spain. It was founded in 1178, and given the dignity of a royal chapel together with other privileges in 1 202. The massive, window- less outer wall suggests that it may have served as a work of defence as well. A simple pointed door 141 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS leads into the interior, which is arranged like other Spanish churches of the period with three semicir- cular apses roofed with semi-domes in the thickness of the wall. Its roofs are all of wood, and the main arches are pointed. It is strange to find this circular form used in a church which was built neither by the Templars nor by the Knights of St. John. The Convento de la Vega has been turned into an agricultural college, and nothing but half a dozen magnificent capitals remains. There are a few more Romanesque fragments in the town, but they are of small importance ; and churches and buildings of the good Gothic period there are none, except for the stout Torre del Clavero. When we come to the age of the Catholic Kings, however, there begins a blaze of splendour ; for, besides the new cathedral, we find the famous facade of the university, the Casa de las Conchas, and a long series of important monuments reach- ing down to the eighteenth century. The facade of the university is the most renowned example in existence of the Plateresque style, to which the stone of Salamanca was particularly suited, for it is easily worked and lasts well. However deli- cate the decorative motives that run over this doorway round the medallions of the Catholic Kings, one is always conscious of the indifference of the Spaniards to form and proportion ; for the building it adorns is a rambling collection of barracks. The square in front is beautiful in many 142 Facade of Salamanca University. SALAMANCA ways — those masses of grandly carved stone of such gorgeous colour, and the sun, and the sky, make it a difficult and invidious task to criticise Salamanca. It is altogether a marvellous city to anyone who is sensible to the beauty of venerable stone. The statue of Fray Luis de Leon, the scholar and poet of perfect academic style who defended the use of the vulgar tongue in all branches of letters, and helped to gain recognition for Santa Teresa's untutored but living writings, stands in front of the university where he taught. In the building itself there are the remains of a famous library, indifferent tapestries, and a ruined chapel. The facade of the Casa de las Conchas with its shells and rich rejas, the patio and artesonado ceilings of the same, the palaces of Monterrey, Salinas, de las Muertes, the beautiful Churriguer- esque Plaza Mayor, the facade of the Dominican convent church San Esteban, even the vast mass of the Jesuit seminary, are things that delight the eye in their proper surroundings, biit which it is imprudent to try to analyse. By far the most perfect building of the latter times in Salamanca is the Colegio del Arzobispo, now known as the Colegio de Nobles Irlandeses, which was founded by the most famous member of the Fonseca family, Alfonso, Archbishop of Toledo, in 1521. The patio stands alone in Spain for its simplicity and purity of line. Three of the best men of the period did their utmost to make it *43 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS what it is. Pedro de Ibarra, Alfonso de Covar- rubias, and Alonso Berruguete worked together upon it, and the last-named painted the retablo in the chapel, which, never remarkable, has suffered many mishaps. It is worthy of note that the Spaniards so much preferred to let line go hang and revel in exuberant ornamentation like that to which generations of Flemings, Burgundians, and Germans had accustomed them, that the calm voice of Italy speaking through this exquisite patio passed unheeded. Opposite the Palacio de Monterrey is the convent of Agustinas Recoletas, founded in 1626 by the then Conde de Monterrey, Viceroy of Naples. The church is a good seventeenth-century building, and it contains Ribera's Conception, one of the grandest works of that painter in existence, and one which has the inestimable advantage of being seen in the place for which it was painted. There are a few more pictures by Ribera : but all save a good San Genaro have been tampered with. There is little enough painting in Salamanca, a town that was once rich enough to command everything its fancy could light upon ! CIUDAD-RODRIGO South-west of Salamanca, surrounded by the foot-hills of the Sierra de Gata and the Perm de 144 CJUDAD-RODRIGO Francia, lies Ciudad-Rodrigo, famous for the sieges it stood in the Peninsular War. The city is of no great age — it was founded about the middle of the twelfth century — but its complete mediaeval walls, towers, and gates, its magnificent cathedral, and the view of river, plain, and moun- tain from its ramparts, make it one of the most beautiful in Spain. Visitors will look in vain for the "grand castle of the thirteenth century" which " still towers above the city, almost perfect " promised them in Murray's Guide Book ; but they may see storks and wonderfully attired peasants enough to compensate for its absence. The bishopric of Ciudad-Rodrigo was founded in 1160, so the cathedral must have been begun after that date, but the exact year is unknown. It is given variously and without sufficient foundation as 1166, 1171, and 1190. Equal doubt hangs over the length of time during which it was under con- struction and the date of its termination. The one certain date is 1230, in which year aids for the work were granted by San Fernando. The architecture belongs in part to the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth, in part to the second part of the latter century ; and, in addition to this, alterations were made in the decadent Gothic and classic periods. Here, as at Salamanca, the names of none of the architects who worked on the body of the church are known. The church consists of nave and aisles of four k i45 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS bays, a deep western porch, transepts, and three semicircular apses, of which the middle one was transformed by Cardinal Tavera early in the six- teenth century. The plan and detail are similar to those of Salamanca and Zamora, with the differ- ence that Ciudad-Rodrigo has no dome. The groining is octopartite throughout, except in the late Gothic portions, but each bay is treated as a dome. Here again we see the change in plan which abandoned the original arrangement of a waggon vault in the nave and transepts, and quad- ripartite vault without ribs in the aisles, for groin- ing ; for there is no indication in the piers that groining ribs had been thought of. In the nave the absence of proper supports is disguised by statues as at Salamanca. The dome-like vaults and heavy pointed arches give a look of great strength and solidity to the interior. Nothing but such massive masonry as this could stand the large and profuse carvings of beasts and foliage with which the capitals are ornamented. The windows in the aisles are triple. They have shafts and capitals and are covered with carving of Romanesque character, whilst those in the nave have early pointed tracery. Both the transepts have circular traceried windows, and there is another, now blocked up, in the west end. In the transept and west porch there are blind cusped arcades in the place of a triforium. The three doors are all remarkable. That in 146 CIUDAD-RODRIGO the north transept is round-arched and cusped, and is set between two long columns under an enclos- ing arch. The south transept facade also has a round-arched door with shafts in the jambs and an unsculptured archivolt. Above, there is a row of arcading with large statues of saints. Most important of all is the door in the west porch. It is double, the great arch being pointed, and the two smaller ones beneath round. There are six shafts in each jamb bearing life-sized apostles under leafy canopies, at whose feet the Torre del Gallo of Salamanca appears as a decorative motive. In the tympanum are scenes of the coronation and death of the Virgin and the Passion of Our Lord. The orders of the main arch are richly carved with scenes under canopies, representing the Last Judgment. In short, the whole doorway — capi- tals, corbels, and all — is profusely decorated with foliage, wyverns, men and beasts. The work is not of the finest finish, but is well-proportioned, and would be of great effect were it not for the disastrous way in which it has been painted white and slate-colour. The heavy, greasy coats of paint and wash take all the life and sharpness of line out of it. In date this monumental door- way cannot be earlier than the thirteenth century. The fine cloister north of the church appears to be of later date, though in part it is early Gothic. An inscription records the name of Benito Sanchez, who was one of the masters who worked 147 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS on the earlier part. The Plateresque additions were made by the architect Giiemez, whose medallion portrait is to be seen in them side by side with that of Canon Villafane who paid the expenses. The exterior of the cathedral is not as much obscured as is often the case in Spain ; much of the old work shows. Let no one abuse the pagan west front, for it still bears traces of the cannon balls it prevented from crashing into the perfectly preserved doorway within during the siege. Ciudad-Rodrigo is not a rich diocese, and the furniture of its church is poor except for the magnificent late Gothic choir stalls by Rodrigo Aleman, like those at Plasencia and Zamora. PLASENCIA The influence of the school which created the arcaded domes of the Salamantine region extended over the mountains southward into Estremadura ; in later times also the cathedral of Plasencia em- ployed the great wood - carver who worked at Zamora and Ciudad-Rodrigo. For this reason I shall speak of the Estremenian city here. Plasencia is surrounded by the River Jerte, which runs through the gorge at the base of the hill upon which the city with its walls is perched, just as Toledo is girded by the Tagus, and the 148 Choir-stalls, Ciudad-Rodkigo Cathedral. PLASENCIA rocky grey landscape of both cities is the same. Its soil is full of Roman remains, and its peasantry still observes Roman customs and cracks Roman jokes ; but the Moors destroyed all its monuments of antiquity. Like Salamanca, the town has two cathedrals, but here the plan was to destroy the one as the other was built. The older building, or the fragment of the west end that remains of it, dates from the early fourteenth century, and has an indifferent cloister of the same period, which in this remote corner of Spain means that debased Romanesque forms had not entirely given place to Gothic. Opening out of the cloisters is the chapter-house, a square room in plan, brought to an octagon above by pendentives. Above these there is a stage of pointed arcading and then a ribbed dome, the thrust of which is resisted by four pinnacles in the position of those at Sala- manca. The outer covering of the dome is also treated in the same manner in both cases, though the ornamentation is much less rich here than in the older example. When this curious building was completed, I do not know ; it is probably the last of its small but illustrious family. The unfinished new cathedral, begun by Bishop Gutierrez Alvarez de Toledo in 1498, is a rambling pile remarkable chiefly for its furniture. The re- tablo of the high altar is a great carved affair by Gregorio Hernandez, 1626, who must be owned to mark a decline in Spanish sculpture. The stalls i 49 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of the coro are among the finest in Spain, and the most Rabelaisian in Christendom. They are by Rodrigo Aleman, one of his best works ; and besides the perfect carving of the architectural details, they have a wealth of scenes from convent life, which represent monks and nuns engaged in every imaginable sort of nefarious traffic. The reja is a fine one by J. B. Celma, dated 1604. A number of magnificent copes and chasubles of the richest velvets, with gorgeous late Gothic em- broideries, are preserved in the cathedral ; and many more are said to have been burnt to get the gold and silver out of them. There are a few in- different churches in the town, full of atrocious pictures ; and valuable paintings are said to exist in one of the convents. Z AMOR A The ancient city of Zamora rises on a violent red cliff on the north bank of the Duero, which is crossed at that point by a long mediaeval bridge. The country round about is bare and parched, and the sun has burned the clay into every shade of ochre. At the top stand the city walls, the square tower, and, very white against the. deep blue sky, the round dome of the cathedral. Zamora was a border fortress throughout the fiercest times of the Reconquest ; its name continually sounds in 150 Choir-stalls, Plascenia Cathedral, by Rodrigo Aleman. Late Fifteenth Century. ZAMORA chronicles, and it was famous before Salamanca ever was heard of. When the Christians had definitely taken possession of it, the ancient bishopric was revived in favour of the French monk Jeronimo, whose name is also connected with that of the old church at Salamanca. The present cathedral, however, was begun in 1151 by Bishop Esteban, thirty years after Jero- nimo's death. The consecration took place in 1174 ; but this need not be taken to mean that more than the east end was finished at that time. The upper portions of the nave are certainly of more recent date, as also the dome over the cross- ing. Late in the fifteenth century modifications were undertaken which entirely transformed the east end and the western porch. The original plan, then, consisted of nave and aisles of four bays, western porch, transepts, dome, and three apses — the usual Salamantine church. The transepts have preserved their pointed waggon vaults, and it was clearly intended to roof the nave in the same manner. The change resulted in the adoption in it of quadripartite groining ; though in the aisles the original plan of quadripartite vaults without groining ribs was carried out. The arches are pointed, and the piers very massive and bold with square caps and bases. The lantern is similar to that of Salamanca Cathedral, except that it has but one stage of arcading, which has led to the general belief that it is the earlier of 151 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS the two. Seen from the outside, the squat form of the dome and pinnacles gives the whole a pro- nounced Eastern appearance. There is at present no entrance at the west end, which is obscured by modern additions ; but from it rises the magnificent square Romanesque tower, which looks as if it had been built for defence. Like the vaults in the nave, this tower shows French influence, and both works may well date from the episcopate of a Frenchman, Guillermo, who died in 1191. The usual approach and en- trance is by the north transept, the front of which has been modernised. Much the best of the facades is that of the south transept, which is without exception the most remarkable front in all the Salamantine region. The main doorway with its four deeply carved orders is flanked by two recessed arches which have figured scenes in their tympana. Above comes a row of arcading, and then a blocked-up window. The general effect is severe owing to the unusually sparing use of leaf and figure ornamentation. The cloister north of the cathedral has been modernised. The furniture preserved in the interior is varied and rich. The choir stalls resemble those at Ciudad-Rodrigo and Plasencia, and are probably by the same wood-carver, Rodrigo Aleman. In this work, even more than in the other two, the German's fancy dwells lovingly on ribald cloister scenes. The draughtsmen who work for 152 ZAMORA " Simplicissimus " have gone no further ; on one panel a fox is represented disguised as a monk and preaching to a flock of hens. There was no love lost between the secular and regular clergy in those days. Both the coro and the capilla mayor have splendid rejas, and there are several well- carved tombs of bishops. Fernando Gallegos has a painting in the trascoro, and a large retablo, his masterpiece, in the Capilla del Cardenal. The panels, which are enclosed in a late Gothic frame, represent scenes from the life of San Ildefonso, and are care- fully and lovingly painted in Gallego's entirely German manner. There is a hole in the roof of this chapel, and, whenever it rains, water trickles down on to the retablo ; but the canons, who savagely resent interference with their ways of doing things, refuse to have it plugged up. There is even less excuse for this hole than for one which they allowed a sacristan to cut in the beauti- ful late Gothic sacristy door — to let the cat out. It is to be hoped that some day a commission will come down on the canons of Zamora ; for, besides the way they treat their works of art, they some- times do not take the trouble to light the liturgical candles on the altar at Mass. During the Octave of Corpus and other feasts the processions here are very gorgeous. The splendid late Gothic custodia is borne through the streets, and the cloister of the cathedral is hung 153 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS with early sixteenth-century tapestries of the Trojan War, equal in style to those of the expe- dition to Tunis in the royal collection at Madrid. Time was when Zamora had nearly as many Romanesque churches as Segovia. Of those that remain, San Claudio, Santo Tome, Santiago del Burgo, Santa Maria de la Orta, all have a certain amount of fair work ; but the most important is La Magdalena. The single nave is entered by a fine moulded door, the orders of whose arch are rather too richly carved in a style which may be termed the Baroque of Romanesque. The interior is remarkable for the two baldachins placed on either side of the nave, as in San Juan de Duero at Soria. La Magdalena was for a time in the hands of the Knights of St. John who built the Sorian church ; but it is supposed to have originally belonged to the Templars. Here the baldachins are carried on twisted shafts with extremely good leaf capitals, and have square-topped, plainly ornamented canopies. It is doubtful whether they were originally intended to be used as sepulchral monuments. Though the work is hard to match in this part of the country, it is equally unlike that in the baldachins at Soria. Zamora has few monuments of any importance later than the Romanesque period. There is a private house with wild men carved on the facade, la Casa de los Monos, and a church or two ; but the cathedral, the walls, and ruined castle with the i54 TORO sweeping view from them over the Duero Valley are enough to fill more days than most people have to spare. TORO On another cliff above the Duero stands the city of Toro, less ancient than Zamora, but more famous in comparatively modern times. It is now a waste and almost deserted place, given over to the making of wine by most primitive processes, and the cultivation of cherries. In early spring the almond trees dot the ragged bare slopes of the hill with their exquisite blossoms. The date at which the Colegiata was begun is unknown, as also that of its conclusion. It is similar in plan to the Romanesque churches of which I have spoken in the foregoing pages, having nave and aisles of three bays, a western porch, transepts, dome over the crossing, and three semi- circular apses. This disposition is very similar to that of San Martin at Salamanca, which is said to have been founded by people from Toro but is certainly older than this church. The pointed waggon vaults have been preserved here in the transept and nave ; but it is difficult to say when and why the present dome-like, groined vaults of the aisles were adopted ; and there is the same discrepancy between the arrangement of the piers and the system of groining that we have seen in the other buildings of this class. SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS The dome is a rough and hesitating copy of the Torre del Gallo at Salamanca ; though its exterior is much less effective than that of its original because of the flat form of the roof. It is worth noticing, in trying to date the church, that the capitals of the columns on the exterior of the apse are exactly like those in the nave at Zamora. The lateral doors, which open, not into the transepts, but into the middle bay of the nave, are both good late Romanesque work. The most remarkable, however, is that in the west porch, a double pointed door somewhat resembling that of Ciudad-Rodrigo, though vastly more valuable, in that it has never been whitewashed and preserves its original polychromy almost intact. The archi- volt and tympanum are covered with figures in a good early thirteenth-century style. Toro is full of great mediaeval houses whose windows are barred by fine iron rejas, many of which have been plundered of late. The churches also were once full of fifteenth and sixteenth cen- tury painting and works of art. The clergy of the town must have made a good thing out of the cartloads of goods that antiquity dealers have taken away from it; for now there is little left but a damaged retablo, by Gallegos or another, in San Lorenzo, and a few pieces of plate in the Colegiata — unless they, too, have vanished during the last four or five years. 156 VII BURGOS Burgos is above all others the city of Old Castile. Its history begins with the first Christian attempts to fortify and reclaim part of the central table- land of Spain, which had been entirely overrun by the Moslems. It knew great prosperity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the best period of the Christian monarchy ; it suffered with the rest of the country in the bad times that followed and, finally, was glorified once more in the age of magnificence under the Catholic Kings and Charles V. The history of Old Castile, therefore, is reflected in its monuments more constantly than in those of Avila, Segovia, or Valiadolid, which represent one or two incidents only. Since the sixteenth century little has happened at Burgos ; but it is a pleasant town with its shady walks beside the Arlanzdn, adorned with windy eighteenth - century statues of the early kings in the style of those in the Plaza de Oriente at Madrid. The first great church of Burgos in point of time is that of the Cistercian royal nunnery i57 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of Las Huelgas, which lies about a mile out- side the town to the west. It was founded by Alfonso VIII of Castile and his queen, Leonor, daughter of Henry II of England; and the build- ing seems to have been begun in 1180 and con- secrated in 1199. This was the period when St. Bernard's monks were ousting the Benedic- tines from royal favour in many lands. Leon already had its Cistercian Moreruela, Navarre and Aragon their Oliva and Veruela, and Catalonia her royal abbeys and nunnery of the same order in Poblet, Santas Creus, and Vallbona. Dona Leonor probably did not wish to be behind the other Spanish kingdoms in patronising the fashion- able order. From the first only noble ladies were admitted into Las Huelgas ; the Infanta Dona Constanza was its second abbess. Its walls have seen royal marriages, coronations, and funerals, and its mitred abbesses have ruled over great domains. Round the convent a flourishing village grew up. Now all is dead. The noble nuns and their lady abbess still remain, but the splendour and riches of their house are gone. The convent is surrounded by an outer wall, within which is the village, and then by an inner court. The church is approached from the north and entered from a porch on the north transept front, beside which rises a low steeple. It con- sists of nave and aisles of the (for Spain) great length of eight bays, transepts, choir, and two 158 BURGOS chapels opening east out of the transepts. There is a cloister passage all along the outside of the north aisle. The west front has no entrance and is simplicity itself with its three plain lancet windows corresponding to the nave and aisles and its gable with a stork's nest as its only orna- ment. Of the interior the only part open to the public is the transept and east end. A heavy railing protects the nave, which, with the rest of the convent, is closed to everyone save the king. Through it the bays of the nave are visible ; and sometimes the magnificent series of Flemish tapes- tries which Felipe el Hermoso gave to the convent are hung up in the nuns' choir. There is an octagonal lantern over the crossing ; and the choir has two bays of vaulting and an apse groined in five compartments. The transept chapels are square in plan ; but arches are thrown across the angles to form a half-octagon at the east end. Street points out that this arrangement is common in Anjou, and goes on to say that it was reproduced in the polygonal vault of the one chapel in Burgos Cathedral which was not tampered with by the Colonias and their followers. How much influence it had on the octagonal vaults which reappear in all stages of Gothic in Spain it is difficult to say. The clerestory has simple lancets ; the arches are pointed. The detail is everywhere severe in obedience to the rules of St. Bernard. There is very little i59 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS sculpture ; but the carving in the doorways in the above-mentioned porch and the cloister running along the north aisle is of the very finest early Gothic work. In fact, there is just enough detail to show that the sobriety of the church was not in the least due to poverty. The same is true of the interior, though it is whitewashed and the east end is further disfigured by very bad re- tablos. South of the church there is said to be a cloister with round arches carried on coupled shafts with carved capitals, and a chapter-house of nine groining bays, the typical Cistercian arrangement. The character of Las Huelgas is different from that of the other Spanish houses of the Cister. Though it obeys the rules of its order in its general simplicity, absence of ornament, and in not possessing a lofty tower, its simplicity is that which is more costly than display. Santa Maria La Real de las Huelgas wears the plainest of dresses, but one of exquisite cut and finish, which, like most perfect gowns, is the work of French hands. In its main lines it resembles the little- known Vallbona de las Monjas in Catalonia. In the first years of the thirteenth century, then, we have the convent Las Huelgas in a fine new French style, richly endowed, and with an Infanta for its abbess. The cathedral of Burgos was a small Romanesque building, and the bishop and clergy must have been envious of the royal 1 60 BURGOS nunnery. When the Queen, Dona Berenguela, judged that the time had come to marry her son Fernando, who was to unite the crowns of Castile and Leon, she sent the Bishop of Burgos, Mauricio, to the Imperial Court at Spier to ask for the hand of Beatrix of Suabia. There is a tradition, ac- cepted by English writers, that this Mauricio was an Englishman. No mention of it is known to occur in Spanish chronicles before the middle of the fifteenth century. Be that as it may, Mauricio stopped on his way at Paris, and was entertained by Philippe Auguste. Notre Dame was nearly finished ; and Mauricio may well have felt that his own cathedral was far too humble for its mission, and have conceived the plan of building a new one in the latest development of French archi- tecture, which should at once be a church worthy of the chief city of Castile and crush the upstart Las Huelgas. The marriage of Fernando and Beatrix of Suabia took place in the old cathedral of Burgos in 1219, and two years later the foundations of the new church were laid. The work went on so fast that in 1 280 the choir was ready for service. The nave was probably built in the years immediately follow- ing, and the cloisters, exact information about which is lacking, should date from the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the next century. In style Bishop Mauricio's church, like Toledo which followed it by a few years, resembles Bourges, L 161 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS and bears out the theory that the prelate brought builders with him from mid-France. If this thirteenth-century building had been left alone it would be the grandest pointed church on Spanish soil, sterner in character than Leon, and richer in sculpture than Toledo. With the fifteenth century, however, the revolution of which I have given the history in another chapter took place. In 1435 Alonso de Cartagena, the most brilliant Churchman of his age, became Bishop of Burgos on the resignation of his father, who belonged to a Jewish family of the tribe of Levi, long resident at Burgos, and who, convinced of the truth of Christianity by reading Jeremiah xxxi., had had himself and his family baptised in 1390. He entered the church and rose to be Chancellor of Spain and bishop in his native city. Naturally both he and his son were rabid adversaries of tolerance for the Jews. All this is curious as an illustration of the state of society in Castile in the fifteenth century ; but what more nearly concerns the cathedral of Burgos is that Alonso de Cartagena was sent to the Council of Basle, visited several places in Germany, and, soon after his return, set about building the great towers that now surmount the west front of his cathedral. Soon after this we find a Juan de Colonia (Hans von Coin) working at Burgos ; and it is more than probable, though not certain, that he was the author of the un- deniably German towers, and that Bishop Alonso 162 BURGOS had brought him from Germany. W e know that he planned the church of the Cartuja de Miraflores in 1454, and that in 1466 he was building the great cimborio of the cathedral. Juan de Colonia had two sons, Simon and Diego, who both became architects and worked at Burgos ; and Francisco, the last of the family, also worked here and at Astorga. Alonso de Cartagena died in 1458, and was succeeded by D. Luis Osorio de Acuna, who, like Alonso's father, had been married before entering the Church, and had begotten a son who be- came the fighting Comunero Bishop of Zamora, hanged at Simancas in 1526. D. Luis had as great an enthusiasm for the new style as his pre- decessor, and under him the great cimborio was planned and begun. This cimborio was the admira- tion of all eyes. Its windows were full of glass by Arnau de Flandes, his son Nicolas de Vergara, Juan Valdivieso, and Diego de Santillana. The mouths of sacristans are still full of extravagant expressions of admiration which kings have lavished upon it. It did not last long, however. In 1539 it fell in, as that of Seville had done just after completion in 1511. Another similar erection at Zaragoza had to be taken down as unsafe in 1500. The chapter of Burgos, however, could not resign itself to parting with its marvel, and had it rebuilt by Juan de Vallejo and two Burgundians, Felipe Vigarni and Juan de Langres. The new cimborio 163 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS seems to be a close imitation of the old, though its architects introduced decorative motives of their own ; for Vigarni — Felipe de Borgona as he is often called — was deep in Italian Renaissance. J uan de Colonia also began the chapel of Acuna in 1477, and this was probably his last work. His sons Diego and Simon, however, were constantly employed in the cathedral, and inroad after inroad was made upon the thirteenth-century fabric. Al- most all the chapels were modernised ; a great carved, painted and gilt retablo was set up behind the high altar ; and, finally, in 1482 the enormous Capilla del Condestable was begun. This Con- destable was D. Pedro Fernandez de Velazco, Constable of Castile ; but it seems to have been his wife, Dona Mencia, sister of the great Cardinal D. Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, who got leave from the chapter to pull down one of the chevet chapels, and carried out the work. The chapel took twelve years in building, and is certainly a product of the Colonia school. We now have the cathedral transformed. In fifty years the towers, the huge cimborio, and the equally huge Capilla del Condestable have been added. In the interior all the side chapels except one have been rebuilt, the triforium disguised, and great new retablos set up in profusion. Those who would find the old church must look for it in the cloister, transept fronts, buttresses, upper parts of the nave, and, with an effort, in the general 164 BURGOS proportions of the interior. No church in Spain shows more clearly the wave of northern art which swept over Castile in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The northern art, in its endless detail, pleased the Spaniards ; but they insisted on having it larger, coarser, and, above all, more of it. We may now turn to the cathedral as it stands to-day. It is not wonderful that the French parentage of this church should have escaped the eyes of visitors who are not in the habit of examining architecture closely. Apart from the fifteenth- century additions which have done so much to alter it, it is built on a hillside and shut in by houses. French churches usually stand clear and on level ground. Here a flight of steps leads from the street up to the south transept door, and another, of nearly forty steps, from the interior up to the north transept entrance, which is placed high in the wall. To the west, it is true, there is an open space, but that part, besides Juan de Colonia's heavily crocketed spires, has modern door- ways. From the street that skirts the church to the north a close view of the chevet buttresses, clerestory, and the original masonry may be had. From the same spot also the cimborio with its pinnacles and excess of ornamentation, and the similar but rather less cumbersome Capilla del Condestable, may be examined. Seen from the surrounding country, Burgos is a huge and lordly fifteenth-century cathedral. 165 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS The north and south doorways have remained almost untouched, and are the finest of their period in Spain. The character of the sculpture on both is similar, but the north door is the richer of the two. In the tympanum sit Our Lord, the Virgin, and St. John, and, below, the righteous and the wicked. The upper group is unsurpassed in thirteenth-century sculpture. It has movement and expression, without the frivolity of the scenes in the west porch at Leon. The Virgin raises her arms in a suppliant gesture ; the folds of her robe are grace itself. The actual door has been modernised ; but the orders of the arch are richly sculptured, and the jambs have figures of the apostles. The south door has, in the tympanum, Our Lord with the beasts of the four evangelists, and statues in the jambs. The usual entrances are by the above-mentioned door in the south, and by a Renaissance doorway in the east wall of the north transept. The interior is sorely obscured by the coro, which occupies three of the six bays of the nave. Six bays is short for a church of this size. It is one of the features in which the three great French Gothic cathedrals of Spain differ from those of France. Leon has six bays, Toledo seven, while Notre Dame de Paris, Bourges, Chartres, Rheims, all have several more. The best view of the nave and aisles is that from the west end. The main arches are well moulded, and the columns have 166 BURGOS engaged shafts which carry the groining ribs. The clerestory windows consist of two lights with a circle or triangle in the head, and there are magnifi- cent circular traceried windows in the west front and south transept. So far there are no altera- tions. The triforium, however, which originally seems to have consisted of cusped openings under a round enclosing arch, the tympanum of which is pierced, suffered from additions in the German period. The choir has three bays and a five-sided apse, leaving plenty of room for the stalls, which appear to have been left in their proper position until late in the fifteenth century. The choir aisle and chapels have been modified, with the exception of the two north of the entrance to the constable's chapel. The one next to this entrance has an early pointed vault, and is probably the only one that remains of the original chevet. The next has an arch thrown across its north-west angle, and the space thus enclosed filled with a little tripartite vault, like those in the transept chapels at Las Huelgas. The transepts have also been much modified ; but the great Colonia additions are the constable's chapel and the cimborio. The first lies at the extreme east end of the church. Its ground plan is irregular, square at the west and rectangular at the east ; but the vault is made into an octagon by pendentives across the west angles. The groin- ing is enormously elaborate, the arches deeply 167 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS fringed, the walls covered with huge coats-of- arms. The octagonal cimborio is even less re- strained in its decoration than the constable's chapel ; and the other chapels are all of the Colonia period or later. The cloister lies to the south-east of the church, and is entered from a door in the south transept, which has a beautiful Annunciation in its jambs. This door is later than those of the transepts ; like the cloister, it prob- ably dates from the end of the thirteenth and be- ginning of the following century. As an interior door it is more elaborate than the others ; but it is, no less than they, fine French work of its period. The wooden doors themselves are late Northern Gothic. The cloister has two stories of openings filled with excellent middle pointed tracery. There is much sculpture scattered about them ; especially worthy of note are the large thirteenth-century figures of the royal founders, Fernando el Santo and Beatrix de Suabia. The aspect of the cloister from the outside gains greatly by the beautiful light crocketed pinnacles which surmount the roof. We have now seen something of the fabric of the church as it was, and of the accidents that have befallen it. Its furniture is rich and varied. The coro, it has been said, occupies three bays of the nave west from the crossing. The stalls date from the first years of the sixteenth century, at which time the present position was probably 1 68 BURGOS adopted, and are good Renaissance work by Felipe Vigarni. In the coro lies the great thirteenth- century effigy of Bishop Mauricio ; it is of wood, covered with much-worn plates of copper and enamel. The retablo is a large and severe pseudo- classical erection, deeply gilt, set up by Rodrigo de la Haya late in the sixteenth century to replace a German one given by Bishop Cartagena and prob- ably similar to that in the chapel of Santa Ana. Be- hind this retablo, between the main choir columns, are bold sculptures of Passion scenes by Juan de Borgona (Langres), and Alonso de los Rios. In the constable's chapel there are two retablos. That on the south side is a small masterpiece of fifteenth -century wood-carving. The colour and gold are original, and the whole is in excellent condition ; none finer exists in Spain. It is divided into nine compartments, in each of which there are figures. One of these is a St. Mary Magdalen, attired solely in her golden hair, and more seductive than any model to be found nowa- days in Germany. The other retablo is later work, but good in line and colour, and into it is let one splendid small panel of St. Jerome by Gaspar Becerra. The rest of it, like the monument to the constable and his wife, which stands in the middle of the chapel, is by Juan de Borgona. On the wall there is a Flemish painting which looks as if it might be good. The windows have German early sixteenth-century glass ; and in a little 169 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS sacristy are kept some good ornaments and magnificent stamped velvets. Many other chapels contain remarkable objects; and there is a very important piece of ironwork in the interior staircase leading up to the north tran- sept door, designed by Diego de Siloe, a son of the other's. The chapel of Santa Ana has a most beautifully carved retablo, said to be by the Colonias, the colour of which has been ruined by repainting ; a fine tomb by Gil de Siloe — a real native of Burgos for once — and a good Gothic reja. The Presentacidn also has a good reja by Cristobal Andino, who wrought that of the con- stable's chapel, and a tomb by Felipe Vigarni. The monument of Alonso de Cartagena, who seems to have been responsible for the Germanis- ing of Bishop Mauricio's French church, is by Gil de Siloe, and stands in the Capilla de la Visitacidn. Beyond this we have the famous Santo Cristo of Burgos, a strange image which is greatly revered throughout Spain, a few indifferent Flemish paint- ings, and fair tapestries. In the sacristy are kept a number of gorgeous velvet vestments with richly embroidered orphreys, and a processional cross, one of the few surviving works of Enrique de Arfe. In chapels in the cloister, finally, are a few poor paintings, and the box which the Cid filled with sand and gave as security to Raquel and Vidas, the two pawnbrokers of Burgos. Burgos Cathedral probably had good glass 1 70 Retablo of Santa Ana, Burgos Cathedral. Tomb by Gil de Siloe, Burgos Museum. BURGOS at one time, most of which is supposed to have been shaken out by an explosion in the castle during the Peninsular War. At present, barring a few fragments in the south circular window, the best in the church is the white glass in the nave. The north transept and the choir windows are filled with abominable stuff supplied by Munich firms. The Germans, who made a nearly success- ful attempt at suppressing the thirteenth-century French church in late Gothic times, have thus attacked it again. The remaining churches of Burgos are not of great importance. San Nicolas, near the cathe- dral, has a large stone retablo, covered with late Gothic detail and scenes from the life of the saint. Its donor is buried close by ; his tomb bears the date 1505. Higher up the hill upon which stand the ruins of the castle is San Esteban. This is a church of nave and aisles of four bays, and three parallel apses. The section of the columns and general detail of the interior is similar to that of the cathedral ; but the three parallel apses indi- cate another influence than the French. There is hardly a reason, however, for calling this a national Spanish arrangement, as Street does ; it appears in the early churches in Catalonia, whither it came from Italy, and later became known throughout the country. The west door is covered with sculpture, which may be taken to be a product of the school founded at Burgos 171 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS by the builders of the cathedral. It shows no sort of advance on its models or, indeed, any difference whatsoever except an increasing tech- nical inferiority, which makes such work difficult to date. South of the church there is a muti- lated cloister, and in the sacristy are preserved a few vestments and a curious painting of the Last Supper, in which the table-cloth has a mock Arabic inscription in its border. The interior arrangements are very poor and of no interest save for the late Gothic western gallery, which occupies the same space here as in San Nicolas and the next church to be described, San Gil. Whatever the date of San Gil may be, it is another product of the school of Burgos ; that is to say, a close imitation of one of the great French churches. This time the model is not the cathedral but Las Huelgas, though San Gil does resemble the cathedral in the alterations it suffered at the end of the Gothic period. The original plan seems to have been nave and aisles of three bays, transepts with two chapels opening east out of them, choir, and apse. The transept chapels were later thrown together and elaborately groined, and another chapel of similar description opens out of the north aisle. All three have good late Gothic carved, painted, and gilt retablos. There is a fine wrought-iron pulpit, also of the latest Gothic, in the nave. There are several fine private houses of the 172 BURGOS fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, like the Casa del Cordon, built by the enterprising wife of the Constable of Castile, Dona Mencia de Mendoza. Over the town gate of Santa Maria there is a small but valuable museum. It contains the fine tomb, by Gil de Siloe, of Don Juan de Padilla, a pretty page of the Catholic Kings. The arch is fringed, like those in the constable's chapel in the cathedral. The most important part of the collection, however, are the spoils of the convent of Santo Domingo de Silos : a small casket of Limoges enamel with copper relief, and another of ivory and enamel. The carving of the ivory is similar to that of the famous casket of Pamp- lona, and bears an inscription in Arabic, which states that it was made by Mohaimed ben Ziyar at Cuenca in the year of the Hegira 417 (a.d. 1039). The enamel is probably two centuries later ; one of the plates represents Santo Domingo de Silos standing between two angels. Most valuable of all is the great altar frontal from the same con- vent. It represents Our Lord in a vesica-shaped aureole and, on each side, the apostles in a row of round-arched arcading with shafts and capitals, surmounted by little roofs and towers. The figures are all in enamel of an exquisite scheme of colour, the heads and architectural details in copper relief, and the borders were studded with semi-precious stones. This frontal is beyond a doubt the finest in Spain ; it seems to be early 173 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS thirteenth - century French work. It has once been stolen from the museum and miraculously recovered. The Carthusian monastery of Miraflores lies about three kilometres from Burgos. It is reached by a road lined with poplars — almost the only trees to be seen in this part of Castile — which com- mands a view of the city and the great plain. The dominant note in both is grey ; there is little red in the soil here, and, except for a few weeks in spring, little green. The Cartuja stands on rising ground overlooking the valley of the Arlanzon, on land once occupied by a royal palace, which Juan II left to this order. The church was begun by Juan de Colonia in 1454 as convent chapel and burial- place of Juan II and his queen, Isabel. Its archi- tecture is uninteresting ; and the interior has been largely modernised, though it preserves indifferent old glass. The remarkable part of Miraflores are the royal tombs, retablo, and choir stalls. First the great alabaster monument of Don Juan and Dona Isabel, which stands before the altar, enclosed in good iron railings of the period. The effigies lie under canopies on the tomb, and the whole is covered with very rich German late Gothic detail of masterly design and execution. Against the north wall is the tomb of Don Alfonso, son of Don Juan and Dona Isabel. It is of the same style as the others and by the same hand ; Gil de Siloe, a native of Burgos but undeniably a crafts- 174 BURGOS man of German training, made them both, 1489-93. He had an important share in the retablo also, a mighty work, carved, painted, and gilt, and still in good condition. The choir stalls are of the same period, and by another Spaniard of northern schooling, Martin Sanchez. The detail is good and is limited to tracery and pinnacles ; animals and grotesques are absent. Little save historical associations remains to make the five-miles journey on to San Pedro de Car- den a worth while. A couple of kilometres further in the same direction is San Quirce, once a Bene- dictine monastery. The actual church of a single nave and apse was consecrated in 1147. Its detail is rough and not remarkable. It has one feature of great interest, however : the cupola which rises from its centre, carried on a strange arrangement of pendentives with small curvilateral triangles at their sides, which Sr. Lamperez says is used in the palace of Sarvistan in Persia, but nowhere else in Spain. A day's journey from Burgos, in the direction of El Burgo de Osma, is the Benedictine monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos. After the disturb- ances of the thirties, during which it was sacked, the monastery remained uninhabited and roofless for years, and has now been over-restored by French monks. The capitals and reliefs in the cloisters are of the greatest interest ; they date from the latter eleventh, twelfth, and early thirteenth cen- i75 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS turies. Some of them are rude and archaic, prob- ably copies of ivory carvings ; others represent a freer Romanesque school, showing a deep feeling for design ; the best resemble the famous capitals of Moissac. The province of Burgos occupies a wide sweep of the central plateau of Spain ; but it is sparsely populated and contains little else of interest save the town of Aranda de Duero, which lies in its southern extremity. A miserable and squalid place it is now, this Aranda de Duero, but worth a visit for its late Gothic churches. The most important of these is Santa Maria. With its nave and aisles of only three bays in length, western gallery for the coro, transepts with chapels opening east out of them, and blocked up clere- story windows in the nave and apse, Santa Maria is a typical church of its day. The exterior is a jumble of parapeted walls ; the builders seem to have cared little for proportion, and to have con- tented themselves with erecting one of the most gorgeous doorways in Castile. This runs up several feet higher than the south wall, from which it is well set out. The great main arch encloses a small groined porch, and the space above it is covered with coats-of-arms and carving. The arch is fringed and crocketed, like those of the period at Burgos, and its orders are covered with figures under canopies. In the tympanum are more scenes, and large figures of saints are set round 176 South Door of Santa Maria, Aranda de Duero. ARANDA the jambs. The wooden doors themselves are well carved in the Renaissance manner. Who designed this door I have not been able to discover. The coats-of-arms are those of the Catholic Kings and the Bishop D. Alfonso de Fonseca ; the interior of the church seems to have been unfinished until the time of Don Pedro Alvarez de Acosta, about the middle of the sixteenth century. In style the south doorway is the most consistent of all the great monuments of the age of the Catholic Kings. Its main lines are of an exagger- ated Gothic, without introduction of Renaissance motives as at V alladolid and Salamanca ; and the figures are very good of their typically German kind. The interior has several features of interest. The staircases leading up to the western gallery are ornamented with late Gothic and Mudejar designs in plaster. The main columns are moulded and have the high bases usual in churches of this period. The groining is sexpartite. In the altars there is a profusion of very good sixteenth and seventeenth century wood sculpture. The high altar has large dramatic painted and gilt figures, the work of Gabriel de Pinedo and Pedro de Cicarte. The church of San Juan appears to be half a century or more earlier than Santa Maria, and there is a truncated early pointed steeple at its west end. It has a fine south door with a figure of the divine Shepherd in the tympanum, but is M 177 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS otherwise sparingly ornamented. The slender shafts and foliated capitals are good. Among a mass of poor sculpture in the interior there are six excellent late Gothic groups, heavily whitewashed, let into the much later high altar. San Francisco, an abandoned church, contains a few groups in relief by Juan de Juni. Most of them have been repainted ; those that have escaped show magnifi- cent estofado. There are no private houses worth mentioning in the town, but it is full of examples of humble Castilian domestic architecture. 178 VIII LEON AND PALENCIA The city of Leon owes its name to a Roman military station. Strong and important under the Goths, it was successively destroyed by the first Moslem invaders and Almanzor, but was rebuilt soon afterwards to become the capital of the king- dom. Since the conquest of Seville its importance has steadily waned ; for, unlike Salamanca and many of the Castilian cities, it had no revival of prosperity in the times of the Catholic Kings and the Hapsburgs. To-day it is chiefly remarkable for two churches, the Colegiata de San Isidoro, containing the Pantheon of the early kings of Leon, and the Cathedral of Santa Maria de Regla, one of the most extraordinary achievements of thirteenth-century French Gothic. On a site which had been occupied by earlier churches, Fernando I, first king of Castile and Leon, built a church to contain the remains of San Isidoro. This building, begun in 1063, was enlarged by Dofia Urraca, Fernando's daughter (died 1101), and finally rebuilt under Alfonso VII, the Emperor, and consecrated in 1149. In plan 179 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS it has nave and aisles of six bays, transepts, and three eastern apses, of which the central one was rebuilt in late Gothic times. The transepts and side apses probably date from Fernando I, and the body of the church from Alfonso VII. Petrus de Deo must have been the architect who was employed in this latter period, for his epitaph states that he worked under Alfonso the Emperor. There is a certain difference in style between the two parts, for the arches leading into the transepts are cusped in a manner which leads Sr. Lamperez to say that they may be due to Moorish influence brought by the very men who conducted San Isidoro's remains to Leon from Seville, and this part of the building is roofed with a round barrel vault a good deal lower than that of the nave. The body of the church is fairly typical of the Burgundian architecture which was introduced into Spain late in the eleventh century. The nave has stilted round main arches, a clerestory with round- headed windows, and a round barrel vault ; and the aisles have quadripartite vaulting. The clere- story is so high that the thrust of the vault has thrown the piers out of plumb, for which reason scaffoldings and restorations have obscured the interior for some time past. The interior has also been abominably painted and whitewashed, but is now being scraped clean so as to show the magnificent bold carving of the capitals : men, beasts, and leaves in wonderful de- 180 LEON signs. The doorway leading into the south aisle is covered with similar sculpture. The furniture is poor, with the exception of a very curiously carved baptismal font, which is said to have come from an earlier church, but is too savage in style to be accurately placed ; and the elaborately groined late Gothic chancel is unapproachable on account of the faithful who are always seeking the inter- cession of San Isidoro. A door in the west end opens into the Panteon Real, a chamber of nine bays of vaulting carried on columns with great coarse Corinthian capitals, which, though its lines do not correspond to those of the church as it stands, is supposed to have served as a narthex to Fernando I's foundation. In it stand the tombs of many of the early kings of Leon. The vault is covered with well-preserved paintings representing scenes from the Apocalypse and incidents in the life of Our Lord, Who is here painted with a beard. Their date is uncertain ; but there is a freedom about them that suggests that they were not copied from a manuscript. As a guess one might place them at the close of the twelfth century. In spite of thorough looting on the part of the French, very notable objects are preserved in San Isidoro, but they are not readily shown. The more important of them are : the painted and gilt wooden box in which the saint's body travelled from Seville ; a wooden Romanesque casket of the 181 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS eleventh century, decorated with carved plaques of ivory; a Limoges enamel casket with reliefs in copper of the same period ; and San Isidoro's banner, which was present at the taking of Granada. Of the once valuable library there remain a few incunabula and, above all, a magnifi- cent Codex Bibliae, dated Era 990, and richly illuminated with scenes from the Bible — the cross- ing of the Red Sea and others. The cathedral, N.S. de la Regla, stands just inside the old walls, which are here left free with their round towers recalling those of Astorga and Lugo. It seems fairly well established that the Bishop D. Manrique, who died in 1205, founded a church on this site ; but there is no reason for believing that the present edifice has anything to do with his. Indeed, N.S. de la Regla is, more than any other Spanish cathedral, all of a piece and all of a period. In this respect, as in many others, it is utterly unnational. Its period must be the latter half of the thirteenth century, for records show that indulgences were granted for the work in 1258 and 1273, and expenses were cut in 1305, at which date the fabric was probably complete. Leon is thus the third of the three great Spanish Gothic churches, Burgos and Toledo being nearly contemporary to one another and older by about twenty-five years than N.S. de la Regla. All three are, in their original plan and design, French ; 182 Leon Cathedral. Nave of Leon Cathedkal. LEON and all three were begun in the lifetime of Fernando el Santo, under whom Castile and Leon were permanently united. Leon, owing to the comparative unimportance of the place in later years, has been less modified than the others. Be- sides this, the long restoration which has recently been finished has aimed, not unsuccessfully, at leaving the structure as it was when the builders took down their scaffolds. As to these builders nothing is known. Street says that Amiens, Rheims, and the later part of St. Denis are Leon's models. M. Enlart, in M. Andre Michel's Histoire de VArt, points out the resemblance between this west porch and the lateral doorways of Chartres, and between the ground plan and sections here and those at Rheims. It is unnecessary further to insist upon the French character of the church. Many buildings more or less similar to it and of earlier date are known in France ; Burgos and Toledo, both of which are certainly the work of Frenchmen, had not existed long enough to give rise to a national style — which, indeed, never was formed — in Spain at the time when Leon was building. In plan N.S. de la Regla has a nave and aisles of six bays, transepts, a choir of three bays, and a choir aisle with five pentagonal chapels. It will at once be noticed that this plan with its long choir is far removed from the very short choirs, or east ends finishing in three apses, which were in 183 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS universal use in Spain in this period. The only Spanish feature is the comparative shortness of the nave, which may well be explained by a corre- sponding shortness of money. The main arches are carried on light clustered columns, above which comes a triforium with four openings in each bay, and then the great six-light clerestory windows. Both the triforium and the clerestory are entirely glazed, so that the whole weight of the vaults is carried by the slender piers. All the rest of the walls is glass. The builder helped himself out with a row of double flying buttresses on the out- side ; but even so his successors were not easy in their minds and walled up the triforium and the outer lights of the clerestory windows. Well they might wonder and quake at such a glass house, these Leonese who had probably grown up to look on the, in its day, daring pierced clerestory of San Isidoro as final in the direction of airy construc- tion ! When the half-century-long restoration was begun, the whole of the south aisle had to be taken down, and it demanded great courage on the part of the restorers, who numbered among them D. Juan Madrazo and D. Demetrio Amador de los Rios, to revert to the original plan. We owe to them the preservation of an unrivalled example of the most exaggerated French style ; but how truly Northern it is and how radically at variance with all the traditions of Spanish churches, in many of which far smaller clerestory 184 LEON windows have been blocked up as giving too much light ! The detail is excellent throughout ; the capitals and the tracery in the windows are very pure work of the period. There is a cloister to the north of the church, which was rebuilt in the latter part of the sixteenth century or thereabouts, and a large late Gothic chapel east of it. We now come to the exterior. To judge of the work of the restorers it is necessary to look at the cathedral as it was when they took it in hand. When Street saw it the west front was disfigured " by late additions, and some of the sculpture in the porch was covered with glass cases and tricked out in finery. All this has been swept away. The west front, with its two great fifteenth -century pinnacles, huge rose window, and triple porch, now rather shocks the beholder by the amount of new masonry in the upper part ; and this newly cut stone will take many years to colour properly. However, the porch with its three doorways covered with sculpture is left intact. In the tympanum of the centre door Our Lord sits in judgment, and round about Him are the sheep and the goats, the latter being taken into custody by devils, and the former strolling into heaven for all the world like people going to Mass on Sunday morning. The other doors have scenes from the life of the Virgin in their tympana, and the archi- volts of all three are covered with groups under 185 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS canopies. The wooden doors themselves have good sixteenth-century carving. In the jambs and on the detached shafts of the porch are statues of saints and apostles, and, on the shaft dividing the central door, Nuestra Senora la Blanca, a smiling and supremely elegant lady, in whom M. Enlart, or M. Bertran, or whoever is responsible for the chapter in M. Andre Michel's Histoire de VArt) discovers " sous son fard le charme jeune et frais d'une jolie maja." This porch certainly bears a resemblance to the south door at Chartres. There is a good deal of difference, however, between the quality of the various parts of the work. The saints and apostles in the jambs and detached shafts are rather a scratch lot ; they, or most of them, must date from different periods, and be the work of Spanish apprentices. N.S. la Blanca and the scenes in the tympana and in the archivolts are the most ex- quisite joyous French conceptions, of a later and less stern period than those of Chartres. In their kind they are unsurpassed in France or out of it. It is useless to point out the happy grace of the blest or the triumphant beauty of the young queen who appears as the Virgin. One glance at them will tell more than pages of description — or will tell nothing, in which case the description is vain. They were all painted, of course ; there are traces of colour on them still. The south aisle, it should be remembered, was 186 LEON taken down and put up again, as far as possible, with the old stones. The original sculpture was all preserved in the south transept door ; it re- sembles that in the west porch. The east end, which pierces the city wall, is well preserved, re- taining its old masonry untouched. The north door leading into the cloister is also covered with carving of rather later date than the rest. In- serted in the wall of the cloister are several pieces of sculpture, N.S. del Foro for instance, a Virgin accepting a gift from a kneeling personage, which dates from the early part of the eleventh century at latest. The walls of the cloister are covered with very good frescoes, apparently Florentine, which may be the work of one Dello Delli, who was in Castile towards the middle of the fifteenth century. When Street was here he made out thirty-one ; but many have disappeared since then ; and, as they are unprotected while the present restoration of the cloister is going on, there will probably be little left of them when it is finished. The work of the restorers is more evident inside the church than out. It has already been said that they glazed the triforium and the outer lights of the clerestory. They also glazed the side chapel windows ; and to do this they set up a manufac- tory at Leon. By way of models they had the remaining clerestory lights, which were still filled with thirteenth-century glass resembling that at Chartres and Rheims ; and they did not do badly 187 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS on the whole. The new glass, except for one monstrous window in the north transept, repre- senting the intervention of Santiago at the battle of Clavijo, and signed " Alberto Gonzalez, Leon, 1901," reproduces old designs and colour as nearly as possible, and leaves the sight free to revel in the glorious many-hued clerestory windows and their huge mahogany-faced, red and green robed saints with staring black and white eyes. The size of the real choir makes it inexcusable that the fifteenth-century coro, carved stalls and all, should not have been moved into its proper place, leaving the nave, of which there would be none too much even then, free. D. Juan Madrazo, who did the bulk of the work, fought for years to achieve this ; but the canons said that D. Juan was not a good Catholic and, besides, that it would be too cold in the choir. When D. Juan died Sr. Amador de los Rios tried to carry out his wishes in this as in every respect. The canons could make no objection to him on the score of religion, but they stuck to it that it would be too cold. Sr. Amador de los Rios also died ; and the canons still lord it in their coro. The capilla mayor has a good reja ; but long before the restoration was begun the old Gothic retablo of the high altar was broken up, scattered all over the diocese, and replaced by an abomina- tion which is now to be seen in the Franciscan convent. During the restoration as many of the 1 88 LEON parts of this retablo as could be recovered were collected. Finally, enough was gathered together to form the respectable retablo which, in a modern frame, now does service. The paintings are of the usual Flemish character. There is also a retablo in one of the chevet chapels, in which this cathedral is represented as it stood in the fifteenth century. The choir aisle has remains of frescoes like those in the cloister, and a fine fourteenth- century tomb of Grdono II (died 923). In another of the chevet chapels there is a rudely carved early tomb with a much-quoted legend attached to it. I have said nothing of the chapel of Santiago, the late Gothic chapel east of the cloister. It is elaborately groined, and is interesting because of the fine glass of the period, of a style very different from that of the clerestory windows. In the sacristy there are a few pictures, all of them copies of well-known Flemish paintings, and a processional cross by Enrique de Arfe. The chapel of Santiago with its Flemish glass, the stalls of the coro, several carved wooden doors, and such paintings as have survived, record the invasion of Spain by the arts of the North in the fifteenth century. The modifi- cations caused by this and subsequent invasions are of less importance at Leon than in the other two great Castilian cathedrals however ; Leon remains a monument of thirteenth-century French art. The town has little else to show. There are 189 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS two or three churches with old remains, and a few private houses of small value. Near the bridge by which the old Asturian road crosses the Bernesga stands the great secularised convent of San Marcos. Its early history does not matter, as the present building was erected by Juan de Badajoz in the first half of the sixteenth century. It has a vast Castilian Renaissance facade and a bastard church, in which there are magnificent choir stalls of the period by Guillermo Doncel. The Museo Pro- vincial contained in it possesses second or third century funereal tablets upon which the horseshoe arch makes its first recorded appearance on Spanish soil. On the banks of the River Esla, a day's ride south-east of Leon, lies the very curious church of San Miguel de Escalada. A shrine dedicated to this saint is known to have existed here in Visigothic times ; whether it was partially or wholly destroyed at the Moslem invasion is a matter of controversy. It seems to be certain, however, that the existing building was erected between 913 and 914 by refugee Mozarabe monks from Cordova under an abbot named Alfonso. Sr. Lamperez suggests that the architect may have been one Viviano, who is known to have been employed upon San Pedro de Montes. San Miguel is rectangular in plan, with a nave and aisles, and three parallel horseshoe-shaped apses in the thickness of the east wall. The transept 190 ASTORGA does not show on the plan, but is separated from the nave by three horseshoe arches which carry a low wall. The nave is roofed with wood ; but the transepts and apses have vaults of a later date. South of the church is a gallery of the same style as the nave, probably intended as a place for con- verts or penitents. All the arches are horseshoe, and the round columns have curious capitals of pro- nounced Byzantine design. There are a few pieces of carving, notably on the arcade across the nave, which show the traditional Visigothic motives. The history of San Miguel de Escalada is better known than that of most of the Mozarabe churches, and its state of preservation is really extraordinary. It shows clearly to what point Christian archi- tecture had developed under the Arabs at Cordova before the persecutions began ; and a comparison with San Juan de Banos will prove that these Mozarabes did not by any means owe as much as is generally supposed to the Moslems. They con- tinued the Visigothic tradition, from which their conquerors had also borrowed plentifully. ASTORGA The very ancient city of Astorga was rich and prosperous under the Romans ; but it is now an utterly gone-to-ruin place, where nothing but grand walls remains to recall vanished glories. The 191 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS utter stillness that oppresses it is hardly ever broken, except on feast days when the Maragatos, that strange tribe which inhabits the surrounding country, come in and dance in one of the squares, making a noise with their castanets that can be heard at the distant railway station. Some of them still wear a costume that is quite unlike anything the rest of Spain can show. On very great occasions the women carry many pounds of silver ornaments, among which are most curious beads of a design which is met with in early Greek and also in Visigothic jewellery, but whose presence here is wellnigh inexplicable, unless it has been handed down by tradition from Visigothic times. The town has an inferior church or two and a late Gothic cathedral of some importance. Founded in 1471, it was slowly built, and has Renaissance and Baroque elements. The only architect I know to have been employed upon it is Francisco, last of the Colonia family of Burgos. The nave and aisles are seven bays in length ; there are three parallel apses ; and to the west rise two large towers. The columns have high bases and no capitals ; and the rest of the detail is typical enough of Castilian architecture of the time. The coro has good Renaissance stalls, finished in 1551 by Tomas and Roberto. The gilt reja was made by a Basque, Lazaro Azcain, in 1622. The glowing red and yellow glass in the clerestory dates from the first half of the sixteenth century. 192 PALENCIA By far the most important work in Astorga is the retablo mayor of the cathedral. It is by Gaspar Becerra, perhaps the greatest of the Spanish Renaissance sculptors, certainly the one who had the finest sense of line and who turned out the least quantity of work. He had his training in Italy, it is said under Michael Angelo. The retablo has large scenes from the life of Our Lord and His Mother, and many beautiful single figures. The chapter of the cathedral was so enchanted with the work when finished in 1569 that, besides the twenty thousand ducats agreed upon, it made Becerra a present of three thousand and a job as notary, which he sold for a further eight thousand. It was painted and gilt by Gaspar de Hoyos and Gaspar de Palencia for ten thousand eight hundred ducats more. It shows how important a part the painting and gilding of these works played, when in this case it cost more than half the sum for which the sculptor had agreed to carve the retablo. PALENCIA Important in Roman times, Palencia has been less hardly treated by modernity than Astorga. The first university of Castile was founded here early in the thirteenth century, though afterwards it was moved to Salamanca, and there are important architectural remains of that period. In the reign n 193 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of the Catholic Kings it had the fortune to possess one of the great Fonsecas as its bishop. At the present day it is a large, rambling, dirty village, without any particular character of its own, but it has gone ahead industrially in the last years, and is now one of the most important manufacturing towns of Castile. Palencia's oldest and best-built church is San Miguel, which stands near the River Carrion. It consists of a nave and aisles of five bays and three apses, the central one of which is groined in four compartments. The detail in the interior is care- fully carried out, as also that of the west door, which has a deeply moulded and carved archivolt. Over the west front rises a grand massive tower with a great traceried window in its face and several more on the other sides. The early thirteenth- century character of the interior is marred by the bad modern altar and many coats of whitewash ; and even the proportions have been ruined by blocking up the western bays for the purpose of turning them into chapels. There are several more churches in the town. San Francisco has remains of good thirteenth-century work, but has been spoiled by a recent restoration ; and San Pablo and San Lazaro are great unsymmetrical piles of the latest Gothic. San Pablo has a few passable orna- ments, and its buttresses are adorned with the arms of the Fonsecas. The cathedral, dedicated to the local patron, 194 PALENCIA San Antolm, was begun in 1321, and took rather over two hundred years in building. The original plan of nave and aisles, transepts, a long choir and apse groined in seven compartments, and a choir aisle with chapels, was also tampered with. It had left plenty of room for the stalls in their proper place in the choir ; but these were moved down into the nave in the early sixteenth century, the high altar set forward, and the apse covered with a sort of low roof and used as a chapel, whilst the true capilla mayor was also covered in and turned into the parroquia — the parish church of the cathedral. The result is that the building has a double-jointed appearance, as if there were two crossings. There are a few traces of ap- parently fourteenth-century work in the windows and groining in the chevet, but the nave must all be of the fifteenth and sixteenth ; its enormously wide aisles, massive columns, and elaborate groin- ing are typical of that period. The exterior is poverty-stricken ; the principal doorways lead- ing into the transepts are dilapidated, and there is a defaced cloister. The furniture of this church is magnificent. The choir stalls are Flemish-looking work by a Valencian called Centellas (1410), and there are several good rejas by Cristobal Andino and Gaspar Rodriguez. The glass is white in the nave ; but un- fortunately the choir has been filled with very bad coloured products of Barcelona. In the sculptured J 95 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS trascoro, the work of Gil de Siloe, there is an altar with a triptych, painted in 1505 at Brussels by Juan de Holanda, by order of D. Juan de Fonseca, then Bishop of Palencia, who had gone to the Low Countries as Ferdinand's ambassador, and who figures as the donor on the central panel of the triptych. The same painter is supposed to have been brought to Spain by the bishop, and to have painted the twelve scenes in the retablo mayor. D. Juan de Fonseca was a great patron of art ; he was so enthusiastic about what he saw at Brussels that, besides bringing back Juan de Holanda, who it is true is otherwise unknown and is of no great importance, he ordered and bought a large number of tapestries. Four magnificent ones of New Testament scenes, all bearing the Fonseca arms, hang in the chapter-house of this cathedral, and there are ten more large ones which are hung up in the capilla mayor in winter. Even finer are four small pieces in one of the chevet chapels. No others of the period in Spain, save those of the royal palace at Madrid, can match with these. In the sacristy there is a magnificent picture by El Greco, a San Sebastian, one of the few im- portant naked figures by that painter left in the country now that the San Martin from Toledo has gone. Unfortunately it is hung so high that the light is bad. In the treasury are kept a fine silver-gilt custodia by Juan de Benavente, and a 196 PALENCIA Moorish carved ivory casket not unlike the much better preserved one at Pamplona. Recent excavations in the crypt under the coro, known as the cave of San Antolm, have revealed a few very barbaric columns and capitals which appear to be of Visigothic origin. A few miles south of Palencia, however, near the railway junc- tion of Venta de Banos, there is a much more important and perfect Visigothic remain in the church of San Juan de Banos. A votive inscrip- tion, which has been preserved, states that this building was offered in the year 661 by King Reccesvintus to St. John the Baptist in grati- tude for the benefit the king had received from the waters of Cerrato. At present the church is of oblong plan, with a narthex to the west, nave and aisles, and square east end with three parallel apses. It appears from discoveries made in 1898 that there were originally transepts, three sepa- rated apses, and an external gallery. The main arches are horseshoe-shaped, and most of the masonry is considered to be of the time. The capitals show debased classic forms but are skil- fully treated, and there are decorative details and a pierced stone slab in the central apse, which exactly reproduce designs to be seen in existing Visigothic jewellery. It is little short of a miracle that this church should have survived in such good condition ; nothing but its desolate situation could have saved it. 197 IX TOLEDO— THE TOWN Everyone who has written about Spain has felt it his duty to try his hand at a poetic description of imperial Toledo ; there are dozens of such in every European language. The very name with its countless associations — Roman, Gothic, Jewish, Moorish, and Christian — inspires Spanish writers to rise to the dizziest heights of eloquence. In the presence of these noble outpourings I feel that my safest path is that of silence. It also seems to me that the visitor may be trusted to observe by him- self that Toledo breathes the spirit of old Spain, of the lordly, proud, and believing men who drove the Moors from their country, just as Madrid does that of the imitation constitutional monarchy that has contented their descendants for the past cen- tury. Also, that the position of the two cities, only a few leagues apart but utterly different in every respect, is symbolic of the manner in which unhappy Spain has repudiated her past without having the shadow of a hope for the future. The Spanish chroniclers attribute the foundation of Toledo to Tubal or Hercules ; but the town 198 TOLEDO— THE TOWN does not seem to have had any great importance until the Visigothic monarchy. The Roman re- mains are few and fragmentary, for Goths and Moors invariably used the buildings of their pre- decessors as quarries. Under Leovigild, the fierce supporter of the Arian heresy, it became the capital of Spain, and it was here that Leovigild's faith was renounced by his successor Recared, who thus, in the words of Sr. Quadrado, reconciled Spain with heaven, and its ruler with his subjects. The Visigothic monuments met the same fate at the hands of the Moors, and none of them have come down to us in a good state of preservation. Carved capitals and fragments, however, were utilised in Moorish buildings, and it is possible that careful examination of the foundations of later erections may bring more work of that period to light. The barbaric splendour of the Visigothic court must have been dazzling ; and we have a good notion of the taste in architecture that then prevailed from the famous votive crowns of Guar- razar, which were discovered at that village, not far from Toledo, some fifty years ago. During the Moorish occupation the Mozarabes, or con- quered Christians, lived here in great numbers unmolested ; for there were often friendly relations between the infidel king and his Catholic majesty, and Alfonso VI had married a Moorish princess before conquering the town in 1085. A few of the old Visigothic churches were rebuilt by the 199 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Mozarabes, and two of them at least still exist in the form they received at that period. Moorish art flourished exceedingly here, not only during the lifetime of the Moorish kingdom but afterwards ; for the brick architecture in which the Spanish Moslems excelled had taken such deep root at Toledo that it was used in religious and civil buildings down to the end of the Gothic period. In the thirteenth century, it is true, Fernando el Santo, that lover of true French Gothic, founded the cathedral ; but his subjects were as little in agreement with his views as Philip II's were with his, and they went on having their houses and churches built for them by Mude- jares, as the conquered Moors were termed, in the style that became so universal that it even invaded the great Northern cathedral. In it the Jews also built their synagogues ; and when at last Christian architecture did prevail, late in the fifteenth cen- tury, Mudejar influence modified some of its features — the domes and vaults, for instance. When the Renaissance came, Toledo was already in its decline ; but its prelates were still so enor- mously wealthy that they built not a few great monu- ments. It makes the strangest whole imaginable, this town on its rocky hill, built almost like the immemorial Eastern cities, with the works of each civilisation serving as a foundation for those of the next, and finally, on top of it all, Gothic, Mudejar, and Renaissance buildings rising up side by side. 200 TOLEDO— THE TOWN Throughout the Middle Ages Toledo was a centre of industrial arts of all sorts. Besides its famous armour and swords, it was equally re- nowned for silk tissues ; and the best Castilian glass, which rivalled that of Venice and Barcelona, was made at Cadalso not far away. The cathedral is still the richest museum of works of the applied arts in Spain, and also preserves magnificent sculpture of the fourteenth century, probably by the Frenchmen who came at that time and founded a school, as at Burgos and Leon. The Virgin known as La Blanca is one of the most perfect pieces of Gothic statuary in existence. Later, in the fifteenth, came the northern archi- tects, carvers, glaziers, and painters : Juan Guas, Rodrigo Aleman, Enrique de Egas, Juan and Felipe de Borgoila, Diego Copin, Alberto de Holanda, Maestro Cristobal, and many others. Hard on their heels the men, many of them Spaniards of Italian training, who brought the new style : Alonso Berruguete, Alonso de Covar- rubias, and Andrea Contucci, the probable author of the Mendoza tomb. In the midst of the splendid ornaments and trap- pings with which these craftsmen filled the church, the absence of painting is striking. There are a few frescoes by Juan de Borgona, and Flemish panels in many of the altars ; but three-quarters of the sixteenth century passed before any great painter was employed here. Some time before 20I SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS 1580 Domenico Theotocopuli, El Greco, who had tried in vain to find work at the Escorial, finally settled at Toledo and soon won the admiration of many of the men of discernment who found the Primate of Spain a prince more to their taste than Philip II, and lived beside the Tagus. The bulk of El Greco's work is, or rather was once, to be found here ; for many of his pictures have gone, including the magnificent St. Martin and the Beggar, which vanished in 1907 from the Capilla de San Jose, soon afterwards to appear at a dealer's in Paris. There are legends of El Greco's strange character : of how he kept great state in the house which was once inhabited by Samuel Levi, Peter the Cruel's banker, always having musicians to accompany him at meals. Such a painter found his fit place in such a city. He had the society of men who, like himself, were possessed of the Italian culture ; and, above all, he had no rivals. For some forty years, until his death in 1614, he lorded it here, painting as he pleased, or designing and even carving altarpieces, and planning churches. His manner, which had resembled that of Jacopo Bassano and other of the Venetians when he lived at Rome, changed gradually until he produced those sombre portraits and amazing, brilliant glimpses of heaven, all light and pure colour, which may be seen on one and the same canvas in the " Burial of the Count of Orgaz " in the church of Santo Tome. He went TOLEDO-THE TOWN further ; in the years just before his death he made more and more daring experiments in the rendering of light, in which he so openly disregards what are still for most men the rules of drawing that the story sprang up that he was mad. It is very difficult to analyse his genius or to say exactly what it is that gives him so powerful a charm for the present generation. Perhaps the true quality of his paint, his inspired, flame-like arrangements, and those skies of his in which the immensity and luminosity of the Spanish heaven are translated as no other painter has ever trans- lated them, perhaps these things explain it ; but I think there are other reasons which make a stronger appeal. El Greco is supposed to embody the mystic spirit of the age in which he lived ; he is said to be full of the very essence of Toledo ; M. Maurice Barres, the author of a book called Du Sang, de la Volupte et de la Mort, has had another entitled, El Greco, le Secret de Tolede, announced for years. Undoubtedly one may read into his pictures what one imagines the mystic spirit of his age to have been, and there is little question that most of his admirers find it more amusing to do so than to rejoice in the quality of his paint. But whether El Greco ever suspected himself of expressing a conception of Castile such as the twentieth century breeds in the brains of aesthetic gentlemen and ladies is another matter. 203 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Together with this literary appreciation of his art goes the theory that it was the spell of Toledo that inspired him to forget Venice and adopt a style which should express the spirit of the Castilian city. I cannot stifle the conviction that El Greco cared mainly for his paint and for the ever-chang- ing light ; that he stayed at Toledo because they paid him well enough there, and because he was free to work as he liked, having a reputation made in Italy, a country for whose verdicts on art his Spanish patrons had a great respect. As to his style having been evoked by Castile, I find it difficult of belief. There are pictures of his in existence which were either painted before he left Italy or immediately afterwards, and which show the same types of faces which he went on repro- ducing to the day of his death, the same gestures, and almost the same compositions. The point in which he did change was his technique, for he abandoned the elaborate glazings that he had learned at Venice, and adopted a large style of free colour on a dark red preparation, in which his great pictures are executed. He made constant efforts towards the simplification of his methods, sacrificing accessories and adjuncts in the pursuit of true values. This everlasting struggle, the stages of which are so strongly marked in his work, is, to my mind, the really important fact about his life, and there is no reason why it should not have been fought out in other surroundings than Toledo. 204 View of Toledo, by El Greco. Coll. Durand-Ruel. Retablo by El Greco, Hospital de Taveka, Toledo. TOLEDO— THE MONUMENTS In a sense El Greco represents the spirit of his age, as every great painter must and always has — Poussin not a whit less than Degas. But with El Greco it is the subject, the superficial side of his work, that carries all the associations which people are so fond of linking with his name. Its fundamental qualities, the manner in which he de- signed and put paint on canvas, he owed not to Castile and not to Toledo, but to his own brain, eye, and hand. Indeed, it was not Toledo that influenced El Greco, but El Greco who brought life into Castilian painting, which was wellnigh dead when he arrived there. Tristan and other nameless pupils of his are not great, but they show the overpowering force of the personality of their master. And this personality did not sway those alone with whom it came into direct contact ; Velazquez, who was a boy of fifteen when Theoto- copuli died, learned from his work lessons which helped him to paint pictures destined to be looked on as the world's masterpieces by thousands who never heard the name of El Greco. THE MONUMENTS Curious as the streets of Toledo still are, they have been much modernised in a cheap fashion of late. Dealers have carried off everything that was lying loose or could be bought or stolen, and the 205 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS money which might have been spent in preventing clandestine sale has gone in atrocious restorations. When one looks at Sr. Melida's handiwork at San Juan de los Reyes, one feels moved to thank the Almighty that in His wisdom He has made the Spaniards too poor to do the same for all their historic buildings. This tendency is nothing new ; hardly a church escaped the rage for modernising which overtook the land in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The private houses have really got off much cheaper, and months might be spent in the town without exhausting the number of those that have preserved some Mudejar frag- ment or other. The patios or courtyards with their iron grilles and wainscoting of tiles are novel and enchanting to the northern visitor. The two Mozarabe churches to which I have referred are Santa Eulalia and San Sebastian. The former, which was founded in Visigothic times — before the abandonment of the Arian heresy, in fact — still has round horseshoe arches and carved stone capitals dating from the Reconquest. The east end — or apse, rather, as these Toledan buildings, owing to the broken rocky ground, are often not oriented — has been modernised. San Sebastian resembles it in every respect, except that its apse has disappeared altogether. The most important vestige of the Moorish rule is the little hermitage called El Santo Cristo de la Luz ; but only part of it, the nave and 206 TOLEDO —THE MONUMENTS aisles, belonged to the mosque of Bib-al-Mardom, the transept and apse having been added after the Reconquest. The exterior of the older part is grievously defaced, but still shows traces of inter- secting arcades and the other usual Moorish brick- work patterns. That of the apse is much better preserved and is a typical example of Mudejar work, always in the same material. The interior has round horseshoe arches supported by columns with carved stone capitals, many of which are of Visigothic origin ; but the general effect is marred by the modern plaster roofs. This little church has a history quite out of proportion to its actual value ; among other things the first Mass celebrated in Toledo after Don Alfonso and the Cid entered the city in triumph was sung in it by the French Benedictine monk Bernardo, who became arch- bishop of the see. There are remains of another mosque, known as the Mezquita de las Tornenas, similar to the above- mentioned, but much more disfigured. Beyond this there are a large number of ruined buildings which claim to have work of the time of the Moorish domination ; but it is all very fragmentary and doubtful. The best of the earlier Mudejar churches is Santiago del Arrabal, said to have been rebuilt in the thirteenth century by the Com- manders of the Order of Santiago de la Espada, who made it their business to care for the preser- vation of churches. It has a nave and aisles, 207 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS transepts, and three parallel apses. The interior has kept its pointed horseshoe arches, one fine artesonado ceiling, and a good specimen of the plaster work of the style in the pulpit ; but the vaults are modern. There is fair brick arcading on the exterior and a square tower with an ajimez window in it. The churches of San Roman and Santo Tome both have brick steeples, the best Mudejar erections of the sort in Toledo. They are both square and have several stages, of which the upper ones are pierced with trefoil or cusped arches, or adorned with arcading, a curious feature in which is that the shafts are of glazed earth. In Santo Tome hangs the Burial of the Conde de Orgaz, the greatest picture of El Greco's second period, painted not many years after his arrival at Toledo. All the most notable men of the day are repre- sented among the gentlemen who are witnessing the funeral. The most complete monuments of the Mudejar style are the two synagogues, El Transito and Santa Maria la Blanca. The first was founded in 1357-8 by Samuel Ben-Meir Ha-Levi, treasurer to King Peter the Cruel. Don Samuel must have been a financial genius of the first order, for he grew enormously rich and, like other Jewish bankers, did not forget his people. He appears to have had the ear of Peter's lovely mistress Maria de Padilla, and through her he 208 El Transito, Toledo. TOLEDO— THE MONUMENTS succeeded in getting the King to look the other way while, in open defiance of the civil and reli- gious laws of the realm, he built a synagogue on a spot upon which none had previously stood. His triumph was short-lived, however ; for two years later, when his foundation was nearing com- pletion and the Hebrew inscriptions praising him for his zeal and the King for protecting Israel were being traced on its walls, the royal officers laid Samuel Levi by the heels and put him on the rack. He died, and his royal master confis- cated his estate and that of his relatives, which must have created an unwontedly prosperous situ- ation in the Castilian treasury. Great was the consternation among the Jews of Castile, for from this time onwards their position became more and more precarious. The mob was always longing to be at their throats, and though states- men like D. Alvaro de Luna wished to keep them, and even Ferdinand and Isabella were tempted to take the vast sum offered and allow them to remain, popular feeling, rendered the more dangerous by the popular element in the Church, made it impossible ; 1492, that year which brought events at once glorious and fatal, saw the conquest of Granada, the discovery of America, and the expulsion of the Jews. Don Samuel's synagogue is a parallelogram round the upper portion of whose interior walls runs an arcade of Mudejar cusped arches, carried o 209 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS on coupled shafts ; the end wall is covered with the same plaster -work down to a few feet from the floor, and there is a really fine artesonado ceiling. On the same side of the Paseo del Transito, next door to the synagogue, is the house in which Don Samuel lived, and which is thought to have been El Greco's abode. It has lately been bought by the Marques de la Vega Inclan and thoroughly restored — in the good sense of the word — with old material. It is a small but beautiful house, with its light and graceful patio and its view over the gulf of the Tagus to the hills beyond. In the course of the repairs deep subterranean vaults have been discovered, in which the Jew probably kept his treasure. The Marques de la Vega Inclan has made a gift of the house to the nation, to be used as a museum of El Greco ; the twelve or fifteen canvases formerly in San Juan de los Reyes are to be placed there, the donor is adding some of his own, and it is to be hoped that others will follow, for more perfect surroundings for El Greco can hardly be imagined. The other synagogue, now called Santa Maria la Blanca, is presumably older than El Transito. It was dedicated to the Toledan Virgin by San Vicente Ferrer, most writers say in 1405, though I believe that the Jew-baiting that occasioned the seizure of it really took place in 1411. The exterior, like that of nearly all the Mudejar build - 2IO TOLEDO — THE MONUMENTS ings at Toledo, is insignificant. The interior, with its nave and aisles, long rows of horseshoe arches and friezes of sugary plaster-work, is a magnificent specimen of Mudejar architecture. The flimsy and false character of these brick and plaster columns and carved plaster capitals is as near an approach to the magic beauties of the Alhambra as is to be seen in Castile. I cannot spare the space to go over all the churches and houses which have Mudejar remains. There are many of them, but the work is always of the same description : cusped horseshoe or bastard Gothic arches and plaster ornamentation without end. I may mention the convents of San Juan de la Penitencia and Sta. Isabel de los Reyes, and the houses of the Conde de Esteban, Conde de Fuensalida, the Taller del Moro, the Casas de Mesa and de los Guzmanes. Very little ceramic work of any importance re- mains here ; the tiles are quite good of their kind, but always of the stamped variety so com- mon in Spain. As far as I know, the only ex- amples with hand-drawn designs are those that may be made out with difficulty in the dome of the Conception. The few artesonados visible after the various plasterings and restorations that have conspired against them, are worthy of the closest examination, for the Moors were exceedingly cunning carpenters. The most im- pressive of all the Mudejar remains are the famous 211 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS gates, with their frank unplastered brick ornament- ation, the Puertas del Sol and de Bisagra. In the midst of these ex-mosques and syna- gogues stands one of the grandest churches in Christendom, a product of the thirteenth century and of France, enriched by the arts of every suc- ceeding age and nation, noble in proportions, and decorated with glorious sculpture. Such is the charm of the new and strange, however, that the cathedral of Santa Maria la Blanca is neglected by myriads of tourists who are capable of the wildest enthusiasm for any fragment of Mudejar wedding-cake plaster- work they may come across. On the present site of the cathedral it is sup- posed that the Visigothic church, of whose mag- nificence Arab chroniclers have left a record, also stood. The Moslems either destroyed the building altogether or rebuilt it as a mosque, and in spite of the promises made by the king, his French queen and bishop seized and consecrated it soon after the town was taken. For nearly a hundred and fifty years the mosque was the church of the primate, until Fernando III — he is always known to Spaniards as El Santo, having been canonised in 1671 — pulled it down and, in 1227, laid the foun- dation-stone of what was to become the greatest Christian monument of Spain. Burgos had been building for six years, and Leon had not yet been begun. He was a great and a wise ruler, Fernando el Santo ; Spain owes 212 TOLEDO— THE MONUMENTS a heavy debt to him, and the building of these three mighty French cathedrals is not the least part of it. It was a great mind that saw the shame of allowing the capital of a Christian king- dom to worship in what had once been a mosque, and a generous one that was eager to take what France, the eldest daughter of the Church, had to offer him. Whether the impulse came from Fer- nando himself, or from his great bishop of Burgos, Mauricio, there can be no doubt of what the temper of the king was. Street puts the conclu- sion of the matter well when he says that Toledo Cathedral is a grand protest against Mahomedan architecture. We have the name of the architect who, it is said until 1290, directed the works. He was Petrus Petri, and the Spaniards translate his name as Pedro Perez, which is a gentle manner of con- veying the impression that he was a Spaniard ; but the character of his work makes it much more probable that he, like the Archbishop of Toledo at the period, was French. The plan he made here is on a scale unrivalled in any contemporary building, the width in the clear being given by Street as 178 feet. The length hardly corresponds, for it is only 395 feet, whilst Bourges, which Toledo resembles in its general disposition, has a width of only 128 and a length of 370. This enormous width accounts for the impression that the church is low. The nave and double 213 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS aisles are seven bays long ; the transepts do not project beyond them ; there is a choir of one bay, and a five-sided apse surrounded by a double choir aisle. It will be noticed that there is a certain Spanish look about the plan owing to the short- ness of the choir, which has one bay less than Leon and two less than Burgos, thus making it almost certain that the choir stalls were placed in the nave from the first. This detail, even backed by the Mudejar cusped arches of the triforium, is not enough to make it at all probable that the archi- tect was Spanish. He may have been obliged to conform in so far to the wishes of the clergy ; but, as Street says, it is inconceivable that anyone who had not worked on some one of the great French churches should have been able to plan this chevet. I need hardly remind my readers that the cathe- dral of El Burgo de Osma, begun, presumably by a national architect, five years after the one now under examination, originally had an east end con- sisting of apses without a choir aisle. The earliest part of the fabric here is the east end, and it deserves the closest attention ; for the difficulties presented by the unequal vaulting bays in the choir aisles are here met by a masterly solution. Street analyses the system fully, com- paring it with French examples, and finding it to be the logical conclusion drawn from a study of previous attempts, and superior to them all. The architect did not plan his diagonal ribs on a 214 TOLEDO — THE MONUMENTS curve as at Bourges, nor yet on a broken line as at Chartres and Leon. He improved upon the idea of a builder at Le Mans who introduced triangular compartments into the outer aisle, for he succeeded in making the vaulting bays between these compartments nearly square by placing be- tween the aisles double the number of columns that there are round the central apse, and further doubling their number in the supports in the outer wall. Thus the alternate bays are triangular throughout, the rest nearly rectangular, and the outer wall had circular chapels opening out of the square bays, and small square ones out of the tri- angular compartments. The two great chapels of San Ildefonso and Santiago, which now interfere with this arrangement of chapels on the east and north-east, and the atrocious " trasparente " are of later periods. The above-mentioned triforium runs round the inner choir aisle, and shows good French carving on its capitals. Above, there is a rose window in each bay, and there is another arcaded triforium in the choir itself. The clerestory windows are plain pointed lights. The building probably progressed slowly here, for when we come to the nave there is a change of style. The piers and groinings are as they were first planned, but there is no triforium, and the nave clerestory and the outer aisle have large six-light traceried windows. There is, further, a large circular window in the north transept. 215 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS It has been said that the coro was probably always in its present position in the two bays west from the crossing, and this is proved by the very rich middle pointed screen which surrounds it, the detail in which, from the architectural part to the sculptured scenes under canopies, is excellent. The screen is carried round the choir as well, but there parts of it have been modernised. From the fourteenth century also date the octagonal groined chapel of San Ildefonso, to the extreme east of the cathedral, and the richly carved north transept door, called the Puerta del Reloj. The door of Sta. Catalina, which leads into the cloister, is probably of the last years of the same century, at which time the cloister, which has been ruined, was also begun. Most of the above are founda- tions of Archbishop Tenorio. Such an array of fourteenth-century sculpture might lead one to suppose that a school had existed at Toledo at this period ; but I fear there is no foundation for the theory. It seems that we must give the credit to France again, for it is well known that there was a perfect mania for French fashions and the French language at the court of the Trastamaras. People referred to France as "the nation." There is nothing in Spain to lead us to suppose that there were ever any native sculptors at Toledo capable of executing such works ; and when the fashion changed another crowd of foreigners came in, this time Brabanters, Burgundians, and Germans. 216 TOLEDO— THE MONUMENTS Men really were citizens of the world in those days. Jan van der Eyken became Anequin de Egas, and worked from 1459 to 1467 on the Puerta de los Leones with Johan Waas (Juan Guas) and other Northerners. The magnificent stained glass dates from the early part of the century, and is the work of Alberto de Holanda, Maestro Cristo- bal, Pedro Frances, and many others. Towards the latter part of the fifteenth century, however, Spanish names became more and more frequent. Alvar Gomez was employed upon the west front, and the fine tombs of D. Alvaro de Luna and his wife in the ornate chapel of Santiago are by Pablo Ortiz. There is a little Mudejar work in the entrance arch to the sacristy and another chapel, but fortunately not enough to tell in the general effect. The exterior of Toledo Cathedral is in every way unworthy. It is shut in on all sides, except the not very important west front, by houses, and the roofs are a chaos of irregular additions. The towers were finished in the Renaissance period, and the cupola which tops one of them was de- signed by Jorge Manuel Theotocopuli, El Greco's son. We must return to the interior, where there are works of art enough to occupy us for months. The coro is a sumptuous place, fit to receive those holy men the canons, who live so well that there are many of them who are unable to waddle unassisted from the sacristy to their stalls. The lower seats 217 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS are the work of the same Rodrigo who carved the coros at Zamora, Ciudad-Rodrigo, and Plasencia ; but he behaved himself better here, and, instead of monks and nuns playing Puss-in-the-Corner and other less innocent games, wrought the taking of Granada and the chief military exploits of the Catholic Kings. The upper stalls, divided by marble shafts, have wooden reliefs of single figures of saints, those on the north by Felipe Vigarni (or Biguerny), and those opposite by Berruguete. The lectern is a magnificent bronze eagle, the metal- work is all of the best ; and alone, with her back turned towards the high altar, stands the gloriously beautiful Santa Maria la Blanca, whose photograph graces the first page of this book. Both the coro and the capilla mayor have great wrought rejas by Cespedes and Villalpando. The capilla mayor makes such a superb whole with its reja, bronze ambones (pulpits for reading the Gospel and the Epistle), and royal tombs, all backed by the enormous retablo, as is to be seen in no other church in Spain. Many chapters might easily be written on what it contains, for the arts of Castile at the proudest moment of its history are all represented in it. The carved, painted, and gilt retablo kept a tribe of craftsmen employed for years under the direction of Enrique de Egas. The tomb of the great Cardinal Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, who died in 1495, is said to be by a Dutchman, Diego Copin, but the attribution which 218 Lectern, Toledo Cathedral. TOLEDO— THE MONUMENTS gives it to the Tuscan Andrea Contucci seems more probable. The catalogue of the works of art preserved in the other chapels, the treasury, the winter chapter- house, and the sacristies is interminable. There are copes embroidered with large pearls, plate, priceless vestments of all periods, reliquaries of every shape and date, tapestries, sculpture. There are a few late Gothic altars which still have Flemish primitive paintings, but most of them were suppressed in the sixteenth century, and until the advent of El Greco nothing better was done here than Juan de Borgona's frescoes in the winter chapter-house. In the sacristy there is a series of apostles by El Greco, and in the altar one of his finest, certainly his most indisputable work, the " Christ on Calvary." The room itself is of good proportions, and is soberly decorated in the style of the late sixteenth century. The frescoes on the roof are by Giordano, and to the right of the high altar on the side wall is a scene from the Passion by Goya. The Annunciation opposite it probably has another Goya under the daub painted by order of the chapter thirty years ago. In a room opposite the sacristy there is a doubtful Titian and what, in its bad light and dirty condi- tion, looks like a fine Giovanni Bellini. The visitor who is interested in liturgy should go to Mass in the capilla mozarabe, where it is said according to that ritual every morning. The 219 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Toledan processions are magnificent beyond words ; the cloisters are hung with splendid tapestries and rugs, and Enrique de Arfe's custodia is carried through the streets at Easter and Corpus Christi. Besides the cathedral and its dependencies, there is only one other Gothic building of any importance in the town — the convent church of San J uan de los Reyes, founded by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1476. It is another example of the style which I have had occasion to describe at Valladolid and Salamanca, and, though historic- ally interesting, has little else to recommend it. A curious point is the dome which is groined with coupled ribs that indicate Moorish influence. It would be interesting to know whether Juan Guas really designed the whole church. The cloisters, which were once fine, have been horribly rebuilt, and all the restorations carried out in the church and its adjacent buildings are equally bad. The provincial museum contained until recently a series of Apostles and the famous view of Toledo by El Greco, all in shocking condition ; but these pictures are now to find a happier home in the Casa del Greco. The room in which the museum is installed is constantly menacing ruin, and it would be a pity if a damaged but beautiful series of pictures of the school of Bruges, and good early Moorish fragments of ceramics, were destroyed. 220 TOLEDO -THE MONUMENTS Just below the Zocodover stands the Hospital de Santa Cruz, a foundation of Cardinal Mendoza's like the one of the same name at Valladolid. The cardinal died in 1495, and the building was not begun until afterwards, so that here Enrique de Egas was able to go to work without the fear that the founder would not find the result rich enough. The portal is heavily ornamented, however, and would probably have satisfied Mendoza himself. In the fine patio there are preserved a few Visigothic capitals. The great Alcazar, which stands on the highest point of the hill looking across the Tagus towards the old ruined castle of San Servando, has been burnt countless times and preserves little more than its austere outer walls, the work of Alonso de Covarrubias and Juan de Herrera. To the north of the city, outside the walls, lies Cardinal Tavera's hospital, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and usually known as the Hospital de Afuera. It was begun by Bartolome de Busta- mente in 1541, and besides the great tomb of the founder, Berruguete's last work contains a retablo designed by El Greco. Several of the pictures painted for it by the same artist have gone, but there are one or two left. El Greco's architecture may further be studied in the facade of the Ayuntamiento, and in other retablos, notably that of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, which also has sculpture by him. His lines are pure and severe ; 221 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS here, as in his painting, he seems to have kept the memory of what he had seen in Italy quite undimmed in his Spanish surroundings. The great pictures have disappeared from San Jose" ; but one of his last, and in some respects most interesting, paintings is the "Assumption of the Virgin " in San Vicente. I thus come to the end of my account of Toledo, a place most difficult to describe because of the multitude of buildings of interest con- tained in it. With all its beauty and charm it is made as unpleasant as possible to strangers by the mob of guides and touts of all colours and sizes that infest it. It is also sad to return there year after year to find that some fresh abuse in the way of restoration has been perpetrated or planned, that the cathedral is falling because a Ministry refuses to grant the sum necessary for constructive repairs, or that another Greco has been sold and carried off. The Marques de la Vega Inclan's intelligent idea of making a small museum of the Casa del Greco is the one bright spot in all the dreary history of modern times at Toledo. 222 X THE ESCORIAL AND VALLADOLID The colossal monastery upon which Philip II lavished so much time and money is not unworthy to be ranked as the eighth marvel of the world. Its strange position in the bleak mountains of the Guadarrama, the awful majesty of its granite walls, its empty treasure-houses and well-filled royal tombs, all make it an appropriate monument to the ill-fated House of Austria that built it. After the few years that Philip II passed in follow- ing the wars in person, he spent as much time as he could at the Escorial, watching the progress of the building, planning the decorations, and sending to Italy for painters and works of art. The first architect in charge was Juan Bautista de Toledo, who had lived at Naples under the great viceroy, D. Pedro de Toledo, and formed himself there and at Rome. In 1559 Philip summoned him to Madrid ; and from that time until his death four years later he was constantly engaged with plans and preparations, for when he died, in 1563, very little of the work had been done. His successor was an Asturian named Juan de Herrera, a man 223 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of strong character, who had studied at Brussels and, as an officer in Charles V's bodyguard, had followed the wars in Italy. Herrera is the greatest architect of Spanish blood who ever lived ; he evolved a style of his own that has all the austerity of his Spanish mountains, and for that reason, perhaps, he has never been popular with his fellow countrymen. The Escorial took the best years of his life, for he worked upon it until 1577 with the nominal salary of 250 ducats. He never- theless found time to build the cathedral at Valla- dolid, the south wing of the Alcazar at Toledo, and an exchange at Seville. The task presented by the erection, in such a desert, of such a pile as the Escorial, in a country where there was no slave labour, may more readily be imagined than described. Fortunately there was a business man with a phenomenal head for executive detail and an iron will at Herrera's side. This was a Geronimite monk named Antonio de Villacastin, and he put down a strike in 1577 which might easily have ended in the wreck of the nearly completed monastery by the hungry and ill-paid workmen. The plan of El real sitio de San Lorenzo del Escorial is rectangular, with a small square addi- tion, the royal palace, on the east side. It is dedicated to St. Lawrence in fulfilment of a vow made at the battle of St. Quentin ; but the often-repeated story that the plan is intended to 224 THE ESCORIAL look like a gridiron, the saint's emblem, is without foundation. Beside the royal apartments and church, it contains a famous and largely unexplored library which has many times suffered from fire and thefts, the halls and refectories of the Geronimite monks who once inhabited it, and a seminary. Of the pictures which are preserved in the sacristy and chapter-house there are some of great value, though those that were most esteemed at the time of the War of Independence were then taken to Madrid. The French looted the jewelled reli- quaries most systematically and left nothing but the bones. A catalogue of the frescoes, other paintings, sculptures, and works of art which the monastery contains would be of little value here, for they are well known and are for the most part interesting as illustrations of the tastes of the royal founder. As to what manner of man this Philip was, opinions vary widely ; but many people who deny him the title of statesman will yet admit that he was a fine and discriminating judge of art, a reputation he gained easily through having in- herited Titian from his father. It was no particular merit on Philip's part to recognise the great Vene- tian at the height of his glory, and it was the same with the Leoni and Antonio Mor. The story of the king's relations with the latter are very curious. The court-painter's atelier communicated by a private door with the palace at Madrid, and p 225 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS on the occasions when Philip could induce Mor to come there, he used to slip in unnoticed and surprise the painter at his work. These visits became so frequent and lasted so long that it began to be feared at court that Mor's influence would grow too large ; and to give him a gentle hint it was whispered that he had bewitched the king. The hint was enough, for Mor, who had probably heard how another artist, Pietro Torrigiano, had fared at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition, took the first opportunity of leaving the country for good. The painters whom Philip summoned from Italy to decorate the Escorial were the worst of their time. It is difficult to find anything to say for the work men like Pellegrino Tibaldi, Francesco Zuccaro, Luca Cangiagi, and Cincinati did there. It is supposed with foundation that El Greco left Rome for Spain in the hope of being employed at the Escorial, but though he had been recommended in the highest terms by as competent a person as Giulio Clovio, Philip would have none of him. At the same time it is curious that he should have cared enough for the wonderful fantastic works of Hieronymus Bosch to buy as many of them as he could. D. Felipe de Guevara left him the six he possessed in his will, and Philip put nine at least into the Escorial, some of the finest of which remain there. The magnificent Tintorettos, I believe, were brought to Spain later ; and it is on 226 THE ESCORIAL record that Philip cared little for the superb Grecos : " San Onofre," " San Mauricio and the Theban Legion," and the "Allegorical Vision," which indeed looks like a caricature. There can be no doubt that the king was passionately interested in art. On his journey to Portugal he spent two weeks in examining the Roman remains at Merida. He loved to spend as much time as he could spare from the affairs of state with sculptors and painters, and he freely criticised and advised them. All this proves abundantly that he loved the arts ; but in paint- ing, at least, the men he selected himself were all second or third rate. Most of them were Italians, but the Spaniards, Navarrete, Carvajal, Barroso, were little better. As regards sculpture, it is interesting to notice how different Philip's taste was from that of his subjects ; for, at a time when all the churches in the land were being filled with painted wood- carving, he banned it absolutely from his monastery. He was most fortunate in his architects, Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera, and it is to them that the Escorial owes its individuality. Philip must have the credit for entrusting the work to them, for they were not popular ; and however weak his painters may be, they are well worth those who enjoy the favour of the one sovereign who patronises art at the present day. 227 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS VALLADOLID Valladolid, which lies on the Pisuerga a few miles north of the Duero, is the largest and most prosperous of the towns of Old Castile. The penalty it has paid for modernity is the loss of the aspect of a city, which decaying places like Burgos and Avila still possess. It is rather northern- looking, with its modern brick architecture, blind- ing electric lights, and monotonous dingy streets. The Court often resided here in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the town is worth a visit to-day for the buildings of that age it preserves ; for the facades of San Pablo and San Gregorio are the most curious works of the style to be seen, unless the weary journey to Aranda de Duero be undertaken. Many foreigners find these mon- strous doorways of the Catholic Kings the most interesting examples of Christian architecture in Spain ; they certainly are the most astonishing. The only well-preserved early church at Valla- dolid is Santa Maria la Antigua, which has a short nave and aisles, a transept that does not project beyond them, three apses, an exterior gallery along the north wall, and a splendid Romanesque steeple at the west end. The exterior gallery consists of round arches on coupled shafts like those at Segovia. The interior is good in detail, though the proportions are marred by the western gal- 228 VALLADOLID leries ; and, judging by the vaults, the east end is later in date than the west, the usual order being thus reversed. The retablo of the high altar is a well-preserved work by Juan de Juni, with brilliant estofado, or colouring, and in the side chapels there are two earlier altarpieces with good wood -carving and inferior paintings. With the exception of the steeple of San Martin, which is nearly a reproduction of that of Santa Maria, there is nothing more until we reach the latter part of the fifteenth century. This was the age of enormously wealthy and powerful prelates, the Mendozas, Fonsecas, and Cartagenas ; and here as at Burgos we find most instructive evidence as to their tastes in art in the buildings in which they rivalled one another. D. Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, el Gran Cardenal de Esparia, founded the Hospital de Santa Cruz in 1466, and got the Brabanter Enrique de Egas to build it for him in the latest fashion. Egas, anxious to please, planned a fine and rather severe facade in a style of mixed Gothic and Renais- sance, which, in spite of alterations, is to-day one of the best-proportioned fronts in Castile. When the cardinal saw it, however, he was furious, called it poor and wretched, and was so angry with the unhappy architect that the king had to pacify him. To make matters worse the ambitious Bishop of Palencia, D. Alonso de Burgos, had in the mean- 229 SPAIN : HER LIFE AND ARTS time built the church of San Pablo, with a wonder- ful west front running up higher than the roof and covered, every inch of it, with carving. There are pinnacles, figures of all shapes and sizes, coats-of- arms, and every conceivable sort of late Gothic ornamentation on it. This facade naturally put the cardinal's hospital entirely in the shade ; and, as if further to proclaim his triumph, its founder soon afterwards, in 1488-96, built the Colegio de San Gregorio next door to San Pablo. The facade of San Gregorio is even wilder in its excess of decoration than the other. It is true that the quality of the sculpture is greatly inferior in the later building, for San Pablo has good work of its kind, and may well be by the Colonias' best pupils, but contemporary opinion probably regarded the more extravagant front as the grandest work of its age, and Bishop Alonso de Burgos seems to have preferred it, as he chose it for his burial- place. 1 The interior of San Pablo deformed by seven- teenth-century additions made by the famous Duque de Lerma, is better in its proportions than most buildings of its age. It consists of a great nave of five bays, transepts, and a long choir in which the stalls fill their proper places, though the three western bays of the nave are occupied by a 1 For details see Estudios Historico- Arthiicos, by Sr. Marti y Monsd ; and Carl Justi, Miscelaneen aus drei Jahrhunderten Spanischen Kunstle- bens. Berlin, 1908. 230 VALLADOLID gallery. The groining is very elaborate, and was painted in bright reds, blues, and yellows at the time of the Lerma additions. The strange lack of feeling for proportion that is always evident in this period is nowhere more forcibly illustrated than in the position of the two richly carved interior doors in the ends of the transepts. These were not placed in the centre of their walls, but so much to one side as to make it necessary to chop off part of the doorways, thus giving the church an unbalanced look. Another and much later example of archi- tectural extravagance may be seen in the facade of La Magdalena with its overgrown coat-of- arms. After that it is a relief to turn to Herrera's grand though unfinished cathedral. The Renaissance arrived late at Valladolid. W e have seen a pathetic plea for moderation merci- lessly quashed by the great cardinal ; and the gale of the Catholic Kings' Gothic had to blow itself out before simplicity of line could be toler- ated. When the change did come, it went as far in the direction of classical sobriety as the pre- ceding movement had in the other, though the reform it initiated was short-lived and only left one monument, an unfinished one at that, to record its existence. Only half the mighty church which Juan de Herrera planned for Valladolid in 1585, when the city hoped to be capital of Spain, was 231 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS finished ; the destinies of Valladolid and its cathedral were alike. The outside was reformed by Churriguera and cannot be appreciated in its present form. The interior with its colossal arches and roughly hewn granite walls is that of a noble temple, let the enemies of classic architecture say what they will. Even Street, who had no prejudice in Herrera's favour, praises him for his sincerity in leaving the great exterior buttresses exposed to view instead of spending a vast sum in concealing them as Wren did at St. Paul's. The furniture, as befits the style, is scanty. There is a great silver custodia by Juan de Arfe in the treasury, and in the library an interesting model of the cathedral as Herrera intended it to be. The Grecos which were once in the sacristy have been sold to a Paris dealer. The Hospital de Santa Cruz, whose early history is given above, is now used as a museum. Among a litter of rubbish it possesses a large quantity of important Renaissance wood sculpture from con- vents in the town which were destroyed or plundered in revolutionary times. Here the school of retablo-makers of the sixteenth century may be closely studied. They all of them had their training in Italy ; and through them the northern influence was finally routed. There are admirable fragments by Alonso Ber- ruguete from the great retablo of San Benito, begun 1526 ; some of these figures, such as that 232 Wooden Statue of St. Francis, attributed to Alonso Cano, Toledo Cathedral. VALLA DO LID of San Sebastian, are full of beauty and make one suspect that the mass of work that bears Ber- ruguete's name is really by his pupils. There is an Entombment by Juan de Juni, dated 1543, a frightfully contorted composition. Gregorio Her- nandez, who is often insipid, is seen at his very best in a series of life-sized groups of the Pro- cession to Calvary (about 1627), originally in- tended to be carried through the streets in Holy W eek. The spirit of realism shown in these pasos is extraordinary ; it is nearer caricature than the wonderful and curiously similar work Tabachetti did a few years before at Varallo. There is no stone sculpture of any importance in the museum, but two magnificent bronze kneeling figures of the Dukes of Lerma, the models being by Pompeyo Leoni and the casts by Juan de Arfe and Lesmes Fernandez de Moral (1601-7). There are probably few museums which do as well as this of Valladolid with as meagre a grant. Expenses, custodians, director, and all have to be paid out of about £24 per annum. 233 XI MADRID Madrid is always disappointing to the traveller who visits it in the hope of rinding a great archive of national life standing, to the country at large, in the relation in which London stands to England or Paris to France. The city is almost entirely modern, and its central quarters have that character of the first half of the nineteenth century which the present generation finds the reverse of picturesque. Monuments of the Middle Ages there are none — its obscure late Gothic chapel or two and many Baroque churches are of less architectural importance than the religious build- ings of any of the provincial capitals. There are very few private houses of interest ; the Plaza Mayor and the Puentes de Toledo and de Segovia are almost all that remains of old Madrid, and they date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There is no cathedral, though one is being slowly built at the present time. Madrid has an inglorious past, an unspeakable present, and a doubtful future. The official style, Villa y Corte, is significant. 234 MADRID Madrid, though capital of the realm (Corte), is still but a Villa (town), and has never been a Ciudad (city). After its recovery from the Moors it was a mere hunting lodge throughout most of the Middle Ages. It only began to grow in importance towards the end of the fifteenth century, and was finally chosen by Charles V as his capital, in no wise on account of its size and importance, but because the Emperor liked its keen air and desolate surroundings. Charles may also have wished to avoid swelling the pride of any of the great cities of Castile or Andalusia, whose rivalries were troublesome enough as it was. His policy, and that of his son, Philip II, of fixing the capital at upstart Madrid, at the expense of historic Toledo, Valladolid, and Seville, is very like that followed in the choice of their ministers and high officers of state, who sprang from the gutter more often than from noble houses. To-day there is not enough even of Renaissance or Baroque architecture to remind one of the old days. If the traveller would look for sermons in stones, however, he might find scores in every street and public building. Madrid is a living symbol of the divorce of old Spain from the new. Here Philip II and his successors sanctioned the anything but national policy which brought the country to ruin under the old regime, and here, under the new, Jacobin centralisation has fed a vast army of office-holders, while experiments for 2 35 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS the perfection of parliamentary government have distracted the attention of the ingenuous and the well-meaning. To modern Spaniards Madrid stands for the highly centralised form of government which the demagogues of the nineteenth century, drunk with the new wine of the principles of 1789, forced upon the country. The rupture with the past which changed France's course at the Revolu- tion was far less violent than that brought about by the constitutions which, from 1812 to 1876, adorn the pages of Spanish history. The great fact with which those who govern Spain must reckon : that the country is made up of several different nationalities, has been ignored by generations of parliamentary quacks, who have persisted in treat- ing Spain as if she were in all respects similar to France. They have suppressed the old division into thirteen provinces, which had their origin in the independent states gradually absorbed by Castile, replacing them by forty-nine new ones, arbitrarily traced by a D. Javier de Burgos after the model of the French departments. They have introduced almost universal suffrage in a country where the majority can neither read nor write. Their labours have been of about as much use to Spain as those of the diligent translators, who have placed each new French bawdy book in the hands of the Spanish reading public, as D. Joaquin Sanchez de Toca, ex-Mayor of Madrid, says in 236 MADRID his Regionalismo, Municipalismo y Centralisation, a most thoughtful essay on the subject. The upshot of it all is that Spain is governed by a small minority of professional politicians, who are less responsible than their like in other countries, because most honest men steer clear of politics, and because the people are too badly educated to be able to keep an eye on their doings. Now the centre of these statesmen's operations is Madrid, and it is not unfair to say that its entire population — for there is very little industry or commerce — lives directly or indirectly on politics. All the people who fill the cafes are either em- ployed by the Government, or hope to be soon, and in the meantime employ themselves in playing dominoes or in holding up the wall in the Calle de Sevilla. Madrid is the most purely political capital in Europe. The foregoing is intended to be neither an ill- natured caricature nor a useful hint to the Spaniards as to the management of their own affairs ; but rather to show in what way the place is important, and to suggest some of the associa- tions which rise up in the Spanish mind at the mention of its name. The Basque, the Catalan, and the inhabitants of other outlying regions certainly have their reasons for regarding Madrid and what it represents as a curse to the country. But why should the foreigner take up their quarrels ? He may just as well, if his moral sense 237 ( SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS is under control, forget it all and rejoice in the vast crowds of idlers that prevent circulation in the Puerta del Sol, or in the smart carriages which roll up and down the Castellana on warm spring evenings. At first sight it seems that there is nothing pecu- liarly Spanish about all this ; the few well-dressed people look as if their clothes came from London or Paris ; and the first theatres are modelled on the French. He who would see how much national character Madrid has kept under a thin varnish of European civilisation should devote his days and, especially, nights to exploring the quarters which lie south of a line drawn straight across the city from the Palace to the Prado. Here national life is strongest, and a prowl through the Calle de Toledo, the Rastro, Plaza de la Cebada, and Calle de Lavapies will show popular Madrid as it is in its garlicky self; and the foreigner must not be dashed if he has to court it in such modern surroundings as the Latina cinematograph. As for the new quarter, the Barrio de Salamanca and the streets on the other side of the Castellana, it will have little charm for those who know Paris. However, a visit to it may be rewarded by some such vision as the following : A block of three or four tall houses built in imitation of those in the Avenue du Bois, glorious with palatial marble entries, plate-glass doors, and porters in uniform, stands on one side 238 MADRID of an enormously broad street, which is obviously intended to be adorned with a double row of buildings of the same description, but has as yet to content itself with this one block and a few run-to-ruin shanties. The street is a sea of mud, in the middle of which a heavy country cart with a string of mules is sunk up to the axles. Two muleteers run from one beast to the other, beating them about the head and uttering blood-curdling whoops and curses ; all in vain. In the back- ground a glimpse of the plain of Castile with the blue Guadarrama in the distance. As, outside the walls of its museums and private collections, Madrid has nothing of interest in the field of art, I shall take the opportunity of speak- ing of Spanish theatres and other amusements. Little need be said about the opera and the more serious theatres, such as the Espanol and the Comedia, where the foreigner will seldom find anything by the old Spanish dramatists being given, but may see modern historical plays, or come 'dies- cle-mceurs modelled upon the French. Of the former there is one which must on no account be missed ; it is Zorilla's D. Juan Tenorio, always played in every Spanish town where there is a theatre on All Saints' Day, and always attended by vast crowds as if it were a religious ceremony. The story is that of Don Juan, taken from the old Spanish plays. As drama the piece may or may not be interesting ; but the enthusiasm of the 239 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS audience is magnificent. Every man, woman, and child knows some passage by heart, and when that passage arrives all who know it repeat it after the actor. The culminating point is approached in the lines — '? la barca del pescador que espera cantando el dia, no es cierto, paloma mia, que estan respirando amor ? " soon after which Da. Ana falls into Don Juan's arms. The effect is very curious, and reminds one of prayers at Harrow, when the shell was taken by the French master and used to gabble out the responses at the wrong places, causing blasphemous confusion. In the case of the Spanish audience, however, the motive is something approaching religious exaltation. The God is upon them. They are drunk with the sound of their gorgeous Castilian. They obey the impulse which makes the Italians sing at the opera. More entertaining are the smaller theatres like the Apolo, Zarzuela, Lara, Eslava, and others which vanish and reappear periodically, in which reigns what is known as " el genero chico," the lesser sort. The programme usually includes three or four sections, as they are called, short one or two act plays with or without music — zarzuelas or sainetes. The stalls cost one or two pesetas and the house is cleared after each section. These little plays are 240 MADRID a truly Spanish form of art, and are often delight- fully written and acted. Those by the brothers Quintero are full of the very essence of Madrid. The scene is usually laid in some low quarter of the town or in a country village, and the characters taken from the people. The actors play these parts with a joy in the people's way of looking at things which takes one's breath away when one is fresh to it. And imagine an audience, composed of all classes of society with a strong prepon- derance of the people, which does not yearn for dukes and counts, but delights in seeing its own daily life on the stage ! The music of the operettes consists chiefly of popular airs improved upon with more or less disastrous results, and separated, the one from the other, by most amazing modern Italian or Wagnerian padding. The large and unwieldy orchestra labours woundily with the padding, but pulls itself together when a popular air heaves into sight, and gives it with great emphasis. The dancing is seldom good — almost always of the con- ventionalised school — dances known in Spain as " bailes de academia " and in the rest of Europe as Spanish dances : spangled skirts not reaching to the ankle and castanets. These dances are cor- rupted by foreign and academical influence, and are prevented from being good by the music, which is much too loose rhythmically. Dancing and music are of secondary importance in these plays. Q 241 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Those who come to Madrid in the hope of finding the sort of performance given by Spanish dancers like Otero, Tortajada, or Guerrero will be disappointed. Neither of these three ladies dances well enough to earn her living by the art in Spain, and their dances are intended for exporta- tion into foreign countries, where they are more appreciated. The Madrid public is naturally much more interested in the Cake-walk or the Kraquette. At the time of the Spanish- American War all Spain was singing " Two Little Girls in Blue," which, as long-memoried people may recollect, made its appearance in the States about the time of the Chicago fair. Spanish national dances are not seen to advan- tage on the stage ; and they are so vitiated by generations of dancing schools as to have lost all their flavour when performed by professionals. Far from lamenting their disappearance, one is inclined to welcome it as an unmixed blessing, if one looks at the matter from any other than a sentimental point of view. It will be a relief when the last puny minx, with her dirty pink shoes and stockings and her jaded spangled dress, has gone through her perfunctory peteneras for the last time. The real national dances, from which these tawdry music-hall turns have been evolved, still exist and will probably long continue to do so ; but they must be looked for elsewhere. The joys of Madrid are not exhausted with the 242 MADRID zarzuela. All the year round the historic Basque game of pelota is played at the Jai Alai or great court near the Calle del Carmen. The game itself is very fine ; it puts the well-grown, white-clad bodies of the young Basque pelotaris into splendid play, which has perhaps had more to do with its great success in Paris than its purely sporting interest. It is playe#by sides of two or three in a three-walled court, ^consisting of one side and two end walls, of which the side wall is almost three times as long as the others. The fourth side is occupied by a gallery for spectators. The ball is about the size of a tennis-ball, but hard, and is struck against one of the end walls with a large, narrow, spoon-shaped, wicker glove, known as the cesta. Rules and scoring are not unlike those of racquets, and are very easily understood. The moment play begins a gang of desperate- looking ruffians starts calling out the odds, which are taken freely by the audience. The book- makers stand in the court and throw the tickets up to the backers in the gallery in pierced tennis- balls, into which the backers put their stakes and toss them back. The odds often take dizzy runs while the fifty points which are usually played are being scored ; experienced backers often manage to get odds both ways. For instance, the betting having opened at evens, after fifteen minutes' play the score may stand at : Blues, 15 ; Reds, 5. Fifty minutes later Reds have scored 35, and 243 SPAIN : HER LIFE AND ARTS Blues only 20. Wild excitement, especially if there is a dark horse on either side. Has Blues' opening run exhausted them ? Or are they merely lying low with an eye to the odds ? The book- makers are evidently not all in the know, for widely different views of the situation are betrayed by the varying odds offered. Now is the time for the careful punter, who has put three dollars on Reds at ten to three early in the day, to make sure of the thing by taking the proferred seven to four the other way. The very mixed audience cheers its colour for a good return, curses it for a bad one, and wildly applauds an error on the other side. The bookies keep up a deafening roar. The air is thick with blasphemy, tobacco smoke, and sweltering humanity. Grim, heavily moustachioed old ladies sit in deepest black, pencil and paper in hand, not letting a move of the game, or of the betting, escape them. They know every pelotari in the court, and long experience has taught them to catch that indefinable atmosphere which lingers about a queer game, and to turn the knowledge to account. In the meantime Blues have scored a little, but Reds move steadily forward. Gradu- ally the betting droops ; no one will take six to one. Reds have only five or six points more to make, and Blues are a dozen behind. The pelo- taris are tired, one or two of them dead beat. The crowd has stopped its cheers and curses, and 244 MADRID those who have no money to touch take them- selves off. Now and then a hideously raucous bookmaker screeches out some absurd odds which no one dreams of taking. And the match ends, rather less bravely than it began. Felota is not native to Castile, or to any part of Spain save the Basque provinces, whence come all the pelotaris, and where alone it is to be seen in its pristine purity, unpolluted by the evils of gambling. It would be an exaggeration to say that most matches played at Madrid are arranged beforehand, as I have hinted was the case in the one described ; but a queer game is by no means rare at the Jai Alai, and may be taken as typical of the influence of the capital on provincial ethics. Indeed, it might be said of Madrid, and of all Spain as represented by it, that it is the home of foregone conclusions. From pelota matches to changes of ministry, nothing is willingly left to chance in this land of gamblers. Everyone knows the exact result of elections before these have taken place ; in the whole constitutional history of the country no Government has ever failed to get its majority elected to Cortes. The virtue of prudence has killed all belief in living possibilities, and has filled Spaniards with that profound scepti- cism from which hardly one is free. Not hot reck- lessness, but cold prudence, is what ails the Spaniard. Nos, el Desengano (Disillusionment) ; that joyless sovereign has ruled Spain ever since 245 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Quevedo proclaimed him, and Quevedo, not Cervantes, is the prophet of modern Spain. It is impossible to speak of the amusements of Madrid without mentioning the bull-fight, and yet what can be said about it that has not been repeated many times ? Everyone knows what it is ; though many of its fiercest foreign opponents think it necessary to be present at one, presumably to show their displeasure by leaving the Plaza after the first bull. Almost every book on Spain contains a more or less exact account of the ceremony, and there are many long treatises on the art of tauromachy in Spanish. It is not easy to gauge the state of opinion in Spain itself as regards bull-fighting. A great number of people disapproves strongly of the sport, and there is a league for suppressing it altogether, whose efforts will probably remain fruitless for long years to come. The spectacle really plays a less important part in Spanish life than is imagined abroad. Except in a few great cities and in the districts were fighting bulls are bred, no corridas, except for a rare novillada, take place out of fair-time, and then only three or four. In Madrid, however, which boasts a matchless population of idle ruffians with enough money to command amusements, there are one, two, or even three fights a week from Palm Sunday until well on in November ; and it is not unfair to say that there bull-fighting is as important a 246 MADRID factor as any other in forming the character of the people. In most of the towns the audience is composed largely of men who look on the sport as outsiders, who have no first-hand knowledge of bulls, and understand little or nothing of the technique. Andalusia and parts of Castile, however, are first and foremost grazing countries, full of big gana- derias or ranches. Good bulls are bred in the south, in the province of Salamanca, near Guadal- ajara, and at many other places. Fights take place at the centres of these districts in fair-time, which are very different affairs from those held in the capitals, where the mob indulges its blood- thirstiness vicariously. At Medina del Campo, for instance, the three days of the fair early in September see a sort of running bull-fight in the town square, which is hardly interrupted while there is light, and not always when there is not. Bulls in endless succession are turned loose in the square, which is converted into an arena for the occasion, and walled with carts and compact human bodies. Thus all the spectators, except those perched on the house-tops or in the windows, may be called upon to take an active part at any moment, as was originally the case in all Spanish pastimes, and still is in the real juerga. When the bull is let loose a frenzied mob rushes upon him with coats, cloaks, hats — any- 247 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS thing will do — and begins to play him. Some of them know a good deal about it, others little, most nothing ; and accidents are frequent. The thing turns into a mad orgy of blood later ; the peasants come forth armed with bludgeons, swords, knives, shearing scissors ; they rush the corral, let loose several bulls at once. Anyone who will take the chance of being gored in the street by a stray bull, or of being forced into action by playful peasants, is sure to be rewarded by sights such as Goya etched, the like of which will probably never be witnessed again in the arenas of the large towns. Andalusia is the home of the best bulls and the best toreros. Cordova and Seville between them turn out more diestros than all the rest of Spain put together. There the crowd at the fights is much more amusing than at Madrid — they know more about it, and come to see fine play rather than blood. W onderful performances take place in the villages in the grazing country. Everyone is more or less of a torero, and a band of hopeful young novilleros is sure to be there, all burning to try their skill. This is the true school of bull- fighting. All the masters have passed through it, and a hard apprenticeship it is, for, to say nothing of hunger and thirst, they travel over the country without a ticket — de vialeta — under the seat or in the lamp-hole, risking being thrown out of the train without the formality of stopping if dis- 248 MADRID covered, or worse still, having their cherished pig- tails cut off. " Pasando mas fatigas que Dios pasd penas en el monte Calvario " — worse sufferings than our Lord's on Calvary — until they draw the attention of some important personage and get a chance of appearing in an important corrida. But their woes are nothing in comparison with the paradise which is the life of the few who climb to the top of the profession. Most of the great toreros have sprung from the gutter ; not a few, among them the finest artists of all, have been gypsies. Luis Mazzantini is a notable exception ; but he has retired, like Rafael Guerra, who holds his court at Cordova, and, when asked who is the best living torero, replies, "El mejor torero de Espana, soy yo. Despues de mi, nadie ; y despues de nadie, el Fuentes." 1 The same hero is said to have been dining once with some friends at Fornos' at Madrid when D. Marcelino Menendez Pelayo, the stupendously learned author of La Historia de las Ideas Esteticas en Espana, entered the restau- rant. A friend touched the torero's arm and said, " Mira, Rafael, alia va el hombre mas sabio de Espana." 2 Rafael cast a glance over his shoulder, measured Menendez Pelayo from head to foot, spat, and made answer, " Y ese tio, de que sabe ? " 3 1 " The best bull-fighter in Spain is myself, after me no one, and after no one Fuentes." 2 " Look, Rafael, that is the wisest man in Spain/' 3 " That cove ? What does he know ? " 249 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Fuentes has at last retired, or has promised to do so, Antonio Montes was killed in the arena in Mexico, and the men of the day are Bombita and Machaquito. There is another, el Gallito, the son of that Fernando el Gallo who was also a great man in his day. This cockerel is beyond compare the greatest artist alive, but, cautious like the true gypsy he is, he never takes the mad risks which make Machaquito beloved of the crowd. With the cloak he is an exquisitely delicate workman, and he fills the hearts of all true aficionados — the fancy — with joy, as also the soul of his lamented father, who is popularly supposed to sit in glory, and look down and exclaim, " Hijo del alma ; ole ya ! " at each of his son's matchless quites. The passion for bull-fighting is strong in the extremes of society — in the highest class and in the lowest ; the middle classes are indifferent or hostile. In fact, popular opinion is divided on the subject much as it is in England on horse-racing. It is little short of a national calamity that the national sport of Spain should be one upon which it is next to impossible to bet ; otherwise the parallel be- tween the turf and the plaza is complete. The nobles often have small private bull-rings attached to their country seats ; at any rate there is always a farmyard which can be turned into one when necessary. Here youth learns to play bulls with the cloak and, later, to kill; just as young Englishmen hunt foxes and ride point-to-point 250 MADRID races ; with the difference that amateur bull- fighting is rather the more dangerous sport of the two. The bitterest enemies of bull-fighting are the middle classes of the towns ; in particular that portion of them that burns to educate Spain into a modern European country regards it as a foul disgrace, and its friends and admirers as wretched savages, too ignorant to understand how benighted they are. Spanish Liberalism, since the days when Fernando VII suppressed the universities and founded an academy of bull-fighting, has ranked the sport with the other elements which resist progress : clericalism, ignorance, and idleness. Foreigners should shun speaking lightly about it to professors, journalists — to Liberals, in short — as they would shun joking with a casual acquaintance about the moral vagaries of his family. These same Liberals will often speak of bull-fighting as a thing of the past, a contemporary of brigandage which has had its day. They will tell one that a few more years will see its suppression by law. Conversations and newspaper articles in this tone have often saddened the hearts of foreigners, who would feel such a misfortune as keenly as they would the introduction of the British Sunday on the Continent. Their fears are probably ground- less. A sight of the Calle de Alcala on a fine dia de toros will dispel many misgivings. The very newspapers that publish such articles well know 251 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS that they would never sell their evening editions if they were to leave out a full account of the afternoon's bull-fight. Madrid is a place where few people have any occupation to interfere with their amusing them- selves ; but for some reason or other no one but the mob seems to succeed in doing so. There are no large restaurants or music-halls for the foreigner, and the haunts of the people, which really are amusing, are too highly flavoured for European tastes. Now that Sr. Lacierva has shut up the cafes at half-past one, and is meddling in many ways with Madrid habits, it is also necessary to know something of inside arrangements to avoid being molested by the police. THE MUSEUMS As Madrid is in every way unlike the old Castilian cities, it is not surprising to find all the works of art it contains, not in churches, but in museums. The only church in the town that has important pictures is San Antonio de la Florida, where there are charming frescoes by Goya, full of pretty women in the dress of his day. San Francisco el Grande is a melancholy place adorned with inferior paintings. There are private collections possessing works of the first merit, like those of Srs. Berruete and Bosch, and 252 THE MUSEUMS the palaces of the great nobles still preserve magni- ficent tapestries, furniture, and pictures, but are not always easy of access. The noble owners have sold so much of late that they are often unwilling to show their collections, for fear that the absence of heirlooms may be talked about. First of all the Spanish museums comes the Prado. I can attempt to give no detailed account of what it contains here ; it is well known that many of the greatest pictures of the world are lodged in it, and several valuable books have been published about them. It is typical of art in Spain that most of these masterpieces should be the works of foreigners ; for the Prado is nothing but the royal gallery formed by Charles V and the Philips, whose patronage went largely to Italians and Flemings. The next foreign house that ruled in Spain, that of Bourbon, is marked by the French eighteenth-century portrait painters, and practically nothing has been acquired since the days of Goya and the spoiling of the convents in the thirties. The early Italians are not represented here ; but, beginning with the beautiful Mantegna of the Death of the Virgin and the Virgin with two saints by Giorgione, we have a stupendous collection of Venetian painting in the world- famous Titians, which belonged to Charles V and Philip II, and Philip IV's and Da. Isabel Far- nese's Tintorettos and Veroneses. Philip IV 253 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS was also a fervent admirer of Raphael and, if the red Cardinal was his, owned one of the greatest portraits of the Roman school. The splendid Rubens recall the fact that that princely painter came as ambassador to Madrid, and the collection of Da. Isabel Farnese, Philip V's queen, which must have been the richest the world has ever known, also possessed great pic- tures by Jordaens and Van Dyck. The ex- quisite Flemish primitives, the attributions of most of which are uncertain, almost all belonged to the first Hapsburgs. There are two of these painters, Patinir and Bosch, who are better re- presented than anywhere else in the pictures now in the Prado which these monarchs acquired for the Escorial. Among the French pictures there are several fine Poussins that belonged to Philip V, and two most lovely Watteaus of Da. Isabel Far- nese's. Three painters of the Spanish school are well represented. Velazquez first of all, though each successive director amuses himself by changing the arrangement of his works and often over- cleaning them, and the present one has hung his room with a coral-pink, which is agony for the reds in " The Spinners " and several of the por- traits. Ribera has many of his best here, thanks to Velazquez who saw them at Naples and made Philip IV buy, as he did with the Tintorettos and Veroneses at Venice. Murillo has a room 254 THE MUSEUMS to himself ; but many of his finest paintings are at Seville. El Greco's portraits here are among his most successful and complete works, but there is nothing like the Cardinal Inquisitor, now in the Havemeyer Collection in New York ; and his larger canvases in the Prado are inferior to those at Toledo. Goya, that most unequal of painters, can hardly be judged by what he has here; though there are several most beautiful portraits by him, there is none of the quality of that of the Condesa de Pontejos in the Marquesa de Martorell's collec- tion. The Sevillans : Zurbaran, Herrera, Luis de Vargas, Juan de las Roelas, Valdes Leal, are all very poorly represented, if at all. Of Spanish primi- tives there is an absolute dearth. The Spaniards who painted at the court of the Hapsburgs have left good part of their pictures here ; but it is difficult to spend much time over Alonso Sanchez Coello, Claudio Coello, Pantoja de la Cruz, Cerezo, or even Carreno and Alonso Cano, in the same building with Velazquez, Rubens, Titian, Tinto- retto, and Veronese, to say nothing of these Madrid portrait painters' far greater master, Antonio Mor. The Prado was formed in 1818 by that strange being Fernando VII, though I believe that a royal order of Joseph Bonaparte exists to show that the idea was originally his. In the curious first catalogue, published in French in 1828, the then keeper, Sr. Eusebi, enlarges on the lively 255 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS desire of the royal founder of bull-fighting uni- versities that his people have access to ennobling works of art. The gallery was open three days a week, except when it rained ; not a bad idea, as the light is poor then, and visitors are less likely to come from a desire to see pictures than in order to get in out of the wet. Throughout most of its history the Prado has been ruled by the Madrazo dynasty ; but the present director is Sr. Villegas. Several of the best pictures that were in the Academia de San Fernando until a few years ago have been removed to the Prado ; but the Academia still contains a few small and very beautiful Goyas. After the Prado, the best public collection in Madrid is the Royal Armoury, which is open to the public in the palace. Here, again, we have to thank the Hapsburgs, for most of the finest pieces belonged to Charles V and Philip II ; and though much perished in a fire, nothing has been added to the collection since those days except a part of the Visigothic treasure of Guarrazar, the best part of which went to Paris. The Spanish armour of the Middle Ages is rather simple and business-like, and the Moors never excelled at this craft, for they went lightly armed. The swords attributed to the Cid, Pelayo, and other early heroes are probably of later date. The gorgeous suits that are the pride of the collection begin 256 Flemish Tapestry in the Royal Collection, Madrid. THE MUSEUMS with the Burgundian alliance ; from the time of Philip I onwards we have the masterpieces of the great German and Milanese armourers, the Col- mans and Negrolis ; few, if any, of these wonder- fully worked casques and shields seem to be the work of Spaniards. There appear once to have been many fine textiles, but these have presum- ably perished. On the walls are hung some of Charles V's magnificent tapestries ; and on great occasions many more superb Gothic pieces, which came from Brussels to Spain with Philip I, are hung in the palace corridors. The palace itself is a huge and rather impressive pile, built after plans made about 1735 by an Italian named Sachetti. Its position overlook- ing the Manzanares, the Casa del Campo with its park, and the blue Guadarrama in the distance, is magnificent. The rooms shown to the public contain good examples of Retiro porcelain, splen- did French furniture, and decorations by Tiepolo. The Plaza del Oriente opposite is adorned with wonderful eighteenth-century statues of early kings of Spain, dressed like Roman emperors, which were intended to decorate the roof of the palace. It was decided they were too heavy, so the public places of Madrid were embellished with them. There are more in the Retiro Gardens, near the Puente de Toledo, and at Rurgos. The archaeological museum in the National Library building has acquired, more by good luck R 257 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS than good management, a few important pieces. There are three or four fine Hispano-Moresque plates, but this truly Spanish art is far better illustrated in a dozen foreign museums, and in a private collection, that of Sr. Osma, here in Madrid. The primitive paintings are second-rate, and there are few textiles, though the great cloak of the time of San Fernando compensates for much. Very interesting are the life-sized, solid stone animals, known in Castile as toros de Guisando. Their form is more that of pigs, and D. Vicente Paredes, the Estremenian antiquary, supposed that they were placed in prehistoric times along the roads followed by the migratory flocks. The custom of sending the flocks from the plains of Estremadura to the uplands of Leon for the summer has survived in a limited form to the present day, and of old it was of the greatest import- ance, as grazing was the chief source of wealth of those regions. D. Vicente Paredes, in a most curious monograph, Los Trashumantes Celtiberos, attempted to trace the old roads, and to prove that the toros de Guisando were used to indicate them. Many have disappeared of late, but a few still stand in Castilian and Leonese villages. Readers of Lazarillo may remember that the rogue's blind master gave him a lesson in cunning by breaking his head against one that stood on the bridge at Salamanca. The same beast is still to be seen in the Dominican monastery at that town. 258 Gr^eco Phoenician Statue. Archceological Museum, Madrid. THE MUSEUMS There are a few interesting Grseco- Phoenician fragments of sculpture, a vast quantity of inferior Roman objects, and a few very fine ones. But when will the Museum have a catalogue ? The Academia de la Historia should be visited for the sake of the Mudejar coffer from the Monasterio de Piedra, and one or two other pieces. Of the modern picture gallery I say nothing. If one finds time hang heavy on one's hands at Madrid, there is nothing better than to go to spend a day at Alcala-de-Henares, or at Illescas, in the church of which town there is a magnificent Greco. In spring or autumn also, Aranjuez, with its beautiful park and running streams, is wholly delightful. 259 XII NEW CASTILE AND ESTREMADURA The vast tract of land which stretches from the Guadarrama to the Sierra Morena is thinly popu- lated, and there are many excellent reasons for its lack of historical monuments. It was long harried by the Moors, and by the time that danger was over, the currents of Castilian life were already flowing in fixed channels. Toledo and Madrid, it is true, are in this province, but they lie in its north-western corner and, historically, may be said to be part of Old Castile. The only cities of any artistic importance in the other New Castilian provinces of Guadalajara, Ciudad Real, and Cuenca are Sigiienza and Cuenca. Of the first I give some account here ; of the second, which has a good early cathedral, I do not speak as 1 have never visited it, and I believe that it contains nothing that is in any way unique. Great part of the province is occupied by the Manchegan desert, which Cervantes chose as the scene of Don Quixote's exploits. The scenery of these bleak plains is always grand ; but it is similar 260 SIGUENZA to that of regions of Old Castile, which have the additional attraction of their mediaeval towns. SIGUENZA Sigiienza, which had been the seat of a bishop before the first Moslem invasion, suffered griev- ously for four centuries before it was restored to the Cross. It was so untempting, and the Moors that held it so formidable, that Alfonso V I and his archbishop Bernardo preferred to leave it alone. Before his death, however, Bernardo appointed a namesake, companion in religion, and fellow- countryman of his to the bishopric, probably in the hope, which was afterwards fulfilled, that the new prelate would not rest until he got possession of his see. It took him some time, for it was only in 1124 that Bishop Bernardo, after desperate fighting, succeeded in ousting the infidel. Since that date Sigiienza has been an episcopal city, where the bishop and his clergy have ruled unquestioned. To-day it is the same, and has been made famous by the copla : — " Como quieres que en Sigiienza haya muchos liberales, que todos son hijos de curas canonigos y frailes ? " 1 1 How can you expect to find many Liberals at Sigiienza, where they are all sons of priests, canons, and monks ? 261 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS It lies on the banks of the Henares, and behind it rise up the strange forms of the bald clay cliffs that follow this river on all its course. The building which makes the town well worth a visit is the cathedral, a superb early pointed church in a rare state of preservation. It was long supposed that its foundation dated from the time of Don Bernardo, the first bishop ; but the ex- cellent monograph by Sr. Perez- Villamil has published documents which show that in the last year of his life D. Pedro de Leucate, the second bishop, made a gift of rents to the church, to last " until the heads of the altars and the cross of the whole church should be entirely built." This was in 1156, and the obvious conclusion is that in that year the east end was being constructed, and that D. Pedro wished it to be completed as soon as possible in order that the consecration might take place. It is hardly necessary to recall the general practice of opening churches to the cult as soon as the vaults of the east end were closed in. The document is further valuable in that it leaves small doubt as to the original plan of the oldest part which must have consisted of three apses. Sigiienza has been held up as a conclusive proof of the existence of good Spanish builders in the twelfth century. Murray's Guide Book says that it is, "as Mr. Street suggests, undoubtedly the work of Spanish architects." Apart from the fact that the name of not a single one of the men 262 S1GUENZA who worked on it prior to 1488 is known, the nationality of its bishops and the quality of the work make this unlikely. D. Bernardo was a Frenchman, though he saw none of the building ; D. Pedro de Leucate came from Narbonne ; D. Cerebruno, the third bishop, was a native of Poitiers ; and Sigiienza is said to have been re- peopled by men from Aquitaine and Provence. The first bishop was a Benedictine monk, like most of the contemporary occupants of Spanish sees ; but soon afterwards the White Friars triumphed over the Black in Spain, and at least one of the early bishops of Sigiienza, D. Martin de Finojosa, who died in 1191, was a member of the Cistercian Order. In other chapters I have spoken at some length of the enormous influence exercised by both these rules on Spanish architecture. The charac- teristic of the Cistercian was its sobriety and restraint in ornamentation, and the fact that, almost without exception, its Spanish houses were built by men come straight from France. The massive unadorned work at Sigiienza is very similar to that of the great French and Spanish Cistercian churches ; and the excellence of the carving wherever any is introduced makes it at least probable that the authors were French. If more evidence were wanting, we have the resem- blance, upon which Street himself comments, be- tween the west front here and that of Notre Dame at Poitiers. 263 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS The church consists of nave and aisles of four bays, transepts, choir, and heptagonal apse. There were doubtless three apses originally, for the choir aisle dates from the neo-classic period. There is a row of blind arcading in the apse, below which it is circular in plan, becoming polygonal above ; a change which shows how slowly the work must have been carried on. There is a lancet in each face of the apse and a clerestory of similar lights in the choir. The groining in the choir and tran- septs is sexpartite, and quadripartite in the rest of the church. The proportions of the nave, obscured as it is by the coro, are splendid ; the pointed main arches and massive clustered columns with their severe capitals give an impression of great strength. The windows in the aisles are round-headed, those in the nave clerestory of two or four lights with a circle at their head, and in both the transepts and the west front there are magnificent roses. The exterior, like the interior, has suffered less from additions than almost any other of the early Spanish cathedrals. Siguenza owes something to its comparative poverty and isolated position. The west front is divided into three compartments by great buttresses like those on the side walls, and engaged shafts support three pointed arches, one in each division, which correspond in height to the groining. In the central compartment there is a fine round-arched door with shafts in its 264 SIGUENZA jambs. The two low square towers are of the plainest description and harmonise in every respect with the character of the whole. The transept doors have been modernised. Though the history of the church is still ob- scure, it is certain that, in spite of the massive columns, the vaults of the nave and aisles had to be reconstructed soon after their termination, which can hardly be placed earlier than the latter half of the thirteenth century. The work seems to have been long and difficult, for the building was constantly under repairs from the episcopate of D. Alonso (died 1342) to that of D. Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza, who occupied the see from 1468 to 1495, though we may be certain that that mighty prince of the Church did not reside much at Siguenza. The first architect of whom we have notice is one Donys who was employed upon, and presumably completed, these repairs under D. Pedro de Mendoza. The next bishop, D. Ber- nardino Lopez de Carvajal, the Cardinal, had the cloisters built in a very late Gothic style by Alonso de Vozmediano ; and the chapel which opens out of the south transept is probably of the same date. The furniture of the cathedral is very rich in many respects, and anyone who provides himself with Sr. Perez- Villamil's book may make an ex- haustive study of the arts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there, for a long and most interesting list of the craftsmen employed is given 265 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS by him together with the terms upon which they were contracted. The choir stalls, good late Gothic work, were executed late in the fifteenth century by Maestros Rodrigo Duque, Francisco de Coca, Gaspar and others. It is not known who did the arch leading into the Capilla de la Anunciacidn, a curious work in which Mudejar and Renaissance detail manage to combine to form a harmonious whole. There are several fine rejas, carved pulpits, and sculptured tombs, among which the most curious are those of Bishop D. Alonso Carrillo and the great mausoleum, with its kneeling figures of the founder and other person- ages, of D. Fadrique de Portugal who was bishop here from 1512 to 1532. There are several good examples of Plateresque work in the altars, but little painting. By far the most important picture is kept in a room to which it is difficult to gain admission. It is a magnifi- cent Annunciation by El Greco. The light in the interior is beautiful, for though there is no old glass, no new products of Munich have replaced the opaque white panes, and the walls are unwhitewashed. There is little else to be seen in the town but what remains of the Romanesque church of San Vicente, founded by Bishop Cerebruno about the middle of the twelfth century. Following the Henares down stream we come to the God-forsaken city of Guadalajara, which 266 Capilla de la Anunciacion, Siguenza Cathedral. Tomb in Siguenza Cathedral. ALCALA contains the renowned fifteenth -century palace of the Duques del Infantado, the patio of which, for rank coarse ornamentation, may compete with anything in Spain. It is not unlike some of the worst excesses of the modern architects of Barce- lona. There are several fine artesonado ceilings in the rooms, however. On the same river, at a short distance from Madrid, lies the pleasant town of Alcala de Henares, where Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros founded his University. It contains a very poor late Gothic collegiate church built by Pedro Gumiel, which has been abandoned because it is expected to collapse. If it does so, it is to be feared that the magnificent marble tomb of Cisneros by Domenico Fancelli or Bartolome Ordonez will perish. The University has a fine Renaissance facade, and the archiepiscopal palace is, after the Colegio del Arzobispo at Salamanca, the best building of the period in Spain. It was built by the archbishops of Toledo : Tavera and Fonseca, and both the courtyards are full of well- executed Plateresque detail. The Mudejar por- tions have been over-restored. The Moorish walls of Alcala have in part re- mained standing, and the space outside them has been planted with trees of all sorts, making a charming walk. The town has a number of sixteenth-century churches, some of which contain interesting furniture. 267 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS ESTREMADURA The origin of this name is disputed, but it seems reasonable to take it to be Eactrema Ora, the last territory conquered from the Moors. The last for the moment, that is to say ; for Andalusia was still in their hands when the word first appears. Barring perhaps La Mancha and parts of Aragon, the old province of Estremadura, which embraces the modern Caceres and Badajoz, is the most thinly populated region of Spain. It cannot be said that it is uninterest- ing, for it preserves magnificent Roman remains at Merida and in the bridge of Alcantara, and towns like Caceres and Trujillo in which nothing has been changed since the days of Pizarro and Cortes, who were both Estremenians. The mountains are wild and beautiful, and must be full of treasure for the naturalist. From the point of view of those who visit Spain to study the arts of the country, however, it has nothing except the Roman ruins to offer which is not much better represented in Old Castile. It is the last part of the kingdom in architecture, sculpture, and painting ; for the famous Geronimite monastery of Guadalupe is chiefly remarkable for the traditions of its wealth and power, and a series of paintings by Zurbaran, who may be studied to greater advantage at 268 ESTREMADURA Seville. Caceres and Trujillo are full of the enormous houses which the first Spanish Con- quistadores built with the gold they brought back from America. Badajdz has a poor mediaeval cathedral, and paintings by that depressing and conscientious man whom the Spaniards know as " el divino Morales." Of Plasencia, the one town in the province that possesses important Christian works of art, I have spoken in another chapter because, as far as its monuments go, it belongs to the Salamantine group. Estremadura is nothing if not picturesque. Its inhabitants are more Andalusian than the Sevil- lians, whose accent they affect and by whom they are utterly despised. The lower parts of the province are full of mosquitoes and malaria, and the Estremenians are a feverish race, alternating between bursts of wild enthusiasm and long periods of depression. In every little town there is a magnificent casino where, when the Estre- menian is in funds and spirits, he gambles frantic- ally. Nothing can exceed the intricacy of the plots and counter-plots, intrigues and labyrinths, that recommend themselves to the minds of these remarkable people when there is any business to be done. It may be that their starved love of activity makes them anxious to prolong affairs, for years pass without so much as a disputed town council election arising to give them something to think about. Between times they are obliged to 269 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS do as best they can with cock-fights and games of chance. MERIDA Under the Romans Emerita Augusta was a city of the first importance and the capital of Lusi- tania. The monuments of the time of the Em- peror Trajan it contains were once so colossal that centuries of neglect and destruction have left several of them standing. The splendour of the place in Visigothic times must have been marvellous ; but the Moors obliterated almost every trace of its churches and palaces, and did what they could to wreck the Roman temples, a work in which the Spaniards and the Napoleonic invaders also lent a hand. Lying on the banks of the sluggish Guadiana, a nauseous river full of poisonous weeds and water snakes, the town is a picture of decay. The magnificent Roman bridge, the remains of the castle, now a church, and above all the great line of the aqueduct, surrounded by the miserable buildings and squalid life of the modern town, recall views of Rome as it was before the days of Winkelmann. The surrounding country also, like the Campagna, is full of ruins. There are the two theatres, both of them well preserved, and, a few miles away, the Lago de Proserpina, which Spanish antiquarians say was used for 270 MERIDA naumachiae or sea-fights. Nothing can express the desolation of this graveyard of ancient civilisations. The only important church in the town is that of Santa Eulalia, the patron of Merida, who met martyrdom here, and is not the same Eulalia who is venerated at Barcelona. It is known that a church existed on this spot in the fourth century, and that it was rebuilt with additions by Bishop Fidel under the Visigoths. When the Moors were masters of the town it was still open to the cult as a Mozarabe church, though the fanatics who invaded Spain towards the end of the eleventh century probably wrecked it, as it was rebuilt after the Reconquest, in 1228. As it now stands, the church has a short nave and aisles and three apses, the central one semi- circular and projecting, and the others of the same plan but contained in the thickness of the wall. It may be that part of the masonry of the east end belonged to the primitive building, and it is certain that the capitals in the nave are fine examples of Visigothic carving. The richly orna- mented horseshoe-arched door in the south aisle, and most of the rest of the church, date from the thirteenth century, though the other door, the roofs, and some of the columns are much later. There is a crypt which was opened in. 173 4 and immediately closed, since when no one has had the opportunity of seeing what it may contain. 271 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS In the museum, among a lot of poor Roman remains, there are fragments of the highest interest from the Visigothic ducal palace ; for here we have the horseshoe arch, not only used as a decorative motive, but appearing in a real ajimez window, before the landing of the first Moslem invaders. It is known that Merida was plundered by the Khalifs of Cordova to enrich their mosques ; and this may easily be the origin of the horseshoe arch, which is universally famous as the character- istic of Moslem architecture. 272 XIII THE BASQUE PROVINCES AND NAVARRE The Basque provinces, Alava, Vizcaya, and Guipuzcoa, interesting ethnologically, are so poor in architecture and the other arts that I cannot afford to give much space to them here. The Basques, whatever their origin, have inhabited the western borderland between Spain and France since the dawn of history. Firmly established there, they have always been jealous of foreigners, devotedly attached to their own institutions, and, what is worse, to their own language, of which they say that the Devil hid seven years behind a door in the hope of learning it. In vain ; at the end of the time all he could say was bai andrea — yes, madam. The Devil himself could not learn it. This circumstance has doubtless saved many a Basque soul from damnation ; it has also made the Basque country an absolutely non- conducting obstacle to the influences of civilisa- tion ; not only can no one learn Basque, for cen- turies no Basque could learn any other tongue. The Santiago pilgrims poured into Spain by the pass of Roncesvalles ; the Basques went on as s 273 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS before and stood coldly aside. Their interest in Spanish politics has always been limited to the preservation of their own liberties, most of which they lost in the Carlist wars. In spite of all this, many of the Basques who emigrated to Castile have played a great part there. The house of Mendoza is of Basque origin. San Ignacio de Loyala and the majority of the sixteenth-century Spanish seamen were Basques. Bilbao was an important port in the Middle Ages, but its economic importance sud- denly became great in the last third of the last century by reason of the discovery of rich iron mines in the immediate vicinity. Of late years this development has slackened. The nearest mines have been gradually exhausted, and means of communication are lacking to the exploitation of those that are farther away. None the less the town is one of the richest in Spain. Politically Bilbao is very curious and remark- able. It has a Liberal past and to some extent a Liberal reputation, for it stood firm for the con- stitutional monarchy in both the Carlist wars. In speaking of Barcelona I pointed out the great modern convents that occupy the finest sites in the suburbs ; here also the process of clericalisa- tion has coincided with economic development, and has been even more thorough than in the Catalan capital. It has now reached a point which can hardly be surpassed. On the one side 274 THE BASQUE PROVINCES there is the working population, discontented and violent, but too ignorant to organise itself effec- tually ; on the other, the people of property, upon whom the congregations — Company of Jesus, Sacred Doctrine, and others — keep a firm hand. The result is that here, as in Catalonia, the secular schools which existed and gave a good education towards the middle of the last century have been crushed out of existence. No one is properly edu- cated except at the hands of the congregations. Thus training and the influence of women are at one to guard against the possibility of the appear- ance of that most dangerous element : a body of educated men of revolutionary temper. A few pupils of the Jesuits have, of course, broken away and become the bitterest of their enemies ; but the Law of Jurisdictions, passed some four years ago, which suspends constitutional guarantees in cases in which the accused is judged to have insulted the country or the army, has compelled many such to cross the frontier. In literature the Basques are as deficient as they are in art. Since they have come out of their mountains and learned Castilian many of them have gained distinction in Spanish letters, but all the monuments of Basque literature prior to the sixteenth century have been discovered to be spurious. The language has nothing to show but a few works of devotion. Indeed, we may take it on the word of D. Miguel de Unamuno, who is 275 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS a Basque himself, and has narrowly escaped lynch- ing at the hands of his compatriots for telling them home truths, that the language can with great difficulty be made to express abstract ideas. To-day it is fast losing ground. In Bilbao it is only spoken by people of a sect known as Bizkai- tarras, who have for the most part learned it laboriously when old enough to know better, and who appear to wish to separate from Spain and form an independent state where Basque alone shall be spoken and where no foreigner shall be allowed to sojourn lest the Basques be corrupted once more. Good seamen as they have always been, the Basques have long had a strong connection with Spanish America. Large numbers of them emigrate and return laden with wealth. The country is dotted with Casas de Americanos — the great houses which they build for themselves, and in which they, their families, and domestic animals live, eat, and sleep in the kitchen. The character of Basque landscape is as different as possible from that of Castile. Instead of the broad plains with rare mud-coloured villages huddled round a church, we have here a sort of small Switzerland, full of tree-clad hills, green pastures, cows, and isolated white farmhouses. The inhabitants speak an incredibly villainous Castilian ; it seems that their own language is constructed in such a way that those who have spoken it as children must 276 NAVARRE forget it before they can hope to master another. Cervantes makes merry at their expense on this score, much as Shakespeare does at that of the Welsh. In temper they pass as being merry and free ; Voltaire, who loathed the Spaniards and represented them as vicious, sluggish, and priest- ridden, speaks with admiration of the Basques. All in all it is a good country, pleasant and con- venient to walk in, for there is always a well-pro- vided and comfortable inn at every village or, failing that, a clean bed at every large farmhouse. The winter months are not as cold as in Castile, and a good deal of rain falls all the year round. But, save the truly extraordinary and gorgeous Jesuit church at San Ignacio's birthplace Loyola, there is very little in the way of monuments. Vitoria has a fair early pointed cathedral, Bilbao a good fourteenth-century church, but buildings of interest are very few and of very relative interest. The one art in which the Basques have excelled is that of the working of iron, and few enough examples of that remain in the provinces. With Navarre, though it is largely inhabited by Basques, the case is widely different. Here a Christian monarchy existed from the middle of the ninth century, and early in the eleventh grew to be the most important in Spain under Sancho the Great, who extended his sway over Castile and Leon. At the death of this king his dominions, as always in those days, split up into their com- 277 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS ponent parts. Aragon, which had till then been subject to Navarre, achieved its independence. The two kingdoms were united again in 1076 under Sancho of Aragon and his son Alfonso el Batallador without loss of personality on the part of Navarre — an arrangement which came to a close in 1134. For exactly another century Navarre was ruled by kings of its own house and, after that, by French princes down to 1425, when the death of Charles the Noble left it without male heir. The terrible story of Don Juan II of Aragon's treatment of his son, the Prince of Viana, lawful heir to Navarre through his mother Dona Blanca, daughter of Charles the Noble, is well known. The Prince of Viana and Dona Blanca his sister were poisoned, probably at their fathers instigation. However, Navarre passed into French hands again and there remained until 1512, when Ferdinand the Catholic seized all its territory south of the Pyrenees and soon after- wards incorporated it with Castile. I hope that these dates will not bother the reader. I am well aware of the fact that this book is full of them ; but I beg leave to say that I have not put them in to show off my own erudi- tion — they are really quite simple, school text-book dates — but rather in order to make clear the poli- tical relations between state and state. Whence and how styles of architecture and the other arts came to the places in which we find them is the 278 NAVARRE most neglected, and certainly not the least in- teresting, aspect of the study of mediaeval life. In the above summary of the history of Navarre, for instance, I wish to emphasise the fact that the country was in intimate relations with Aragon and France before being finally absorbed by Castile. It should also be noted that the Santiago pilgrims entered Spain by the pass of Roncesvalles in this kingdom, and passed through it by Pamplona, Puente de la Reina, and Estella, instead of taking the coast road which, easier as far as mere moun- tains are concerned, would have had the grave inconvenience of leading them into the land of the men of Biscay where, in the words of an old pilgrim book, "that is spoken which no man understands." Of the Romanesque period there are several remarkable churches in Navarre, such as San Pedro de Estella, the monastery church of Hirache, which belongs to the Cluny type with later ogival modifications, and the very curious octagonal Templars' church of Eunate, built in imitation of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, all of which are admirably illustrated, described, and discussed in the monumental work by Sr. Lamperez. In the twelfth century the magnificent transi- tion Colegiata of Tudela was built, and the year 1134 saw the donation, by Don Garcia Ramirez, of the town of Encisa to the Cistercian Order, which immediately sent monks from France to 279 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS take possession and build the still standing monas- tery of Oliva. Oliva, though its church was not finished until 1195, or after the completion of Aragonese Veruela, was actually the earliest Cis- tercian foundation on Spanish soil, which fact bears witness to the close ties then existing be- tween Navarre and France, which are also evident in the architecture of Tudela. Santo Domingo at Estella is a good thirteenth- century church, and the cathedral of Pamplona a splendid early fifteenth -century cathedral, full of sculpture and carving, which demonstrates the constant intercourse which must have taken place between Navarre and the North at that period. The absorption of Navarre by Castile put an end to the artistic history of the country. The Navarrese who have achieved anything in this field since the fifteenth century have chosen other sur- roundings. PAMPLONA Pamplona, once capital of the kingdom and now of the province of Navarre, and see of a bishop, lies surrounded by ramparts on a steep hill rising above the valley of the River Arga. The city is prosperous, industrious, full of shops and of men dressed in English fashions. Except for its mag- nificent cathedral buildings and city walls, it has preserved next to nothing of its mediaeval aspect. 280 PAMPLONA The cathedral is one of the finest late Gothic buildings in Spain, and still has much of its original furniture. It stands just within the walls, from which is seen the sweeping valley of the river with bare grey hills rising on each side. The present building was begun by Charles III of Navarre in 1397, when the old Romanesque church was pulled down. It consists of a nave and aisles of six bays in length, the latter having side chapels in all but the western bay, transepts, and a very oddly planned chevet with four chapels in it. There is a three-light clerestory window in each bay of the nave, and a two-light window in each of the side chapels. The transepts have circular windows in their end walls. The central apse has only two canted sides, with a column in the centre ; the two end chapels, one planned upon a scheme of equilateral triangles, and the two next to the transepts, are curiously dis- torted, for what reason it is hard to see. There is no lantern over the crossing, which, like the central apse, is very elaborately groined. The nave and aisles have quadripartite groining throughout. The detail is rather better than in most of the churches of this period, though of no great merit ; for the mouldings are poor and the carvings on the capitals shallow. The proportions are grand, however, and the clerestory is so high that not too much light is admitted. Later years have done much to mar the general effect. The outer walls S 2 28l SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of the coro, which occupies the second and third bays from the crossing, are poor and the trascoro gaudy. Many of the bases of the main columns have been faced with marble, and the rest are painted to look as if the same fate had befallen them. The people of Pamplona have an insatiable taste for marble or, failing that, imitation marble. I have given a rather full description of the church because it is an excellent example of late German-Spanish Gothic before that style was swamped by the rising flood of the Renaissance. Its furniture is for the most part admirable. The two great wrought-iron screens of the coro and the capilla mayor are both fine, but the latter is much the finer of the two ; it is a masterpiece of Gothic wrought iron. The great retablo of the altar mayor is a well-proportioned work of the six- teenth century. The stalls of the coro are well carved in the style of the same period. The glass in the clerestory windows on the north side of the nave is of the time of the church or a little later ; its delicate whites, pale blues, and reds contrast with the rich reds and yellows of the seventeenth century glass opposite. In the chapel east of the south transept are two good retablos. There is hardly enough light on the best of days to make them out, but the earlier one of the two has several compartments with Gothic tracery. The painting is typical of the Flemish-Castilian school of the fifteenth century, and is well preserved. It 282 PAMPLONA is said to be by one Caparroso. There are several Gothic tombs with fragments of good German- looking sculpture about them. In the treasury is the famous ivory casket from Sangiiesa. It is covered with carvings of foliage and flowers and medallions in which are seated figures, mounted huntsmen, lions, antelopes, and other beasts. Running round the top is the following inscription in Cuflc characters : " In the name of God may the most complete happiness, prosperity, full hope in good works and delay of the fatal time be to Hagib Seifo Daula, Abdelmaleck ben Almansur. This was wrought by order under the inspec- tion or direction of his chief of the eunuchs, Nomayr ben Mohamed Alanmeri, his slave, in the year 395 " (1005 of our era). In the centre of another medallion is another man fighting with two lions ; on his shield is written : " There is no God but God," and in the middle of the shield, "wrought by Hair." On another medallion is another inscription (effaced) which seems to run : "This was wrought by Obeidat"; and there are other effaced inscriptions which may bear names of artists. Don Juan Riano says that in the cathedral of Braga there is another, also done for Almanzor. The design is Byzantine in character, especially in the figures. No less important than the cathedral is the group of buildings to the south. First comes the exquisitely beautiful cloister, part of which was 283 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS probably built before the present cathedral was begun. It is square, with six four-light windows on each side. The tracery on the east side is good late middle pointed ; that on the other sides is much more ornate. Each side has a light crocketed gable piercing the balustrade of the upper story. Between the bays are buttresses and pinnacles. Add to this the number of fine doors, the rich panelling and finish of the walls, the sunny garden in the centre, and we have the finest cloister of the period in Spain. The door opening from the south transept has richly carved jambs and a wonderful sculptured and brightly coloured death of the Virgin in the tympanum. This terrific scene, with its rows of agonised bald heads and curly beards and forelocks, looks like German work, like much of the sculpture here. On the pier dividing the door is a slender Virgin and Child. In the south-west angle is the little chapel de la Santa Cruz with an iron grille said to have been made of chains taken from the Moors at the great battle of Las Navas de Tolosa ; in it is a damaged Gothic retablo, at the sides of which hang the banners of the Orders of Santiago and Calatrava. The cloister is still much as it was when canons lived here under the rule of St. Augustine. A door in the south alley, with scenes carved in the tympanum, opens into their refectory, a noble hall with six bays of quadripartite groining springing 284 PAMPLONA from sculptured corbels in the walls, and a narrow two-light window in each bay. Beside it is the kitchen, a lofty square room with four arches thrown across the angles, from which rises a great central open chimney. In this kitchen are the tombs of the founder of the church, Don Carlos III of Navarre and of his wife Dona Leonor of Cas- tile, which originally stood over the burial vault of the kings of Navarre in the coro. The recumbent figures lie under delicate canopies, and round the sides are twenty-eight figures, also under canopies, some of which are of very fine workmanship, either by a Burgundian sculptor or by one who knew the work of that school. The tombs have been restored, and the great slab, upon which lie the figures and which appears to be alabaster like the rest, has been barbarously painted to look like black marble. All this took place but five years ago as the sacristan told me. Out of the eastern alley opens the chapel known as the Barbazana from its founder, who died in 1355 and lies buried in it. It is a great square room with an octagonal groined vault. The roof is seen rising above the east side of the cloister, and its walls are strengthened by buttresses finished with square crocketed pinnacles. A small gallery of cusped openings runs round the top. This chapel is quite detached from the main body of the church, and the year of its founder's death makes it prob- able that it is of earlier date. The cloister has 285 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS more doors, tombs, and pieces of sculpture than I can describe here ; they are all in the style of those mentioned. In the south alley are preserved a few well-carved Romanesque capitals from the older cloister. The cathedral possesses a number of fairly good tapestries which make a brave show when hung round the cloister walls. The exterior is not imposing. A great pagan front makes the west end look as if it hid a Jesuit seminary rather than a Gothic church, and the sides are much shut in by houses. Some- thing may be seen from the ramparts which skirt it on the east. The other churches of Pamp- lona are scarcely worth looking at after the cathe- dral, unless one can relish husks after delicate meat. San Saturnino presents a sort of puzzle as to where the altar was meant to be put which may amuse ecclesiologists ; and the modern open cloister at San Nicolas shows how utterly it is possible to fail in copying even the simplest tran- sition work with the original before the eyes of the architect. TUDELA Tudela lies on the west bank of the Ebro. A good view of the city may be had from the other side of the old bridge across the river, and a better from the steep cliffs, worked by the water into pinnacles and buttresses, which rise to the north. To the east stretches the vast plain, bounded by 286 TUDELA bare hills like mountains on a relief map, with hardly a tree in sight ; to the west the outline of the Moncayo. In the middle of the city stands the Colegiata with its towers, and nearer the bridge the square Romanesque campanario of La Magdalena. The Colegiata, generally known as the cathedral from having once possessed that dignity, ranks with Lerida and Tarragona, the finest transition churches of Spain. I do not mean to discredit the four churches of Salamanca, Zamora, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Toro ; the latter belong to a class which comes from Burgundy and Aquitaine in its main lines, whilst Tarragona, Lerida, and Tudela are more directly derived from the Lom- bard and southern French current. Santa Maria de Tudela, said to have been begun in 1135 and consecrated in 1188, is thus older than either of its Catalan sisters, though all its detail can hardly have been completed until well on into the following century. The fact that, of the three, it is the most advanced in style, must be owed to its having been built and decorated by men who had seen the latest developments of French work, whilst Tarragona and Lerida are the products of Spaniards who, lingering long behind their times, were none the worse architects for that. The main features in the three are the same : massive strength in construction enhanced by restrained richness in decoration, and a grand effect attained with moderate scale. It is impossible to get a general 287 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS view of the exterior except at such a distance that all detail is lost. The transept gables have been destroyed, and the doors under them are not in the middle of their walls. There is a square steeple at the south-west angle, an octangular turret over the central apse, and others over the modern chapels. The east end is shut in by houses, and the great circular west window is walled up. In plan this church so closely resembles that described at Lerida that I shall only mention the points in which the two differ. These relate mainly to the east end and to the treatment of the doorways. Here the central apse is groined in five bays, and there are two eastern apses in each transept, of which the two next the choir are roofed with semidomes, and the others with a bay of quadripartite groining. There is no lantern over the crossing. The clerestory windows are of two lights with a circle over their arched head, and the transept end walls are pierced by triplets. At Lerida the central apse has a semidome, the other apses are irregularly planned, there is an octagonal lantern over the crossing, and the windows are all round-headed or circular. Need- less to say, the Tudela church is much more accessible than the other, and its interior propor- tions are not ruined by barrack arrangements. The above comparison shows how much later Tudela is in spirit, in spite of the earlier date ; in the doors the difference is fully as great. My 288 TUDELA readers will remember that at Lerida — or if they do not they may turn to the description — the style of the doorways is, on the authority of Street, distinctly Lombard. Now, just as we have seen at Tudela signs of knowledge of recent French work in the windows and the design of the choir, the decoration of the doors is twelfth-century French, not Italian, in character. These doors are three in number. Of those in the transepts, the north doorway is slightly pointed, the other round-arched. In each there are three shafts in each jamb, and the capitals are richly carved with subjects from the New Testament. By far the grandest of the three, however, is that in the west front, a magnificent portal with eight shafts with capitals in each jamb. The tympanum alone lacks sculpture ; the corbels which support it, the capitals, the abaci, the orders of the arch, all are covered with subjects and foliage in the richest style of a period rather later than that of the transept doors. The capitals have scenes from Genesis, and the orders of the arch present on the left the Resurrection, and on the right the damned being haled away to eternal fire and brimstone. Among the damned are men, the pained and surprised expression of whose faces shows that no such solution ever occurred to them. Devils clap on the shoulder kings, bishops, rich men, every fold of whose garments expresses a bottomless horror. These scenes, side by side with 289 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS the Creation depicted on the capitals, cannot fail to strike awe and pity into the soul of him who reads Dante or his Bible. They are a poem of the beginning and end of things, the great truths which should be brought before men's eyes when they enter a church. They called forth from Street an eloquent hymn in praise of the art he understood and loved so well, and a lament for the evil days when men 6 ' seem to believe in no Last Judgment, no masculine saints, and nothing but female angels." On the south side of the nave lies a cloister of oblong plan. The round arches are carried on alternately coupled, tripled, or quadrupled columns, and there is a large pier at each angle and in the middle of each side. The capitals and abaci are carved with subjects and foliage in great pro- fusion and in very perfect style, but the plaster and whitewash which everywhere obscure them spoil the general effect. It appears that the chapter's taste is rather in the direction of music than the plastic arts ; a sacristan told me that they were thinking of selling one of the finest capitals in the cloister for a piano. The carving of the great west door and much of that in the cloister is unsurpassed in Spain. Whether it is by Spanish hands or not, it occupies an important place in the history of French sculpture. Its resemblance to the finest French work of the period, such as the cloister at Moissac, 290 TUDELA and the fact that it was executed at a time in which the work known to have been done by Spaniards is much more primitive, makes it certain that the kingdom of Navarre owes this pearl of price to its relations with its neighbours north of the Pyrenees. The church contains much poor Baroque furni- ture, but also some good painting. High in one of the walls of the cloister, so high that it is hard to see it well, is a very early square unframed paint- ing of a saint with scenes at the sides, which looks like the antipendia of Catalonia. In the western bay of the south aisle is a little altar with an early fifteenth -century retablo of St. Catherine of Alexandria. The slender figure of the saint with her wheel occupies the middle compartment, and at the sides are six more, each under its little cusped arch, with scenes from her life. There is also a predella of seven compartments, and the whole is dirty but very well preserved. The drawing is spirited and correct, the colour good ; some of the scenes are very amusing — for instance, one in which the sweet saint is brought before the tribunal and one of her judges is a little free with his hands ; and another which represents her looking out from her prison bars while two beautifully dressed ladies pass by in the street crying fie upon her. In the chapel in the south transept called ' ' de los Desposorios," which is entered through a good Gothic reja, is another and much larger retablo, 291 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS with many scenes from the New Testament and two large figures of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, and of St. Dominic, all enclosed in rich Gothic traceried framework and in good con- dition. The drawing is much less subtle than that of the last mentioned ; it is later work, but many of the scenes have great decorative value with their interlacing tree-trunks or castle-crowned hills standing out upon the gold ground. In the same chapel is the fine recessed tomb of Don Francis de Villia Espesa, Chancellor of Navarre, and his wife, died 1423. The three recesses are covered with scenes, and there are figures in the arcade on the side of the tomb. In the next chapel there is a much plainer monument of a bishop whose effigy is splendidly sculptured. The coro has monotonous late Gothic stalls, and behind the high altar is an enormous retablo of the same period in an elaborate framework of pin- nacles and canopies rising up to the roof. The scenes are very large and are painted in a very Flemish style ; the saints look as if they had been fed to take prizes in a county show. Here, as at Tarazona, the interior has been painted slate- colour and the capitals and abaci whitewashed. It is the greatest pity that so perfect a church as this should be robbed of that beautiful quality of light which nothing but old stone can give. 292 XIV ARAGON Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel, the three provinces of the old kingdom of Aragon, occupy a moun- tainous, wind-swept tract stretching from the Pyrenees to the Sierra de Albarracin, and bounded on the east by Catalonia and Valencia. Aragon was the cradle of the race of soldiers who won back the fertile sea-coast from the Moors. That sea- coast soon outstripped the highlands in all the arts of civilisation. The early history of Aragon is obscure. In Iloman times its capital was a place of great importance, but Moors, and particularly tough Moors, established themselves in the valley of the Ebro so firmly that they were not ousted from Zaragoza until 1118. First a Navarrese lordship, Aragon was not independent until the reign of Ramiro I (1035). This Ramiro had to wife a daughter of the Count of Bigorre, and married his own daughters, Teresa and Sancha, to the Counts of Provence and Toulouse. French bishops were present at the consecration of Jaca Cathedral in 1063, and Ramiro el Monje lived for years in a monastery at Narbonne — this to show how French art found its way thither. T 293 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS When Aragon and Catalonia were united in 1137, the history of the country changed. Aragon- ese policy was henceforth absorbed by Catalan. Barcelona became the chief city and the centre of the life and art of the kingdom. Zaragoza, it is true, became important again in the fifteenth century ; but it and all its region are very poor in monuments. The towns of Tarazona, Calatayud, Daroca, and Teruel are interesting for a few twelfth and thirteenth, and more fifteenth and sixteenth century buildings, among which are the curious Mudejar brick towers. The predominant building material of the lower part of the province is brick of the same colour as the surrounding soil, which lends a peculiar crumbling appearance to the land- scape. Indeed, Calatayud, Morata, and many other towns on the banks of the Jaldn are hardly to be distinguished from the strange turrets and pinnacles of the apocalyptic-looking hills at the base of which they lie. The scenery of the Aragonese desert between Zaragoza and Lerida is stranger in its treeless desolation than anything in Castile. There is little pointed architecture in Aragon itself ; of the three Cistercian houses of Veruela, Rueda, and Piedra, the first alone is well preserved. The cathedral of Huesca and the Seo of Zaragoza are the only great Gothic churches the land can show. Indeed, the name Aragon bore in the Middle Ages it owed to Catalonia and Valencia ; its own part — for commerce naturally did not 294 ARAGON thrive in an inland country — was chiefly military. The Aragonese nobles, who wrung privileges from their earlier kings until they left them hardly a shirt to their backs, were fierce fighting-men, and did gallant service in the taking of Valencia and the foreign wars of Catalonia. In times of peace these nobles were a plague : they fought each other or the king indifferently. Catalonia, fortun- ately for herself, always kept them at arm's length except when there were throats to be slit. Valen- cia doubtless seemed a paradise to them after their own bleak Aragon. There they received large grants of land from D. Jaime, and there they rolled in riches which they found little difficulty in extorting from their hardworking Moorish peasants, and turned the city into a hell of murder and riot. The Constitution of Aragon, which was not extended to Catalonia at the union, shows what manner of men these robber barons were. As a masterpiece of impracticability it can only be matched by the famous Charter of Poland. The members of the Aragonese House of Lords, like those of the Polish Diet, had privileges among which was the monstrous liberum veto, which made absolute unanimity necessary to the passing of laws. The kings managed as best they could, cut- ting off the heads of the most troublesome, until the union of Castile and Aragon and, particularly, the times of Charles V and Philip II. 295 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Liberal historians, as is their wont, have cham- pioned the cause of Aragonese liberties through thick and thin ; to anything bearing the sacred name of Constitution they bow their heads. Charles V, however, could not be expected to share the very exaggerated notion of their own importance held by the Aragonese. If he had spent all his days in wheedling their absurdly constituted Cortes he would have had no time left for the business of State. He preferred to let them alone. His successor was so short of money that he could not afford to do the same, and Philip II earned the execration of Liberal posterity by beheading the Justicia Lanuza. The occasion had apparently little to do with the real issue ; but though the Constitution remained as before on paper, little more was heard of it in practice. ZARAGOZA Zaragoza esta en un llano, la torre inclinada en medio, y la Virgen del Pilar a las orillas del Ebro. 1 So runs a copla of the Jota Aragonesa. That was before the owners of the houses in the little square 1 Zaragoza lies on flat ground, with the leaning tower in its midst, and the Virgen del Pilar on the banks of the Ebro. 296 ZARAGOZA where stood the leaning Torre Nueva, a perfect example of Mudejar brick architecture, obtained that it should be pulled down — not that there was any danger of its collapsing, but the fact that it fell ten feet out of the perpendicular cheapened house-rent on that side. Now that it is down the authorities are talking of setting it up again. An idea of what Zaragoza looked like in the seventeenth century may be obtained from the painting attributed to Velazquez in the Prado. Now, in spite of the fact that Murray's Guide Book for 1898 gives it as standing and secure from further decline, the Torre Nueva has been gone fifteen years and the coloured tiled cupolas of Nuestra Senora del Pilar dwarf all. The view from the other side of the Ebro is grand, however, especially by moonlight, when the mass of El Pilar stands out like some vast Russian church. The colour of the city is given by the brick of which it is built; there is that dusty quality in the air which is to be recognised in the landscapes of Goya, who came from the neighbourhood. A better general view of town and surroundings is to be had from the suburb of Torrero. The fertility of the Ebro Valley is due to no Moorish works of irrigation, but to the canal begun in the days of Charles V, and continued by a canon of the cathedral of the house of Pignatelli late in the eighteenth century. The Ebro, useless as a water- 297 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS way to-day, was navigable while the Moors held Zaragoza, and dropped slowly into its present condition in the general blight which fell upon Aragon after the union with Catalonia and the conquest of Valencia. Zaragoza, like many another Moorish-sounding Spanish word, is the corruption of a Roman name, Caesarea Augusta. It is the Holy City of the Aragonese, who flock thither every year in pil- grimage on the feast of the Virgen del Pilar. The character of these hard-headed folk has always been the same. Everywhere in Spain one sees little volumes of Cuentos Baturros in the bookshop windows, upon the cover of which figures an Aragonese peasant riding a donkey along the railway track and paying not the slightest attention to the train which is bearing down upon him. The siege of 1808, during which k la puerta de j cas tillo, un aragones cantaba al son de los cafionazos que Agustina disparaba, 1 and the men of Zaragoza fought the French from house to house for weeks, is deservedly famous ; though it is unlikely that the heroic defenders knew more of what it was all about than that Frenchmen had insulted La Pilarica. The miraculous lady, with Agustina her lieutenant, 1 At the gate of the castle an Aragonese sung to the tune of Agustina's cannons. 298 ZARAGOZA captained her Baturros gallantly. Another verse of the warlike jota : — La Virgen del Pilar dice que no quiere ser francesa, que quiere ser capitana de la tropa aragonesa. 1 In 1908, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the siege, she obtained promotion which she had long deserved. She is now a Captain-General of the Spanish army. Her Aragonese adore her; the name Pilar, common in all Spain, is borne in Aragon by nearly half the total female population. A friend of mine had an Aragonese servant who one day came home from the fair with a magnificent chromo-lithograph portrait of General Espartero in uniform and covered with medals, which she had bought imagining it to be the Virgen del Pilar. To-day Zaragoza is much modernised. It was never as rich in mediaeval art as Barcelona, and what it did possess, a tangle of tortuous mediaeval streets, has been largely swept away by the im- provements of the last thirty years. The city is prosperous and likely to grow more so. Politically, the Aragonese see no reasonable solution of the problem but that Zaragoza should become the capital of Spain. Little love has ever been lost 1 The Virgen del Pilar says she will not be French^ she will be captain of the troops of Aragon. 299 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS between them and the Catalans, and they would probably prefer the present state of things to having to share any degree of autonomy with their eastern neighbours. Though in its present form it dates from the end of the seventeenth century, Nuestra Senora del Pilar is, by its history, one of the most im- portant Christian monuments in Spain. A few years after the death of Our Lord, the Apostle Santiago, St. James the Greater, was praying one day beside the River Ebro, when Our Lady appeared to him accompanied by angels who carried her image and a pillar of jasper. Our Lady gave the image and the pillar to Santiago, telling him to build a chapel for them, in which she would protect Zaragoza and which should last until the end of the world. Santiago obeyed, building a modest chapel in which the image stood on the same spot which it occupies in the existing church. The image was miraculously preserved during the Moorish invasion. After the Reconquest several churches in succession were built over it, the last of which is the one begun after designs by Francisco de Herrera in 1686. In plan it forms a square, and has nave and aisles. The interior is rambling and rickety-looking, and several of the many cupolas threaten ruin. The roof is painted on the inside in fresco by Bayeu and Goya. By far the finest thing in the church is the great late 300 ZARAGOZA Gothic alabaster altarpiece by Damian Forment. The choir stalls and the reja are good work of the later sixteenth century. Behind the altar is the chapel of the Virgin. Glittering silver lamps and precious marbles make it difficult to see the image, which is, moreover, fully dressed in gorgeous robes and covered with jewels. Those who have had the opportunity of seeing it naked say that it is a wooden figure of the twelfth century. The treasury contains those of the countless costly gifts made to the Virgin which have not been sold. Unfortunately most of the historically and artistically interesting ornaments have vanished. A museum of painting has been formed in one of the dependencies of El Pilar, which contains sketches for the frescoes of Bayeu and Goya. Goya was made to conform rigorously to his brother-in-law's style here. What he did when left to himself may be seen in the Cartuja de Aula Dei. In this collection there are also three large paintings on canvas in a bold decorative style without much colour. The clergy of El Pilar seem to know nothing of the original des- tinations of these canvases. In style they are not unlike the toiles-peintes used in Burgundy as scenery for passion plays. Their author may have been an Aragonese of the fifteenth century who had travelled to Burgundy and Italy — several of the figures wear Florentine head-dresses — without forgetting his home ; for a wolf which appears in 3°i SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS one of the miracles has a Hispano-Moresque look about him. The subjects are : — 1. (a) The apostles leaving Jerusalem. (b) The preaching of St. James. (c) The seven converts of Zaragoza. (d) St. James and his companion Torcuatus. 2. The Virgin appearing to St. James. 3. Four miracles of N. S. del Pilar. The subjects thus make it certain that the can- vases were painted for this church. The Seo, dedicated to our Saviour, the other great church of Zaragoza, in which many of the kings of Aragon were crowned, was founded shortly before El Pilar. Hence endless squabbles as to which of the two possessed the metropolitan dignity, which was finally, in the seventeenth cen- tury, conferred upon both to put an end to the dispute . Barbaros aragoneses, que habeis querido casar con el Cristo de la Seo a la Virgen del Pilar. 1 Service is now held alternately for periods of six months in each. The church of to-day, much altered as it is out- side, dates mainly from the fifteenth century. In the apse are to be seen traces of Romanesque work dating from the building begun soon after 1 Barbarous Aragonese,, who would wed the Virgen del Pilar with the Christ of the Seo. 302 Paintings representing the foundation of NS. del Pilar, Zaragoza. ZARAGOZA the Reconquest. Still more interesting is a por- tion of the apse which is covered with excellent fourteenth century Mudejar brick and tile-work. These tiles are glazed and of different colours, but many of them have unfortunately disappeared of late years. The interior, with its nave and double aisles of great width and only five bays in length, is ordinary late Spanish Gothic, and not remark- able in detail. The octagonal lantern was built early in the sixteenth century to replace another which had collapsed soon after being set up — a fate which overtook those at Burgos and Seville ; even fifteenth-century builders were not infallible. The high altar has a very rich Gothic retablo. In one of the chapels is the magnificent fifteenth- century Luna tomb, analogous to those described at Poblet, and, like them, Burgundian in style. The connection of the Luna family with Zara- goza is further recorded in the three splendid fourteenth or early fifteenth century silver and translucent enamel busts of SS. Vincent, Valerius, and Lawrence, kept in the treasury. They were the gift of the Luna anti-Pope, Benedict XIII. The Seo is full of more monuments of local interest, none of which are of great artistic value. There are also a few indifferent paintings. In Holy Week both El Pilar and La Seo are hung with a magnificent series of great late Gothic Flemish tapestries, the best of which the chapter made a desperate attempt to sell five years ago in 303 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS defiance of laws. The negotiations were carried on with melodramatic secrecy, and were so near com- pletion that a very pretty advance sum was made over by the dealers ; but a patriotic son of Zara- goza got wind of them and telegraphed to Madrid. There are more tapestries — one Gothic and eight after Raphael's cartoons — in San Pablo, a massive early pointed church with a good retablo of the same school as that in El Pilar. The most remarkable part of the building is the Mudejar steeple, which, now the Torre Nueva is gone, is the best of the kind left. It is octagonal and of brick, with glazed tiles let into it in patterns. Of what once existed in Zaragoza this and little more remains after the French siege and other storms. There is part of the Renaissance Santa Engracia, with fairly good sculpture, and the curious Gothic (1551) Lonja, in which the style of the Catalan exchanges, so well represented at Barcelona, Palma, and V alencia, gave its last gasp. There is also the Aljaferia, once the palace of the Moorish kings. This building has been so much altered in later times that only a tiny mosque remains, and that so deeply whitewashed that the Moorish work in it, finer in quality than anything in Granada, loses much of its effect. What gives a certain distinction to the streets of Zaragoza are a number of fine sixteenth-century palaces, like Casa Zaporta, with great overhanging carved roof timbers and splendid spaces of brick wall. Inside 3°4 i If w fax ffef 2i*^f La ZARAGOZA they are mostly uninteresting. The story of the siege may still be followed on the very site ; numberless battered gates and houses show the frightful slaughter which preceded Zaragoza's fall. At a distance of seven or eight miles from the town lies the Cartuja de Aula Dei. Founded by the Archbishop D. Hernando de Aragon, this house enjoyed large rents and great prosperity until the War of Independence and the bad time of 1835, when the monks were obliged to abandon it. In 1901 the exiled French communities of Valbonne and Vauclair took it over, and the decorations which Goya painted in the other- wise ordinary church became known to a few people at Zaragoza. The paintings are not frescoes. They are painted in oils directly on the wall with a red ground as the only preparation ; this rash process, typical of Goya, accounts for the state in which they now are. Those that have survived represent the Marriage of the Blessed Virgin, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Kings, and the Presentation in the Temple. Before anyone could stop them, the French monks got two Grands Prix du Salon from Paris, who restored two more in such a way as to make them utterly unrecognisable ; and the decoration of the church was probably never finished. Badly preserved as they are, the paint- ings should be carefully examined by critics before they repeat the current opinion that Goya was 305 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS incapable of painting religious scenes except as grotesques. The compositions of these groups are full of dignity and simplicity ; they are deeply felt. In the Adoration of the Kings, it is true, we have a black Magus who looks like the nigger who used to dance at the Cafe de Marina in the Calle de los Jardines at Madrid, in his much- applauded tango de la Hob ana, but Goya prob- ably thought in all seriousness that an Ethiopian would thus express his reverence. He may well be right. In fact, these paintings are the only ones in existence in which Goya was left to depict religious scenes exactly as he pleased. He prob- ably painted them in 1781, while he was working at El Pilar. We know that he was a great friend of Padre Salcedo, then prior of La Cartuja. The difference between his work here, so full of ex- pression, and his conventional pieces at El Pilar, where he was under Bayeu's eye, is enormous, and is easily explained by the liberty which Salcedo would naturally give his friend. Good photo- graphs of the paintings, side by side with others of the sketches for El Pilar, have been published in Forma (No. 23). HUESCA AND JACA On the line of railway which runs up to Jaca, just at the foot of the Sierra de Guara, lies Huesca, capital of Aragon for a few years before Zaragoza 306 HUESCA AND JACA was won back from the Moors. The town is not beautiful, but it contains important buildings, chief among which is the Romanesque monastery church of San Pedro El Viejo, said to have been consecrated in 1241, though the monastery and parts of the actual building are much older. In plan it closely resembles San Pedro de Galligans at Gerona, but it has a quadripartite vaulted lantern with richly traceried round windows which, though it is of about the same date as the rest of the church, is of a much more advanced style. The detail of the interior is very plain, as befits a church of the early Lombard type ; but there is a little fifteenth -century coro in the unusual posi- tion of the last bay of the nave to the west. The hexagonal tower, which is entered from a fine round-arched door in the north transept, is four stages high and has an added belfry. The round- arched cloister appears to have been interesting, but it has been clumsily restored of late, and the few remaining old capitals are very rude. The west front has its window and door walled up. In the tympanum of the door leading into the cloister is a wonderful Adoration of the Magi, which, like the remaining old capitals of the cloister, is twelfth- century French work. Two kilometres from the town is the church of the old monastery of Salas, which has a fine west front in the style of that of the south transept of the old cathedral at Lerida. The round arch 3°7 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of the door has six richly carved orders with acanthus capitals ; but the shafts, which were probably of marble, have all been wrenched out. The door is set well forward from the face of the wall, and has engaged shafts running up at the sides to the sculptured horizontal cornice. In the gable above is a round window of three orders, which has lost its tracery and been bricked up. The interior of the church has been modernised. Near by are the remains of a simple round-arched cloister. The cathedral seems to have been begun by Juan de Olotzaga in 1400, and not to have been finished until 1515. Street notices that the plan, with its five apses stuck into the east side of the transept, is very similar to that of certain early Spanish churches ; exactly the same as Tudela Cathedral, in fact. He takes this as evidence that Olotzaga built on the foundations of an earlier church, of which the door in the north transept and fragments of the cloister are remains. The detail is all fifteenth-century work, with the possible exception of the west doorway, which Street thinks is fifty years older, but which may well be the work of Olotzaga, who was probably not exactly in advance of his day. This doorway is of seven orders, three of which are carved with foliage, and the others with figures. There are seven saints in each jamb. The high altar has a great alabaster retablo by the Valencian 308 HUESCA AND JACA Damian Forment. It is certainly a fine work, finished in 1533, in a very late Gothic style in which the Plateresque begins to appear in the detail, but which recalls the manner of neither Phidias nor yet Praxiteles, of whom Forment is said to have been the rival in the inscription on his tomb: "Arte statuaria Phidiae Praxitelisque aemulus." In the treasury are kept three lovely little Limoges champleve enamel caskets of the thirteenth century, and the magnificent silver and enamel altar front given by Alfonso IV — second third of the fourteenth century — to the convent of Salas. In the old university, now the Instituto, are remains of the palace of Don Ramiro el Monje, who was taken out of a cloister to rule Aragon on the death of his brother, D. Alfonso el Batallador. D. Ramiro proved that the cowl had not unfitted him for the crown by inviting his highest nobles to Huesca and cutting off their heads, which he made into a bell to be heard, as he playfully said, all over Aragon. The room where this bell is said to have been hung still exists. It has semicircular arches of the plainest. Above, is the fine library called the Sala de Dona Petronila, a handsome room with semicircular arches and sculptured capitals, the proportions of which were marred in the eighteenth century, when the roof was lowered to just above the level of the capitals. Soon after this exploit D. Ramiro abdicated in favour of his u 309 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS daughter, Dona Petronila, and betook himself to the Benedictine monastery of S. Pedro in this town, where he lived in peace another ten years or more. In the Colegio de Santiago is a collection of Aragonese primitive paintings, some of which have a local interest. The railway at present ends at Jaca, which ancient city lies on the road by which pilgrims from Toulouse and its region entered Spain, and which crosses the Pyrenees near the Pic du Midi. Below Jaca the road follows the River Aragon as far as Sangiiesa, whence it strikes across country to meet the French road at Puente de la Reina. Jaca was the capital of the first independent kings of Aragon, who began its cathedral in the middle of the eleventh century. The cathedral has been much altered in Gothic and later times ; but it still has its original east end, which probably dates from the days of Ramiro I, and is of a French style, which may well have been introduced by this monarch. South of Jaca, in the Sierra de San Juan, lies the gloomy monastery of San Juan de la Pena, which was founded by Garci-Ximenez in the course of the century of the first Moslem invasion, at the very dawn of the history of Aragon. It holds the ashes of many of the Aragonese heroes of the Reconquest, but the building as it stands to-day has little work earlier than the twelfth century. 310 TARAZONA AND VERUELA TARAZONA AND VERUELA Tarazona, a border city in the north-west corner of Aragon, is built on both sides of the River Queiles. On the north bank lies the cathedral, and on the south, which rises sheer up from the river, the Bishop's Palace, the Mudejar tower of la Magdalena, and the body of the town. All the houses are of brick, of brick the towers of the churches, and as this brick is of much the colour of the clay of which it is made, the town has a dusty look and loses itself in its surroundings when seen from a distance. West of Tarazona rises the bald mountain of Aragon, el Moncayo, from which icy blasts sweep down in winter. On the whole, with its brick architecture and its narrow ill-paved streets, this is a typical Aragonese city. The cathedral was built, probably on the site of an earlier building, in the thirteenth century. It is of good plan, with nave and aisles of six bays, transepts, a lofty lantern over the crossing, and a chevet consisting of a choir of two bays with a five-sided apse and awkwardly planned chapels leading out of the choir aisle. The original build- ing may be made out by careful study, for surely never was thirteenth-century church so maltreated as this. The havoc seems to have begun early in the sixteenth century, when the stone walls of the exterior were immured in brick additions, and the 3 11 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS brick tower and riotous brick lantern were built. This latter, seen from the outside, is a jumble of turrets and pinnacles, many of which are beginning to look dilapidated, and is inlaid with coloured tiles. The tower is inferior to that of the Magda- lena on the opposite bank of the river. On the north side was added a monstrous Renaissance doorway with large barbarous saints placed in Gothic fashion in the jambs. All this is nothing to what they did inside. The beautiful early pointed arcaded triforium which surrounded the choir and transepts was partly blocked up and partly filled with classical balustrading ; the lantern was adorned with angels sitting dangling their legs over the arches, and the coro was built in the third and fourth bays of the nave. Each succeeding age has added something ; the columns and their capitals have many of them been robbed of their original form, the old clerestory windows have been replaced by square ones, and, finally, the whole interior has been painted a dark slate colour, with white lines to imitate masonry. The effect is wholly ruined ; nothing can be more depressing than trying to divest the early church of all this growth. By way of furniture there are poor late Gothic stalls in the choir, and the chapel called de los Cardenales has two good fourteenth-century tombs. The cloister, to the south of the church, is an interesting example of brick architecture ; the 312 TARAZONA AND VERUELA openings were once filled with delicate Mudejar traceries cut in thin slabs of stone. The arches and jambs are of brick, but the whole is now hid- den under a thousand coats of whitewash, and utterly gone to ruin. After seeing a church like this, of fine plan and detail, all buried under later additions, one is inclined to thank looting Liberals for clearing out the rubbish and leaving the original fabric naked, as they did at Poblet, Santas Creus, and Veruela. Veruela, one of the first Cistercian houses to be founded in Spain, lies in a valley under the Mon- cayo, about two leagues from Tarazona. The foundation was on this wise. One day in July, 1141, Don Pedro de A tares, a prince of the royal house of Navarre and closely related to that of Aragon, lost his way while hunting and was over- taken by a frightful storm. He prayed for help to Our Lady, and was instantly answered by her appearance in person. She gave him an image of herself and told him briefly that she wished him to found an abbey of Cistercian monks on the very spot. St. Bernard's white friars had not yet reached Spain, so Don Pedro had to appeal to the abbot of Scala Dei in Gascony, whence monks were sent to direct the building of this their home on Spanish soil. The work was carried on rapidly, the stone being brought from quarries near the castle of Trasmoz, whose ruins may be seen on 3*3 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS the slopes of the Moncayo, so that when Don Pedro died in 1151 the church was almost finished. The road from Tarazona reaches the abbey through the village of Vera, about half a mile away, at the entrance to which is written in large letters : " Viva la Virgen de Veruela ! Este pueblo es cristiano, en el no se blasfema ! " 1 This Virgen de Veruela is nothing less than the miraculous image which Our Lady gave to Don Pedro de A tares, and which is still preserved in the high altar of the abbey church. After passing through the village the battlemented walls of the enclosure are seen, with a low court in front of the great entrance gate, which is surmounted by a crocketed spire and flanked by round towers. Beyond rise the brick steeple and the roofs of the buildings. Inside the gate is a long narrow court, the arrange- ment of which, with the late buildings on the right and the west front of the church and cloister at the end, is exactly the same as that of Santas Creus, though here no old outer door is left to the cloister. Street points out that there is a great similarity between the arrangements here and in the earliest French Cistercian convents. An examination of Poblet, Santas Creus, and Vallbona de las Monjas, which Street did not see, suggests that these three 1 Long live the Virgin of Veruela ! This village is Christian, no blasphemy here ! 314 TARAZONA AND VERUELA houses, which were built very soon after Veruela, were planned by monks who brought with them full instructions from the authorities of their order in France. Here, as at Poblet and at Santas Creus, all the rules which St. Bernard laid down for his friars were observed in the original plan. The severity in the details of the architecture, the low steeple, the absence of sculpture, the cloister with its chapter-house of nine groining bays and its projecting hexagonal chamber for a lavatory, the great dormitory running over one side of the cloister — all is alike in these Aragonese houses of the Cister. Though Veruela was not as rich as Poblet, later times must have seen the erection of a great deal of bad work, all of which was swept away in 1835, when the monks were turned out and everything that glittered was thrown into the fire to see whether gold could be got out of it. From the time of the exclaustration until thirty years ago the abbey was a private residence ; since then it has been a Jesuit seminary. Its present inmates have done in the way of restoration no more than was necessary to prevent ruin, and have been unusually sparing in decoration. On entering the great court, then, we have the site of the abbot's palace on the right and the west front of the church before us. This west front has a great recessed round-arched doorway with several shafts and capitals. Above is a circle with the monograms " X. P." and " A. £2 ", and then a 315 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS row of arcading borne on engaged shafts. The lower part of the front is set well forward, and above it the nave and aisles each have a round window. The exterior of the church is very plain ; the roof of the aisle has a corbel- table running all round it. The exterior of the apse is divided into five compartments by pilasters. The great brick tower was built in the sixteenth century in defiance of the rules of the Order, which had permitted nothing higher than the little tower rising from the north transept. South of the church lies the square cloister of six bays on each side, the tracery in which is of good early fourteenth - century design. In the sixteenth century an upper stage was added. The projecting hexagonal chamber on the south side has windows like the rest of the cloister, and the chapter-house on the east is exactly like the one described at Poblet. Above this side runs a great hall known as the Sala de los Reyes, which is fantastically groined with ribs springing from heads in the walls. This room was doubtlessly a dormitory like the fine one at Poblet, and re- ceived its present grotesque form in the sixteenth century. On the threshold of the now disused door lead- ing into the south transept, by which the monks entered the church, may be seen engraved a great sword, the only monument which Don Pedro de A tares allowed to adorn the spot where his bones 316 Chapter-house, Veruela. Cloister, Vallbona de las Monjas. TARAZONA AND VERUELA were crossed several times daily by the feet of the monks. Near this door are three sarcophagi, said to be the tombs of the son of Don Pedro and of his two grandsons, one of whom, Don Alfonso, fought by the side of Don Jaime el Conquistador at the taking of Valencia. The soldiers, knowing that he was of the town of Borja — two leagues from Veruela — acclaimed him by that name, which he took when he established himself in the lands given him in the newly conquered kingdom of Don Jaime. His descendants have been many and famous. The Borja or, as they were called in Italy, Borgia popes sprang from him ; and, less notorious but no less famous, Francisco de Borja, el Santo Duque de Gandia, who became third general of the Company of Jesus which now inhabits the abbey founded by his ancestor for the white friars. The abbey church is an admirable twelfth-cen- tury building, whose present unadorned condition makes it possible to appreciate the harmony of its stern lines. The nave and very narrow aisles are six bays in length ; the transepts have eastern apses ; and the choir is surrounded by an aisle, still narrower than the others, out of which open five small apsidal chapels, all of which, like those in the transepts, are roofed with semi-domes. There is no lantern over the crossing, and the groining is quadripartite throughout. The arches opening from the crossing into the choir, nave, and aisles 317 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS are pointed, but the main arches in the nave are round. Each division of the nave and the apse, which is groined in five bays, is lighted by a round- headed clerestory window. There are no side chapels in the aisles. A late Gothic groined chapel, which contains the only tomb of any im- portance surviving in the church, has been added to the north transept, and in the south is a hideous Baroque door. The capitals are plainly carved, the piers massive and unadorned, though the character of the whole is much less rude than that of the church of Santas Creus. Of the coro there is not a trace, but it is evident from the con- dition of the floor that it occupied the second and third bays west from the crossing. In the apsidal chapels, transepts, and chevet remain the original altar tables carried on five shafts with capitals, and the choir has a massive altar faced with a round- arched arcade. All these tables have modern Gothic trappings on them now. In a recess of the very ugly high altar is kept the miraculous Virgen de Veruela. As the priest who showed me round remarked — with, as I thought, a twinkle in his eye — the little wooden image is extraordinarily well preserved after having inhabited earth since 1141 ; indeed, with the best will in the world I could see in it nothing but an ordinary seventeenth-century Virgin and Child, The people of Vera are fervently devoted to their Virgen, and are prepared to defend her in arms 318 TARAZONA AND VERUELA if anyone presumes to compare her with her Aragonese rival, the Virgen del Pilar. She, in return, still calms the wild storms which devils brew on the Moncayo, as she did on that July day when Don Pedro de Atares sought her protection, and it is rare that any house in the neighbourhood is struck by lightning. If it has now and then happened that a peasant has lost his crops, one may be sure that he had neglected the injunction which stands written at the entrance to the village. 319 XV CATALONIA The old province of Catalonia occupies the north- east corner of Spain, and includes the present provinces of Barcelona, Gerona, Lerida, and Tarra- gona. The long Mediterranean coast-line stretches from the French border at Port-Bou to the town of Alcanar, beyond the delta of the Ebro. From this point the frontier runs in nearly a straight line up to the peak of Maladetta, opposite Luchon in the High Pyrenees. It will be seen that most of the province is very mountainous ; the Llanos de Urgel, in the part of the province of Lerida bordering on Aragon, are the only broad plains in its territory. The character of Catalan landscape is varied ; for the most part it recalls Italy rather than Spain. The fertile hills rising from the sea are covered with vines and olives, and intersected by innumer- able stone walls and terraces. The very colour of the soil, the rock-pines and cypresses, the grey river-beds, the mouldering towers which crown the steep hills, take one back to Tuscany. This impression is strongest in the province of Tarra- 320 CATALONIA gona, upon which Roman and older civilisations have left deep traces. The sea-coast of the Am- purdan in the province of Gerona is a little world in itself. Separated as it is from the inland by rugged hills traversed by very bad roads, it has always had easier communication with Italy and the Mediterranean islands ; for in the days when Europe as it is now was in the making the sea united and land divided. This strip of coast was dotted with colonies in ancient times ; almost every cove still has a name with a classical flavour about it. Here is Ampurias, the Greek colony of Emporium, where were struck the first Spanish coins and where recent explorations have dis- covered pottery, gems, and bronzes. To-day the straight-limbed fisher-folk speak a strange dialect of Catalan, full of Sicilian words. In the good old days these fishermen rolled in riches which they drew from smuggling, a pursuit they were so unwilling to abandon that General Polavieja had to be sent with a small army against the smuggling centre Cadaques, where the church used to be crammed with contraband tobacco until there was no room for the congregation. The Pyrenean valleys are wild, difficult of access, and extremely interesting in many ways. The difference between the conditions of life in these savage mountain villages and in the populous manufacturing towns in the lower part of the province of Barcelona is as great as possible. The 321 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS mountaineers are still the Catalan peasants of the Middle Ages ; they are strong Catholics and for the most part Carlists ; while the townsmen have long been turbulent Liberals, and the working population breeds Socialists in plenty and not a few anarchists. Whatever may be the truth about the ethno- logical origin of the Catalans, and in looking into the question one is reminded of the butcher in the Hunting of the Snark, whose e< Intimate friends called him candle-ends, And his enemies toasted cheese/' one thing is certain — they are but distantly related to the Castilians and Aragonese. According to their particular bent, friendly writers say that the base of the population is Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, or Frank. Of late unfriendly people in Madrid have upheld the view that the Catalans are not merely Semitic but downright Jews. Pessimists at home — for there are pessimists even in Catalonia — admit all these opinions and call their country the Western Caucasus, the dust-bin of Europe, the corner into which racial odds-and- ends have been swept from time immemorial. We may as well let this question rest, and content ourselves with noticing that the Catalan physical type is widely different from the Castilian. The Catalan language is also a thing apart ; it is of the Limousin branch, is spoken in France in the 322 CATALONIA Roussillon, and resembles the Toulouse and Pro- vencal dialects. The Mallorqum, spoken in the Balearic Islands, and Valencian are but dialects of the Catalan. This language is in no danger of dis- appearing ; the Catalans have always been strongly attached to it, their love for it was strengthened by persecution in the eighteenth century, and for the last fifty years it has been part of the duty of a good Catalan to speak and write it as much as possible, and to speak Castilian only when forced to do so and with an accent which is in itself a declaration of sound Catalan principles. The Catalan sea-board is one of those lands whose soil has that indefinable quality which is only given by ages of culture and occupation by ancient civilisations. Interesting as its early his- tory is, we must pass on to the times of the Reconquest, when the territory as far south as the Llobregat soon shook off the Moors. Its position on the Mediterranean, its seafaring population, gave it the arts of civilisation when the other Christian states were sunk in barbarism. The Counts of Barcelona became more or less inde- pendent in the latter part of the ninth century ; while most of Aragon, including Zaragoza, which was only recovered in 1118, was in the hands of the Moors, Catalonia was free and becoming pros- perous. It is true that Almanzor laid it waste with the rest of the Peninsula in 986, but thanks to its industry it soon recovered from the blow. 323 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Except for this one interruption, it had two and a half centuries of relative prosperity behind it at the time of its union with Aragon in 1137, by the marriage of Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barce- lona, with Dona Petronila, daughter and heiress to Ramiro el Monje, King of Aragon. This union was only personal ; the Catalans kept their independent Cortes, and though they addressed their sovereign no longer as Senor Conde but as Senor Rey, they obeyed him as Count of Barcelona, and in no wise accepted him before he had taken oath to respect the liberties of Catalonia. It is well to remember that this state of things out -lasted the personal union of Aragon and Castile, and only ceased with the final suppression of the liberties of the prin- cipality by Philip V in 1714, after a desperate struggle, in which Catalonia, single-handed and abandoned by all her allies, continued to brave the first Bourbon king of Spain. Long after the union of Catalonia with Aragon, Barcelona was the residence of the kings. In spite of the fact that these assumed the title of kings of Aragon, it was really Catalonia that absorbed the other country. The great royal abbeys of Poblet and Santas Creus, situated near Tarragona in the heart of Catalonia, were the burial-places and occasionally the residences of the kings and princes of the blood, as the abbey of Ripoll had been those of the Counts of Barcelona before the 3 2 4 CATALONIA union. Barcelona, with its delicious climate, the richest town in all Spain as it has always been, in constant communication with the sea-board of the Mediterranean, within easy reach of the best East Pyrenean passes, was naturally a more con- venient and pleasant seat than inland Zaragoza, with its climate of extremes of heat and cold and its bleak surroundings. For throughout the Middle Ages the kingdom of Aragon was a mighty affair. It included Valencia after that kingdom had finally been recovered from the Moors in 1238, the Balearic Islands (though these formed an independent kingdom at times), a por- tion, varying in size, of the south of France, of which the Roussillon, where Catalan is spoken to the present day, was the last part to fall to France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1660). In addi- tion to this, Pedro III of Aragon, late in the thirteenth century, inherited the kingdom of Sicily through his wife Constance, daughter of Manfred, second son of the Emperor Frederick II. The crown of Sicily had been given by the Pope to the House of Anjou, but the Aragonese, aided by the Sicilians themselves, succeeded in holding it for a time against the French. The varying fortunes of the wars — which only ceased to begin again — between French and Aragonese brought Naples to Alfonso V of Aragon in 1442, and the crowns of Naples, Sicily, and Aragon remained united in the Aragonese dynasty, and usually in x 325 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS the same person, until the Italian dominions fell to Fernando, third son of Charles III, in 1759. Before the personal union of Aragon and Cas- tile by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella (1474) and the discovery of America (1492), Aragonese policy — and policy meant something in the hands of sovereigns like Pedro III, Pedro IV, and Alfonso V — was constantly directed towards Italy and the Mediterranean, whose rich cities were more tempting to bloodthirsty Aragonese and mercantile Catalans alike than the bare plains of Castile. In those days Barcelona was mistress of the Mediterranean as Venice was of the Eastern Seas. There are also many traces of its inter- course with the East, among them a chapel still standing which was founded by a Byzantine merchant family established at Barcelona in the days of the Counts. The great variety of early Oriental textiles found in parish churches all over Catalonia also shows that, at a time when the Castilians were entirely absorbed in slitting the Moors' or each other's throats, the merchants of Barcelona were growing rich and acquiring a taste for the graces of life. Catalan seamen have always been famous ; the great Roger de Lauria, Pedro Ill's admiral, swept all before him, and from the latter part of the thirteenth century onwards the maritime code of the Consulado del Mar of Barcelona was observed in all the Medi- 326 CATALONIA terranean. The palace of the Consulado, or at least its noble Gothic hall, still stands, and is now the Exchange. These Catalan sailors were rough men, as their descendants have been after them, and were bitterly hated by their Italian rivals. Aretino, in one of his courtesans' dialogues, makes a lady who, on retiring from the profession, gives the fruit of her experience to her daughter who is about to embrace it, compare her venerable trade to a merchant's voyage at sea — there are many sore trials, among which perhaps the worst is having to embark with Catalan seamen, but the profits are great. The merchants built many monuments to adorn their city. The Casa Consistorial, or Town Hall, and the Casa de la Diputacion are two splendid fourteenth -century civic buildings ; and Santa Maria del Mar was built by the merchants at their own expense and in their own quarter, close by the harbour and outside the walls. The Catalans have always been vastly proud of the civil, rather than religious or military, character of their capital. They have managed their municipal affairs for themselves from the earliest times, with only the break of the century following the suppression of their liberties by Philip V, and they have a bitter and deep-rooted hatred of interference, which found expression in the insufferable insolence of the Catalan Cortes when they addressed their king. Insolence such that the good King Don 327 SPAIN : HER LIFE AND ARTS Fernando, who had been Regent of Castile and was elected King of Aragon after the extinction of the House of Barcelona by the death of Martin el Humano, died of the taste he got of it at the Cortes of Barcelona in 1416. This temper of the Catalans — and that of the Aragonese and Valencians was only less rough — made them see in the king in no wise the Lord's anointed, but a paid official on whom they did well to keep a vigilant eye. A sovereign like Juan I, El Amador de la Gentileza, who cared for nothing but poetry, music, and court games, and who was encouraged by his Burgundian wife Violante to spend money like water in maintaining effeminate wasters from the four corners of Europe at his court at Zaragoza, was denounced violently from the pulpit, harried unmercifully at his Cortes, and finally driven to cutting his expenses and sending his minions packing. Barcelona reached the summit of its glory in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The union of Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand and Isabella marks the beginning of its fall, for, though Ferdinand was always Aragonese at heart and never forgot traditional Aragonese policy, the interests of his own kingdom gradually became subordinate to those of Castile, especially after the conquest of Granada and the discovery of the New World. When, under the Hapsburg kings, the gold and silver of America began to flow into 328 CATALONIA Spain, the great field for Spanish shipping was no longer the Mediterranean but the Atlantic, and Cadiz in the south, and Vigo and Coruna in the north, gradually superseded Barcelona. The woe- fully mistaken idea that precious metal alone consti- tutes national wealth, brought industry into con- tempt ; and the childish notions of the Cortes on political economy made them imagine that they could check the extravagance of a luxurious age by prohibiting silk-spinning, which was already in evil repute because of its connection with the Moriscos, and which was the real wealth of Valencia. The mad fiscal policy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which made matters worse by prohibiting the exportation of precious metal, killed the inter- national trade which had raised Barcelona to what it was. In short, the temper of the age in Castile was for adventure overseas, for the propagation of the Faith by the sword, and all against the traditions of industry and civic life which were so strong in the cities of Catalonia and Valencia. When Aragon was united to Castile the con- stitutions of the three states into which the former was subdivided suffered no change ; the Catalans regarded themselves as independent as ever, and gave their allegiance to the Emperor Charles V himself merely in his capacity of Count of Barcelona. The Hapsburg kings were very impatient of the stubbornness of the Catalans, and governed as far as they could without asking for 329 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS subsidies from any one of the three Aragonese Cortes, which upheld their privilege of presenting grievances before considering questions of supply. However, costly wars forced them to have recourse to Aragon, and the result was a series of squabbles which must have been gall and wormwood to kings used to the subservient Cortes of Castile. The fact is that the Hapsburgs misgoverned Spain with the enthusiastic approval of Castile, misgoverned it exactly in the manner in which Castile wished to be misgoverned, in order to have a free hand to prosecute their foreign wars. This was all very well for Castile, but hard on Aragon, or rather on Catalonia and Valencia, which by no means shared the temper of the Castilians, or desired to ruin themselves to uphold the glory of Spain, which they looked upon, then as now, as a foreign country. It is impossible to go into the weary history of the brawls between the Philips and the Catalan Cortes. Things went from bad to worse until the year 1640, when the principality rose, slaughtered the Spanish garrison, chopped the Spanish governor into mincemeat with their reap- ing-sickles — fi< Bon cop de fals, bon cop de fals ! " (a swing of the scythe : Catalan song) — and trans- ferred its allegiance to the King of France. It fared no better with the French, and was finally brought back, utterly exhausted. Hardly had the principality taken breath after these tragic happenings when the wars of the 33° CATALONIA Spanish Succession overtook it, bringing another dozen years of blood and fire with the total sup- pression of the Fueros (liberties) as a set piece to wind up the display. Catalonia had fought the Bourbons till she had hardly a drop of blood left to shed, so this final blow had to be borne, though it was looked upon as a disgrace worse than death by her people. The eighteenth century was a bad time for the Catalans. They had been brought to their knees by foreigners in the name of Castile, by foreigners who had been formed in the French school to look upon the sacred traditional liberties of Catalonia as the survival of a barbarous age. Everything conceivable was done to break their spirit ; it was forbidden to print books, to act plays in Catalan. The dramatist Ramon de la Cruz wrote in Castilian and put as many proverbs in his native tongue as he could into the mouths of his characters — for it was lawful to quote a proverb in Catalan, All the while the great black hill of Montjuich, with its Spanish garrison in the fort at the top, lowered over the town. It is not strange that the fruit of this policy should have been bitter. The union of the Cata- lans with Castile had marked the beginning of the fall of their commercial prosperity ; the policy of each successive Hapsburg had been more fatal to them than that of the last. Finally they had taken refuge with France, had been grievously disillu- sioned, had fought a losing fight for the Austrians 331 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS only to find themselves at last hopelessly beaten and saddled, apparently for ever, with their enemies, the Bourbons. Experiences like these are not soon forgotten, and the hard, savage temper of the Catalans should only remind us of their history. Who shall blame them for their indifference in the Peninsular War — indifference, so long as the seat of war was not in their own territory, for the siege of Gerona shows what they could do when attacked at home — or call it lack of patriotism ? Why should they care what happened to Castile, or risk their skins for one taskmaster or the other, when they had found that all were equally hard ? The nineteenth century brought a great change. The more or less liberal policy followed by the fathers of the first Spanish Constitutions, gave better results here than elsewhere, in that it gave the Catalans a hand in their own affairs, which was what they most desired. Little by little industries began to spring up. The industrial recovery of the principality was much delayed by the Carlist Wars, which divided the Catalans against themselves, for while Barcelona and the new manufacturing cities were Liberal, the country was Carlist to the back- bone, and Don Carlos' promise to restore the Fueros won over many to his side. The position of the Catalan Liberals also was and is a peculiarly difficult one, and has more than once — notably in 1840 — led to serious trouble. The reason is con- nected with the economic development of Catalonia, 33 2 CATALONIA and is curiously interesting. It has already been said that as soon as peace was established industries began to spring up. Catalan-spun cotton and cloth, chemical products, manufactured articles of all sorts, carefully protected by custom dues amount- ing to a prohibition of the importation of foreign goods, supplied the Spanish market. Now the first article in the Spanish Liberal creed was alliance with England, and alliance with England meant lowering the fiscal barrier enough to allow British goods to land on Spanish soil. Unfortu- nately the new-born Catalan industries could not turn out products good enough or cheap enough to stand foreign competition on any terms what- soever ; a duty of 25 per cent proposed in 1840 seemed so insufficient that Barcelona rose in arms. Hence the apparently anomalous position of the Catalan Liberals, and the reason for which they have never been able to combine with Liberals of the rest of Spain. The end of the last Carlist War marks the begin- ning of a period of extraordinary prosperity, which lasted down to the loss of the colonies in 1898. The continual revolts in Cuba and the Philippines kept large Spanish armies in those colonies, giving Catalan industry plenty to do to clothe and feed them, and keeping Catalan shipping busy trans- porting them to and fro. Barcelona became the centre of Spanish shipping once more by virtue of the coal deposits of the Pyrenees. In this period 333 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Catalan interests were identified with Spanish policy ; money poured into Barcelona. The popu- lation of the city grew by leaps and bounds until it passed half a million ; a large new quarter was laid out, and was rapidly adorned with houses in such wildly extravagant styles of architecture as Darmstadt itself cannot rival. In 1888 a great exhibition was held, for which numbers of tempo- rary — and not a few permanent — buildings, the latter including a mighty red - brick Arch of Triumph, were put up. To-day these once magnificent remnants of the exhibition have a tragic and mournful look about them. Surrounded by enormously broad, muddy or dusty, ill-paved streets lined with squalid houses, crowded by the flocks of foetid milch-goats which infest Barcelona and by ramshackle drays driven by blaspheming draymen, they stand, rather tar- nished and worn, looking wearier of their twenty years of life than the group of Gothic buildings round the cathedral does of its centuries. The visitor is reminded again and again that the colonies are gone, that custom dues no longer protect Spanish products in Cuba and the Philippines, and that there are no more Spanish armies to contract for over the sea. It may be imagined that the loss of the colonies did not improve the relations between Catalonia and the rest of Spain. It removed one great advantage which Catalonia drew from the connec- 334 CATALONIA tion, and the other provinces complained, not without reason, that they had been bled for years to the profit of the Catalans. The ill-feeling soon became venomous, and the Separatist party grew strong. Barcelona, always advanced Radical, has long contained a nest of anarchists, and can now boast an average of fifteen to twenty mysterious bombs a year, for which the various political parties bandy about the blame. It seems fairly certain that the anarchists, at least, have nothing to do with it. The economic revival had been accompanied by a strong Catalan movement in literature ; many of the Barcelonese papers are published in Catalan, and Catalan writers now use their own language whenever they can. Catalan is, of course, the language of everyday intercourse ; from the highest to the lowest no one speaks Spanish if he can avoid it ; educated Catalans are always readier to speak French than Castilian with a stranger. Catalan customs, Catalan music are enormously popular. One of the most curious sights to be witnessed in all Spain is the dancing of the Sardanas, the Catalan national dance, in a public street or garden. To the sound of a wailing music — which is utterly un- Spanish and rather recalls Russian peasant dances — of wind instruments, a ring is formed, and several people clasp hands in a circle and begin to dance. Others join in until the ring is large ; then other rings are formed. 335 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS The dancers very often do not know one another, and belong to every class of society— soldiers, servant-maids, sailors, young ladies in Paris dresses, tram-conductors, men in frock-coats and top-hats ; a most amazing collection of people dances solemnly hand-in-hand while the music lasts and then separates without a word. Let the visitor be as enthusiastic as he likes, but let him not imagine that he is enjoying the spectacle of an interesting old custom. Nobody ever dreamed of dancing Sardanas in the Paseo de Gracia or the park until a year or two ago ; it is on a par with revived Erse in Ireland, the expression of Catalan solidarity bidding defiance to the rest of Spain. This mention of the Sardanas brings me to the present political movement which, though rather outside the scope of this book, is so interesting that I must say a few words about it, all the more in that Spanish politics of to-day are incompre- hensible if it is not taken into account. The various political parties into which Catalonia is divided — Separatists, Republicans and Carlists, with their sub-species, — found that their experience abundantly proved that, while they continued to squabble among themselves, not only could their parliamentary representation have little weight, but that many openings must present themselves to outsiders in Catalonia itself. Such, in fact, was the case ; a pirate by the name of Don Alejandro Lerroux, sailing under the Republican flag, ruled 336 CATALONIA Barcelona and the surrounding territory, making his own terms with successive Governments and sending his own men to Cortes. A study of Don Alejandro's methods strengthens an impression which the thoughtful observer must receive at every turn, that Barcelona is like nothing so much as some city of the same size in the United States. Now such Republicans as did not approve of Don Alejandro, and the other parties, came to realise that, while they were looking for improbable Utopias, Don Alejandro, boss or cacique, held the present in the palm of his hand. They began to feel that, after all, changes of regime or of dynasty were difficult to be brought about, and that they would perhaps do better to busy themselves with prosaic questions of administration, which, naturally repugnant to every lofty-spirited patriot, undoubt- edly have their importance in everyday life. Instead of founding a Good Government Club, these gentlemen did what amounted to the same thing ; they formed a party called La Solidaridad Catalana, whose members, taken from all the existing parties, agreed to sink their differences, to make a clean sweep of Don Alejandro and his men, and send a solid minority to Cortes. The first step was the conquest of the municipal coun- cils, for while these were in the hands of the enemy there was no chance of winning the big elections, the municipal councils having possession of the electoral lists. In the meantime the party led a 337 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS mighty campaign through Catalonia and even part of Valencia and Aragon. Don Nicolas Salmeron, former President of the Spanish republic, and an old Carlist chieftain of a country priest embraced at a vast meeting in which not a single eye remained dry. The first passage of arms was at the municipal elections at Barcelona in March 1907. Among bombs and general enthusiasm the Solidaridad Catalana scored a great victory. From this moment success was assured ; adhesions poured in from all quarters and the elections to Cortes which took place a few weeks later returned an absolutely compact minority of nearly fifty Soli- darios, whose electoral districts form a great part of the old kingdom of Aragon. Don Alejandro Lerroux and all his men were, for the moment, utterly routed. To all appearances the millennium had arrived. Carlists and an ti- clerical Republicans and Separa- tists went arm-in-arm to Madrid. The wolf dwelt with the lamb, and the child put its hand upon the cockatrice's den. The effect produced in Cortes and in the country was marvellous. Hopes began to stir in Spain that at last Madrid's supremacy had had its call. The attitude of the Solidarios in Cortes was naturally imposing — that of a group of men with that valuable political asset, a historic grievance, who had forgotten their differences in a common end : the conquest of municipal au- tonomy. The Conservative Government immedi- 338 CATALONIA ately began preparing a Local Administration Bill. The election of the Solidaridad Catalana to Cortes is an event without parallel in the parliamentary history of Spain, where no Government has ever failed to obtain the exact majority, and even the exact opposition, desired. The latter history of the Solidaridad is less brilliant, and bears out the people who shook their heads and said it was too good to be true. A right and left soon began to define themselves in the party. The Local Administration Bill proved a disappointment. The Solidarios grew slack at home until, in December 1908, Don Alejandro Lerroux and two of his men were elected once more to Cortes. 1 Nevertheless the movement is not dead yet, and it has enough sane elements in it to show fight again. This excursion into Spanish politics may seem unnecessary. Its object is to show how soon hopes bloom and die blasted in this country ; and also to hint at the hesitating appear- ance of a more statesmanlike temper in Catalonia, which gives promise of better things to come. To-day Catalonia still has the entire Spanish market to supply, thanks always to prohibitive custom dues ; and the depression and violent dis- location of interests caused by the Cuban War are 1 It is difficult to write about D. Alejandro and keep his chequered history up to date. Since the above was written, in December, 1908, he has committed a political offence for which he could be brought to justice if he set foot on Spanish soil. He is at present (February, 1909) in America. 339 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS beginning to heal. It is beyond a doubt well for the relations between Catalonia and the rest of Spain that the colonies are gone. It did not look like it at the time ; but the conditions before the war were those of a family all the members of which are engaged in some interminable lawsuit which can only profit one member who manages to pocket large commissions on the lawyer's fees. When the case is finally lost, brothers and sisters gaze ruefully upon one another and remember how much has gone in fees, while our commission agent is peevish because no more is coming to him. All that can be said about the thrashing Spain got in that war is that, if it was bad in itself, the state of things to which it put an end was a thousand times worse. Catalonia may well be satisfied with her present position ; she is prosperous, and appears to be growing daily more popular — or less un- popular — with the rest of the country. ART IN CATALONIA Few remains of Greek art have been found in Catalonia. Emporium was a trading port, and there is probably nothing very startling to be got out of it by excavations. The Roman domina- tion left the aqueduct at Tarragona, the so-called Tomb of the Scipios, and the Arch of Bar a, many bridges, numberless pieces of statuary of the de- cadence, and a few fine earlier ones. There are no 340 ART IN CATALONIA relics of the Arabs of even secondary importance ; the Moslem occupation was too short and uneasy to have done much in the way of architecture. The province is chiefly interesting for its monu- ments of mediaeval art, that is to say, from the tenth down to the end of the fifteenth century, for we have seen that at the latter date the centre of events moved away from Catalonia, robbed her of much of her importance, and soon afterwards left her a prey to a long succession of bloody wars which only ended with the third quarter of the last century. This explains the fact that there are no important works of the Renaissance to be found here. From the point of view of those who visit Spain for the purpose of studying mediaeval art in its place, Catalonia in general and Barcelona in par- ticular are at least as well worth while as any other part of the country. This for several reasons. As far as architecture is concerned, 1 can do no better than quote Street, who says (2nd ed., p. 291): "The architectural history of Barcelona is much more complete, whilst its buildings are more numerous, than those of any of our own old cities, of which it is in some sense the rival. . . . The architecture of Cataluna had many peculiarities, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when most of the great build- ings of Barcelona were being erected, they were so marked as to justify me, I think, in calling the Y 341 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS style as completely and exclusively national or provincial as, to take a contemporary English example, was our own Norfolk middle-pointed. The examination of them will, therefore, have much more interest and value than that of even grander buildings erected in a style transplanted from another country, such as we see at Burgos and Toledo ; and besides this, there was one great problem which I may say the Catalan architects ventured to solve — the erection of churches of enormous and almost unequalled width — which is just that which seems to be looming up before us as the work which we English architects must ere long grapple with, if we wish to serve the cause of the church thoroughly in our great towns." The importance Street gives to the . national element in Catalan architecture is no more than its due. In Spain, where whenever any other native style has shown its head it has been imme- diately crushed by the importation of a much more vigorous foreign one, this fact is all the more striking. Look at the Catalan names of builders and craftsmen who worked here ! Those of the men who worked in the churches of Castile are more often than not foreign under a thin Spanish disguise : Annequm de Egas, for Jan van der Eyken ; Arphe, for Harfe ; Guas, for Waas ; Rodrigo Aleman, Juan de Colonia, Arnau de Flandes, and countless others. We even find two Catalan silversmiths summoned to Rome 342 ART IN CATALONIA by a Pope ; nearly the only case on record, if we except that of the Moorish potters, of Spanish artists being in request outside their own country. In studying the architecture of Catalonia it is essential to remember that at the time when the mediaeval buildings which engage our attention were being erected, the Roussillon, and at times a tract reaching as far as Montpellier, formed part of the kingdom of Aragon. Thus the architecture of the Roussillon should be studied side by side with that of the rest of Catalonia of the period. A visit to such places as Perpignan, Elne, and Arles-sur-Tech, the first with its typical Catalan nave of extraordinary internal width and the other two with their twelfth and thirteenth cen- tury cloisters, will impress it clearly on the mind that the Pyrenees were far less of a barrier here than at their western end, where the presence of the hopelessly alien Basques formed an obstacle far harder to be overcome than any merely physi- cal one like a chain of mountains. Thus it was that much of the European civilisation which reached Spain by land had to pass through, and in some sort to take out its papers of naturalisa- tion in, Catalonia, before it could reach the rest of the Peninsula. Very few traces of the times prior to the first Moslem invasion remain, though Spain was the country in Europe where the old learning was best preserved, and in the fourth century Tarragona 343 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS was already the chief of its three metropolitan cities, the others being Seville and Merida. The mosaic of Centellas alone remains to give us a hint of the splendour of Tarragona in those days. The little baptistery of San Miguel at Tarrassa, though its authenticity has been much discussed, is classed as being in its main lines of the latter end of the fifth century by Sr. Lampe'rez, who is undoubtedly the most competent authority, alive or dead, on Spanish architecture. Its close resemblance to the baptisteries of Ravenna suggests that at the time of its building Catalonia was in close rela- tions with the Adriatic. This is not at all sur- prising ; there was a strong Byzantine colony in Retica and Lusitania from 554 to 625, and San Isidoro, writing in the early part of the seventh century, speaks of Eastern traders and monks. The patriarch of Cartagena was dependent upon that of Constantinople. In Catalonia itself Rosas and Ampurias were still inhabited by Greeks and Syrians as in antiquity. The interruption of the course of Christian civilisation caused by the Moorish invasion was of shorter duration in Catalonia than in any other part of Spain that had any civilisation to be inter- rupted. We know from the admirable Capmany that in the ninth and tenth centuries Greeks, Syrians, and Armenians frequented her coasts, making Barcelona the centre of Eastern trade. We shall see a chapel founded at Barcelona in the 344 ART IN CATALONIA twelfth century by a Byzantine merchant. In the tenth and eleventh pilgrims already began to flock to Santiago de Compostela, and the Eastern pil- grims came by sea and went up the Ebro, which was navigable in those days as far as Logrono, passing through Catalonia on their way. It is thus natural that the earliest school of Catalan architecture should have been derived from the Byzantine ; witness San Miguel and the east end of San Pedro at Tarrassa, San Pedro de Las Puellas, and San Pablo del Campo at Barcelona. With the eighth and ninth centuries another influence, destined to supplant the Byzantine, began to make itself felt. The Carolingian period saw the first counts of Barcelona subject to the Frankish kings, and Ludovicus Pius imposed the rule promulgated at Aix-la-Chapelle in 816 upon most of the Catalan churches. Thus com- munication by land became frequent, and Villa- nueva gives several instances in the ninth and tenth centuries of the presence of builders from Lombard y, that mother of W estern architecture. The Catalans themselves boast that they possess the oldest Romanesque churches in Europe, and these not the work of foreigners, but the product of the soil. They base their arguments upon the supposition that the earliest dates of consecration given by Villanueva refer to existing buildings. It is true that a sort of embryonic Roman- esque existed in Catalonia early in the eleventh 345 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS century ; but the first real Romanesque churches in Spain date from the latter part of the same. Street has already pointed out the frequency of Italian Romanesque features in Catalan churches of the eleventh and following centuries ; many more evidences of the presence of Lombards than he dreamt of are now at hand. In several of the Catalan Pyrenean passes there are round Lom- bard campanili. For instance, there is one in the valley of Bohi, and another in the valley which leads down to the Seo de Urgel and to Lerida. Perhaps unwittingly, these builders thus left monuments to commemorate their descent upon lands upon which they were to leave the mark of their national genius. In the eleventh century a new period opens, one which introduced full-blown Romanesque archi- tecture into Spain. This was mainly the work of the Benedictine Order and the result of the subjec- tion of many Spanish monasteries to the great House of Cluny. At the same time Spanish princes began to marry French wives who brought Frenchmen and French manners in their train, and the increasing hordes of Santiago pilgrims flooded Spain with foreigners, not a few of whom came to stay. In the twelfth century we have Bishop Olegar's journey to France and the East, which also brought French influences and religious orders from Palestine, like that of the Templars, into the country. The architecture introduced by 346 ART IN CATALONIA the French at this period was of course derived from the north of Italy ; also the Lombard builders went on working in Catalonia, where, though the character of the masonry becomes much finer than it had previously been, the change was less marked than in Castile and the north- west. A century later, in the second half of the twelfth, another great order brought the pointed style to Spain. The Cistercian houses of Poblet, Santas Creus, and Vallbona de las Monjas were built within a few years of one another, and in a style which came from France and was slow to influence the architecture which predominated at that time in Catalonia. The great cathedrals of Tarragona and Lerida, though they are the thir- teenth-century contemporaries of Burgos, Leon, and Toledo, are both built in a transition style, which, in spite of its pointed main arches, has apses, round-headed windows and doors, richly carved detail, all of which constantly recalls North Italian Romanesque. It is possible that the secular clergy may have wished to show its in- dependence by ignoring the new-fangled construc- tions of foreign monks patronised by royalty, or it may have considered that the new style was not adapted to other than conventual churches. Be that as it may, we have in Catalonia the curious spectacle of the erection of transition cathedrals, in which the detail is Romanesque, fifty to a 347 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS hundred years after that of abbey churches in a much more advanced style. A truly national style of architecture did not spring up in Catalonia until the beginning of the fourteenth century. This Catalan Gothic is always distinguished by the same features : a very wide and lofty nave, unadorned capitals and ribs, and a dark interior. Barcelona has four fine examples : the cathedral, Santa Maria del Mar, Santa Maria del Pino, and the hall of the Lonja. Other good buildings in the same style are the cathedrals of Palma and Gerona, and the collegiate church at Manresa. As Street suggests in the long passage quoted, this style deserves respect as the one truly national form of Gothic Spain produced, and also because with it the Catalan architects solved a difficult problem : to make room for the large congregation which would flock to Mass in these busy mediaeval towns to group itself within sight of the high altar and within earshot of the pulpit. A style of civil and domestic Gothic came into being in Catalonia at this time, which also has its own distinctive features. The graceful courtyard of the Diputacidn at Barcelona with its open galleries, its fine broad staircase, and its curious two or three light ajimez windows in the exterior walls which (these latter) are repeated in Gothic houses all through Catalonia, is the best example of mediaeval civil architecture the land can boast, 348 ART IN CATALONIA Street certainly knew Gothic architecture in Spain ; though he missed many of the most in- teresting monuments in Catalonia his word is quite enough upon that score, and has brought not a few English and other travellers. But if not as important as the buildings it was made to adorn, there is none the less much mediaeval painting, sculpture, silver, glass and ironwork which is still to be seen in its original surroundings, and which has for the most part passed unnoticed. Spain is the only country left in Europe where the churches retain their mediaeval furniture, and in no part is this furniture more varied and better worth study- ing than in Catalonia. In Catalonia, as in the rest of Europe, the interiors of early churches were frequently painted in bright reds, yellows, blues, and greens in a manner that would make the hair of the modern aesthete, who is in the habit of steeping his soul in the dim shadows of Gothic things, stand straight on end. The practice probably had its origin in an inexpensive imitation of mosaics. Only by a miracle have a few examples of this art been preserved to us. In the church of Pedret in the mountains near Berga there are fragments of mural paintings of the wise and foolish virgins which have been fully illustrated and described in a publication of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans that gives them as earlier than the second half of the twelfth century. In character they resemble 349 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS representations of the same parable in early mosaics and illuminated manuscripts, out of one of which they, like most of their class, were prob- ably copied. In San Clemente de Thaull, pro- vince of Lerida, and in San Pedro de Tarrassa, there are more Romanesque paintings. The curious Pyrenean altar fronts called anti- pendia, painted on panel with relief in plaster, of which there are fine specimens in the museums of Vich and Barcelona, and one in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, are another poor man's makeshift. The mountain towns and villages of Catalonia, from which they come, were not rich enough in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to provide metal and enamel altar - fronts, studded with gems, like the one which vanished from San Cugat, for their churches. They invented a less expensive variety which may be said to form a national school of painting. For the most part rude in line and colour, some of them show battle and other scenes which are extremely interesting and look as if they had been drawn freehand, not copied out of a manuscript. Excellent photo- graphs and an article on the subject have been published in Forma. Besides the antipendia, the Catalans of this period made themselves painted wooden baldachins like the splendidly preserved one in the museum at Barcelona. It is probably fruit- less to attempt to trace any connection between the antipendia and the school of altarpiece paint- 35o Antependia, Barcelona Museum. St. George and the Princess. Catalan, Fifteenth Century. Coll. Cabot. ART IN CATALONIA ing which flourished in Catalonia from the end of the fourteenth century down to the beginning of the sixteenth. It is true that the Catalans were never splendid patrons of painting ; of late years several con- tracts between guilds and painters have come to light in which the amount of liberty allowed to the artist is very small. The subject and com- position are accurately laid down in these con- tracts, and even the exact amount of colour and gold which he is to use are stated. Dante's men- tion of "Favara poverta dei catalani" is probably not gratuitously ill-natured. However, it is a grand thing to be rich, and, close-fisted as the burgesses of Barcelona undoubtedly were, they had at least an overweening pride in their city, and spent money freely on its public monuments. The character of the people has probably not changed much ; at the present day the rich men build enormous and imposing houses for them- selves and contribute freely to a church of the Holy Family, which already startles the world, though only a small part of it is finished, but they are tardy and haggling patrons of painting. After all, it is natural enough ; a picture is a small thing to pay a big sum of money for ; it has no intrinsic value. Thus it is that, while the mediaeval churches and public buildings of Catalonia are grand, and rich in costly fur- niture, the paintings which adorn them are the 35 1 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS work of local painters. There are two ways of looking at this fact. First way, one may say that the Barcelonese were too miserly to pay any of the great Italians or Flemings to come and paint altarpieces for them. Second and more charitable way, one may praise their discernment and freedom from affectation of foreign fashions in seeing that their own native painters were as good as the best. The Catalan writers on art will have it this way, in spite of the fact that their primitives were from first to last more or less interesting followers of either the Flemish or the Middle-Italian schools. The only truly great painters who have left work in Catalonia were two Cordovese, Maestro Alfonso and Bartolome Ber- mejo. This Catalanist view of the question, which is well represented in the best (only) book on the subject (Los Cuatrocentistas Catalcmes, por Sr. Sanpere y Miquel, 2 vols., Barcelona, 1906), re- minds one of what the Western senators say to people who are impatient of the enormous duty on works of art imported into the United States, " If they want art, what's the matter with American art ? " However this may be, Catalan painting in the fifteenth century is an interesting and little- explored field for study, and produced work which is certainly not to be compared with that of the great Flemish and Italian painters of the time, but equally certainly deserves a better fate than to be 35 2 ART IN CATALONIA utterly ignored, as it has been by most writers on Spain. The chapter-house of the cathedral and the two museums at Barcelona, the churches of Tarrassa and that of Manresa, contain enough of these primitives to give a good idea of the school. Sr. Sanpere y Miquel's book mentions every indi- vidual picture which can possibly be attributed to any member of it. In sculpture great and important works were carried out in the churches and monasteries throughout the Middle Ages either by natives or foreigners. Not a little still remains, though much more has been destroyed or stolen. The great portal at Ripoll, the cloisters and western facade at Tarragona, the remains of the royal tombs at Poblet and Santas Creus — to mention a few among the more important — show what magnificent work was done in Catalonia in this period. The Catalans have always been cunning crafts- men, and in the days when every trade was an art they turned out splendid furniture for their churches and convents. The industries in which they most excelled were the working of silver and iron, and glass - blowing. The churches still contain quantities of fine chapel- and altar- screens of forged iron, and there are good pieces in the museum at Barcelona ; but no conception can be formed of the perfection this art attained without a visit to Don Santiago Rusinol's collec- tion at the Cau Ferrat at Sitges, which is full of 353 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS exquisitely designed and wrought door-knockers, candlesticks, nail-heads, caskets, each one perfect in its kind. Of the glass much, of course, has perished, but Sr. Cabot has several fine pieces at Barcelona ; some of them closely resemble Vene- tian, others Oriental models. There is doubtless many a Catalan piece in many a great museum which passes for Venetian. Good craftsmen themselves, the Catalans could not fail to love gorgeous Oriental stuffs and cera- mics and lust after their possession. Jews and Armenians, established in large numbers in Barce- lona, were able to satisfy their desire by means of the commerce they carried on with the East. Before the monasteries were sacked by the Liberals in the troubled times of the thirties of the last century, they must have held incalculable wealth in Oriental and Italian textiles, Persian pottery, and the Hispano-Moresque ware which the Moors of Valencia made in imitation of the reflet-metal- lique of Rhages and Sultanabad. Important col- lections of Oriental textiles have been formed in Catalonia ; pieces of great value used often to be found sewn into the lining of cheap modern chasu- bles and copes, and the embroidered Florentine altar-front of Manresa and the marvellous cope of Oriental silk and gold tissue in the new cathedral at Lerida remain to hint that the Catalans were ready enough to pay big prices for works of art when the materials used were precious. Precious 354 ART IN CATALONIA indeed are the materials of the great fourteenth- century altarpiece with its baldachin in Gerona Cathedral, all overlaid with silver and plaques of translucent enamel and studded with precious stones. Precious also are the silver throne of Don Martin el Humano in Barcelona Cathedral and the custodia of Gerona. Indeed, Barcelona was, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the chief seat of the silver- smith's craft in Spain ; to this day there is a street of the silversmiths in the city. The Catalan silver- smiths were so famous that Pope Calixtus III summoned two of them, Pedro Diaz and Perez de las Cellas, to Rome in 1455. To the Catalans must be attributed the invention of the custodia, which afterwards played so great a part in Spanish art. This vessel is an erection in the form of a tower, destined to hold the Host, or rather the Monstrance in which the Host itself is placed, on great occasions. The custodia should not be con- fused with the Monstrance, which is called in Spanish vi?il, portatil, or custodia de manos, for it has nothing to do with the everyday service of the Church, and is an arrangement peculiar to Spain. The above-mentioned custodia at Gerona was begun in 1430, and is the oldest known, so that the invention is of no great antiquity in Spain itself. It may be asked : If Catalan churches were so rich in the Middle Ages, what has become of all the 355 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS furniture which filled the room in the side chapels now occupied by Baroque or, much worse still, modern Gothic altarpieces and saints from the saint-factory at Olot ? The desperate wars which laid the province waste in the seventeenth, eight- eenth, and nineteenth centuries would be enough to declare the sad end of these works of art, but more destructive agencies still have been at work. Wherever a pseudo-classic altarpiece stands in a Gothic church to-day, one may be sure that there was once an early one which had to give way to it. These destituted altarpieces did not every- where meet with such tender treatment as in the cathedral of Barcelona, where they were given shelter in the chapter-house. For the most part they were burnt for the gold in them, which was used to gild new ones. Long after the chapters had ceased putting up Baroque reta- blos the old ones were used unmercifully ; I have talked with a dealer at Barcelona who told me that his father had burnt over seven hundred Gothic retablos. If the wretched amount of gold to be got out of a Gothic panel could induce people to throw all the primitives they could lay hands on to the flames, it may be imagined what fate befell the works of art heavy with precious metal and gems, like chalices, reliquaries, pastoral staffs, processional crosses, cut velvet vestments whose orphreys were heavy with yellow gold. The last fifty years have seen fashion turn to 35 6 ART IN CATALONIA Gothic art. The once despised altarpieces and carvings of emaciated saints and apostles became interesting when it was known that foreigners would pay large sums of money for them. At first the finest pieces only, then, as demand in- creased, the less important ones, until latterly anything bearing the Gothic stamp has been eagerly sought for. Catalonia, near as it is to France, was the first Spanish territory to be ransacked by the dealers when the Gothic deposits of the south of France began to give out ; and for years van-load upon van-load has poured into Barcelona, and thence to Paris, London, and New York. The early birds found in Catalonia what must have seemed to them a paradise. They made as advantageous bargains as those which the first traders struck with the red men in America. A gaudy bauble or a little fire-water against all the noble savage's hoard of skins. The village priest could not believe his ears when an affable stranger offered him beautiful new chasubles or a brightly coloured carpet in exchange for his worn old ones. Old lamps for new ! As time passed, however, the village priest became more wary, and a new character, the clerical dealer, made his appearance on the Spanish stage. I have spoken elsewhere of the strange habits of this individual ; he enjoys many advantages, and can command all the terrors of righteous indignation if the proposed deal does not happen to suit him. He has enor- 2 357 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS mously complicated the always intricate art of antiquity-dealing, which in his hands has gained in human interest what it has lost in simplicity ; for he brings to bear upon it wits sharpened by years of intrigue and Indian warfare in chapter- house and sacristy. In view of all the enemies which have preyed upon mediaeval works of art from their own days to ours, we may well ask, not what has become of them, but how it is possible that so many should have survived unmolested, in the places in which the hands of their makers set them, to gladden the heart of the traveller and to bring a vision of past ages before his eyes. Consider the churches of France ! How much remains in them ? They are either as bare as our own or full of ram- shackle modern gewgaws, paper flowers, and all the abominable trappings of the rue Saint- Sulpice. The glory of Spain is, and, if the zeal of museum directors on the one hand and the barbarous tastes and predatory instincts of the clergy on the other can be held in check, may for years to come con- tinue to be, the interiors, at once severe and mag- nificent, of her Gothic churches. 358 XVI BARCELONA — THE CITY Placed at about the middle of her coast-line, Barcelona is and has always been the capital of the old province of Catalonia. Its history is her history, and its glory is the pride of every true Catalan's heart — except the men of Reus, who prefer their own city. Barcelona has a fine position. To the south of the town rises the black and scowling Montjuich (Mons Jovis, Mons Judaicus), which, with its fort at the top, protects or rather threatens the town and harbour. Behind the suburb of Gracia to the north-west is a range of pleasant hills wooded with pine, of which the Tibidabo — so called be- cause the Devil might have offered Our Lord a tempting bribe from its summit — is the highest, and is crowned by a gorgeous grand hotel reached by a funicular railway. The pleasanter, because less-frequented, San Pedro Martir is the next summit to the south. From any of these hills a good view of Barcelona is to be had. First, at one's feet, the lower hills covered with trees and 359 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS dotted with villas — the old ones in painted stucco with balustrades in the Italian style, very pleasant to look at, the new ones nightmares combining all the strangest features of all the schools of architecture with the cheapest materials, so that one may at least hope that the things will fall down — and enormous solidly built convents and monasteries. Then the parallel lines of the broad streets of the Ensanche (enlargement). Then, crowded between the Montjuich and the park, the old city with its complicated network of streets and the towers of the cathedral rising in the middle. Then the sea. North of the city are more towns whose streets nearly join with those of Barcelona : Badalona, Sabadell, and Tarrassa full of factories ; to the south lie Sarria, Sans and Prat, and the great low plain of the Llobregat. What sinister -sounding names, harsh and un- friendly to foreign ears, are these of Tibidabo, Montjuich, Hostafranchs and Llobregat which assail the eye on every passing tramcar ! Over many a shop in Barcelona is one stranger still — Tupinamba ! This word has in reality no sinister import, however ; it designates a popular coffee- roasting machine. To come back to our moun- tain — let us choose one whose name even in its Catalan form, San Pere Martir, has a familiar and comforting sound — we may take a glance at the forest-crowned hills which roll away inland behind us as far as the eye can reach. There in a valley 360 BARCELONA — THE CITY lies the monastery of one of Barcelona's tutelar saints, San Cugat. All in all this Barcelona, the greatest manufac- turing town in the country, has a delightful aspect. No cloud of smoke hangs over it, and the factories, being all in suburbs or neighbouring towns, are hidden from sight. The air is soft, the distances blue and silvery, unlike those in the grave plains of Castile, where the hard, sharp atmosphere cuts every line, near and far, with equal precision. The climate is the best in Spain, never too cold and seldom too hot. There is a great deal of life in the town, good opera in the season, plenty of theatres, Catalan, Spanish, and Italian — for the people under- stand Italian, and Zacconi and Novelli are yearly guests — bull-fights in plenty, though the Catalans do not care much about them. The surrounding country is delightful, full of little-known places of the greatest interest. Barcelona has that air of a capital city to which its history gives it a right. The people are good to the stranger, especially the non- Spanish stranger ; those who have experi- enced its hospitality will agree with Cervantes who, in Don Quixote, calls it the stranger's haven, the home of courtesy, and many other pleasant things. For some mysterious reason which is probably ultimately connected with the fixed idea so preva- lent in England that art and letters cannot flourish side by side with commerce and industry, in spite 361 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of the fact that all the great schools of art — witness Florence, Venice, the Netherlands, Burgundy — have sprung up in such surroundings, a conven- tion has arisen which regards Barcelona as practically destitute of art. Ford well expressed this in his introduction to Catalonia, "com- mercial Catalonia has never produced much art or literature," and other English writers have followed in his footsteps. One can only take it that their reasoning has been : " We English are a commercial nation and, to be quite frank, we have never produced much art ; therefore no other com- mercial nation has produced any art." It would be much more exact to say that people who are obsessed by the idea that there is something inherently shame- ful and vulgar about commerce and industry are heavily handicapped in the production of vigorous art or anything else. The peculiar charm of Barce- lona lies in the fact that, alone among Spanish cities, it surrounds its many monuments of the Middle Ages, not with death and desolation, but with the life of to-day. The oldest part of Barcelona is the hill upon which stands the cathedral and the old buildings that surround it. Upon this spot which Hercules, or rather Melkarth, chose when he founded the city, Carthaginians, Romans, Goths, and Moors held successive sway ; and from their small enclo- sure the town gradually grew. In the Middle Ages the sea occupied most of the lower part of 362 BARCELONA— THE CITY the city between Atarazanas (arsenal) and Santa Maria del Mar ; this church and the Consulado del Mar (now Lonja) were at the water's edge. The quarter round Santa Maria del Mar lay outside the walls ; it was known as Vilanova, and its streets, of which the Calle de Moncada is a good example, were full of the houses and store-houses of rich merchants who traded with all the Mediterranean seaports. Many of these still exist, and it is worth running the risk of being crushed by the heavy drays which charge through the narrow Calle de Moncada, to go into every courtyard one finds open, and take one's chances of being able to see a Gothic room in the house. To the north- east of this quarter lies the park, in which is the Museum of Fine Arts, and which, until half a century ago, was occupied by the Citadel, as may be seen in the plans in the earlier editions of Ford's Handbook. This Citadel only dated from the first quarter of the eighteenth century, when a considerable number of streets were pulled down to make room for it, and the suburb of Barceloneta was built upon the spit of land running out into the harbour. The Rambla, which runs straight through the old town from the Plaza de Cataluna to the harbour, is also outside the circuit of the mediaeval walls ; and the streets lying to the west of it are not particularly interesting, except those near the barracks of Atarazanas which are crowded with low theatres and cafes, and strange resorts 3 6 3 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS where 6 ' sportive ladies leave their doors ajar " and solace hardy seamen and brave soldiers. Beyond, in the Calle Marques del Duero, is a sort of permanent fair known as the Paralelo, which is full of little theatres, booths, shanties, and tents which offer varied attractions. The old town is bounded by the harbour, the Calle Marques del Duero, the Rondas San Pablo, San Antonio, de la Universidad, San Pedro, the Salon de San Juan, and the park. This is the line which the loathed eighteenth-century fortifications followed. These were gradually removed in the middle of the last century, and gave way to pleasant broad streets with rows of trees. Be- yond, in the direction of Sans, Sarria and Gracia, lies the Ensanche, which is formed by parallel streets of wearying uniformity. Indeed it is an inconvenient as well as monotonous plan, for all the main arteries run in two directions only. In the course of the alterations a great many valu- able churches and houses perished, and a fresh inroad is now being made on the old town, which will sweep away the tortuous streets which lie between the Plaza del Angel and the Plaza A. Lopez. These streets are very wretched and con- tain few interesting buildings, so there is no reason for lamenting their disappearance. There is little danger that any of the existing mediaeval buildings may be destroyed by further alterations. The old town is very small in comparison with 3 6 4 BARCELONA— THE CITY the new, and that part of it enclosed by the mediaeval circuit of walls is small indeed. How- ever, most of the important buildings do lie inside it, though a few, such as San Pablo, Santa Ana and Santa Maria del Mar, are at some distance. In spite of all the changes which the mere keeping itself alive must bring to a great city, the old quarter of Barcelona is still mediaeval. The very names of its streets, dels Boters, dels Escudillers, dels Argenters, dels Abaixadors, are the same as they were when the guilds had a majority in the town council. Opposite the cathedral is the house of the Guild of Cobblers, with shoes carved all over its front, and many another of the old guild halls still stands. In examining the historic churches it is best to group them in roughly chronological order. The first group thus includes the remains of the Bar- celona of the Counts — before the union of Aragon with Catalonia towards the middle of the twelfth century. The second, occupying the period of the kings of Aragon, that is to say down to the close of the fifteenth century, comprises the most im- portant monuments of the city and brings us to the end of the Gothic period and of the glory of old Barcelona along with it ; for, as we have seen, the Renaissance left nothing of importance. The oldest known church in the town is that of San Pedro de las Puellas. It lies in the Plaza San Pedro, that is to say well outside the mediaeval 365 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS walls, and was founded by Count Sunyer, and con- secrated by Bishop Wilara at a date variously given as 945 and 983 (Piferrer and Cean Bermu- dez). The raid of Almanzor in 986 caused havoc in this church, which has also suffered much since. The original form was that of a Greek cross, with a single apse, and a cimborio or dome over the crossing, the arches below which are carried by four columns with curious elaborate capitals, probably of Eastern origin. These four columns are now baseless. The nave and south transept have waggon vaulting. The arrangement of a Greek cross, single apse, and cupola points to the Oriental influence which must have predominated in Catalonia before Romanesque times. To the right on entering is a good late Gothic tomb of the Abbess Leonor de Belvehi, who died in 1452. There was formerly an early cloister with capitals — perhaps like those of the columns under the dome — which was entirely destroyed when the works of the Ensanche were begun. The convent church of San Pablo del Campo stands at the corner of the Calle San Pablo and the Ronda San Pablo. Its name shows how far away from the town it was at the time of its building — Saint Germain-des-Pres. The convent appears to be a foundation of Count Wilfredo II, of the first years of the tenth century ; according to an inscription, the Count was buried here soon afterwards. With the rest of Barcelona the con- 3 66 BARCELONA — THE CITY vent was destroyed by Almanzor, and was re- built at the expense of one Guilberto Witardo and his wife Rotlandis in 1117. It was inhabited down to 1578 by the Benedictines, then for a few years by the Observants of Montserrat, after which the claustral monks returned, and San Pablo was incorporated with Santa Maria de la Portella. After the riots of 1835 the convent became a barrack and narrowly escaped destruction until it was declared a national monument in 1879. The church is cruciform in plan, has a waggon-vaulted nave and transepts, three parallel semi-domed apses, and an octagonal vault on pendentives over the crossing, and is interesting as a well-preserved early specimen of the sort of early church of Byzantine lineage which is found all over Cata- lonia. The work is massive, and the sculpture on the tympanum of the west door is typical of the style. The little cloister to the south has four trefoil arches on each side, and coupled shafts with good capitals dividing the openings. In the Vilanova, the seafaring and mercantile quarter which lay outside the walls at the har- bour's edge, there is a little chapel which, though the only part spared by the restoration of 1860 are the facade and porch, is interesting for other reasons. This is the Capilla de Marcus, near the Calle de Moncada. It was founded in the eleventh century by Bernardo Marcus, a member of a rich Byzantine merchant family resident at Barcelona. 367 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS The little chapel thus recalls the relations which early existed between Barcelona and far-away lands, but it has still more memories about it. It was the seat of the Compania y Cofradia de Correos — the Company of Postmen — which extended its opera- tions all over the principality of Catalonia, and over Aragon and Valencia as well. A cedar bench still exists with the words " Banch dels Corrers de Cavall " and the arms of the company — a postman whip in hand on horseback. The bench was per- haps placed in the porch where the rector blessed the departing postmen. The chape] is dedicated to Nuestra Senora de la Guia — Our Lady of Good Guidance — who presided over the destinies of letters centuries before the penny post. We now come to the group of buildings round the cathedral. They have all of them been trans- formed since the days of the Counts, but they all preserve something of the original fabric. They lie just inside the walls of which the two massive round towers, called "las torres archidiaconales," which flank the gate in the Plaza Nueva, are the only visible remains, and they rose up round a cathedral older than the present one. First comes the Episcopal Palace. This build- ing was originally the private house of Bishop Adaulfo (852-62), and has been used as an epis- copal palace since the latter part of the thirteenth century. In its present form the only part of the old building which the casual visitor may see is 368 BARCELONA — THE CITY a walled-up gallery of three dog-toothed arches with low columns and capitals, visible in the wall opposite the door leading from the street into the courtyard. The rooms which look into the garden on the other side are said to preserve vestiges of the Gothic — real Goths, before the Moslem invasion — walls, which were built on the foundations of the Roman ones. Joined on to the south side of the cathedral, and used as a chapel of the same, is the chapel of Santa Lucia, which existed before the present cathedral and is the latest Romanesque building in Barcelona. It was founded by Bishop Arnaldo de Gurb as the Capilla de las Santas Virgenes in 1271. The chapel has a pointed waggon vault and a fine round-headed doorway leading into the street. The carving on the archivolt is very delicate, but a hideous gaudy painting of the saint with a palm branch in her hand has been put into the tympanum in the last few years. Directly opposite is the Casa del Arcediano, which has been restored of late, but still has much good late Gothic and Renaissance detail. The foundations on which the house is built are Roman, like those of the towers of the Plaza Nueva which bear the same name — archidiaconales. Near by, in the Calle de la Canonja, is the convent of Santa Clara, which contains all that remains of the palace of the Counts of Barcelona. As there is what is known as clausura, or absolute 3 6 9 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS prohibition to enter the convent except to the confessor, doctor, and royal visitors, it is next to impossible to get a look at the Tinell Mayor or Great Hall of the earliest pointed architecture, in which Don Juan I and his queen, Dona Violante, held their frivolous court — next to impossible only, because in Spain the most wildly improbable things are always possible. The present building dates from the middle of the sixteenth century, and was successively the Palace of the Inquisition and of the Viceroys of Catalonia. From the outside the most conspicuous part of it is the lofty and graceful mirador of superimposed galleries of round-headed arches which overlooks the little Plaza del Rey. This mirador rises from the nave of the above-mentioned Tinell Mayor. In this same Plaza del Rey, which is entered from the Calle de los Condes, which runs along the north side of the cathedral, is the Chapel Royal of Santa Maria or, as it is now called, Santa Agueda. This was the chapel of the palace, with which it com- municated by a gallery, and here were baptised many of the kings of Aragon. It was built under Don Jaime II (1291-1327) to replace an earlier chapel which already existed in the twelfth cen- tury. Its architect is supposed to have been Bertran Riquer. This very graceful middle pointed church has a single nave of four bays and a groined pentagonal apse. There is a window, the tracery of which is simple and good, high in the 370 BARCELONA— THE CITY wall of each bay. The wooden roof is also re- markable. The beautiful octagonal steeple with its two-light windows has suffered a good deal. Santa Agueda is now used as a Museo de Antigiie- dades — not to be confounded with the Museo de Bellas Artes in the park — which contains a collec- tion of Gothic statuary, altarpieces, poor late Manises, Catalan blue and other pottery. One important piece is the retablo del Condestable by Pablo Vergds, one of Sr. Sanpere y Miquel's Catalan primitives, who worked from 1460 to 1472. This little museum is very entertaining to visit. As there is no catalogue and the objects are arranged without classification, one comes across all sorts and kinds of things huddled together, none of them of any great importance, but amusing in that they give food for speculation as to what they all were and whence they came. It is to be hoped that the zealous curators of the new museum will not be allowed to rifle this modest hoard and rob it of its present air of a well-stocked old curiosity shop whose owner has gone away forgetting to lock the door — a sort of collector's paradise, with the light streaming in through the graceful tracery of its windows. Opposite Santa Agueda, between the Calle de los Condes and the Plaza del Rey, is a fine civil Gothic building, the court of which is full of frag- ments of antique and other sculpture. This is the Corona de Aragon, so called because the 37i SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS archives of the Crown of Aragon are kept there. The archives are full of important documents and beautiful illuminated books, but carelessly catalogued and difficult to work in. The post of librarian appears to have been hereditary for many generations ; its present holder is a kindly soul who is always delighted to show some dozen magnificent books, which he has handy for the purpose, to the admiring stranger. Far away from the mediaeval town, behind the Plaza de Cataluna, is a church of Santa Ana which the monks of the Holy Sepulchre of Jeru- salem built upon ground " extramuros " given to them by the great Count Ramon Berenguer IV in 1146. In 1421 these monks united themselves with the regular canons of San Augustin, who came to Santa Ana from their convent of Santa Eulalia del Campo, which they were obliged to hand over to the nuns of San Pedro Martir, thus making a collegiate church of Santa Ana. The church is cruciform in plan, with barrel vaulting in the transepts, two bays of quadripartite vaulting in the nave, and an octagonal lantern over the cross- ing. The nave has plain lancet windows, and all the detail is severe. The font came from the old palace of the Counts. West of the church is the two-storied fourteenth- century cloister. The light shafts have capitals of the type of those of San Pedro de las Puellas, but are of much later date. Unfortunately, the general 37 2 BARCELONA — THE CITY effect of this beautiful cloister is marred by ugly modern glazing. Before leaving the early architecture of Barce- lona it will be well to notice the monastery of San Cugat (Sp. : Cucufate) del Valles, which lies a few miles from the town on the other side of the Tibi- dabo. San Cugat, saint and martyr, was put to several tortures in one of the early persecutions, and became, with Santa Eulalia, joint patron of Barcelona. The legendary founder of his convent is Charlemagne ; it is at any rate certain that the place was a famous pilgrim shrine before Almanzor sacked it in 986. The present three-naved tri- apsal church was begun soon afterwards by Othdn, the great Bishop of Vich, who lies buried in the lateral nave next to the door leading to the cloister, but was slowly built for want of funds, so that the styles are mixed. The church has a nave and aisles of three bays of quadripartite groining to the crossing, over which there is a bold octagonal lantern. East of this comes another bay of nave and aisles, and then three semicircular apses, of which the middle one is groined in seven compart- ments, and the others are roofed with semi-domes. The main arches in the nave are pointed, the rest round. It is extremely difficult to say from what period the different parts of the church, the square Lombard tower, and the cloister date. The oldest part appears to be the east end. In the west end is a great circular traceried window full of fine 2 a 373 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS fifteenth-century glass. The cloister is one of the largest in Catalonia, and is beautiful with the great laurel trees which grow in it. It is four-sided, and has simple round-headed openings carried by coupled shafts with a magnificent series of carved capitals. Above is a corbelled cornice. The only architect whose name is known in connection with San Cugat is he who built this cloister, leaving the following touching inscription to guard himself from oblivion : — Hmc est Arnalli sculptoris forma geralli Qui claustrum tale construxit perpetuale. The high altar was set up in the fourteenth century, and was adorned with the fine barbaric antepen- dium of wood covered with plates of precious metal and incrusted with gems, of which a plaster reproduction exists in the museum at Barcelona, and for whose disappearance from San Cugat a few years ago no one — least of all the clergy of San Cugat — is able to account. In 1473 Maestro Alfonso painted for this altar the decapitation of San Medin which is now in the Museum at Barcelona. The great Gothic retablo has been marred by Baroque additions. San Cugat still contains an important painting, the retablo de la Virgen, said to be the work of Luis Borrassa (worked 1396-1424), who was evidently inspired by the Sienese painters. In the presbytery are 374 BARCELONA — THE CITY preserved a precious early cope and missal, which the authorities would do well to get in out of the wet if they do not wish them to go the way of the aforesaid antependium. We now come to the cathedral, which is the most important building in the town. It stands on the site of several earlier churches, notably one built by Ramon Berenguer el Viejo (1046-58), which was so insufficient for the growing needs of Barcelona in the latter part of the twelfth century that additions were made to its east end. The actual building was begun in the last year of the thirteenth. The work went on rather slowly, and for years service was held in the old cathedral, which was gradually demolished to make room for the new. The west front was never completed, though an architect of the fifteenth century, probably Barto- lome Gual or Andres Escuder, drew rather a florid plan for it which is preserved in the archives of the chapter. When, of late years, the academician Sr. Girona was about to erect the now exist- ing facade, he proclaimed that he would follow this plan as closely as possible. Results have shown that Sr. Girona did not find it possible to follow the old plan very closely ; indeed, he is said to have arranged that the mason, who was contracting to supply solid stone saints of a given height at twenty-five duros a head, should make them a hand shorter and call it twenty. 375 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS The exterior of the cathedral has suffered much from bombardments and other accidents, and is altogether less interesting than the interior. The roofs are of stone, and flat. Of the buttresses the lower parts only remain, and there is no parapet. The towers are plain up to the belfry stage, which is richly ornamented and pierced with windows. The lower buttresses are ornamented with gar- goyles, which serve as rain pipes. None of the exterior doors are very large. That of the Piedad has a fine fifteenth- century wooden relief in the tympanum. The door in the north transept, known as that of San Ivo or of the Inquisition, has two early stone reliefs on either side, one of which represents the battle of Soler de Vilardell with a dragon which the Moors set loose on the Valles, and which Soler slew with a sword presented to him by the Almighty. The west front in its modern form can hardly be better than the bare wall described by Street. It is a pity, for it has a fine position at the top of the long flight of steps which leads up to it. This church met with the enthusiastic approval of Street, who says of it (second edition, p. 296) : " The scale is by no means great, yet the arrange- ment of the various parts is so good, the skill in the admission of light is so subtle, and the height and width of the nave so noble, that an impression is always conveyed to the mind that its size is far greater than it really is — an achievement often 376 BARCELONA— THE CITY indeed met with in Gothic buildings, but seldom more successfully than here." The architects who began the work are not supposed to have had much to do with the general plan, which Street and the best Spanish authorities attribute to Jaime Fabre, of Palma de Mallorca, where he had already built Santo Domingo and would also appear to have been the architect of the cathedral, before coming to Barcelona in 1318. Jaime Fabre is supposed to have been master of the works until 1388, which would make him out as little less than one hundred years of age when he was at last at liberty to return to his native isle. There is probably some- thing wrong here. At any rate one Roque and his assistant, Pedro Viader, are known to have been employed as builders from 1375 to 1400. These men were followed by Bartolome Gual and Andres Escuder, who worked on, and probably completed, the cathedral from 1432 to 1451. The names of a good many of the sculptors and glass painters who worked here are known ; they are to be found in the list at the end of the book. The cathedral is cruciform in plan, but its tran- septs are so short as almost to pass unnoticed except as the bases of the towers. The nave and aisles are four bays long from the crossing ; the western bay of the nave has the lower story of a fine octagonal lantern, the upper stories of which are now being added, and the choir occupies the two eastern bays. The arches of the nave are very 377 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS lofty, and are not pointed but round, like those of the Lonja. The chevet with its radiating chapels is built upon the French plan. An arcaded tri- forium runs round above the main arches, and above this there is one circular window in each bay. The groining is quadripartite throughout. The clerestory windows have good tracery, and were once all filled with fine fourteenth-century glass ; some seven or eight of them still retain it. There are two side chapels to each bay in the aisles, which, with those in the chevet and the cloister, make a total of some fifty distinct chapels. All these have wrought-iron grilles across their outer archways, many of which are fine specimens of Catalan Gothic ironwork. Few of the altars are worth mention, as the original Gothic retablos which have survived at all are preserved in the Sala Capitular. Above the chapels a floor runs round the church. Under the crossing a flight of steps leads to the subterranean chapel of Santa Eulalia, the Barcelo- nese martyr, to whom the church is dedicated and whose remains rest in the great alabaster ark. This chapel was being built by Jaime Fabre in 1334, and presumably was finished when the body of the saint was translated to it in 1339. On the right going down the steps is a white marble ceno- taph of early design with a hole in its roof, which makes it probable that it dates from before the seventh century, up to which time relics of saints 378 BARCELONA— THE CITY were not given, but candles, which were stuck into a hole in the tomb and brought into contact with the bones, whose virtue they thus acquired. The great ark, with scenes sculptured round it of the life and death of Santa Eulalia and the invention of her body, is the work of a Pisan, who executed it in 1327, and is said to have done other work in the church. The gilt high altar is rather florid, as also the iron grille in front of the altar and round the apse. The choir stalls are beautiful late Gothic. The lower row is the work of Matias Bonafe (1457). The upper with its delicate pinnacles was com- pleted in 1483 by two Germans, Miguel Loquer and Juan Frederic. These Germans had reason to curse the day they set foot in Barcelona, for the chapter, when the work had been finished, seems to have cast about to find a pretext for not paying for it. They shook their heads and spoke of grave defects, and finally named a commission which gave a report in the desired sense. The case dragged on for a weary time, and the Germans got only a part of the pay promised them. In this choir Charles V held a great in- stallation of the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1519, at which kings and princes attended, and left their arms blazoned in the upper row of the stalls, where they remain to this day. The Renaissance trascoro was sculptured by Pedro Vilar, of Zara- goza, in 1564, after designs by Bartolome Ordonez. 379 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS There are few interesting tombs in the church. The best are those of Dona Sancha Jimenez de Cabrera in the chapel next to that of San Olaguer, and of the bishop Don Ramon Escalas, died 1398, in the chapel of the Innocents next to the door of San lvo or of the Inquisition in the north tran- sept. Above this door is the organ, which, though it has since been much repaired, was put up by Fray Lleonar Marti in 1546. Below it hangs, as usual in Catalan churches, a mighty Moor's head. As Street points out, the present arrangement of the interior makes it impossible to group a large congregation in one place, and it seems that from the first worship was conducted here exactly as it is to-day. Only one Mass is sung at the high altar, and several Masses are always in simultaneous pro- gress in two or three side chapels throughout the morning, so that the people can choose their altar. The plan of the church, and the sombre colour of the stone, which seems to have been painted origin- ally in the vaulting, make the interior very dark even at midday. This was almost certainly the object of the architect — to shut out light and heat. The result is very successful; the quality of the light admitted through the splendid windows at the east end in the afternoon is exquisite and mag- nifies the noble proportions of the nave without calling the eye to unfortunate modern furniture in many of the chapels. The services are splendid, 380 BARCELONA— THE CITY and the music much better than in most Spanish cathedrals. There is something in the noble reasonableness of its plan, in the absence alike of mediaeval and neo-classic ornamentation, which makes this church the expression of the Catalan spirit at its best and perhaps the most purely religious place of worship in Spain. Ramon Lull, the apostle of reason in Christianity, was alive when it was begun, and it was finished before the days of the Inquisition, before Spain had staked her all on Orthodoxy. The late fourteenth- century cloister lies to the south of the cathedral. It is a sunny, pleasant spot, full of trees and flowers. A projecting chamber covers a tank about which stand stately white geese. Many of the bosses in the vaulting are carved with scenes by Antonio Clapos (1449), and deserve examination. The chapels have iron grilles of fine workmanship, and a few of them preserve their old retablos. In the wall beside the door leading from the cloister into the chapel of Santa Lucia is the tomb of Mossen Borra, miles gloriosus. This glorious knight wears fool's bells in his girdle ; he was court jester to Don Alfonso V of Aragon. In the archives of the Corona de Aragon there exists a document in which Don Alfonso, considering that Mossen Borra in order to continue to rejoice the court must eat and drink, and further, that the said Mossen Boreas teeth having disappeared he can no longer eat, concedes 381 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS to him the privilege of drinking, in modera- tion or to excess, at all hours of the day and night, as much of thirty-one specified kinds of wine as he can hold, under the condition that he mix them not with water. Further, that Mossen Borra may constitute one or more proctors or substitutes, who may in his name drink the specified wines. Another door in the west wall of the cloister leads into the chapter-house. Here, in two large rooms, are preserved several of the Gothic retablos which adorned the side chapels of the cathedral. This is an important collection of Catalan primi- tive painting and should be carefully studied, though the pictures are not very easily seen. Most of the painters seem to have followed the Sienese tradition, but Flemish influences also reached them. Their drawing is full of character though lacking in perspective ; their colours have kept all their brilliancy on the gold ground. All the genuine Catalan primitives painted in tempera. Among those preserved here are the fine retablo " de la Transfiguracion " by Benito Martorell, and that of Santas Clara and Catalina by Juan Cabrera, both of the first half of the fifteenth century. By far the most important painting in the cathedral, how- ever, is the magnificent " Pieta " by Bartolome Bermejo. This picture is painted in oils on panel and is probably in excellent condition under its dirt, as the authorities have never thought it worth 382 PlETA BY BARTOLOME BERMEJO, BARCELONA CATHEDRAL. The Martyrdom of San Medin, by Maestro Alfonso. Barcelona Museum. BARCELONA — THE CITY restoring. The frame bears the legend : " Opus Bartolomei Vermejo Cordobensis Impensa Ludo- vici De Spla Barcinonensis Archidiaconi Absolu- tum XXIII Aprilis Anno Salutis Christianae MCCCCLXXXX." The picture represents the Virgin holding the dead Christ in her arms ; on the right kneels the donor, and on the left St. Jerome. In the background is a landscape in most delicate greens and blues, and dotted with churches and obelisks which recall the work of Patinir, who, by the way, can hardly have had a brush in his hand at the time this picture was painted. The com- position is of great simplicity, and the beholder is instantly drawn by its intense feeling to the central group. When he has looked long at this he may turn to the two subordinate figures, the St. Jerome in his cardinal's robes and his round black-rimmed eye-glasses, and the deeply studied portrait of Archdeacon Despla. Indeed, the picture is wholly admirable ; the drawing is bold and vigorous, the perspective so good that it passes unnoticed as it should always do. There is that grandeur in the simplicity and severity of the whole which is the sign of a great painter, and this picture is probably the first painted on Spanish soil in which the land- scape has received such loving and independent treatment. It is easy to pick out points of re- semblance to the Flemings, but the thing has a character of its own. Sr. Sanpere y Miquel classes Bermejo, whom he 383 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS knows and admits to be a Cordovese, among his Catalan primitives. Not only this, but Sr. Sanpere y Miquel would have Bermejo to be the painter of the "Piete" of Villeneuve-les- Avignon which is now in the Louvre and made its first sensational appearance in Paris at the Exposition des Primitifs Francais in 1904. The argument is long, but may be briefly summed up as follows. M. Hulin de Loo says that the Villeneuve-les- Avignon picture reminds him of Spain more than of France. The frame of the Villeneuve-les- Avignon picture bears an inscription, Honor at Rousset. Now, Bermejo = Rubeus = Roux = Rousset, and Bermejo would ap- pear to have signed himself Rubeus in Latin, which indeed is a fair enough translation. The difficulty of the Christian name is left unsolved, but Sr. Sanpere y Miquel has no hesitation in pro- claiming Bermejo to be the Castilian painter who worked for King Rene in 1476. The argument is very ingenious, and is much more convincing before than after an examination of the pictures, for the resemblance between the two is not strik- ing. The subject is the same ; there is a fine donor's portrait in both pictures, but the treat- ment is so different as to make it extremely diffi- cult to believe that one man painted the two. Sr. Sanpere y Miquel also, for elaborate and (in print) very plausible reasons, attributes a San Miguel in private hands in London and a Santa Engracia in Mrs. Gardiner's collection at Boston, 384 BARCELONA—THE CITY U.S.A., to Bermejo. It is true that the Santa Engracia comes from Zaragoza, is a beautiful pic- ture, and is so like the San Miguel that they may well be attributed to the same man. It is also true that the San Miguel is signed Bartholomews Rubeus. So if Bermejo really did sign himself Rubeus, which is by no means certain, as in the Latin inscription on the Barcelona picture he appears as Bartholomeus Vermejo, he may have been the author of the San Miguel and the Santa Engracia ; but the distance is so far from these two pictures to the Villeneuve-les- Avignon "Piete," and again from the latter to the painting in the chapter-house at Barcelona, that one must be badly bitten with the mania for attributions to give them all to Bermejo. Leaving all these elabo- rate considerations of Rubeus and Rousset aside and looking at the pictures themselves, I find it very difficult to believe that any of them except the Barcelona "Pieta" are by our Bermejo. Beside this picture Bermejo may well have made the drawing for the great wooden relief of the Pieta in the tympanum of the door of that name lead- ing into the cathedral cloister, and we know that he designed the glass in the baptistery chapel of the cathedral. Whether or no Bermejo painted all the pictures Sr. Sanpere y Miquel would force upon him, the one and only work which bears his name is enough to place him in the first rank of the painters of his day. 385 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS The chapter-house is not open to the public, nor is the subterranean chapel of Santa Eulalia, nor yet the treasury in which is preserved the magnifi- cent fifteenth-century throne of Don Martin el Humano, but it is usually easy to gain admittance by marching boldly through the door and demand- ing permission of the priest who sits there behind the table. If the visitor happens to speak fluent Castilian, let him not betray the fact when he addresses this ecclesiastic ; the more obviously foreign he is the better he is likely to be treated. In broken and plaintive accents he should intimate that he has come from far — the farther the better — on purpose to see the marvels of Barcelona Cathedral. I have already mentioned the great church of Santa Maria del Mar, which stands in the Vila- nova, not far from the harbour which nearly washed its walls in the fourteenth century. A shrine, known as Santa Maria de las Arenas, existed on this spot from early times, and the present church was built by the merchants of the quarter in 1329 — essentially a merchants' and sailors' church. The east end suffered sorely from a fire in 1378, but the restoration was completed five years afterwards. It is worthy of note that the mer- chants preferred to build a church of their own rather than contribute to pay the vast expenses of the cathedral, which was slowly growing at this time. 386 Nave of Barcelona Cathedral. King Martin's Throne, and Custodia, Barcelona Cathedral. BARCELONA — THE CITY The architect of Santa Maria del Mar is un- known. It was begun in 1328, the year in which, according to Villanueva, the collegiate church at Manresa, which it so closely resembles, was also commenced. Street is inclined to attribute it to Jaime Fabre, the Mallorcan architect who came to Barcelona in 1318 to work on the cathedral. Whether or not this be true, this church is very typical of Catalan Gothic. It has all the charac- teristics of the style: great internal width and height, a choir aisle, an enormous number of side chapels, great simplicity in detail, and severity in the exterior. The interior is composed of a nave and aisles ; the pointed main arches are carried on great octagonal columns ; the groining is quadripartite. In the wall above the main arches are round clerestory windows. The aisles have a traceried window in each bay, some of three, others of five lights. There are no less than three side chapels with two-light windows in each bay. An aisle runs round the apse, the arches of which, like those of the cathedral, are very nar- row. Some of the single-light clerestory windows in this part of the church have good fifteenth- century glass in them. The furniture is mostly bad, but in the south aisle there is a large covered gallery, glazed and gilt, of the eighteenth century, which is amusing. It looks like the poop of an old ship. The exterior, with its long un- 387 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS broken walls, is unadorned except at the west end, which has a fine fourteenth-century door with statues and panelling on the jambs and a good group in the tympanum. Above is a large flam- boyant circular window, and the whole front is flanked by two octagonal towers, or rather pin- nacles, which are too small for their work. A door leads out of the east end into the Plaza del Borne, in which tournays and bull-fights were once held. The church of Santa Maria del Pino stands between the Rambla and the cathedral. There is said to have been a church on this spot in the eleventh century, which was probably destroyed at the time of the first enlargement of the town. It is not certain when the present church was begun, but it is known to have been in progress in 1329 ; Villanueva says that it was not consecrated until 1453. It consists of a single nave of seven bays with a heptagonal apse. In each bay of the nave there is a side chapel, and, above, a simple traceried window of three lights. Some of the glass is of the fifteenth century. In the west end there is a good traceried circular window. The north door is a fine work, earlier than any other portion of the church, and there is a tall belfry tower, de- tached, to the north of the apse. San Justo y San Pastor is another church of the Catalan type. It has a nave of five bays, but the interior has been badly restored. In the 388 Chapel Royal of Sta. Agueda, Barcelona. of St. George's Chapel in the Casa de la Diputacion, Barcelona. BARCELONA— THE CITY Middle Ages this church had the privilege of ad- ministering oath, to those about to enter upon a trial by single combat, that they were using neither spells nor enchanted arms. In the prob- ably infrequent cases when one of the combatants was a Jew, a blood-curdling oath was administered by a Rabbi. In spite of this solemn swearing both parties had usually provided themselves with some illicit weapon. First choice seems to have been the sword with which Soler de Vilardell killed the dragon, as all may see in the relief near the north door of the cathedral. If this was not to be had, the combatant rushed off to the prior of San Pablo del Campo to hire an enchanted shirt which rendered the wearer invulnerable. In the days of Don Jaime I a battle took place between Arnaldo de Cabrera and Bernardo de Centellas, in which the former wielded Soler's sword whilst the latter wore the prior of San Pablo's shirt. The result was that they fought for three consecutive days without bloodshed. In the Plaza San Jaime stand two great municipal buildings of mediaeval Barcelona. On the west side is the Casa de la Diputacidn (until lately Audiencia), on the east the Casa Consis- torial de la Ciudad. The facades of both buildings towards the Plaza are of late date ; that of the Diputacidn is good seventeenth-century work by Pere Blai. Let us first take the Casa de la Ciudad. It was begun in 1369, and in 1373 was 2 B 389 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS ready for use, though not completed until years afterwards. The old north front in the Calle de la Ciudad, said to be the work of Jordi Johan (1400), still remains. Under a pinnacle on one side is a figure of St. Michael with metal wings, and on the other one of Santa Eulalia, patron of Barce- lona. The windows have good fourteenth-century tracery, and the parapet is very delicate work of the same time. The interior has been modernised, but a grand Gothic hall remains. Formerly the great retablo de los Concelleres by Luis Dalmau, which is now in the museum, stood in the chapel of this house, for which it was painted. The Diputacidn is much better preserved ; indeed, save for the facade in the Plaza it is almost untouched. The north front in the Calle del Obispo is fine work of the early fifteenth century, at which period the building was begun. The wall in the Calle San Honorato has several Catalan ajimez windows. Inside, is a beautiful three-storied courtyard, with graceful arcades on the first floor, and a fine broad external stair- case. On the level of the first floor is another patio, which, long and narrow in shape, extends to the west. It has good arcading, which has been walled up, but is now being freed, and amazing gargoyles on the buttresses. Opening out of the first floor of the main patio is a little Gothic chapel which until lately held the fine embroidered altar-front of San Jordi (George), patron of Cata- 39° Dalmatic, Barcelona Museum. BARCELONA— THE CITY Ionia, said to be the work of Antonio Sadurm (late fifteenth century), several rich Church vest- ments, and the excellent little fifteenth-century figure of St. George in armour, all of which the curators of the new museum have succeeded in tearing away from their original surroundings. The chapel and several other of the rooms are — or until lately were — hung with fine sixteenth-century tapestries, the borders of which are after designs by Raphael. The Casa de la Ciudad was and is the town hall of Barcelona ; in it the municipal council holds its sittings, and Santa Eulalia, patroness of Barcelona, rightly figures on the front. The Dipu- tacidn is the seat of the County Council, which explains the presence everywhere of St. George, patron of Catalonia. The Lonja, once the Consulado del Mar, is now the Stock Exchange. The only old part remain- ing is the great hall, which dates from the latter part of the fourteenth century. It consists of three naves, divided by columns which carry semi- circular arches. The only architect who is known to have worked on this building is Pedro Zabadia, who was the last master of the works. The old arsenal is now enclosed by the barracks of Atarazanas. It still has remains of the original building, which stood on a rock in the harbour, and whence sailed the fleets of Catalonia and Aragon ; but it is difficult to obtain permission to 39 1 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS enter. A good enough view of it may be obtained from any of the higher houses in the disreputable quarter across the Puerta Santa Madrona. I have several times had occasion to mention the Museo de Bellas Artes. This museum has been liberally endowed by the municipality of late years, and is rapidly amassing an important collec- tion, partly by purchase, and partly by ransacking every public building in Barcelona for movable objects of importance, which it bears off with the permission of the municipal authorities. Church property it cannot touch ; and Church property is, much more than municipal property, in danger of that surreptitious sale to guard against which should be the one excuse for dragging works of art away from the places they were made to adorn. However, the museum curators are full of zeal, and there is reason to believe that before it cools they will have stripped every civic building within the city limits of every object of value. A short time ago the grand Gothic Diputacidn was left free by the removal of the Audencia to the new Palace of Justice, and there was nothing in the world to prevent the installing in it of the museum. The house would have made such a museum as never was seen in Spain or out of it ; the authorities preferred their building in the park, whose hideous interior could not be worse adapted to the purpose. It is a very sorry-looking place, with its vulgar display of bronze and marble, but it 39 2 BARCELONA— THE CITY contains works of art of importance, and many of the rooms have been greatly improved of late. To the entering stranger the base of the collec- tion would seem to be a vast miscellany of plaster casts and reproductions. Until a few years ago the authorities went on paying large sums of money for copies of statuary, pottery, Venetian glass, Sevres porcelain, enamel — a little of every- thing, in short — while the dealers were sweeping Catalonia of her mediaeval works of art. It is only in the last few years that, fired by the example of the late Bishop of Vich, they have put a stop to this practice. The work of forming a collection of national art is now going on, and the reproduc- tions will disappear little by little. At present the collection is being constantly rearranged, so that it is impossible to do more than mention a few of the important pieces. There is to be found the retablo de los Conselleres, which Luis Dalmau painted for the chapel of the town hall. The contract made by the councillors with Dalmau in 1445 exists to show how narrowly the burgesses kept the painter to the plan and conditions they laid down. The picture, which is painted in tempera on wood, represents two groups of councillors being presented to the Virgin by the Patrons of Barcelona, Santa Eulalia and San Cugat. The painting has suffered a good deal and seems to me to have been greatly overrated. It is, barring the historical interest which it lost when 393 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS it was removed from the town hall, little more than a fairly good school picture by a close imitator of Van Eyck. A picture by this same Dalmau, a San Ildefonso receiving the chasuble from the Virgin, was acquired by the Louvre and made a short appearance in the long gallery there in 1904. It has since disappeared from a place which it was certainly unworthy to occupy. i§Far more interesting is the martyrdom of San Medin, which was painted by Maestro Alfonso for the high altar of San Cugat del Valle's in 1473. Painted in oils on wood, this picture is the finest in the museum, and its composition and spirited drawing are on a level with its clear and noble colouring. Of Maestro Alfonso little is known. This picture is the only one attributed to him by Sr. Sanpere y Miquel, so we may be sure that no other work is known which could possibly be given to him. Like his country- man Bermejo — for they both came from Cordoba — Alfonso had been formed in the Flemish tradition, and he brought a Flemish strain into the Catalan school which had got its painting mainly from Siena, in spite of the fact that Dalmau was entirely Flemish in his work. Alfonso's influence may be seen strongly marked in this very museum in the series of panels by Pablo Vergds which form the retablo of San Vicente. Another and much finer series of paintings by the same Vergds exists, or existed, in the house of the Tanners' Guild in the 394 BARCELONA— THE CITY Porta Nova for which they were painted. These six large panels represent scenes from the life of San Augustin, patron of tanners. They were originally twelve ; but the rest were used for fire- wood a few years ago. In design they are theatrical, and in execution rough. Beyond the spoils of the Diputacidn which have already been mentioned in speaking of that build- ing, the museum contains several curious antependia, altar panels painted on wood with low relief in plaster, most of which date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and an extremely in- teresting wooden baldachin with paintings in its canopy, which owes its perfect state of preserva- tion to the fact that the parish where it was found has always been too poor and benighted to keep its church furniture up to date. There are also a few good pieces of Gothic sculpture, an incomplete but interesting collection of Cata- lan forged iron, several fine chasubles and dal- matics of cut velvet, and a number of beautiful pieces of early Oriental textiles. The rest of the museum, which is not occupied by the above-mentioned reproductions, is full of frag- ments of pottery and sculpture from Ampurias, and a large and inferior collection of pottery and glass. No one should leave Barcelona without paying a visit to the church of the Holy Family, which is being erected by the architect Sr. Gaudi in the 395 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS north-eastern outskirts of the new town. Only a small part of the church is completed as yet — one lateral doorway and part of a wall — but this small part is so enormous in comparison with the loftiest buildings set up by the pigmies who in- habited the earth in pre-Gaudian days, that it looms large in any distant view of Barcelona. Twilight is a good time to visit this marvel; as the visitor stumbles over the heaps of stones and rubbish, which litter the vacant lots and unpaved streets by which it is surrounded, its more than strange proportions will rise up before him in such a way that he will have to rack his brains to make out how the thing is going to be constructed. At present it looks like a fragment of some over-sized late Gothic church, upon which an enormous mass of, say, sugar-paste has fallen from the skies. Through the sugar-paste crawl primeval monsters, and twist and curl themselves round pinnacles and buttresses. Beside the monsters are smaller beasts, in fact, the whole animal creation, from the mastodon and the ichthyosaurus to the tom-tit and the guinea-pig, is there represented. One cannot help fearing that the innocent school children who play about the base of this unvenerable pile will grow up raving lunatics. Sr. Gaudi has built several private houses in Barcelona and an Epis- copal Palace at Astorga. A good example of his earlier manner may be seen in Sr. Giiell's house in the Calle Conde del Asalto, and of the later de- 39 6 BARCELONA— THE CITY velopment of his genius in No. 92 of the Paseo de Gracia. There are other remarkable architects at Barce- lona, for Sr. Gaudi's enormous success has put a premium on madness. One may set one's mind at rest, however ; if anyone concerned in the erection of these nightmare palaces is mad, that person is not Sr. Gaudi. I would not convey the impression that there is no sane building at Barce- lona to-day ; on the contrary, there are not a few good architects who are generally considered to be pitifully behind the times. Perhaps the most significant modern buildings in the city — more significant than the jerry-built exhibition palaces or the new Palacio de Justicia — are the huge solidly constructed monasteries and convents which cover every foot-hill towards the Tibidabo. These buildings gain still greater significance when one remembers that they are all the work of the last thirty years, and that Barcelona is the most ad- vanced city in Spain, the home of anti- clericalism, where the Liberals besieged the convents in 1835. 397 XVII THE PROVINCES OF BARCELONA AND GERONA When the city of Barcelona has yielded all it contains, there remain several important towns scattered over the province of the same name, and also the mighty Montserrat, which is visible from all its lower part, when once the low range of hills running along the coast has been crossed. On the railway line which skirts the base of the Montserrat, less than twenty kilometres from Bar- celona, lies the manufacturing town of Tarrassa, which contains three important churches. These are San Miguel, San Pedro, and Santa Maria, which stand together surrounded by cy- presses in a group symbolical of the Trinity and probably intended to protest against the Arian heresy which denied that mystery. The first is the most complete building, dating from Visigothic times, in Catalonia. The diocese of Egara, the old name of Tarrassa, was founded in the middle of the fifth century, and disappeared for ever in the Moslem invasion. At the time of the establish- ment of the bishopric a cathedral was built on the site of Santa Maria or of San Pedro, of which 398 TARRASSA San Miguel, following the practice of early Chris- tian times, would seem to have been the baptistery. Many archaeologists have taken San Miguel to be of the Reconquest, that is to say, posterior to Almanzor's raid ; but the character of the building and also the fact that Tarrassa had no cathedral after the first Moorish invasion point clearly to its much greater antiquity. This opinion is held and ably defended by Sr. Lamperez. San Miguel is square outside, but in plan preserves the shape of a Greek cross. The crossing is formed by eight columns, which carry as many stilted round arches. Thus far all, including the form of the vaults, is of pronounced Byzantine character, very like the baptisteries at Ravenna in fact. The octagonal cupola, however, is exactly like that of Santa Maria hard by, and is probably also of the twelfth century. It may well have been added to replace the original one destroyed by the Moors, who worked great havoc at Egara, as the later name Tarrassa, " rased land," shows. The columns are of different sizes ; some of the capitals are Corin- thian, others barbarous. Under the crossing ex- cavations have recently been made which have discovered something which appears to be the bottom of a baptismal piscina. The next of the churches in point of age is San Pedro, which consists of two parts of different date and style. The nave with its lop-sided, pointed waggon vault is coarse thirteenth -century work. 399 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Much more interesting is the east end. This consists of a waggon-vaulted transverse nave with two rectangular chapels at its ends, and a horse- shoe-shaped apse with three semicircular semi- domed chapels, disposed in a manner which, according to Sr. Lamperez, symbolises the Trinity again. The character of the east end is distinctly Byzantine, and suggests that this part of the build- ing dates from the tenth or eleventh century. Santa Maria, the third church, was consecrated by Raimundo, Bishop of Barcelona, in 1112. It has the form of a Greek cross, with a single horse- shoe-shaped apse, and an octagonal lantern over the crossing. Its chief interest lies in its exterior, the walls of which are decorated with alternate rows of two sorts of stone, and arcading, all in a decided Lombard manner. By the time that Santa Maria was begun the Lombards had monopolised church-building in Catalonia. In the church of San Miguel is the retablo of Santos Abddn y Senen, which existing documents show to have been painted by Jaime Huguet in 1460. This retablo is known by the name of the sainted physicians, Santos Cosme y Damian, who are represented in it. It is painted on a gold ground, and has a rather Burgundian look. The judges who are witnessing the martyrdom of the saints are very richly attired. It is worth notic- ing that the martyrs are being guillotined. Sr. San- pere y Miquel would have it that the retablo in the 400 TATtRASSA church near by is an earlier work by Jaime Huguet, and that the portraits of Santos Cosme y Damian in the retablo in San Miguel are by Pablo Vergds, the painter of the panels of San Vicente Exorcista in the museum at Barcelona. In San Pedro there are some seven square yards of mural paintings of the twelfth century, a period in which most churches were painted inside in as bright colours as these yellows, blues, reds, and greens must have been. The Montserrat (mons serratus), whose strange outline is always before one's eye in these parts, is the sacred mountain of Catalonia. Since the earliest Christian times it has been the seat of hermitages and convents, and the object of pilgrimages attracted from all parts of Europe by the miraculous image of the Virgin, which was carved by St. Luke the apostle and brought to Spain by St. Peter. Round the mountain have been weaved countless mediaeval legends, and the Virgin of Montserrat herself plays an important part in Spanish hagiography. At her feet St. Ignatius watched before dubbing himself her knight. He had just before undergone a severe operation, and while recovering he had read and meditated until he resolved to set out from his father's house at Loyola in Guipuzcoa to make this pilgrimage. His brother, who had seen with misgiving a change come over the once dare-devil Ignacio, begged him with tears in 401 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS his eyes to do nothing that might disgrace the family. To-day, apart from the marvellous forms of the jagged pinnacles by which it is formed and the remarkable plants in which it abounds, little remains to tempt one to make the easy ascent in the funicular from Monistrol. The present church dates from the end of the sixteenth century. As Piferrer laments in a rhapsody which he dedicates to the sacred mountain, queens no longer toil up barefoot. Newly married couples from the neigh- bouring villages do come up in the funicular, however, to spend their first night of wedlock in the monastery. Beyond the Montserrat the same railway line runs on to the prosperous cotton-spinning town of Manresa, which disputes with two or three others the proud title of the Catalan Manchester. The town is perched on the north bank of the River Cardoner, and is crowned by its great collegiate church, which the inhabitants often call a cathe- dral, though it has no right to the title. This church was begun, according to Villanueva, in 1328, and was still unfinished in 1416, when Arnaldo de Valleras, its then master of the works, went to the architects' congress at Gerona. The general plan is like that of Santa Maria del Mar and the other Catalan Gothic churches of Barcelona ; but it has the widest span of nave to be found in any church with aisles and 402 MANRESA clerestory, with the exception of the cathedral at Palma de Mallorca. The nave and aisles are six bays in length and an aisle runs round the seven- sided apse. Above the main arches there is a traceried clerestory window in each bay. The octagonal main columns carry the arches and moulded piers from which springs the quadri- partite groining. The detail is rather poor through- out. The choir occupies the third and fourth bays of the nave, and, though it dates from the fifteenth century, it has been rebuilt since so as to lose all character. The stalls are of the sixteenth century. The exterior is very striking with its double flying buttresses, which are built partly inside and partly outside the church. The lofty bell- tower was built from 1572 to 1590, but the names of its architects, which are usually given as Juan Font and Giralt Cantarell, are said by Villanueva to be false. The roof is flat, as in all the churches of this class. On the north side are remains of the church which is known to have been conse- crated on this spot in the early eleventh century. The internal fittings of the collegiate church are very shabby. Nowhere in Spain are so many miserable neo-Gothic retablos to be seen as in its side chapels. How superior are the worst Baroque excesses to these flimsy altars with their emasculate saints and hermaphrodite angels ! The chapel of the Holy Ghost, however, contains an important Catalan retablo. It consists of several compart- 403 SPAIN : HER LIFE AND ARTS ments ; in the middle is the Pentecost, above the coronation of the Virgin, and at the sides scenes from the life of Our Lord. Beneath, is a predella with heads of saints, very North -Italian- looking, and manifestly not by the same hand that painted the rest, which has a pronounced Sienese character. This retablo is the earliest important work of the Catalan school. It is attributed by Sr. Sanpere y Miquel (Vol. I, p. 138) to Luis Bor- rassa, who worked from 1396 to 1424 ; but docu- ments have lately been discovered which prove it to have been painted in 1394 by Pere Serra, who thus takes the place, in which Sr. Sanpere y Miquel set Borrassa, of the father of Catalan fifteenth -century painting. In the archives are two fine paintings by Benito Martorell, another Catalan painter of the Sienese tradition. One is the retablo de San Marcos, for which the Cobblers' Guild of Barcelona contracted to pay Martorell 520 and the sculptor Jaime Ros 130 florins for work and materials in 1437. The scene in which St. Mark arrives at Alexandria with a hole in his shoe, which one Aniano, a cobbler, mends for him, and also the one in which St. Mark consecrates the same Aniano, who later became a saint himself and the patron of all cobblers, are rich in expression and observation. The retablo of San Nicolas Bari by the same painter came from a chapel in the colegiata. The panels of the adoration of the dead Christ 404 SAN JBENET and of St. Michael weighing souls are very dramatic. In the archives is also kept the magnificent altar-front of Manresa, which Street pronounced to be the finest of its age. It is richly em- broidered in silk on fine linen on a gold ground, and shaded delicately with the brush. A small part of it has been clumsily restored, but it is well preserved on the whole. The work is Florentine of the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, and bears the inscription in Lombard capitals : — GERI: LAPI: RACHAMATORE : ME FECIT : IN FLORENTIA. Manresa has also a vast Jesuit convent in a barbarous Renaissance style. The church con- tains paintings which depict the frightful tortures to which Jesuit missionaries have been put by the heathen — to fire the ambition of the rest ? About seven kilometres away, just off the road to Vich, on the banks of the Llobregat, lies the charming little Benedictine convent of San Benet de Bages, now the seat of the painter D. Ramon Casas. The church has a single nave, transepts with apses on their eastern sides, and a semi- circular central apse. The lateral apses are made square outside for purposes of defence. The Lombard tower at the west served the same ends. Over the crossing rises a quadrangular Jan- 2 C 405 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS tern with lights, which is purely ornamental, as it corresponds to nothing in the interior. South of the church is a four-sided Romanesque cloister, the capitals of which are elaborately carved with foliage and beasts. Several leagues further in the same direction, near the town of Moya, is the con- vent of El Estany, in which there is a cloister of about the same period as that of San Renet, with delicately carved capitals on which are battle and hunting scenes, whose perfect state of preservation makes them a precious document for the study of thirteenth-century costumes, harness, armour, and hunting practices. The episcopal city of Vich lies in the mountain- ous upper part of the province on an affluent of the River Ter. It is an ancient town, with hardly a sign of life in its streets except for old-women pensioners in mediaeval dress, and seminarists in top-hats, cloaks, and alpargatas. The cathedral is an eighteenth - century building with huge bare walls, soon to be covered by the vast mural paintings with which Sr. Sert startled the world at the Paris Salon d'Automne in 1907, and which a malicious painter said could never be got out of the building unless somebody punctured them. The fine altar mayor by Pedro Oiler (late fourteenth century) and an enamelled silver pro- cessional cross by Juan Carbonell (1394) are all that remains. The cloister is good middle pointed work ; the capitals are ornamented with something 406 GERONA very much like the Tudor rose, and appear to be work of Berengario Portell (1325). Near the cathedral is the interesting Episcopal Museum, which was founded by the late bishop in order to preserve works of art contained in the parish churches of the diocese from clandestine sale. It is now in the hands of a courteous curator, Sr. Gudiol. Here are to be seen a dozen ante- pendia, varying in size from 2 x 4 to 4 x 6 feet, like those in the museum of Barcelona, but more varied and curious. There are also a number of good pieces of Romanesque and Gothic sculpture, a painting attributed by Sr. Sanpere y Miquel to Luis Borrassa, and a fine English pluvial cope of the middle of the fifteenth century, of red velvet delicately embroidered. The rail- way to Vich takes one through fine mountain scenery. GERONA About half-way between Barcelona and the French frontier, on the banks of the River Ter, lies the ancient city of Gerona, resting-place of saints and martyrs, capital of the province of that name, and see of a bishop. That the origins of the city go back to remote antiquity is proved by the existing fragments of walls built of enormous blocks of stone and known in Spain as Cyclopasan, like the 407 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS much better preserved ones at Tarragona. After its reconquest from the Moors, Gerona was ruled by its own counts until the year 1056, when it was definitely incorporated with the county of Barce- lona. The eldest sons of the kings of Aragon styled themselves Dukes and afterwards Princes of Gerona, which title, since the union of Castile and Aragon, the heirs to the crown have borne together with that of Prince of Asturias. The Capuchin convent contains a relic of the Moorish occupation in a well, or bath as it is usually called. One must comfort oneself with the knowledge that this well exists, for the strictest clausura is observed, and the convent is very difficult to enter. From the earliest times Gerona has stood ever- recurring sieges, and has only been taken after the most desperate resistance on the part of its heroic women no less than of its men. The earliest church in Gerona which has pre- served its ancient features is that of San Pere de Galligans, near the stream of that name, which, being interpreted, means Cock-crow Brook. This fortress - church — for the side walls have neither windows below the clerestory nor doors, and the apse forms part of the city walls — probably dates from the early twelfth century. It is cruciform in plan, consists of a nave and aisles, and has one apsidal chapel on the east and another on the north side of the north transept. The nave has a round waggon vault, and there is a clerestory of simple 408 GERONA round-headed windows. The west front has a round-headed door whose arch is beautifully moulded and carved ; above, is a fine rose window. There is an octagonal tower over the north tran- sept, and a cloister which resembles that of the cathedral and has been turned into a museum of not very important Roman antiquities. Street points out that this church is one of the earliest examples of that Lombard Romanesque type which later spread all over Catalonia. Near by stands the tiny church of San Nicolas, now a saw-mill, which Street mistook for San Daniel. It is said by Piferrer to date from the thirteenth century, which may well be the case, although it is very primitive. The church is of transverse triapsal plan, rarely met with in Spain ; its nave has a round waggon vault, and, over the crossing, an early lantern of the type which became so common, square below and octagonal above. The church of San Feliu, situated outside the old walls, of which the city gate called Portal de Sobreportas remains to this day, probably stands on the site of the cemetery of the earliest Christian community, where San Narciso and San Felix Africanus its patron met martyrdom in 307. At any rate the church is built on very holy ground, for nearly three hundred martyrs of the fourth - century persecutions were buried here. Villanueva takes this fact as a proof that no church, but only 409 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS a cemetery, existed on the spot before the fifth or sixth century. Under the Moors the then church of San Feliu was used as the cathedral, for the invaders turned the latter into a mosque. This is the origin of the customary visit still paid by the clergy of the cathedral to San Feliu on the Feast of San Narciso. The church anterior to the present one was probably destroyed by the French, who took Gerona in 1285, and sacked and burned until some particularly godless Gaul ventured to dese- crate the tomb of San Narciso, whereupon a swarm of flies issued from the sepulchre and stung the Frenchmen's horses, producing a panic which ended in a rout of the invaders. This occurrence is known as the Miracle of the Flies, and is the subject of a most amusing seventeenth-century daub preserved in the church. The present church was begun and completed in the fourteenth century. It is cruciform in plan, with a nave and aisles, the main arches of which are semicircular, though the vault is pointed. There is a central apse, and the north transept has one, and the south two apsidal chapels. The piers are plain and square, and the detail through- out is of the utmost severity. The south porch has fine arcading. The western steeple, though truncated, is graceful late fourteenth -century work. It was finished by Pedro Ca Coma in 1392, but has since been struck by lightning and repaired. Between 1357 and 1368 a cloister was built on the 410 GERONA north side of the church by an architect named A. Sancii, but it had to be pulled down again a few years later by order of the captain of the town as hindering the defence of the church in time of war. The interior has little of interest beyond the great late sixteenth-century carved and gilt retablo and the glass coffin of San Narciso, in which the mummy is well preserved. About its feet is a mass of cotton-wool, from which little wads are given to privileged strangers as a cure for, or precaution against, deafness. In the Capilla Mayor are two poor late Roman marble reliefs, four early Christian ones which are hardly dis- tinguishable from the latter in style, several early Christian sarcophagi, among which that of San Feliu, which has rows of figures carved upon it. All these primitive tombs, of course, come from the earlier church. The general plan of San Feliu, if met with any- where but in Spain, would lead one to take it for a twelfth-century church ; except for the south porch and the steeple the work is of Romanesque or early pointed character. Even the fact that Spain was usually from fifty to a hundred years behind the rest of Europe in its styles of archi- tecture hardly explains this lagging two centuries behind the times, while hard by at Barcelona churches like the cathedral and Santa Maria were being built. The reason is to be found in the troubled state of Gerona in the fourteenth century, 4 n SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS and the exposed position of San Feliu outside the walls, which reduced its builders to resort to a type of church which was as much fortress as place of worship — witness the cathedrals of Avila, Sala- manca, and Zamora — and whose great windowless walls made it a strong point in the city fortifi- cations. The century in the course of which it was built saw the everlasting wars of Don Pedro el Ceremonioso of Aragon, of which Gerona often bore the brunt. The town was a very different place from mercantile Barcelona, for ever torn as it was by the bloody feuds of the nobles who infested it. San Feliu is the last of the early fortress-churches built on Spanish soil. There still remains the most remarkable building of Gerona, the cathedral, which commands the city from the summit of its hill. This building has a history worthy of study ; for in connection with it the names, and even the peculiar views, of many Catalan architects have come down to us. The cathedral stood on this site from early times, and was several times modified and rebuilt before being consecrated afresh in 1038. Of this church the cloister is probably a remnant. The present building seems to have been begun in 1310, and in 1320 two architects from Narbonne, Enrique de Narbona and Jaime de Favariis, or Taverant, were directing the works. In 1325 there is made mention of one Bartolome Argen- ter, who is taken by most of the authorities to 412 GERONA have directed the works until the completion of the choir in 1346, but whose name makes it much more likely that he was the silversmith engaged upon the retablo of the high altar, which was certainly being made at this time. Between the two Narbonne architects and Guillermo Boffiy, who was master of the works in 1416, the names of several architects who worked on it are known : in 1330 Guillermo de Cors, in 1368 Francisco Ca Plana and Pedro Ca Coma, in 1394 Guillen Morey, and in 1397 Pedro de San Juan. In 1416, then, Guillermo Boffiy, master of the works, proposed a plan for completing the church with a single nave of the same width as the east end with its choir aisles. It appears that Boffiy had been master of the works for some years, and had already advanced this proposal, but that the opposition to it was general until Dalmacio de Mur, a most enlightened prelate, became bishop of Gerona in 1416, and, taking the scheme seriously, called together a conference of the foremost architects of the kingdom to decide the question. To each of these architects certain questions were put, and each man gave his answer upon oath. The results of the conference are given by Villanueva (Viaje Liter ario, ch. xxxiv, Vol. XII) in the original Catalan, and Street gives an English translation in his Gothic Architecture in Spain. This document is most valuable to the history 413 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of architecture. The results of the conference may be briefly summed up as follows. Pascasio de Xulbe and his son Juan de Xulbe of Tortosa, Pedro de Vallfogona and Guillelmo de la Mota of Tarragona, Bartolome Gual and Guillelmo Abdiell of Barcelona, and Arnaldo de Valleras of Man- resa, all pronounced in favour of continuing the church with a nave and aisles, and consequently against Boffiy's one-nave project. On the other hand, Antonio Canet of Barcelona, Antonio Anti- gom of Castelldn de Ampurias, Guillermo Sagrera of Perpinan, and Juan de Guinguamps of Nar- bonne spoke warmly in favour of Boffiy's idea, affirmed that it would produce a much more harmonious result, and went to the length of declaring that the idea of the builders of the east end had been to complete the church with a single nave, and not with a nave and aisles. Finally, Botfly himself stated his reasons to such good purpose that not long afterwards all the architects consulted pronounced unanimously in favour of his scheme, which was nothing less than to erect a nave of seventy-three feet in width in the clear — that is to say, according to Street* the widest pointed vault in Christendom. This mighty project was at once embarked upon, but the work went on so slowly that the nave does not seem to have been finished until late in the sixteenth century. Soon afterwards the tower was built, and in the seventeenth cen- 414 GERONA tury the west front and the great flight of steps leading up to it were begun, but were not com- pleted until a hundred years later. Thus the whole west front is of a neo-classic character entirely at variance with that of the interior. Altogether the exterior has suffered much, and, in spite of its fine position, is nowise worthy of the grand church which it conceals. The south doorway has in its jambs a series of terra-cotta statues of the apostles, for which Berenguer Cervia received six hundred florins in 1458. The cloister has been mentioned as prob- ably being a remnant of the church consecrated in 1078, though no mention of it is to be found before 1117. It lies to the north of the cathedral, and is of four unequal sides. The arches are round, and are carried on coupled shafts with abaci and very delicately carved capitals of simple but exquisite leaf-design without birds or beasts. They are very similar to those at Elne and others in the south of France. The east end, completed in 1346, consists of a choir with an aisle out of which open nine chapels. It has pointed arches carried on clustered columns of the Catalan type, a small triforium, and a clerestory of two-light windows. The mighty proportions of the nave become overwhelming when one looks eastward from the coro, for its great vault soars far above the three lofty arches which open into the choir. The nave is only four 415 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS bays in length. Street says that with another bay not an interior in Europe could have surpassed it in effect. Its general aspect is also marred by the coro, which is planted in the middle, and whose outer walls are painted with wretched sham-Gothic tracery. In each bay there are two side chapels and a lofty clerestory window, be- tween which runs no string-course, but a row of cusped openings by way of a triforium, and at the same height as those in the choir. The groining is quadripartite throughout. The works of art contained in the cathedral are worthy of their treasure-house. The fourteenth- century choir stalls are fine work of a good period. In the chapter-house hangs an embroidered tapes- try, probably of the tenth or eleventh century, and of Byzantine flavour, the like of which is hardly to be found. It is evidently a fragment of a larger piece, for it is divided into two concentric circles placed inside a deep border of three sides only. It represents the Creation. In the inner circle sits the Creator, who is here depicted beard- less; round him runs the inscription: "Dixit quoque deus fiat lux et facta e lux." In the outer circle is the Creation : the Spirit of God on the face of the waters, day and night, Adam and Eve, beasts and fishes, and the inscription : " In principio creavit deus," etc. In the border are the months, winds, planets, and the city of Jerusalem. This wonder- ful tapestry is only to be matched by some of 416 Tapestry of the Creation, Gerona Cathedral. GERONA the mosaics of the same subject in the narthex of Saint Mark's at Venice. It is interesting to com- pare it with the curious illuminated book of the Apocalypse in the library here, which is probably slightly earlier in date. In the treasury is a fine silver-gilt late Gothic custodia by Francisco Artado of Gerona, and a great silver-gilt processional cross of the same period, with four delicate translucent enamels. The custodia, begun in 1430, is the earliest known example of this exclusively Spanish class of vessel. These fine specimens of the art of the silver- smith pale before the retablo of the high altar. This is of wood, entirely covered with silver plates, and divided into three rows of gabled divisions, each of which has a subject and is studded with gems and pieces of enamel. Three figures under canopies which surmount the re- tablo in Street's drawing of it have vanished, and have been replaced by three crosses of unequal size and earlier date, which give the whole a rather barbaric look. Perhaps the clergy have put them there to compensate for the mag- nificent eleventh-century altar-frontal which has disappeared. Over the retablo is a baldachin carried upon slender shafts, and also covered with silver plates and small figures. It was begun by Bartolome in 1325, and finished in 1357 by Ramon Andreu and Pedro Berner. The oxi- 417 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS dised tone of the silver is set off by the brilliant translucent enamel, and makes the whole very beautiful. At each side of the altar stairs lead up to a grand marble throne above the level of the retablo, which Villanueva is probably right in giving to the twelfth century, though the clergy of the cathedral say it is of the time of Charle- magne. Older than the throne itself is the custom that the bishop, when pontificating, shall mount to it after the first thurifi cation, and stay there until the offertory, when he descends to the altar. This ceremony is gorgeous indeed. Above the glitter- ing altar rises the simple throne, and there in his rich vestments, among clouds of incense, sits the venerable prelate, while the plain chant surges through the nave. The lower part of the province contains many more buildings of interest, such as the Roman- esque campanario of Figueras, the great Catalan Gothic church at Castellon de Ampurias, and the convent of San Pere de Roda. In the mountains, in the upper part of the valley of the Ter, lie Santa Maria de Ripoll and San Juan de las Abadesas. A great monastery is known to have existed at Ripoll towards the end of the ninth century, and several consecrations are recorded previous to that at the hands of Oliva, Bishop of Vich, in 1032. During the whole period of the Counts of Barce- lona, Ripoll was what Poblet became after the 418 Figure known as Statue of Charlemagne, Gerona Cathedral. RIPOLL union of Catalonia and Aragon, the royal monas- tery of Catalonia, just as San Juan de las Abadesas held the place of royal nunnery, after- wards taken by Vallbona de las Monjas. The two earlier foundations observed the Benedictine rule, the latter the Cistercian. Of what the church was like before the Liberals rased it to the ground in 1835, an idea may be formed from Villanueva, who visited it in 1805. As it stands to-day, the building is the work of a Don Elias Rogent, who rebuilt it at the command of the Bishop of Vich in 1887 and following years, taking as his model San Juan de las Abadesas, San Pere de Galligans, and other Catalan Roman- esque churches. The restoration is fairly success- ful in its main lines ; indeed, with the ground plan there the architect could not go far wrong ; where he extra-limited himself is in the vaulting, espe- cially in the complicated vaults under the towers, for which there is no precedent in contemporary Catalan architecture. In plan the church is alone among Spanish Romanesque buildings in having a nave and double aisles and seven parallel apsidal chapels. The main arches are carried on plain square columns without capitals, and those separating the aisles on alternated square pillars and columns with great capitals. All the arches are round. Over the crossing is an octagonal lantern. All the windows are round-headed and plain. In 419 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS short, a Catalan Lombard church of great se- verity. The glory of Ripoll is its great western portal, which escaped miraculously from the hands of the Liberal looters, and stands beside the Portico de la Gloria at Santiago as the greatest iconographic monument in all Spain. Indeed, not in Spain alone, not in France or in Italy, the countries in all likelihood of the men who made it, is there any contemporary portal of the importance of that of Ripoll, though Verona and Pavia came nearest to matching it. The Catalans of course will have it that a school of art existed here early in the eleventh century, of which this door would be the only product. Sr. Lamperez much more reasonably holds it to be of the middle of the twelfth. The perfection of the work makes it incredible that it should be much earlier in date than the, in point of style, more advanced Portico de la Gloria, which was begun in 1168. The portal is set well forward from the wall, and has a single finely moulded round-arched door without a tympanum. All its face is covered with seven horizontal zones, which, like the jambs, the orders of the arch, the shafts, are covered with sculpture in the richest profusion : knights in armour fighting with lions, centaurs, birds and beasts, foliage, saints, and divine personages. The seven zones are said to symbolise: 1, The Battle of Reason and the Passions ; 2 and 3, Consequent punishments and 420 SAN JUAN DE LAS ABADESAS rewards ; 4 and 5, The Psalms ; 6, Beatific Visions ; 7, The Triumph of Christ. All in all not unlike the plan of the Divine Comedy. Besides the portal there remains the double cloister, of the lower part of which one side is Romanesque with rich capitals and abaci, the other three rather later but similar in feeling, and the upper story late Gothic. Higher up the Ter lies San Juan de las Abadesas, founded by Wilfredo el Velloso, first independent Count of Barcelona, in 887, for his daughter Ema, who became its first abbess. The actual church was consecrated in 1150. It has a nave and transepts, two lateral apses, and a central one of curious plan with three added semicircular apses. The choir is rather long, and there is a false choir aisle, which now has the appearance of being real because the altar has been moved for- ward in such a way as to make room for a passage behind it. The arches are all round, the waggon vaults unsustained by arches, and the work of the utmost simplicity, without mouldings or capitals. 2 D 421 XVIII TARRAGONA AND LERIDA The origins of Tarragona are lost in antiquity ; the name it is said to owe to the Phoenicians, who made it a maritime settlement. Under the Romans it attained riches and prosperity, and a population of a million. Its soil, and that of the Italian- looking plain by which it is surrounded on the land side, is redolent of antiquity ; the mighty walls, the Roman Aqueduct, names of villages like Constanti, the stony vineyards that still produce the wine the Romans loved to drink, bring back the times when Tarragona was capital of Spain. Of the countless temples and other monuments which the Romans built here nothing remains but the walls, the aqueduct, and a few fragments ; for the Moors, who enjoy such an enviable reputation as tolerant lovers of the arts, held Tarragona for some four hundred years, and laid low every vestige of Roman civilisation of which they could make no use in fortifying the place or providing it with water. They made a cleaner sweep here than at Merida, which says much. Roman works of art have constantly been found in digging foundations 422 TARRAGONA or in ploughing ; most of the best of them went to England in the eighteenth century. But the very stones of Tarragona once stood in Roman buildings, and the great Cyclopsean walls of huge roughly-hewn blocks make the Roman walls, for which they serve as bases, look like the work of yesterday, and give the town such an air of hoary age as is scarcely to be breathed in any other place in Spain. After the Reconquest, Tarragona regained its metropolitan dignity ; the archbishop disputes with Toledo the title of Primate of Spain to this day. But its prosperity had gone for ever ; Barcelona had already become the centre of Catalan trade. Throughout the Middle Ages it remained the ecclesiastical capital of the kingdom of Aragon ; indeed, its glorious cathedral, sur- rounded as it is by poor buildings, shows clearly enough what the life of the town has been during the last eight centuries. The cathedral crowns the city, which stands on a rocky hill overlooking the sea on one side and the valley of the Francoli on the other. It is perhaps the finest of the many examples of a transition style, showing strong Lombard in- fluence, which are scattered over the kingdom of Aragon ; it is much more accessible than the old cathedral of Lerida, which is superior to it in detail, is in much better condition, and above all has been preserved to the cult, and has thus kept 423 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS many of its old fittings. Exactly when it was begun, and by whom, is not known ; but it is inferred that the greater part of the work is of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In the twelfth Bishop Olegar of Barcelona made a journey through France and the East, which occasioned the coming of the Templars to Cata- lonia and, it is supposed, of Normans to Tarra- gona. The only architect who is known to have worked here during this period is Frater Bernar- dus, who died in 1256. The church is cruciform in plan, with a nave and aisles of three bays, transepts, a lantern over the crossing, and three circular apses east of it, in addition to which each transept has a small apse on its east side. The piers of the nave are composite ; the main arches spring from coupled half- columns, and the quadripartite groining from columns which run up between them. Each apse has a semi-dome. As usual in these churches, the east end was built first, and this part has a decidedly early character, particularly in the exterior of the central apse, which is lighted by a lower row of three larger, and an upper of seven smaller round- headed windows, and has a rich projecting corbel- table at the top. All the main arches are pointed, but the transepts are lighted by a round-headed window in each bay, as the nave undoubtedly was before the large three-light clerestory windows were pierced in the fourteenth century. There 424 Retablo of High Altar, Tarragona Cathedral. ReTABLO DE LOS CONCELLERES, BARCELONA MUSEUM. TARRAGONA is a fine rose window in each transept and a great traceried circular window in the west end. The lantern is groined in eight cells, and is lighted by- early pointed windows of three and four lights alternately. The detail is very good throughout ; the delicate carving of all the capitals gives value to the unadorned strength of the massive piles and arches. Street's enthusiasm for this church is great, and he points out with his usual acumen that if the capitals were plain it would be classed as a Romanesque building, whilst, as it is, the carving gives it an early pointed look. To the north-east lies the cloister, which is reached by a door opening out of the north aisle. This door is round-arched, with four engaged shafts in each jamb, and a central dividing shaft. All the capitals are very beautifully carved, of much finer workmanship than any others in the church or cloister, and in the tympanum is Our Lord with the emblems of the four Evangelists. Like the other doors in the church, it is all of marble, and is said to have been removed to the cloister from the west front when the present great portal was built, though this seems improbable. Its sheltered position has prevented its taking the deep golden tone which exposure has given to the others, but has lent it in exchange a delicate greenish hue, which creeps over the carvings on the capitals and in the tympanum — that exquisite sea-green which those who have seen the transparent carved altar 425 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS rail at Torcello and the carvings in the churches at Ravenna will ever associate in their minds with Byzantine sculpture. Each bay of the cloister has three richly-moulded round arches carried on coupled shafts with capitals and abaci, on many of which intricate scenes are carved. Above the openings are two round windows, some of which have preserved their alabaster slabs with arabesque tracery. This cloister, with its quadri- partite groining and its chapter-house on the south side, is in all respects, save that of the pierced slabs of alabaster, similar to the early Cistercian type. The exterior of the cathedral is much shut in by houses, as is often the case in Spain ; the most conspicuous part is the west front which stands at the end of a long street and is, as is usual in Catalonia, reached by a long flight of steps. The west front presents a curious mixture of styles ; for while the doors into the aisles are round-arched, and have well moulded and carved circular windows above them, the door lead- ing into the nave is a vast middle pointed affair with a truncated gable rising above it, and huge figures of apostles and saints in the jambs and round the flanking buttresses. Nine of these figures were sculptured by Maestro Bartolome in 1278, and in 1375 Maestro Jaime Castayls contracted to make the remaining twelve. They are of marble, and are very similar in style to 426 TARRAGONA the apostles from the Chapelle de Rieux in the museum of Toulouse, though none of the Tarra- gona apostles are as finely wrought as the Saint John the Evangelist of the Chapelle de Rieux series, who is so smirking, bedimpled and be- dizened that the most guileless observer can hardly fail to be aware that the sculptor must have had his blasphemous tongue in his cheek. On the dividing shaft is a Virgin and Child, and subjects are carved on the pedestal. All this statuary is of a character similar to that of much that is to be found in the south of France. Above the door leading into the south aisle is a very early Romanesque relief of Our Lord entering Jerusa- lem. In the tympanum of the doorway is a window with rich traceries, and the doors them- selves are diapered with iron plates and fitted with several magnificent knockers, all splendid specimens of Catalan wrought iron of the early sixteenth century. The marble, and indeed all the stone in the west front, has taken on a deep golden tone, which is oftener to be met with in Castile than in Catalonia. The lower stages only of the tower on the south side are of the time of the church, for the octagonal steeple is of the same period as the great west door. The church contains many remarkable works of art of different periods, which make a rich and varied interior. The coro occupies two bays of the nave west of the crossing. It contains 427 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS late Gothic stalls, executed by Francisco Gomar of Zaragoza in 1493. Let into its north wall is a little chapel, built by Canon Barcelld, which contains a curious late Gothic Entombment with life-sized figures ; the tomb is an early Christian sarcophagus, with the arms of Canon Barcelld carved upon it. In this chapel is a fine Gothic wrought iron candelabrum. The iron screens of the coro and the capilla mayor are simple and good, and there are two good Gothic pulpits at each side of the arch opening into the capilla mayor. In the wall of the trascoro is the seventeenth- century tomb of Don Jaime I of Aragon, brought here from Poblet. There is at present a scheme on foot (which may the prayers of the just defeat !) to allow the architect Sr. Domenech to erect a huge Romanesque tomb for Don Jaime I between the piers of the third bay of the nave, and another great Gothic tomb opposite to it, to receive the bones of the kings which were rescued from the general ruin at Poblet. If this scheme is carried out it will seriously mar the aspect, at present so fine, of the nave. Behind the high altar is a florid Gothic retablo, all of marble, and polychromed, by Juan de Tarragona, early sixteenth century. It may be noticed that marble is used freely in this church ; it came from the neighbourhood, and so was not expensive. The upper part of the retablo is divided into numerous scenes from the New Testa- 428 TARRAGONA ment, and the lower has a series representing the life of Santa Tecla, tutelar of the cathedral. In the capilla mayor is an organ of the sixteenth century of very beautiful tone. In the apse of the north transept is the chapel of the old Tailors' Guild of Tarragona, with a marble retablo which appears never to have been painted. It consists of four compartments in width, with twenty-two scenes, each under its little crocketed gable, from the Mysteries of the Rosary, and a large Virgin and Child under a canopy in the centre. This retablo is perfectly preserved, and is in a very pure and graceful fourteenth-century style. At certain times of the year — the feast of the Patron and the Octave of Corpus — the church is hung with a series of magnificent Gothic tapestries, which it is impossible to see at any other time, as they are rolled up and put away in the attics. When the tapestries are in their places the view of the nave is magnificently obscured. Near the cathedral to the south stands the little church of San Pablo, enclosed within the modern Seminario ; it has good Romanesque sculpture and a rectangular door which belonged to the early Christian Capilla del Arce. Santa Tecla la Vieja has vanished. The little Museum of Archaeology contains all that has been kept in Tarragona of the great 429 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS quantities of Roman statuary discovered from time to time in the city and the surrounding plain. No. 377 is a fine Roman torso of Venus, muti- lated ; No. 372, a beautiful mutilated statue of the young Bacchus in Paros marble, probably Greek. No. 575 is a large bronze Roman lamp, in good preservation, with a negro boy holding a tray with snuffers. There were once valuable coins and gems in the museum, but the best of them have long since been sold by former directors. In addition to the Roman remains, there are a number of more or less mutilated groups of Gothic figures from the royal tombs at Poblet. These groups are backed with thick blue glass, fragments of which are found scattered over the pavement at Poblet ; they also bear evidence of having been polychromed. The effect must have been very brilliant. Most of the figures are weeping monks of less than a foot in height, in the style of those which adorned the tombs of the Dukes of Bur- gundy. Many are beautiful, and it is probable that still more beautiful ones have found a happier home than a Spanish provincial museum ; though it may be doubted whether any of the mourning monks of the tombs of Poblet were of the wonder- ful tragic expression of the four jpleurants in the Musee de Cluny, or of those at Dijon which awoke such enthusiasm in Stendhal at a time when Gothic sculpture found few admirers. As to how Burgundian sculptors could have made 43° Arch of Bara, near Tarragona. POBLET their way hither, it may be remembered that the wife of Don Juan 1 of Aragon was Violante de Bar, a Burgundian princess who lived for art alone. Documents show that in the fifteenth century toiles-peintes, like those preserved in the museum at Rheims, were often used for decorating Catalan churches on holy days. 1 Outside the city lie the remains of the Amphi- theatre, the Roman Aqueduct, or Devil's Bridge, one of the finest in existence, the Tomb of the Scipios (?), and the Arch of Bara. At Centellas, near the village of Constanti, about three miles from Tarragona among low-lying vineyards, is a peasant's house, in the roof of which a large Christian Roman mosaic, the finest in Spain, has been discovered. The mosaic is dilapidated and clumsily restored, but enough remains to show hunting scenes and rows of figures with their hands raised in attitude of devotion, and wearing the Phrygian cap like some at Ravenna. The house was almost certainly a Roman villa impro- vised as a church. POBLET AND SANTAS CREUS In the province of Tarragona lie the great Cis- tercian abbeys of Poblet and Santas Creus. As these monasteries are similar in their essential 1 Los Cuatrocentistas Catalanes, Sanpere y Miquel, Vol. I, p. 19 et seq. 43i SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS points, I shall first take Poblet, by far the grander of the two, which stands three miles from the station of La Espluga. According to Piferrer, a document existed in the library of Poblet previous to the desecration in 1835, which was nothing less than the act of donation of the abbey lands, made in 1120 by the Moorish king Almominiz to a hermit called Poblet, who had been thrice freed from captivity by the hands of angels. Poblet brought a few other hermits to share his solitude, and, after the con- quest of that part of Catalonia by Ramon Beren- guer IV, thirteen monks of the Cistercian rule — white friars — were sent thither from the monastery of Fuenfria (Fontfroide, near Narbonne). In 1151 three churches were founded, and during the thir- teenth century the great church with its cloister was built. From Don Alfonso II, who died in 1196, down to Don Juan II, father of Ferdinand the Catholic, almost all the kings and many princes of Aragon were buried in the abbey, which became what the Escurial grew to be under the Hapsburgs, the Westminster of Aragon, the richest and grandest religious house of all the Spains of the Middle Ages, into which sons of noble families only were received. Its magnificence can hardly be imagined to-day after the pillage it underwent at the hands of the Liberals in 1835 ; but some idea of what it was may be gained from Pons, who visited it before the 432 POBLET sack. 1 Of late years Poblet has been declared a national monument, and the church and parts of other of the buildings have been put into good enough condition to prevent their falling to pieces. The monastery stands at the foot of a range of hills overlooking the fertile valley of the Francoli. The grounds are enclosed by an outer wall, within which is another with an enormous gate flanked by two towers. To the south in the same wall lies the west end of the church, which has lost all its early character through neo-classical additions, but still shows a large circular window without its tracery. The design of the whole will best be understood by a look at the ground plan. The great cloister which lies to the north of the church is the central point. It dates mostly from the thirteenth century, though parts may be older. The three-light windows on the north, east, and west sides have fine early pointed tracery, and the arches are carried on delicate engaged shafts with capitals. The windows on the south side have two round-headed arches carried on coupled shafts with good capitals. The vaulting is quadripartite throughout. On the north side is a projecting six-sided chamber with a window of two round arches carried on coupled shafts in each side. This chamber is usually found in Cistercian monasteries ; it served as a lavatory. Opening out of the east side of the great cloister is the chapter-house. 1 Vol. XIV, pp. 220 et seq. 433 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS It is entered by a fine round-headed door with many shafts in its jambs, on each side of which is a round-headed window. The room itself is divided into nine bays of groining by four detached columns. This arrangement is also one which is constantly repeated in Cistercian foundations. Above the west side of the cloister rises the palace which Don Martin el Humano ordered to be built in 1397. The wall which faces the cloister is pierced by three three-light windows. The tracery is carried on slender marble shafts, the capitals are deeply and exquisitely carved with foliage, and under the roof runs a graceful flam- boyant arcaded string-course. The irregular and most effective spacing of the windows and the delicacy of the detail make this perhaps the most beautiful civil Gothic front in all Catalonia. It was never inhabited ; good King Martin died before his palace was finished. North-east of the great cloister are the library and archives, two divisions of a long groined room. The side windows are round-headed, and many of the bosses of the groining are carved in un- deniably Moorish designs. Above the rooms last described runs the vast and noble Novices 1 Dor- mitory. It is twenty bays in length, and is roofed by timbers carried on pointed arches which spring from corbels. These are carved like the bosses mentioned above. The dormitory is lighted by two rows of cusped openings. 434 POBLET The church consists of a grand nave and aisles of seven bays, transepts, and a choir with its choir aisle and five radiating apsidal chapels. There are side chapels in the south aisle only. The nave is roofed with a pointed waggon vault ; the aisles have quadripartite groining. Over the crossing there is a lantern with a four- celled vault. The slightly pointed main arches are very low, and the spaces between them and the vault are enclosed by round arches and pierced by simple round- headed windows. The detail throughout is of the utmost severity ; all the capitals are plain, and there is an absolute lack of moulding and carving, which is entirely in harmony with the strict original rule of the Cistercians. The church must have contrasted with the gorgeous royal tombs as sharply as did the cowls of the monks with the rich dresses of the courtiers who accompanied kings on their visits. The largest of these royal tombs are carried on low arches between the piers under the crossing, and are badly mutilated. Enough remains to show that they were of enormous proportions and crowned with rich Gothic ornament. In the north transept is the early fifteenth-century tomb of Dona Juana, daughter of Don Pedro IV, which is the best-preserved monument in the abbey. Its front has a stone relief of figures, which still bear traces of having been painted in yellow, red and blue, and backed by thick blue glass. This use 435 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of glass, which has already been noticed in the museum at Tarragona, was a favourite Aragonese device, and may be seen in the Luna tomb at Zaragoza. Numberless other tombs in various stages of ruin may be found in the choir aisles. The coro has entirely disappeared, except for the wall of the trascoro, which contains some Renais- sance sculpture. The great retablo of the altar mayor is of Tarragona marble, and was completed in the year 1529. Though much disfigured, the lower portions show traces of exquisite Italian work. The upper part is coarser. When all the above points have been noticed, there yet remain fragments of sculpture, build- ings, vast wine cellars, portions of cloisters, all in wildest confusion, which are most interesting to disentangle from the additions of later times. In the enclosure between the outer wall and the west part of the church are several remains of chapels of dates varying from the time of the foundation down to the eighteenth century. The exterior of the church itself is not interesting except for the octagonal middle pointed tower which rises from the crossing, and the outer walls of the east end, which are Romanesque in character with their round-headed windows of broad external splay, and from which it would appear that there are seven apses, though there are only five in reality. The first impression made by Poblet can hardly be other than a profound sadness that such a 43 6 POBLET treasure-house of mediaeval art should have escaped the storms of centuries only to fall a prey to a rabble of clodhoppers led by a few Liberal school- masters in 1835. When one stops to inquire into the state of the abbey before this catastrophe, one is brought face to face with facts, which certainly do not excuse the desecration, but which make one less certain that its results are altogether to be mourned. It is useless to discuss here whether the monks deserved what they got. It is certain that the original severity of the Cistercian rule had greatly degenerated ; there is a well-authenticated instance of a flat refusal on the part of the friars to go to choir one day when, instead of the brace of partridges each was to receive at dinner, they had mere quails served out all round. But that is not the point. The unfortunate part of it was that, having such riches, the abbots naturally liked to ornament their house with works of art of the latest style. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Baroque ran riot at Poblet ; Baroque retablos were set up in all the chapels, a Baroque front was added to the west end, the monstrous sacristy was built, and even the venerable stones of the church were not spared ; for all the interior was smeared over with a coat of plaster and then painted to counterfeit masonry, a proceeding, if possible, more iniquit- ous than the painting over of old oak panelling to look like white pine, which has been known 2 e 437 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS to take place at Oxford. The tower over the crossing was also barbarously painted. In fact, tragic as the loss of such priceless libraries, Gothic sculpture, vestments, church plate and pictures may be, it must be recognised that in the splendid mass of grey stone as it stands to-day is seen the Poblet of the kings of Aragon, that Poblet of which the latter-day monks had so poor an opinion that they did their utmost to hide it away from sight. The abbey of Santas Creus (Holy Crosses), though much less important than Poblet, is in some respects better preserved, and certainly deserves a visit. It may be reached from the station of Vails by a dozen miles of villainous and, at times, dangerous road, over which nothing but the unbreakable tartana could conceivably pass. The long valley at the head of which the abbey lies is fertile, and is inhabited by old-fashioned Catalan peasants, many of them still wearing a sort of Phrygian cap, like that formerly worn by the Neapolitans. These caps were all red until Philip V prohibited that rebellious colour, where- upon the peasants soaked them in wine until they turned purple. Like Poblet, Santas Creus was a Cistercian house founded on the site of former hermitages by Don Ramon Berenguer IV. Like Poblet. again, it was sacked by the Liberals on the confis- cation of the lands of the monasteries in 1835. 438 SANTAS CREUS Villanueva has left a description of it as it was before the sack. 1 According to him, the church was begun in 1174 and finished in 1225 ; the dormitory was begun in 1191, and the cloister built between 1313 and 1341. In Villanueva's time the treasury was full of fine vestments and plate, all of which was naturally plundered by the Liberals. The abbey is entered by a gate through the outer wall leading into a long enclosure, at the end of which rises the west front of the church and the cloister wall. The west front has a deli- cately moulded and carved round-arched door, with engaged shafts with good capitals in the jambs. Above, is a fine early pointed traceried window, the glass in which has been restored with the help of remaining fragments. Another similar door leads into the cloister, which lies to the south of the church. Let into the wall near this door is an obliterated inscription, which may well give the name of the architect, En Bernard (Brd) Ranc, with an illegible date. Both these doors certainly look like French work. The cloister has seven bays in each of its four sides, and the typical Cistercian projecting hexagonal chamber and chapter-house to the south, exactly like those at Poblet, though poorer in detail. The tracery in the windows has mostly been broken out altogether, but what remains is early flamboyant 1 Viaje Literario, Vol. XX, p. 109. 439 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS with delicately carved foliage capitals on the dividing shafts, most of which bear the arms of France, Aragon, and Castile. This tracery must have been added some time after the construction of the whole, for the capitals of the engaged shafts are of a very rude early style ; some of them have coarsely carved pornographic subjects. Round the walls are a few belated Romanesque and early Gothic tombs of the Moncada, Cervello, and Cervera families. Above one of these tombs is a life-sized Virgin and Child in stone, with traces of blue, green, and gold colouring. This Virgin looks like good French fourteenth-century work, and may, together with the groups over the door leading into the south transept, of Our Lord with three angels and a kneeling figure, which resemble her in style, and were also painted, be the work of the people who did the tracery in the cloister. Over the chapter - house runs a dormitory very similar to the one at Poblet, but shorter and poorer in detail. The church consists of a nave and aisles six bays in length, transepts, and three parallel apses. The pointed main arches are carried on great massive columns, the vault is pointed, there is no triforium, and light is given by a round-headed window in each bay. The detail is even plainer than at Poblet ; a more unadorned church it would be difficult to imagine. There is a poor Baroque retablo behind the high altar, remains of more 440 Royal Tombs at Santas 'Creus. SANTAS CREUS late rubbish litters the church, and the coro has vanished. In the crossing, contrasting with this desolation, stand two magnificent royal tombs. One is that of Don Pedro III, who died in 1285. It rests on a great Roman porphyry bath carried on two marble lions of Byzantine appearance, which, like the bath, probably came from another place, where they served another purpose, for their tails point in different directions. Indeed, these lions look as if they had been brought from the East. The tomb itself is of stone, with well- carved mutilated figures under gables, once poly- chromed. Over it rises a delicate early pointed baldachin, which consists of four traceried open- ings carried by ten slender shafts of grey marble. The other tomb, said to be the work of Bertran Riquer, is that of Don Jaime II, son of Don Pedro III. It has a similar baldachin and Gothic carving, but the tomb has been meddled with by the insertion of Renaissance carving, and the two female recumbent figures which lie upon it have probably been placed there since the desecra- tion. These tombs are very much like that, by Pacio and Giovanni da Firenze, of King Robert, the great Anjou enemy of the House of Aragon, in the church of Santa Chiara at Naples. King Robert died in 1343, so that, though he is said to have had his tomb made some time before his death, these at Santas Creus can hardly be copies of Pacio and Giovanni da Firenze's work, unless 441 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Pedro Ill's body waited long years before its rest- ing-place was ready for it. 1 To the south-east of the great cloister is another very rude one of four sides of pointed arches, without even an apology for shafts or capitals. Leading out of it are the apartments of Don Pedro III and Don Juan II, which still contain rough Gothic and Renaissance detail. Santas Creus was never as rich as Poblet ; its remains show that it was a copy on a smaller scale of the royal abbey ; but, by an irony of fate, it has pre- served its two great tombs almost intact, and at least its high altar to the cult, while everything in Poblet has been overtaken by utter ruin. LERIDA The city of Lerida is crowded between the River Segre and the bold rocky hill, on the top of which rises the old cathedral with its lofty tower, now a fortress. It is the Roman Ilerda, the Catalan Lleyda, and, in the Middle Ages after its reconquest from the Moors by the great Count of Barcelona, Ramon Berenguer IV, in 1148. it was the seat of the greatest university in the kingdom. Lerida has been besieged, taken, and plundered over and over again ; so it is not surprising that 1 See Venturi, Storia dell' arte Italiana, Vol. IV. 442 LERIDA little should remain except the old cathedral, whose mighty walls were made to outlast such tempests. The Pyrenean winds sweep down on the town with nothing to hinder them, and give it as bad a climate as is to be found in the land. In the town itself there is little of interest, save a Romanesque house at the corner of the Calles Caballeros and Mayor, which has preserved a row of three-light ajimez windows with good shafts and capitals. In the vast neo-classic new cathedral is kept a thirteenth -century cope, four metres long, of the most exquisite gold and silk tissue, than which no finer example of Spanish Moslem textile art exists. In the same sacristy are several chasubles and dalmatics with em- broidered orphreys of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and three very early stoles, two em- broidered, and one admirable woven one of Romanesque character. On the hill below the old cathedral is the church of San Lorenzo with its little Gothic tower, which is said to have been a synagogue. This may be true ; for though it has the three parallel apses and pointed waggon vault usual in these Spanish transition buildings, the church has been so much rebuilt and disfigured by plastering and painting that it is difficult to say what it may not have been, Near the south door is the centre-piece of a triptych — a Virgin and Child on a gold ground, which is either of the fourteenth century or by a belated painter. 443 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS The old cathedral, perched on its rocky hill, looks forbidding, and is not to be entered without permission from the Military Governor — in theory; but in practice a letter from any officer presented to the lieutenant who happens to be on guard will often open the gates. Ever since the W ar of the Spanish Succession it has served as barrack and fortress ; but the annoyance of obtaining permission and the rough climb up the hill should keep no lover of churches from visiting it. In 1203, about half a century after the recon- quest of Lerida, the building was begun, not to be consecrated, however, until 1278. Pedro de Cumba seems to have been the first master of the works, and Pedro de Penafreyta held the same post until his death in 1286 ; but the names of no other of the architects who worked on the body of the church are known. The cloister was being built at the same time as the church, though not com- pleted till much later. Other masters of the works were Guillermo Colivella and Carlos Galtes de Ruan, and Francisco Gomar contracted to erect the great porch in 1490. The tower was finished before 1393, when Juan Franch was sent to study it before building the Miguelete at Valencia. It will be seen from the ground plan that the cloister is built on to the west end of the church, and that the great octagonal tower is set askew to 444 Cope of Moorish Silk, New Cathedral, Lerida. LERIDA the south-west angle of the former. In the west wall of the cloister, again, which is very lofty, is a huge doorway. Thus the church itself is obscured when one approaches it from the west. The cloister is on an enormous scale ; its bays vary in width, and the character of its detail shows that long intervals elapsed between the erection of its various parts. On the east side the arches are enriched with cable ornament, and the buttresses are carried on engaged columns with fine early capitals ; whilst the other buttresses are square in outline, and the capitals of the shafts are very richly carved with exquisite designs of ivy and other leaves, which show the closest observation of nature. The arches are walled up, their tracery gone, and the great western door had statues in its jambs and much fine fourteenth-century detail, all of which is now badly mutilated. Street says that this cloister, even in its present state, is the grandest he has ever seen ; an opinion which shows his love of the adventurous in architecture, and which would be considered barbarous by French authorities on Gothic. The doors leading into the church from the cloister are walled up, but a circular window in the west end of the nave is visible from the tower, from which a splendid view may be had of the whole building with its fine stone roofs. We must enter by one of the three side doors — one in each transept, and one in the south aisle. The 445 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS plan of the church is very similar to that of Tarragona Cathedral, though Lerida is shorter by two bays, and has preserved the clerestory of round-headed windows throughout, whilst at Tarragona those in the nave have been replaced by large pointed ones. The lantern here is also different from that at Tarragona; it is octagonal, but has traceried fourteenth -century windows. A floor has been thrown across the nave, half-way up the piers, which utterly destroys the aspect of the interior. The main arches are pointed, the vault- ing is quadripartite, and the bosses at the inter- section of the ribs are richly sculptured with scenes. The capitals are also of the best, and in the north aisle there are three very early Roman- esque reliefs let into the wall, though all this sculpture is obscured by a coat of whitewash that grows deeper year by year. The point in which Lerida is superior to Tarra- gona—for the differences in the interior are slight, and the main features : massive strength in the piers and arches and exquisite richness in the detail, are the same — is the possession of three side doors, of which the one in the north transept is the simplest. The door in the south transept has a richly carved round arch, on the right jamb of which is the date 1215, which shows that much of the building must have been finished not long after the end of the twelfth century, to which it belongs in point of style. The third door leads 446 TARREGA into the south aisle. It also has a carved and moulded round arch of most beautiful workman- ship, and engaged shafts in the jambs with capitals harmonising with the rest. It is enclosed in a late Gothic vaulted porch. All these three doors are surmounted by richly ornamented horizontal cor- belled cornices, and their detail shows that the men who made them had been reared in the tradi- tions of Lombard Romanesque. The view from the cathedral, or, better, from its tower, extends on one side to the snow-capped Pyrenees, and on the other far away over the Aragonese hills and the Llanos de Urgel, upland plains which will give the traveller who entered Spain by the Mediterranean coast a foretaste of Castile. In the town of Tarrega in these Llanos de Urgel is one of the best-preserved Romanesque houses in the country. Near by, the parish church of Bellpuig has the great Italian Renaissance tomb of Ramon de Cardona, Viceroy of Sicily, an over- loaded and overrated piece of work by Johannes Nolanus, of Naples. This tomb was once in a Franciscan convent founded by the Viceroy out- side the town, which contains a curious three- storied cloister ; the lowest story is of late Ara- gonese Gothic, the second fair Renaissance work, and the third of the severe classic style of the early seventeenth century. A two or three hours' drive along the road 447 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS which leads to this monastery will take one past several dismantled castles to Vallbona de las Monjas, a convent of Bernardine nuns ruled over by a mitred abbess. In Spain the name of " Ber- nardas " is given to nuns of the order of the Cister, so this convent is of the same rule as Santas Creus and Poblet, which lie across the hills to the south in the province of Tarragona. It is also of the same rule as the famous convent of Las Huelgas near Burgos, the royal nunnery of Castile, of which Vallbona is in some sort the Aragonese counterpart. Tradition says that Vallbona was founded in 1157 by a noble hermit, Raimundo de Anglesola y Vallbona, who lies buried before the high altar. In 1176 it was handed over to the order which still inhabits it. 1 Strict clausura is observed, and one can only see the interior of the church from one window and get an incomplete view of the cloister from another in the tower. However, its resemblance to the much better known Castilian convent makes all that can be seen of it very interesting. First let it be noted that the nuns were installed at Vallbona twenty-two years earlier than at Las Huelgas, so the former convent was probably built first. This fact is not as important as might be supposed, however, for both houses, like all those of their order, were built as the Cistercian authori- 1 Espana, Cataluna, Vol. 11^ p. 351 , note. 448 VALLBONA ties in France decreed, so it would be fruitless to try to show that Vallbona was imitated in the other. Nothing is known about the building of the convent. The church stands on the south side of the square of the village, which sprang up beside it as at Las Huelgas. Along the north wall are five early tombs, some of which bear coats-of-arms. The entrance is by a simple round-headed door in the north transept. Like Las Huelgas, again, there is no door in the west end. I could make out little of the church, except that it is cruciform in plan, with a single nave, transepts, three parallel apses, and a low octagonal lantern over the cross- ing. The arches in the east end are round, and those in the nave pointed. On each side of the high altar is a sepulchral urn, in which repose the ashes of Dona Violante, sister of St. Elisabeth of Hungary and wife of Don Jaime I el Con- quistador, and of her daughter. From the tower I could see the round arches of a cloister, of which the north side is said to have pointed arches and the usual Cistercian chapter-house opening out of it, as would also appear to be the case at Las Huelgas. This excursion to Vallbona takes one into a part of Catalonia where the stranger never penetrates and little Castilian is understood ; to a village, also, which shows almost as few signs of life as the cloistered nuns themselves, on whom no one ever 449 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS sets eyes after the day they enter the convent. One is kindly treated at the inn and may eat good Catalan food and drink ranci out of a porron to one's fill, but it might be rash to try spending the night there. In the upper part of the province of Lerida, at some distance from the railway, lies a monument of importance in the history of Catalan architec- ture ; — the Cathedral of the Seo de Urgel. This church was founded in the eleventh century, but was so insecurely built that it appears to have been on the point of falling down a few years later. In 1175 the contract, given by Villanueva (Vol. IX), was drawn up between the bishop and R. Lam- bardo, in which the latter agrees to complete and roof the church, and to put up towers and a cupola, employing four other Lambardos and as many masons. This architect, whom we must content ourselves with calling R., as Lambardo must refer to his nation and profession (for by this time Lombard and builder were synonymous), probably gave the church the form it retained down to the eighteenth century, when it was entirely disfigured as far as the interior is concerned, The ground plan is of nave and aisles of four bays to the crossing, transepts with two semi- circular apsidal chapels contained in the thickness of the eastern wall of each, and a central semi- circular apse. Over the crossing is a low cupola. The exterior has also been much tampered 45° SEO DE URGEL with ; but it preserves the west front with its two solid flanking towers and three round-arched doors, the whole obviously built for defence, as also the ends of the transepts. In the apse there is a round-arched gallery. To the south is the clois- ter, of about the same date as the church, with round arches and sculptured capitals, in the south- east angle of which stands the little three-apsed church of San Pedro. The outer walls of San Pedro are ornamented with typical Lombard arcades. The character of the whole monument is that of a fortress-church such as the troubled state of the country demanded, which explains some varia- tions from the North Italian type. La Seo de Urgel has had a stormy history ; only a little over thirty years ago, in the last Carlist War, the old cathedral did service once more. 451 XIX THE KINGDOM OF VALENCIA The old province of Valencia, once a Moorish kingdom, comprises the modern provinces of Valencia, Alicante, and Castellon. It thus occu- pies a long strip of the coast from the southern limit of Catalonia down to Murcia. Inland its territory is bounded by the wild mountains of Aragon and the desolate uplands of La Mancha, the land of Don Quixote. The Huerta, the plain surrounding the capital and stretching for some distance north and south, is one of the most fertile in Spain. It is irrigated by a very perfect system inherited from the Moors. In antiquity Greeks, Romans, and Phoenicians inhabited various parts of the province. Sculp- ture, coins, and pottery are discovered, and the walled town of Sagunto with its theatre still exists, which, once the greatest Greek colony in Spain, was taken and destroyed by Hannibal. At Elche important archaeological discoveries have been made — mosaics and coins of different periods, and, above all, sculpture of the curious school known as Graeco-Phcenician, of which there are a number of fair examples in the 452 THE KINGDOM OF VALENCIA museum at Madrid, but which, like Visi- gothic jewellery and Hispano-Moresque pottery, is far better represented in Paris. It is typical of the fate of Spanish works of art that the most beautiful piece of sculpture ever discovered on Spanish soil, the Lady of Elche, should have been bought by a Frenchman and given to the Louvre. Of Visigothic times the recently discovered mosaic of a church at Elche alone remains. The Moors found in Valencia a paradise, a land after their own heart. Its plains they turned into one of the fairest gardens upon earth, and the city became a rich centre of commerce. The fact that the Cid took such pains to conquer it shows that it must have offered matchless opportunities for looting. Quando myo Cid gano a Valencia y entro en la cibdad Los que fueron de pie caualleros se fazen El ore- y la plata quien vos lo podrie contar ? Todos eran ricos quantos que alii ha. Myo Cid don Rodrigo la quinta mando tomar, Enel auer monedado XXX mil marcos le caen, Elos otros aueres quien los podrie contar? 1 says the old Poema del Cid. The loot was probably all the Cid cared for ; little was done in the way of 1 When my Cid won Valencia and entered the city Those who went on foot made themselves knights. The gold and the silver, who could recount it to you ? As many as were there became rich. My Cid Don Rodrigo gave orders to share the spoil, In which thirty thousand marks of money fell to him, And the other possessions who could count them ? 2 F 453 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS making the conquest sure by importing Christian settlers, and soon after the hero's death the Moors retook Valencia to hold it for another century and a half, until Don Jaime el Conquis- tador subdued it in 1238, and united it by a personal link to the crown of Aragon. Don Jaime was a statesman not a brigand, and he at once set about the business of turning V alencia into a Christian state. If the Cid's con- quest had been maintained, and if colonists had been brought from Castile, Valencia would have become a new home for the Castilian race. As it was, Don Jaime peopled it chiefly with Catalans, over whom he set Aragonese nobles, so that the speech of Valencia is corrupt Catalan to this day. The corbels under the cornice of the Puerta del Palau of the cathedral are carved into the heads of seven couples, who are said to have come from Lerida at the front of the settlers. The cathedral, before its reformation in the eighteenth century, was an imitation of that of Lerida ; the Miguelete was designed by Juan Franch, who was sent to study one at Lerida for the purpose. The narrow streets of the town, with their huge round arches leading into dark courtyards, are like those of the old quarters of Barcelona. In short Valencia, by its traditions, speech and customs, is Catalan not Castilian or Aragonese ; the very kings of Aragon who made it their residence were of the House of Barcelona. The never-dying hostility between 454 THE KINGDOM OF VALENCIA the Catalan popular element and the Aragonese nobles gave rise to the disorders which caused the civil ruin of the kingdom at the close of the Middle Ages. That the Catalan element was by far the stronger is shown by the fact that it is now predominant. True to the spirit of the age, the conquerors did not attempt to incorporate Valencia with Aragon or Catalonia. A few years after the conquest a code of laws called the Furs Antichs, modelled upon those of Aragon, were drawn up for the kingdom by Vidal de Canelles, Bishop of Huesca. In this code an attempt seems to have been made to simplify the archaic Aragonese w; but this was frustrated by the ricoshombres, the aristocracy, who were mistrustful of innovations, and suc- ceeded in getting the old laws with all their anom- alies. So dangerous did the power of the nobles become in the succeeding century that Pedro IV, that very sagacious statesman and lawyer, de- liberately strengthened popular representation as a barrier against the feudal class. Pedro IV left his V^alencian kingdom in such good order that his son, Juan I, was able to neglect the business of state, and devote his time to organ- ising courts of love with his Burgundian queen, while the kingdom was given over to feuds be- tween the great noble houses. Don Martin el Humano was too gentle, and his reign too short, to stem the tide ; his death left the Aragonese 455 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS kingdoms without an heir, and Valencia a prey to bloodshed and riotous living. The election to the throne of the Castilian Fernando, at Caspe, and San Vicente Ferrer's thundering denunciations of licentiousness opened the fifteenth century, the greatest and most pros- perous in Valencian history. Alfonso V, the con- queror of Naples, often lived there, and the rela- tions between the capital and Italy, which had long existed by virtue of commerce, became so close that the Valencian nobles lived more at Rome or Naples than at home. Their Italian manners and sympathies widened the breach between them and the Catalan plebeians. In the meantime these same plebeians were, like their brothers at Barcelona, increasing in prosperity and power. They had their representation in Parliament, and their gremios or guilds were the predominant element in the municipality. The Catalan plebeians, however, were for the most part townsmen. The country was inhabited by a third element, the presence of which consti- tuted what is now known as a racial problem, not unlike that to which the negroes have given rise in the southern States of America. The violent and disastrous solution by which this problem was met has generally been laid at the door of the Church ; it is more reasonable to regard it as the result of racial incompatibility of temper, which seized on orthodoxy as the best excuse. 45 6 THE KINGDOM OF VALENCIA At the time of the Reconquest a Moorish agri- cultural population had been left to cultivate the Huerta, work to which it was far better adapted than the Christians. Its civil position was that of vassals of the landed nobility. Thus we have the three elements : nobles, Christian plebeians, and African farmers and artisans, the utter absence of cohesion between which was the cause of the ruin into which Valencia fell in the days of the Haps- burgs. Yet another element was the Jewish. After the Reconquest, as before, Jews had been permitted to live unmolested in Valencia. They grew in wealth and social importance, and those who went over to Christianity allied themselves with great Christian houses to such an extent that the orthodoxy of the Aragonese nobility became suspect. This was still another cause of social discord ; the plebeians considered themselves to be of far purer Christian blood than the nobility, which they hated and despised in consequence. The character of the Valencian nobility is well illustrated by the history of the most famous house belonging to it, that of Rorja, sprung from the Navarro-Aragonese Prince Don Pedro de Atares, who founded the abbey of Veruela in the twelfth century. Don Alfonso, one of Don Pedro's grandsons, went to the taking of Valencia with Don Jaime el Conquistador, and, having adopted the name of Borja — a town near Veruela — established himself on the estates given him by 457 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Don Jaime in the newly conquered kingdom. In the fifteenth century the house of Borja rose to be one of the greatest in Christendom. From 1429 to 1511 it gave bishops to the see of Valencia, two of whom became popes as Calix- tus III and Alexander VI. Among the Dukes of Gandia, the title held by the head of the family, was San Francisco de Borja, third General of the Company of Jesus. The Borja bishops and archbishops — Valencia was raised to the archi- episcopal dignity in 1492 by Rodrigo de Borja, Alexander VI — with the single exception of the first of them, resided at Rome, where they were great patrons of art. Italian, naturally, were the works of art which they sent home to adorn their cathedral and the collegiate church of Jativa. The great Leonardesque doors of the high altar Valencia owes to Alexander VI, the Virgin of Francisco de Borja by Pinturicchio in the museum came from Jativa, and even the stern Calixtus III, who made himself loathed at Rome by cutting expenses on works of art and devoting all his resources to fighting the Turks, sent the exquisite chalice which still exists in San Nicolas and the magnificent chasuble preserved in the cathedral, which he is said to have worn during the ceremony of canonisation of the Valencian San Vicente Ferrer. The nobles naturally imitated the Borjas as narrowly as they could ; the cheapest and 45* THE KINGDOM OF VALENCIA pleasantest way was to ape Italian manners and vices, and forget their duties at home. The Borjas did not spend their time in Italy for nothing ; they introduced the Italian Renaissance into Valencia, and there was a certain grandeur about everything they did. But the denationalisa- tion of the nobility was an unmixed curse, the cause of endless disaster. This much for the nobles. The condition of the plebeians during this period is of the greatest interest, for it throws light on the surroundings in which were produced the great works of fine and industrial art which engage our attention in Spain, and also upon the causes of the final ruin. The artisans of Valencia had, from the thirteenth century on, organised themselves into guilds, or rather trades unions, which were more complete and effective than any others in Spain save those of Barcelona. The functions of these guilds, originally merely religious and charitable, were gradually extended in such a way as to regulate the life of the workman from the time he en- tered the trade as an apprentice until his death. They gave him his training, upheld credit and prevented fraud, secured privileges and special jurisdiction, created relief funds for the poor and ailing, provided him with money to marry, and buried him when he died. Also, needless to say, they took the greatest precautions to safe- guard the secrets of the trade, only teaching a 459 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS part of it to each workman in many cases, so that no single renegade could give it away. Daily wages were regulated by the city coun- cils according to the price of food — in theory ; but as the guilds themselves had great influence in these councils, the pay was usually far higher than what is known as a living wage. Sr. Perez Villamil concludes, from careful calculation upon wages recorded in the archives of the cathedral at Sigiienza, that the condition of workmen in 1500 was far better than at the present day. Sr. Blasco Tramoyeres, in his study of the Valencian guilds, states that the workmen employed on the Puerta de Serranos in the fourteenth century received as a daily wage the equivalent in Spanish money of to-day of 21, 14, 12, or 5 pesetas according to their category — using the price of food as a basis of comparison. It is obviously easy to put too much trust in calculations which the smallest oversight may render valueless, but the results of much in- dependent research place it beyond doubt that these guilds in the fourteenth and fifteenth centu- ries succeeded in establishing a sort of trades aristocracy which enjoyed great wealth and con- sideration. Provisions existed for the admission of members of the guilds of other cities by means of an examination or upon the presentation of a cer- tificate from their own guild. But there is no proof whatever of the existence in Spain of wide- spread associations known as Free Masonry, and 460 THE KINGDOM OF VALENCIA which in France, Germany, and England aimed at the monopoly of everything connected with building. In Spain, as Sr. Lamperez says, the sub-division of territory and the Moorish element would have made such organisation next to im- possible. Before the fifteenth century the guilds included Christians, Moslems, and Jews ; later, no one was admitted who could not prove his family to be " clean of blood and pure Christian " for four gen- erations. This insisting upon orthodoxy at a time when the nobility was absorbing much Jewish blood shows a fundamental difference of temper. The Jews and, still more, the Moors had furnished many skilled artisans to the guilds ; certain crafts, such as silk-spinning and the manufacture of His- pano-Moresque pottery, were practically monopo- lies in their hands. The Moors guarded the secret of this pottery so well that to this day it is not certain how they made it. Even for the Christian entry into the guilds was not easy. To be received apprentice he had to pay a fee, and in some cases to pass an examination which probably meant more fees, an operation which was repeated when he wished to rise to the higher stages of journeyman and master. As the guilds grew in power the fees became so extortionate that they furnished a good excuse for the suppression of all the technical functions of the guilds, which was gradually brought about under Charles V and Philip II. By the 461 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS end of the sixteenth century these associations found themselves where they had been in the thirteenth, shorn of everything but their re- ligious character. In this form they have existed down to the present day in Valencia and Bar- celona. In the year 1520, then, the allied guilds of Valen- cia, in full possession of their rights and privileges, had succeeded in obtaining from Charles V the right of arming a force to withstand a dreaded Moorish invasion. The invasion did not take place, but the guilds, well armed and flown with insolence, improved the opportunity offered by a squabble over a constitutional point to fall upon the loathed nobles and massacre them without distinction of age or sex. Luckily for the Jews they had been expelled from Valencia and the rest of Spain in 1492. This Valencian Jaquerie is known in history as La Germama Valenciana, from the fact that the prime movers were the allied guilds, gremios agermanados. In point of time it coincides with the rising of the Comuneros of Castile, but the two movements differ in character. The Germama was purely and simply a popular revolt against the nobles and rather sought the aid of the royal power than otherwise, at least until royal troops were sent to quell it. The royal troops had their hands full, however ; V alencia and most of the towns were in the hands of revolutionary committees in which the lower 462 THE KINGDOM OF VALENCIA clergy figured largely, and which hung all mem- bers of the nobility at sight, and tortured as many Moors as they could catch. Those of the nobles who escaped armed the vassals on their estates, and finally, after much bloodshed, the revolt was put down. The vassals who had been the instruments of its suppression were for the most part Moors, those Moors who were already so detested by the Christian plebeians that they had been excluded from the guilds. The Germania was crushed, but it made the Moors pay for it. The townsmen turned upon the wretched Moslems like rabid dogs worrying the sticks with which they had been beaten. In 1525 the Moors had to choose between baptism, exportation, and the knife ; and, when once happily converted, were usually slaughtered as renegades. The tougher ones took to the hills and worried outlying communities. This name- less condition of things dragged on for years, until 1609 in fact, when Archbishop Ribera got Philip III to sign the decree of expulsion of all the Moriscos, as they were termed after the decree of compulsory baptism, except for six families in every village of more than a hundred houses, who were kept to preserve Moorish agricultural methods. Philip III, his Minister Lerma, and the Arch- bishop Ribera have had to share the fierce hatred of posterity for their treatment of the Moriscos. King, State, and Church have been called to 463 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS account. But what the historians would have had Archbishop Ribera do it is difficult to see. The actual point upon which the Morisco expulsion was decreed, an accusation of treacherous inter- course with the enemies of Spain, was no more the cause of the matter than the sinking of the Maine was the cause of the Spanish- American War of 1898. The roots lay far deeper, in the hatred of the Christian working population for the Moorish. The Christians simply would not have it. They began by trying to keep the Moors out of all the trades by excluding them from the guilds, and the first serious persecutions were the work of the Germama, in which the people held sway aided and abetted by base-born members of the lower clergy, who had the same popular instincts. Again, the Moriscos were a profitable source of revenue, for they supported heavy taxation ; they were also far more valuable as vassals to the nobles than the Christian peasantry. It is not reasonable to suppose that the nobles could have desired the extinction of a people which was one of their greatest sources of wealth, and which had once before saved them from their bloodthirsty brothers- in-the-faith. It is true that Archbishop Ribera appears to have been a bigot ; but even in that he merely recognised and bowed to the inflexible and deep-rooted popular spirit which, a century before, had yelped and strained at the leash to get at the throats of the Moors, when Isabella the 464 THE KINGDOM OF VALENCIA Catholic had done all she could to hold it in check. The history of the relations between Moor and Christian being what it was, it is doubtful whether Philip III, Lerma and Bibera could have acted more wisely than they did. Any attempt on the part of the educated, many of whom lamented the fate of the Moriscos, to persuade the Cristianos Viejos of Valencia to live at peace side by side with infidel dogs would have been met by suspicions of their orthodoxy. It is no light matter to teach hostile races to love one another. Even in these enlightened days South Africans and Australians refuse to walk the same earth with Indians. Per- haps the Liberal historians of a later age will anathematise the Imperial Government for its bigotry, and cry shame upon the leaders of the Republican Party in the United States for lynch- ing and the institution of Jim Crow cars. The discovery of America, and Spanish policy in the latter sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, coupled with the social disturbances referred to above, ruined Valencian trade and industry. Painting and architecture continued to flourish there as nowhere else in Spain in the bad times of the later Hapsburgs, thanks partly to Arch- bishop Ribera and other great Churchmen, partly to the tradition which had taken deep root in the century of the Borjas. Even in the eighteenth the Academy of San Carlos preserved the flame. But the ancient civic life of Valencia 465 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS had vanished. Its liberties were suppressed by Philip V, who earned the name of tyrant by killing something which had shown no sign of life for well over half a century; for the last Valencian Cortes met in 1645. The industrial arts which had flourished exceedingly in the Middle Ages died, partly of the evil odour that clung to anything which had been associated with the Moors, and partly of the sumptuary edicts against luxury, which ruined the silk industry. Throughout the nineteenth century the Valen- cians have sustained their reputation for blood- thirstiness. In 1808 they massacred all the peaceful French residents of the city in cold blood. In the Carlist wars and during the Republic they performed miracles of valour. Quite recently, in 1904, Sr. Maura appointed Sr. Nozaleda to the see. Sr. Nozaleda had been Archbishop of Manila, and, during the war, had been guilty of administering the Sacrament to American sailors. The Valencians declared that, if Sr. Nozaleda came to take possession, he would have to wade knee-deep in blood ; and Sr. Maura, whose judg- ment in these matters is to be trusted, thought it more prudent to appoint someone else. There is already a pretty nucleus of Socialists at Valencia ; political meetings are usually full of regrettable incidents. Of late years the Valencians have asserted themselves in literature and in art. They have dragged out their primitives, have glorified 4 66 THE KINGDOM OF VALENCIA Ribalta and Ribera, and have produced Sr. Sorolla. In letters they proudly point to Sr. Blasco Ibanez, "el Zola espanol." Though of the same blood and speech as the Catalans, there seems to be no tendency in the Valencians to make common cause with them either for war or for peace, either in politics — though there was a moment in which they were enthusiastic Solidarios — or yet in the question of language. The Valen- cians would rather abandon their language alto- gether than admit that it is Catalan and speak it accordingly. The province, which offers many possibilities to the excavator of antique remains, contains hardly any Moorish monuments and no Christian art earlier than the thirteenth century ; little enough of Gothic even. But the capital, which holds the best of the province, is full of architecture, paint- ing, and works of art of the fifteenth and follow- ing centuries, many of which show how great a debt Valencia, and through it all Spain, owed to the Borjas for the introduction of the Italian Renaissance. Valencia has a character of its own in this respect. Its artistic history did not, like Barcelona's, come to an end with that of Aragon as a separate kingdom. Neither did it fall a prey to a rage for display in architecture, like Castile. Even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Valencian Baroque stands alone and distinct from contemporary Spanish styles by reason of a 467 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS certain elegance and lightness of line which no partiality for the gloomy overladen splendour of Castilian pseudo - classic can read into that style. THE CITY OF VALENCIA First and foremost among Valencian monu- ments is the cathedral, with its famous bell-tower, the Miguelete (Valencian Micalet), so called be- cause it was completed on the day of St. Michael. It stands to the north of the centre of the town, between the market and the broad bed of the exhausted Turia. On the same site are said to have stood a temple to Diana, and a Visigothic cathedral. Here also was the mosque which the Cid, and later Don Jaime, dedicated to Our Lady. The first stone of the present build- ing was laid in 1262 by Andres, third bishop. In the reign of Pedro IV, a century later, the great chapter-house was built under Bishop Vidal de Blanes, whose successor, Don Jaime de Aragon, built the Miguelete. Early in the fifteenth the lantern over the crossing was finished, and in the latter part of the same century the nave seems to have been prolonged to meet the Miguelete, after which the cathedral, as far as architecture is con- cerned, was left alone for two hundred years. In 1674 Archbishop Luis Alfonso de los Carneros began embellishing the interior, and during the 468 PUERTA DEL PALAU, VALENCIA CATHEDRAL. THE CITY OF VALENCIA eighteenth century the west front was built, and a general reformation was undertaken, from which the building, as it now stands, emerged. The history of the city is the history of the cathedral ; every change and chance that has be- fallen the one has been recorded in the other. Of the thirteenth-century church little enough re- mains. The Puerta del Palau and the exterior of the apse are all that meets the eye. However, the ground plan of nave and aisles of four bays, transepts, choir of one bay, and three-sided apse, is still the same. The character of the work of the apse and the south transept door closely resembles that of Lerida Cathedral ; indeed, this door was formerly called Puerta de Lerida. To- day the old Catalan church is overgrown and obscured by later addition, but lives on in the stones of its walls, and even shows its head in the apse and the old doorway, just as the old Catalan stock is still the backbone of the Valencian people. Of the history of the north transept front little is known. The great middle pointed doorway de los Aposteles, with saints under canopies in the jambs, is like the one of the same name in the cloister at Lerida, and the richly traceried circu- lar window above it is one of the finest in Spain. Everything points to the fourteenth cen- tury as the period of this front. The octagonal cimborio of two stages, which was begun early in the fifteenth, harmonises admirably with the rest. 2 G 469 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS This cimborio is a true lantern ; nothing but crocketed pinnacles is placed between the six- light windows, which would give far too much light if they had not been filled with thin alabaster slabs. The old chapter-house is reached by a door opening out of the south-west corner of the nave. It is a grand middle pointed square hall, made octagonal in its vault by arches thrown across the angles in the manner which is to be seen in many Spanish buildings — Burgos and Pamplona, for in- stance — and which is one of the very few possibly Spanish developments in Gothic architecture. It is lighted by a window high up in each wall ; in outline these are formed by three intersecting segments of a circle, and they are filled with geometrical tracery. On the south side is the old trascoro, which was brought here from the coro in the cathedral itself. It is of late Gothic design, with crocketed gables and pinnacles and a richly moulded door of two orders, in which is a fine Christ by Alonso Cano. The twelve square spaces, which must once have held the exquisite Italian reliefs now in the new trascoro, have been filled up with odds and ends of poor Flemish primitive panels. Round the room hangs a mighty chain which is said to have been taken from the harbour of Marseilles. In the adjoining sacristy are kept two great embroidered altar - frontals, fine in design, colour, and execution. Wherever they 47° THE CITY OF VALENCIA may have been made, there can be little doubt that the design is Flemish of the early fifteenth century. In the way of vestments, however, everything pales before the magnificent red velvet and gold chasuble of Calixtus III. Next we have the Miguelete, the bell-tower, of which the first stone was laid in 1381. In 1393, according to a document in Catalan from the lib?~o de fahrica given by Pahoner in his Recopilacion, Juan Franch and Bartolome Ferrer went "to Lleyda (Lerida) by order of the honourable chapter to study the features of the bell-tower of the Seu and to take the measurements of the same and of the cloister and of other works of the same necessary for the Seu of Valencia, and they should be twenty days about it." In 1414, after the work had presumably been in progress for thirty-three years, doubts seem to have assailed the builders, for they sent Pedro Balaguer to make another journey to Lerida and other places to study existing towers. After this the work went on quickly, for the model at Lerida was closely followed. The Miguelete, like its proto- type, is set askew to the main building, is oc- tagonal, and ends in a stage each face of which has a window with a crocketed gable. It is no servile copy of the other tower, but the resem- blance is obvious. The idea of its builders seems to have been to outshine the older belfry by raising theirs to 350 feet, or over twice its actual 471 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS height. Besides Juan Franch and Pedro Balaguer, Martin Llobet was also employed upon it. From the Miguelete one sees Valencia with its coloured tiled cupolas, the mountains, and the lagoon of Albufera in the distance. A good view of the fourteenth and fifteenth century portions of the cathedral may be had from the mouth of the Calle de Navellos. The stone is of a pleasing grey tone, and the warm damp air fills the nooks with moss, grasses, flowers, and even robust trees much faster than the Valencians are able to pull them up. The embellishment of the interior is best de- scribed in the words of a contemporary, Orellana, who viewed it with a kindly eye, and whose words throw light upon the reasons which often led to similar proceedings at the time. "As the stone showed everywhere," says he, "the place looked like a mosque ; so it was whitened with alabaster, severely ornamented with gold bands ; the bases of the piers were covered with brilliant marbles ; the choir was moved down one bay ; all the chapels and altars were symmetrically adorned with exquisite marbles and jaspers of this kingdom, whose skilful arrangement and variety of natural colour disarms the most critical." This is how Antonio Gelabert's work struck a contemporary. Street says : 6 6 The cathedral, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, is a church of only moderate interest, the interior having been overlaid everywhere with columns, 472 THE CITY OF VALENCIA pilasters, and cornices of plaster " ; and Ford : " This edifice, one of the least remarkable of Spanish cathedrals, has been vilely modernised inside and outside." The great western doorway was the work of a German, Corrado Rodolfo, who may have learned his trade at Dresden. It is rather like the back of a Louis XIV bergere in shape, and has been roundly abused by everyone from Pons downward. Ford calls it abomin- able. The colour of the stone is pleasing, how- ever ; pleasing also it is to note, in the upper part, medallions of Popes Calixtus III and Alexander VI, supported by allegorical figures of Justice, Charity, Fame, and Glory. The interior, though it is certainly too long for its height by reason of the prolongation of the nave, is sober and elegant, in strong contrast with Castilian interiors of the period. In the trascoro, in a Corinthian arrangement which suits them much better than the florid Gothic frame pre- served in the old chapter - house, are twelve beautifully carved alabaster reliefs, manifestly Italian, which came to Valencia in 1466 under a Borja bishop, and were thus among the earliest products of the Italian Renaissance to land on Spanish soil. The upper row is a series of Old, and the lower of New Testament subjects. The round-arched arcades, the studied anatomy, and the classical dignity of the compositions are very far from the tortured painted and gilt Germanic 473 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS carvings which were fashionable in Castile for another seventy-five years. The choir stalls of 1604 are simple and severe. The high altar is an over-gilt modern Gothic product of Barcelona. The doors, however, be- longed to the old silver altar which disappeared during the War of Independence, and are most interesting. They are painted, inside and out, with twelve large scenes of the Joys and Acts of Our Lady in a pronounced Leonardesque style, and have until lately been supposed to be the work of two Italians, Francisco Neapoli and Pablo de Aregio. The researches of the learned archivist of this cathedral, Sr. Chavas, have shown that Francisco Neapoli and Pablo de Aregio were employed on frescoes in the choir in 1471 and, further, have unearthed the contract for these paintings, which was drawn up in 1507 between the chapter and Maestros Ferrando de Llanos and Ferrando del Almedina. Ferrando del Alme- dina is Hernand Yanez, author of paintings in a similar style at Cuenca. Both of these Man- chegans are steeped in Leonardo, but it is not known whether they had actually been his pupils. Of the two the more vigorous is Ferrando del Almedina (Yanez) ; his share of the work, the " Meeting at the Golden Gate," the " Presentation of the Virgin," the " Visitation," the " Adoration," the " Presentation of Our Lord," and the " Death of Our Lady," has more independence and solidity. 474 Paintings in the High Altar, Valencia Cathedral. By Ferrando de los Llanos, and Ferra7ido del Ahnedina. THE CITY OF VALENCIA The other scenes are by sweet Ferrando de Llanos, who seems to have been all dissolved away in Leonardo. These important paintings swell the debt Valencia owes to the Borjas. Behind the high altar is the tiny Capilla del Trasagrario with its Italian fittings of bronze and alabaster — more Italian Renaissance work — endowed by Calixtus III, who died in 1458. Most of the paintings which were formerly scattered through the chapels, several indifferent works by Juan de Juanes (Vicente Macip), 44 the Spanish Raphael," a poor Ribera, and the usual collection of absurd attributions, are all gathered away in the new chapter-house. In the chapel of San Francisco de Borja is a big picture by Maella of the saint looking upon the corpse of Isabel of Portugal, the beautiful wife of Charles V, with whom he is said to have been in love— before he left the world. When Dona Isabel died San Francisco, then Marques de Lombay, was com- manded to accompany the body on its long journey from Toledo to its last resting-place at Granada. On the side walls hang two large paintings of scenes from the life of the saint, for which Goya was paid thirty thousand reales by the house of Osuna in 1792. They are sombre in colour and are full of Goya's own sense of the monstrous, which is seldom lacking in his religious subjects. The offices are celebrated in this church with 475 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS splendour. The music is very bad, and at the elevation of the Host a loud clangorous wheel of bells is used, which makes a noise like the hammers of the Niebelungen in the Rheingold. In the little square on to which opens the Puerta de los Aposteles is the church of Nuestra Senora de los Desamparados. The dark interior is always crowded by women swathed in black who come to seek the intercession of the Valencian Virgin, whose image is almost as much venerated here as the Pilarica at Zaragoza. After the cathedral, the only church which has any trace of the first Christian times is that of the Templars, which may have been built even earlier than the Puerta del Palau and is in the same style. The other churches, with the one exception of the late Gothic cloister and chapter-house of Santo Domingo, are all of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Chief among these is the Colegio del Patriarca, a foundation of Arch- bishop Ribera, which is a very beautiful example of Herrera's architecture. like the shrine of Nuestra Senora de los Desamparardos, the interior is very dark ; the small windows are usually so heavily curtained that it is difficult to see the fine Ribaltas in the altars. In the high altar is kept a sixteenth-century crucifix of good workmanship which plays a part in the very dramatic services performed here. These Valencian church services are among the most curious in Spain ; the con- 476 THE CITY OF VALENCIA gregation is almost entirely composed of women in deep black, who kneel or sit upon the floor, and all the ritual arrangements are very rich. The music is pretentious, usually very bad, and of that emotional character which the present Pope seems anxious to banish by a return to uncorrupted plain chant. The cloister of the Colegio del Pat- riarca, in a noble classic style, is rich in marbles which are taking on that most beautiful soft tone which exposure gives to stone much faster in mild Valencia than in most parts of Spain. The church de los Santos Juanes in the market, the tower of Santa Catalina between it and the cathedral, and San Nicolas are good examples of the later Valencian architecture, before it fell into the abyss of Rococo of the eighteenth-century Dos Aguas palace, beside which even modern Barcelonese houses look dignified. They are not admired to-day ; but the time will probably come when people will recognise the grace of the tower of Santa Catalina. These and several other churches are full of good marbles and in- different paintings. Over the door of San Martin is a magnificent life-sized bronze group, dated 1495, of San Martin and the beggar, and in the sacristy — unless it has been sold very recently — a life-sized, full-length portrait of a bishop by Goya, of which one exposed as his work at Zara- goza in 1908 is certainly a copy. Over the door of the convent of La Trinidad is a della Robbia of 477 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS the Virgin, which, like the San Martin bronze and the bulk of the finest work in Valencia, came to the city in the spacious days of the Borjas. Most of the paintings which once adorned the parish churches have been gathered together in the Academy of San Carlos, in the northern corner of the town, which now contains a fairly repre- sentative collection of the local school. In the hospital there is a series of paintings by some Valencian of the early sixteenth century, which represents this edifying miracle of St. Andrew. 1 A bishop one day received the visit of a young lady who said that she had come to implore his protection from her father, who wished her to marry. The bishop immediately invited her to dinner. While they were at table St. Andrew, to whom the bishop had always been devoted, knocked at the door in the guise of a pilgrim. The lady urged the bishop not to admit him ; but St. Andrew insisted, and bade the servant tell the bishop to ask the lady three questions, whereupon she sprouted bats' wings and vanished, leaving a strong smell of brimstone. The bulk of the museum collection is quite un- interesting, except perhaps to Valencians ; but, as so often in Spanish provincial museums, there are a few pieces of importance which have escaped notice. First, there is a head of himself by Velazquez, dark and very badly hung. It is accepted without 1 This story is told in the Ingoldsby Legends, with additions. 478 THE CITY OF VALENCIA reserve as genuine by Sr. Beruete, and is thus one of the three portraits of the painter which have come down to us, the others being the head in Rome and the figure standing at the easel in Las Meninas. The Academy of San Carlos is a contemporary of that of San Fernando in Madrid, and can boast of having early recognised the greatest Spanish painter of modern times. A framed letter in Goya's hand hangs on its walls, in which that painter thanks the President, Don Mariano Ferrer, for the honour of election, which he received in 1790. Beside it are two drawings which Goya did in the life-class here in 1789, and four admirable portraits. The first, dated 1789, is that of the same Don Mariano Ferrer, a sanguine person with a red face and a yellow waistcoat, painted with hard pre- cision on a black ground. Next, a beautiful por- trait, dated 1786, of Goya's brother-in-law Bayeu, who stands palette in hand before a canvas. The black coat with lace about the sleeves and the livid flesh of the face are given exquisite value on the grey ground. Third comes a full-length portrait of a pretty fair-haired woman, Dona Joaquina Candado, 1790. Dona Joaquina, in black mantilla and skirt and white blouse, sits on a beautifully painted log, holding a fan in a yellow-gloved hand. At her feet lies a woolly dog. The ground is grey. The fourth, painted in 1815, is a bust of Don Rafael E steve. This Esteve, who sits at a table with an 479 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS etching tool in his hand, was a painter and engraver. He has a pinched, cunning face, as well he may ; for he painted a great many pictures which have since been sold as Goyas, and may have been employed by the master to finish royal commands and other work which did not amuse him. With the two religious subjects in the cathe- dral, the bishop at San Martin, and several fine portraits in private hands, this makes a good collection of Goyas, the having and holding of which is most creditable to Valencia. Except Madrid, no other city in Spain, not even his native Zaragoza, can show so much. After the Velazquez and Goyas, by far the most interesting picture in the gallery is that labelled as " La Virgen de Rod- rigo de Borja," by Pinturicchio, which represents the Virgin with her arm round her Son, who stands upon a stool blessing the kneeling donor. Pro- fessor Justi will have it that this donor is not Rodrigo de Borja (Alexander VI), but Don Francisco, another cardinal of the same family. The Valencian primitives, which were known when the more interesting Catalans had never been heard of, are fairly well represented. Like the Catalans, they are divided between Italy and the Low Countries, and the Italian influence predomi- nates. One of the earliest is a retablo of the history of the True Cross by Pedro Nicolau (1400-9), the painting of which is so inferior to the design that it is probably a copy of some middle Italian work. 480 THE CITY OF VALENCIA The Flemish influence is seen in a large carved, painted and gilt retablo of 1502 ; the scenes by Nicolas Falco and the carving by Damian Forment, the author of the famous retablos at Zaragoza and Huesca. Of all the Valencian pictures here exposed the most interesting are the three large unlabelled and uncatalogued panels of San Martin and two other saints on a gold ground, which show a certain independence of foreign models without being bad as paintings, the usual wages of originality with Spanish primitives. Of the Valencian school of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there are many poor works by Juan de Juanes (1505-79), that belated run- to-seed primitive of small gifts. Here he is represented by heads of Christ on gold grounds, an Ecce Homo, studies for larger pictures, but neither here nor elsewhere is there anything of the quality of the fine man's portrait at the Prado, which, if indeed it is his work, shows a side of his talent which it is a pity he did not cultivate. The first good painter of this school was Francisco de Ribalta, who died in 1628 at an advanced age. He was firmly grounded in Italian traditions, and he himself had a painters eye and a love of true light. His pictures are less dramatically but more truthfully lighted than those of his pupil Ribera. His best work is in the Colegio del Patriarca ; but the descent from the cross is a fine painting and well enough hung. Ribera, Lo Spagnoletto, the 481 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS best-known Valencian painter, is poorly represented in this collection. Most of his best work was done at Naples, where he lived like a prince in the days of the great Spanish Viceroy, Monterrey, until his daughter, whose fair face is to be seen in many of his pictures, had the misfortune to be seduced by the ruffianly royal bastard Don Juan de Austria. The disgrace brought Ribera to his grave* The fine collection of his work in the Prado is due to Velazquez's admiration for him. The two met at Naples in 1631, and Velazquez advised Philip IV to buy large numbers of Ribera's pictures for the palaces of Madrid and the Escurial. Instead of a few good Riberas, we have in this museum numberless muddy daubs by an individual called Espinosa. If the best of Valencian painting is to be looked for in other places, the industrial arts which made the city famous in the days of its prosperity fare even worse. Until the expulsion of the Moriscos Valencia was widely known for its textiles and its pottery. This museum contains nothing of either art ; but something must be said about them, and no better opportunity is likely to present itself. The textiles of Valencia were similar, and for the most part inferior, to Oriental and Italian pro- ducts of the same period ; but the pottery known as Hispano-Moresque is a well-defined and inde- pendent art of great importance in the history of 482 THE CITY OF VALENCIA ceramics. 1 Constant relations between Moslem Spain and the East must have brought the mag- nificent thirteenth - century reflet - metallique of linages and Sultanabad which are imitated in the Spanish fourteenth-century reflet-metallique, most of which has perished, but which is well known through the Alhambra vase at Granada. When it was that the first Spanish lustre ware was made is a vexed question. We have it on the word of the twelfth -century traveller Edrisi that he saw gilt pottery being made at Calatayud, and in the following century Don Jaime el Conquistador gave a charter to the potters of Jativa. It is unlikely, however, that any lustre ware was pro- duced in Spain before the fourteenth, when con- temporary writers show that it was made in, and exported from, Valencia and Malaga. It is doubt- ful whether the four pieces classed as fourteenth- century Malaga ware at the Musee de Cluny were really made at that town. However, they form a class apart and may as well be known by that name as by any other. In the fifteenth century the manufacture be- came very important at Valencia. The workshops at Mislata, Biar, Career, Gesarte, and Paterno turned out the magnificent great plates of gold and blue on a white ground of which contem- poraries speak with enthusiasm, and which were 1 See G. Migeon, Arts Mussulmans, Vol. II, and Hispano- Moresque Ware of the Fifteenth Century, by A. Van de Put. 483 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS largely imported into Italy and France. Inven- tories show that there were Valencian plates in the possession of Jacques Cceur, the rich merchant of Bourges, and of King Rene of Anjou. At the same period (1455) a decree of the Venetian Senate, prohibiting the importation of all pottery intended for daily use, and which excepts " the majolicas of Valencia," shows that Hispano- Moresque was even then looked upon as purely ornamental. It is hard to say why Valencian pottery was known in Italy as majolica. Perhaps because it had been originally brought to Italy in Majorcan ships. Whatever the reason, it is cer- tain that it was so called, and that the name led Baron Davillier and others to believe that there had been important manufactories in the island, though there is no mention of any such in the contemporary accounts which speak of those of Valencia and other places. Strange as it may seem on comparing the pieces, Hispano-Moresque was, down to the middle of the last century, lumped together in collections with the Italian ware which was made at Deruta, Gubbio, and other towns in imitation of it, as the name majolica shows. Valencia did a busy trade in pottery during the fifteenth century. Many Italian nobles ordered plates bearing their arms to be manufactured there and sent to Italy, such as those illustrated in Mr. Van de Put's interest- ing book. 484 PS u> H Z, Id u .5 >< 3 >< THE CITY OF VALENCIA In design the Valencian ware is freer than that of Malaga, in which arabesques and very conventional motives are used. The Moorish potters of Valencia, working among and for Christians, were able to disregard the Command- ment and admit animal and realistic vegetable forms. Also the escutcheon is frequently met with. Plates have been found bearing the arms of almost all the contemporary princes of the House of Aragon, of the kings of France, of the dukes of Savoy and Burgundy, of the city of Florence, of Lorenzo de Medici and many of his fellow citizens. It is seldom that a plate appears with the arms of a Castilian noble. In the sixteenth century the design becomes coarse, the gold redder. Hispano-Moresque got its death- warrant when the persecutions of the Moors began after the disturbances of 1520-5. The Spaniards tried to learn the secret ; but they never even mastered the technique and far less the design, which in their hands lost its suppleness and delicacy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies a debased Hispano-Moresque was still made at Manises and Onil — the red copper plates and bowls with designs of pinks and very stuffed-look- ing birds, more like sheaves of corn than pheasants — which may still be bought fairly cheap at Madrid, and much cheaper anywhere outside Spain. Valencia also produced excellent blue and white 2 H 485 St\AtN: HER LIFE AND ARTS pottery during the fifteenth century. Apothe- caries' jars, in blue on a white ground under a deep varnish, with Oriental motives or mock characters, now and then appear in the market; also blue and white tiles which were used to wainscot the lower parts of walls. These tiles often bear exquisitely drawn coats-of-arms. At Valencia, the potters who made the blue and white ware decorated with leaves and animals, known as " Aragonese," must have learnt their art. These Aragonese potters were surely Moors. While their work is of any value it shows that unfailing sureness of touch which comes not with a lifetime's practice and is only possessed by people who, like the Persians and Spanish Moors, have been potters for centuries. How low the art had fallen at Valencia by the beginning of the seventeenth century is shown by the fact that the Town Council got a man from Toledo to make them the tiles for their house in a style he had borrowed from Italy. In 1729 the Count of Aranda established a manufactory of pottery at Alcora in this province, for which he brought workmen from Moustiers and Marseilles. The manufactory lived a few years and turned out a mighty quantity of good French pottery, which is to be found in plenty everywhere except at Valencia. Valencia, in fact, is the only city in Europe where no speci- men of Valencian pottery, good, bad, or in- 486 THE CITY OF VALENCIA different, is to be seen in museum, private house, or shop. All the city walls have been pulled down ; but two great Gothic gates, the Puertas de Serranos and de Cuarte, remain. They are much alike ; the Puerta de Serranos, built in the middle of the fourteenth century, was copied in the other a hundred years later. Two great battlemented towers flank the gate. By way of precaution the whole is open and defenceless on the side turned towards the city. The river is crossed by five stone bridges, which were built between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The port, El Grao, lies four kilometres away near, though not actually on, the mouth of the Turia. The importance of the silk trade has a monu- ment in the great Gothic Lonja de la Seda, which stands in the market. It was built by the Valencian architect Pedro Comte in 1482 and the following years, and the work seems to have pleased his employers, for in 1498 Comte was made alcalde perpetuo of his Lonja. The building is well preserved ; the upper part of the tower alone is modern. The facade, with its great doorway with a crocketed gable flanked by two large windows and the open battlemented parapet surmounting the north wing, is irregular but strangely well balanced. The doorway leads into a grand groined hall of the height of the building, which is divided into three naves by eight twisted columns. The 487 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS north wing is three stories high ; the middle one contains a fine large room. In the last years of their activity the representa- tive assemblies of the kingdom built for them- selves the palace which is now known as the Audiencia, or Palace of Justice. The exterior is much less fine and of later date than that of the Lonja ; but on the first floor there is a magnificent sixteenth- century hall, where the Cortes of the kingdom used to meet. The walls are covered with frescoes representing the three houses or " arms " (brazos), as they were called — the military (noble), ecclesiastic, and popular — the rather in- genuous but earnest and expressive work of Cristobal Zarinena, Fernando Pozo, and Francisco Maestre. Under the frescoes the room is panelled with tiles of a late sixteenth-century design, which are signed " En Toledo Oliva invenit." The room is roofed with a great carved artesonado of chest- nut wood, which has the distinction of never having been painted or gilt. Opposite the door leading into the hall is the tiny chapel, in which are kept a fine silver and gold thread frontal, embroidered after a design by Juanes, and two indifferent paintings. On the ground floor there are two much lower rooms, both of which have artesonados of the same design as the one up- stairs, only they are painted and gilt. In one of them hangs a series of portraits of the kings of Aragon. In a short time the Audiencia is to be 488 THE CITY OF VALENCIA moved to a new Palace of Justice, and here, as at Barcelona, the municipal authorities will again take possession of their old house. It is to be hoped that they will remove much of the rubbish which at present disfigures this fine civil building. 489 XX ANDALUSIA This southernmost of the Spanish kingdoms is composed of the modern provinces of Cordova, Jaen, Huelva, Seville, Cadiz, Malaga, Granada, and Almeria. Its climate, its orange and olive groves and the traditions of its romantic past, have long made it famous as the most delightful and interesting part of the Peninsula. The Romans left the great ruins of Italica, Seville was the one western centre of learning in the days of the Goths, and the Moors are generally held to have turned the whole kingdom into a garden of Paradise. Naturally foreigners have been at- tracted to the pretty courts of Seville, Cordova, and Granada rather than to the stern plains of the north. More books have been published on these three cities alone than on all those of Castile and Aragon put together. The very fact that Andalusia is, if anything, over-written would excuse me from giving as much space to it as to the other provinces ; but I venture to go further and to say that from the point of view of a book that professes to deal 490 ANDALUSIA mainly with existing monuments, the propor- tionate value of the south is very small. Seville was of the greatest importance under the Visi- goths, so was Cordova, and there was a flourish- ing Byzantine colony at Malaga ; but to see monuments of Visigothic art we have to go to the north. The period in which Spanish Moslem art produced its best work — during which Mozarabe and Byzantine influences, both of them Christian, were strong in it — has left us nothing but the mosque at Cordova ; and, to complete our know- ledge of the school, we must go to the monasteries founded by refugee Cordovese monks in Leon and Castile. The boasted later Moorish style which created the Alhambra is also scantily represented, and the enthusiasm it awakens is probably caused quite as much by associated ideas as by its own merits. Finally, the Christian churches, with one or two exceptions, are so poor that they would not attract a moment's attention if it were not for the architectural misery that surrounds them. It is natural that the Andalusians should have an extremely disproportionate idea of the works of art of their country. They have dispropor- tionate ideas on every subject, and few of them have ever visited any Castilian city except Madrid. But it is curious that foreigners, who in other matters are capable of sober judgment, should agree with them. The strangeness of Moorish architecture partly accounts for it no doubt, but 491 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS even that must wear off with the number of Earl's Court and other exhibitions which contain examples quite equal in beauty to great part of the Alcazar and the Alhambra. Perhaps it is because there is so little of it left, and because it all happened so long ago. I wonder if, hundreds of years after the English have lost India, one or two mid-Victorian viceregal lodges will be lovingly preserved and visited by enormous crowds? of tourists from every Eastern country, who will have themselves photographed in their courtyards, clad in sun-helmets, motor veils, and check riding- breeches hired for the occasion ? What thrilling Tales of Simla will not some Babu Washington Irving write ! And what glory will not be reaped by that dusky Gayangos who translates Mr. Kipling's works into Hindustani ! How those monuments to Her Gracious Majesty will be cherished, which are now wantonly mutilated by men blinded by religious and racial fanaticism ; and what inconceivable folly the expulsion of so noble, poetical, and courageous a race as the English will then appear to have been ! Though the Moslems were in Spain close upon eight hundred years, the glorious period of their rule was soon over. For the first half-century after their arrival no independent government was set up by them, Spain being ruled by the deputies of the Khalifs of Damascus. In 756, however, Abderrahman I proclaimed a Khalifate 492 ANDALUSIA of his own at Cordova, and for two hundred and fifty years the Andalusian city became the most brilliant in the world. Jews, Christians, Arabs, Greeks, men from all the northern nations also, were welcomed if they could contribute in any way to the cultivation of the arts. Many Byzan- tine artists were sent by the Eastern Emperor to decorate the mosque at Cordova, and Abderrahman III had a Christian ambassador, a bishop whom the Arab chroniclers call Rubi, whose chief duty seems to have been to travel all over Europe in search of works of art. He went to Constanti- nople and to the court of the Emperor Otto. When Abderrahman III was building his famous palace of Azzahra, a German known as Juan de Gdrzia, who was afterwards sainted, was sent by the Emperor to take to the Khalif the choicest works of northern Christian art. Abderrahman I, his son Hixem, Abderrahman HI, Al-Hakem II, and Almanzor, all of them were great rulers, and all made libraries and built mosques and palaces. Early in the eleventh century dissensions and civil war were already sapping the power of the Khalif- ate, and all over Spain the Moslem cities began declaring their independence. In the latter part of the same century came the terrible Almora- vides, and not long after the no less terrible Almohades, rough tribesmen from the north of Africa, who fought desperately among themselves, but were both agreed that the civilised rule of the 493 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS great Arab Sultans had been an abomination in the sight of God. These Moorish Roundheads were fierce persecutors of the Christians, and they pillaged and wrecked the palaces and gardens in the erection of which Christian craftsmen had had so large a share. We know that statues were freely used in the decorations of the Azzahra ; the wild fanatics rased the palace to the ground and destroyed all the luxurious buildings of Cordova, only sparing the mosque because of its sacred character, and because the commandment forbid- ding the making of images of living beings was not disregarded in it. The everlasting civil wars of these Puritans brought ruin on the city. Cordova was taken by Alfonso VII, the Emperor ; and though his Moorish vassal rebelled as soon as his back was turned, the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa decided the fate of Moslem rule in Spain, and Cordova fell before San Fernando in 1236. When the disintegration of the Khalifate set in, an impostor named Ben Abbad seized Seville and founded the Abbadite dynasty, which ruled the city for the greater part of the eleventh century. Little or nothing remains of the splendid monu- ments they are said to have built ; for the above- mentioned Almoravides arrived in 1091 and let loose their wild tribesmen on the city. Half a century later came the Almohades, under whom Seville remained a province of the empire of 494 ANDALUSIA Morocco until 1248, when it was taken by San Fernando. The last period of the Moorish supremacy seems to have been of great splendour, if we will believe their writers, who often have an Oriental habit of exaggeration. Then it was that the true Moorish style of architecture was evolved. We have seen how much the beautiful ornaments of the Khalif- ate owed to Christians of several nationalities ; the Almohade style and that of the Alhambra at Granada which resembles it are more original, though when the builders wanted good stone carving for capitals they stole it from erections that dated from the great days of the Cordovese Empire. The main characteristic of the style is the profuse ornamentation in painted plaster of all the wall surfaces, except for the lower parts, which are wainscoted with tiles. Plaster and glazed earthenware, in short, take the place of carved stone and mosaics. The stalactite form of ornamentation is much used, and extremely delicate work was done in the carved wooden ceilings or artesonados. The question is whether this style was imported by the Almohades or evolved in Andalusia. The bulk of opinion, represented by Sr. Madrazo, affirms that it is impossible to credit the theory that it was born on Spanish soil. A document published by the diligent Sr. Gestoso, however, leaves little doubt that these learned gentlemen are wrong. 495 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Ebn-Said, writing in a.d. 1237, says: "From the province of Andalusia, united to their empire of Magreb, the Amirs of the Almohades Yusef and Yacub-el-Mansur summoned the architects who directed the buildings which they commanded to be raised at Marrakesh, Fez, Rabat, and Man- suriah. It is no less well known that the splendour of Magreb seems now to have extended to Tunis, where the present Sultan is building palaces and planting gardens and vineyards, all in the Anda- lusian manner. All his architects are of that land, as also all the masons, carpenters, potters, painters, and gardeners. Andalusians trace the plans of the buildings or copy them from those already exist- ing at home." The above statement is so full and so definite that we must either suppose Ebn- Said to have been a colossal liar or take it that the Almohade style is really Andalusian in its origin. Seville preserves the beautiful Giralda as its chief Moorish monument. It is stated that frag- ments of the existing Alcazar also date from before the Reconquest ; but this is uncertain. So much of Peter the Cruel's Alcazar was built by workmen from Granada, however, that the same style prevails in both buildings, and, greatly modi- fied by Christian influences, there are more ex- amples of it in the Casa de Pilatos and other Sevillian houses. The conquests of Fernando el Santo — Cordova 496 ANDALUSIA in 1236, Murcia in 1240, Jaen in 1246, and Seville in 1248, with that of Valencia in 1238 by D. Jaime el Conquistador of Aragon — left Granada the one Moorish state in the Peninsula. That this kingdom, under its Nasrite dynasty, should have managed to exist for another two centuries and a half is at first sight almost inconceivable. The reason is that during this period the kings of Castile were engaged in civil warfare, and that Ara- gonese policy always looked towards Italy. There were plenty of Aragonese kings strong enough to have driven the Moors, who were always squabbling among themselves, out of Granada, but they pre- ferred Sicily and Naples. That Catalan expedition to Constantinople, of which Ramon Muntaner, who played an important part in it, has left such a wonderful account in his chronicle, spread terror through the East for years and routed foes far more formidable than the latter-day Spanish Moors. However, the fact remains that until Castile and Aragon were united under Ferdinand and Isabella — sovereigns strong enough to crush the nobles and to oblige the towns to take an interest in the general affairs of state — Granada stood. Though its territory was very limited, consisting of the present province of Granada and of parts of those of Malaga and Almeria, the little state was thickly populated by Moors, who took refuge in it from other kingdoms which had once been theirs. When the place at last fell, in 1492, this 497 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS population presented difficult problems. The town and parts of the country were naturally peopled by Christians, and the two races hated one another bitterly. Isabella, and to some extent Ferdinand, were in favour of treating the Moors as well as possible. Those of their nobles who would accept baptism were given Castilian titles, and many of them married Castilian wives. Their blood still flows in the veins of Spanish noble families. The popular hatred for the bulk of the Moorish population was strong, however, and there has always been a section of the Spanish Church eager to encourage every form of ignor- ance, prejudice, and low instinct in the mob to arrive at its own ends. Little by little enforced baptism was resorted to, and the wretched Moors were prohibited the use of their speech, dress, and hot baths, and even their musical instruments and dances. Feeling became so bitter that in the reign of Philip II a young noble of the lineage of the prophet threw off his Spanish dress and title, took to the Alpuj arras, and proclaimed himself Aben-Humeya, King of Granada. A strong fol- lowing drawn from the mountain peasants sup- ported him, and he managed to hold out for two years. When he was finally killed and his followers scattered, the first expulsion took place, and the work was completed under Philip III in 1610. Thus ended the Moslems of Spain. A most interesting contemporary account of the 498 CORDOVA campaign against Aben-Humeya is D. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza's Guerra de Granada. The only Andalusian towns of which I shall give descriptions are Cordova, Seville, and Granada. As for the rest, there is strangely little in the way of the arts even of third-rate interest. The cathedral of Jaen is a fine Renaissance building and, like those of Cadiz and Malaga, contains good carved choir stalls. The wonderful gorge at Ronda and the beauties of the Sierra Nevada and the Vega of Granada are beyond my powers of description. CORDOVA Cordova is now the capital of its province and little else. The town is sleepy ; and though it has produced many of the greatest bull-fighters, these heroes seldom visit their home except when they retire to it to spend the evening of their days in riotous living with a chosen band of boon com- panions, who never leave them night or day. He who would wander among the memorials of a mighty past will find nothing but the mosque, and will have to rely mainly on his imagination to con- jure up visions of Abderrahman-an-Nasir's court in the grass-grown streets lined with whitewashed houses. The spot on which stands the mosque of Cor- dova, by far the most beautiful monument left by 499 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS the Moslems in Spain, was once occupied by a Visigothic basilica, which is said formerly to have been a temple of Janus. The conquerors took half of this building as a mosque, and allowed the Christians to continue celebrating their offices in the other part. For some time this curious arrangement was successfully continued ; but one day Abderrahman I had a vision which decided him to build a mosque worthy of his empire. For some reason or other it seemed to be essential that the new building should stand on the site of the old ; and Abderrahman had little difficulty in per- suading the Christians to sell him their share and to depart in peace. The new mosque was begun in 786, and Abderrahman worked unceasingly upon it ; but the glory of finishing it was reserved for his son and successor, Hixem. The building as it stood at the end of the eighth century consisted of the present north-west portion, as far as lines drawn across the entrance to the capilla mayor and the end of the north transept of the actual church. Nothing more seems to have been done until the latter half of the tenth century, when the Court of Orange Trees was built and adorned with fountains. Al-Hakem II prolonged the mosque southwards and built the existing Mihrab, and Almanzor added the eight alleys to the east. Thus little more than two hundred years saw the completion of this great temple. It appears that its fame spread to all lands, that it was second 500 CORDOVA in holiness only to Mecca, and that a visit to it absolved the faithful from the obligation to make the Arabian pilgrimage, which was a serious journey for the Moors of Andalusia. The Christians, on entering Cordova, immedi- ately consecrated the mosque to the Virgin, but made no alteration until the fourteenth century, when the raised Capilla de Villaviciosa was built by Moors from Granada in the stucco style of the Alhambra. The Christians were far from being insensible to the beauties of their new cathedral, for they kept Moorish workmen constantly em- ployed so that the necessary repairs should have the true character, though the pig-headedness of a sixteenth-century prelate brought about the erec- tion of the coro and the capilla mayor, in spite of the protests of the Cordovese. It is only just to remember these facts when one reads sweeping condemnations of Christian vandalism in destroy- ing Moslem buildings. If the Moors had been half as respectful of what they found in Spain, we might still possess the wonderful Visigothic basilicas of Merida and Seville. Originally the side that adjoins the court was not walled ; the endless vistas of cool alleys must have been delicious from the sunny patio. Now the floor is made higher than it should be, the columns thus appearing to be baseless ; and the coro and capilla mayor interrupt the view from every side. The present plaster ceiling is also 2 I 501 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS extremely troublesome ; it was put up in the eighteenth century when great part of the original Moorish wooden one was removed as too dilapi- dated. Recent repairs, however, have discovered that the old ceiling still exists in several parts of the mosque at least, and if it is brought to light, or even if the plaster is taken down and a modern imitation of the old woodwork put up instead, the double horseshoe arches will have a much better effect than at present. The columns, most of which are of marble, seem to have come mainly from Andalusian quarries, though a few may be of Eastern origin. There is no doubt, however, that the beautiful marble carv- ings and mosaics of the Mihrab and the adjoining chapel are the work of Byzantine artists, and that many of the best capitals were taken from Visi- gothic buildings. There is an obvious falling-off in the capitals of the eastern part, which are prob- ably all of Moslem workmanship. The Christian furniture of the church is not remarkable. The coro is an example of a style that is common enough in Castile ; its stalls are skilfully carved, but are too ornate and laborious —"a lovely bit o' work, sir." In the treasury there are kept a few good ornaments, among which by far the finest is Enrique de Arfe's splendid Gothic custodia ; and there is a gorgeous silver lamp of much later date in the capilla mayor. The earliest Christian church in Cordova is San 502 CORDOVA Pablo el Real, founded by San Fernando in 1241, and built some time between that year and the end of the century. Though the church has been much restored, it is still interesting, as it shows that the Spaniards went on building in an archaic Roman- esque style long after the great Gothic cathedrals of Toledo and Burgos had been begun. The plan consists of a nave and aisles of four bays, and three apses, the central one of which is groined into five compartments, and the others roofed with semi-domes. All three have a bay of quadri- partite groining west of them ; but the rest of the church has a fine Mudejar wooden roof of the sixteenth century, which documents prove to have replaced an earlier one of similar description ; so the nave and aisles never had vaults. The main piers are square, with engaged columns on their four sides ; and the arches are round. The nave has simple lights within a large enclosing arch ; this feature and the section of the piers recall the church of Poblet. The aisles and the central apse have round-headed windows. The detail throughout is extremely severe ; Sr. Lam- perez is probably right when he says that the church belongs to the group in which Cistercian influences were predominant. Adjoining the church are two or three Moorish chapels, much restored, which are said to date from the Almohade period. There are a few more buildings which contain 5°3 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS fragments of Gothic work. Santa Maria has been restored, but still has a good east end ; and in San Miguel there is a good front with three wheel windows and a deeply moulded pointed door with dog-tooth ornamentation and a corbelled cornice above, liked those at Seville. Inside the same church there is a well-preserved Moorish room with a typical ribbed dome, which is said to have been a synagogue. The Provincial Museum is worth a visit for a few pictures by Valdes Leal, who has a large ruined altarpiece in another of the churches of Cordova — Santiago, if I am not mistaken, — and a number of objects in bronze and stone that have been discovered on the site of the palace of Azzahra. The clean Andalusian houses with their flowers and bright patios are charming, and a good view of the town is to be had from the opposite bank of the Guadalquivir, with the fine fortified bridge in the foreground. SEVILLE Of the town of the Romans and Visigoths there is only one vestige — the great amphitheatre at Italica, five or six miles away to the west. There are no remains of the Moslems that go back earlier than the end of the twelfth century, unless we believe that a few arches in the Alcazar are older, which seems open to doubt. The one great 5°4 SEVILLE Moorish monument is the Giralda, which was begun in 1184 as the tower of the mosque. The Torre del Oro, beside the Guadalquivir, is also of Moorish origin but, as far as I know, of uncertain date. Here, as at Toledo, however, the use of Moorish architecture and decoration long survived the Re- conquest ; indeed, down to the sixteenth century, and even later, the Moorish style lived on in the general disposition and decoration of houses. The Moors were great carpenters, spinners, leather- workers, and potters ; and much might be written about those arts as they practised them in Spain. Unfortunately, so few examples have survived, especially in Andalusia, that I should be obliged to refer to the museums of London and Paris for illustrations were 1 to treat of them here. One would be hard put nowadays to find a piece of Cordova leather at Cordova. In Seville and Granada, however, there is a vast quantity of glazed earthenware, upon which, though it is more remarkable for quantity than quality, I shall seize as a pretext for saying something about the history of that art in Southern Spain. It is believed that the great vase at the Alham- bra, with a very few other pieces of early Spanish reflet-met allique ware — there are four or five mag- nificent specimens at the Cluny in Paris — were made at Malaga. It is difficult to know whether this is true or not. At any rate, there is very little 505 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS now existing in Southern Spain that even remotely resembles those splendid plates and bowls ; wher- ever they were made, it seems certain that the art came direct from Syria or Persia. What we find at Seville and Granada, and, indeed, all over Spain, are the glazed tiles, known as azulejos, used for wainscoting rooms. The Alcazar possesses a rich variety of them ; so does the Alhambra. At first these decorations were real mosaics ; for the fragments forming the design were cut out and then fitted in, each piece being of one colour. This method was used, as may still be seen, down to the fifteenth century, when another technique was adopted, probably in order to undertake more elaborate designs than the earlier geometries. This method, known as cuerda seca, consisted in stamping the tile with a wooden mould, after which the relief edges of the design were traced with grease and manganese in order to prevent the colours running; then the painting and enamelling were done, and the tile fired. This process, which allowed the potter to produce several colours on the same tile, was used exten- sively. The designs are still geometric for the most part ; but Gothic heraldic animals and coats- of-arms also appear, as often in the Alcazar. It seems that the Sevillian potters seldom applied it to plates, but there are a certain number in existence that were made in this manner. The design, it is true, was not stamped on the plate, 506 SEVILLE but was traced with grease and manganese to pre- vent the fusion of the colours, and then painted. Baron Davillier, who mentions one which bore the inscription "P. Arzobispo," takes them to come from the village of Puente del Arzobispo near Toledo ; but the plate he mentioned has been seen by no one else, and it seems more likely that they were made at Triana, the Sevillian potters' quarter. In the sixteenth century the cuerda seca tech- nique gradually gave way to two others, known respectively as de pisano and de cuenca. The second, de cuenca, resembles the earlier manner ; the design was stamped on to the tile, and the patterns of leaves in relief so often seen — in Charles Vs pavilion in the gardens of the Alcazar, for instance — were thus obtained. The name of the other method is derived from the Italian who introduced it into Seville. He was one Francisco Niculoso Pisano, and he created a school which turned out a large number of ceramic decorations. His manner, which consisted in enamelling the tile with a warm yellow ground and then painting on it, permitted the making of large ceramic pictures, like the " Altar of the Visitation " in the Alcazar, signed by Pisano himself with the date 1504. Pisano's art rapidly became popular at Seville and spread to other parts of Spain. In several churches there are large full-length figures, funereal 507 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS monuments in fact, made of these flat azulejos ; but perhaps the most extraordinary example in the country is the representation of the battle of Lepanto, consisting of thousands of tiles, in a church at Vails in Catalonia. The art of ceramics had sunk to a low ebb in Spain when this stupid imitation of painted canvas came into fashion. Of late years the Sevillians have attempted to re- vive the earlier methods and turn out more or less acceptable imitations, which are inferior in every way to the old tiles but are still a cleanly decorative material, admirably suited to a warm climate. Having given this brief account of the only one of the great Moorish industries which is to be studied to any advantage in Seville to-day, I may as well proceed to the Alcazar, where lovers of ceramics will find much to delight them. Of the old Almohade palace hardly a trace remains, for numberless fires, hurricanes, earth- quakes, and other disasters have utterly destroyed it. Not the least among these misfortunes were the years which immediately followed upon the revolution of 1869, during which Andalusia in general, and Seville in particular, was playing at being Swiss, and each sovereign federal state proved its devotion to federalism by carrying on internecine war with its neighbours. About half of the scanty remains of mediaeval art Seville con- tained perished in those days of ignoble brawls and gutter-fighting. 508 Procession leaving the Cathedral, Seville. SEVILLE Not less deplorable have been the restorations which, since the early part of the century when a Scotchman named Downie started them by abominable painting, have never left the Alcazar in peace. The plaster-work in many places looks like a cheap confectioner's window ; fortunately, the tourist often does not know that the decora- tion is modern, and so is able to give way to sincere enthusiasm. The palace as it stands to-day is mainly the work of King Peter the Cruel, who brought work- men from Granada ; as late as 1479 a Moor named Mahomed Agudo occupied the post of master carpenter. From that year on, however, nearly all the workmen, whose names have been pub- lished by Sr. Gestoso, are Christians. Many of the really fine sculptured stone capitals date from the time of the Khalifate, and were probably taken from other buildings. It would be a weary and complicated task to explain which portions of the decorations are old and which new. Restoration has invaded nearly every square yard of wall. The truly delightful part of the Alcazar is its garden, a paradise of fruit-bearing trees, sun, fountains, and flowers. The great monument of Seville is its cathedral, the largest Gothic church in the world. It stands on the site of a mosque which was used as a cathedral until it became insecure, when the 5°9 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS chapter decided to erect a new building "so great and so good that no other should be its equal." Fortunately, they spared the court of orange trees and the Giralda, that most beautiful Moorish tower, which, though rather marred by the addition of the upper stages, is still the crowning glory of the town. The brickwork is all sober and good, and some of the arcades have very delicate carved capitals of a much earlier period than the rest. The modest decision taken by the chapter in 1401 was long in being carried out. Who planned the church is not known ; it may have been Alfonso Martinez or Pedro Garcia ; but the work went on so slowly that in 1462 it was only half built. The then master of the works, Juan Norman, was placed in retirement in that year, and two architects of repute, Francisco Rodriguez and Juan de Hoces, were requested to finish it as soon as possible. They began by disagreeing, and matters dragged on until 1496, when the energetic archbishop, D. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, sent a Castilian named Jimon, who seems to have made some progress. In 1502 Jimon was super- seded by Alonso Rodriguez, and the cimborio over the crossing was closed in by Gonzalez de Rojas in 1507, with such skill that it collapsed four years later. A commission composed of Enrique de Egas, Pedro Lopez of Jaen, and Juan de Alava of Plasencia, decided that it would be more 5io Collapse of the central vaulis, Seville Cathedral. Reja of Seville Cathedral, taken just after the collapse of the central vaults. SEVILLE prudent to do without a lofty cimborio ; and on their recommendation Juan Gil de Hontanon closed in the gap with an ordinary raised vault, which lasted until a few years ago, when it fell in again, taking a good part of the central vaults with it. The damage has now been repaired. In plan Seville Cathedral consists of a nave and double aisles of five bays, transepts that do not project beyond the aisles, and four more bays east of the crossing, the whole terminating in a square east end. The scale of the church is so colossal as to be overwhelming; in design it resembles the Castilian late Gothic cathedrals, in its poverty in capitals and mouldings and its excess in groining. It is impossible to describe the tremendous effect of vastness it produces ; but the impression is, after all, one of boastful size and by no means of harmonious proportion. It well represents the spirit of the vain-glorious fifteenth- century Spaniards, who are said to have wished to build such a church that future generations would think them mad for attempting it. They have their wish ; other generations have thought they were mad for that, and for other reasons. This extraordinary interior being what it is, the effect is naturally even more monstrous by night, when the altar alone is lighted. Strangest of all, and most in keeping with the character of Seville, in Holy Week when the midnight pro- cessions pass in and out of the great doors, or when 5n SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS the Miserere is being sung to the strains of an orchestra huge even in such a church. Then the dimly lighted aisles are full to overflowing with a crowd that for the most part never sets foot inside a place of worship on any other occasion : all the bad boys of Seville with cigarettes up their sleeves, strange women, and a generous sprinkling of tourists crane their necks to see the Roman soldiers come reeling into the cathedral, bearing a burden of strong drink that makes it difficult for them to carry the Virgen de las Angustias at a seemly angle. It is always a wonderful spot, this cathedral. There are the great days when the Seises are danced by choir boys before the high altar, and the dog-days when it is the only spot in Seville where it is possible to keep cool, and the sacristans and their friends assemble in the sacristy to smoke cigarettes, drink consecrated wine (with soda), and talk clerical scandal and bull-fights. There is a colossal amount of rich furniture here, and not a little important painting. The sculpture is less interesting, especially to those who know Castile ; for in their eyes the enormous late Gothic retablo mayor, the work of the Fleming Dancart and his pupils, will suffer by comparison with smaller and finer examples elsewhere. The stalls of the coro belong to the same style and were executed mainly by the same men. The rejas of the coro and capilla mayor are both mighty Plater- 512 Retablo of High Altar, Seville Cathedral. Charles V's Palace, Granada. Ayuntamiento, Seville. SEVILLE esque erections, and there are rich silver ornaments of the same period on the altar. The best pieces of statuary or carving are the figures by Pedro Millan in the west door, a crucifix or two attributed to Alonso Cano and Montanes, and the two extremely valuable thirteenth -century French Virgins in the Capilla Real, one of which, the Virgen de los Reyes, was a gift from S. Louis to San Fernando. In the dark little sacristy behind the high altar is kept a silver repousse reliquary of the same date, known as Las Tablas Alfonsinas. The stained glass is extremely fine work of the period. The first glazier about whom we have information is a Maestro Henrique, who received fourteen thousand maravedies for his labour in 1476, and, like most of his fellow-craftsmen at the time, was probably a northerner. Later we have Cristobal Aleman, a Portuguese named Johanes, Bernaldino Flamenco, Arnau de Flandes, and, in 1559, the wife of Carlos Flamenco, who was paid the then respectable sum of fifty thousand maravedies. In the great sacristy, a too rich but well-pro- portioned Plateresque room, are kept the magnifi- cent sixteenth-century bronze candlestick, called the Tenebrario, and several vessels in precious metal, of which the chief are a splendid pro- cessional cross and Juan de Arfe's great silver custodia in the pagan style of his day. The vest- ments are more remarkable for the richness of the 513 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS materials used and for the patience displayed than for anything else ; though they are the best products of an age when embroidery had ousted woven stuffs. Sevillian painting is fairly represented in the cathedral, though the pictures are so hung that it is not often possible to get good light on them. The father of the school — though really no such thing existed at Seville until the seventeenth century, as before that there were simply a number of men painting under different foreign influences — seems to have been Juan Sanchez de Castro, whose " Virgen de Gracia," painted on panel in 1484, is now in the cathedral. Barbarously repainted as it has been, the picture is enough to show the archaic condition of the art in Seville at the time. It is extremely primitive ; the tradition of the Byzantine Virgins seems to have prevailed here years after the Cordovese Alfonso and many other men were doing much more advanced work in other parts of Spain. A Pieta in the Sacristfa de Calices is signed Juan Nunez, who is said to have been a pupil of Sanchez de Castro. Whether this be true or not, it is clear that the influence of the school of Bruges weighed more with Nunez than that of his master, and it is not strange that this should have been so. In the same sacristy there is a little early copy of Shoenegauer's "Death of the Virgin," well painted, one of the countless imitations of well-known German and Flemish 5M SEVILLE primitives that are to be found in Spain, and which declare the poverty of the native painters. Alejo Fernandez has two or three panels in the sacristy, all very Flemish. There are several fine Murillos in the chapter- house and the chapels, and other Sevillian paint- ings of which I shall say more presently. Of the Castilian painters there is a damaged Trinity by El Greco, and the curious " Stas. Justa y Ruflna " by Goya. A large number of priceless books and manuscripts are preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina, founded by Christopher Columbus' son ; and the library is well kept and made ac- cessible to strangers. The outer walls of the cathedral and its jumble of roofs give any impression rather than that of a Gothic church. The doorways are not remark- able for the most part, but the Puerta del Perdon has its Moorish arch and fine bronze doors, and the Patio de los Naranjos into which it leads is a pleasant spot with a fountain in the middle. Seville is full of churches of more or less interest, most of which were pillaged by the French and by native mobs, or have been so rebuilt or restored as to have lost their character. A few of them illustrate the style which came in with the Re- conquest, a sort of Mudejar with strong traces of Romanesque. The towers of Santa Lucia, San Andres, Omnium- Sanctorum, Santa Marina, and others are good specimens of Mudejar brick- 515 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS work ; and San Marcos, San Esteban, and one or two of the above-mentioned have moulded pointed doors with short shafts in the jambs and horizontal corbelled cornices above — an effective arrangement, but one which becomes wearisome here by its con- stant repetition. So much modernising was under- taken in the seventeenth century that many of the beautiful Mudejar wooden roofs have disappeared, and others have been ruined by zealous restorers ; but a few still remain. The public buildings are on the whole better than the churches ; the Lonja and the university, said to have been built, both of them, by Juan de Herrera, the architect of the Escorial — not to be confused with the two Sevillian painters of the same name — are noble, severe buildings ; and the Ayuntamiento has a famous Plateresque facade. The Casa de Pilatos is the best-preserved Mudejar house ; it is full of good azulejos, and has a few moderately interesting Roman marbles. A private house of a more purely Moorish style is to be seen in the Calle de Guzman el Bueno, and there are plenty of fragments of plaster-work and tile decora- tion scattered through the city to reward the enthusiast if he cares to look for them. In the latter sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Seville, which up to this period cannot truthfully be said to have produced much valuable art, became the centre of the only Renaissance school of paint- ing worthy of the name that ever flourished on 516 SEVILLE Spanish soil. The great wealth of the town, de- rived from protected trade with America, no doubt accounts for its very sudden appearance : for when we look for the origins of the school we are obliged to admit that they are not to be found at home. In speaking of the cathedral I called attention to the small resemblance between the work of Juan Nunez and that of his master, Juan Sanchez de Castro ; and this phenomenon is of constant recur- rence among the Sevillians. Those were dishearten- ing days for fathers, when every man's son looked like some distinguished foreigner. During the sixteenth century painters of various nationalities and training established themselves here ; but their influence exercised itself in different directions. The one who was most esteemed by the younger generation was a Fleming named Kempe- neer, who had studied under Michael Angelo, and, as Pedro Campana, lived for years at Seville, and left a fine work in his " Descent from the Cross " in the cathedral. At the same time Luis de Vargas, an Andalusian, who had formed himself at Rome, and, more particularly, under the in- fluence of the followers of Raphael, painted for the cathedral the famous ' ' Gamba " and other works, none of which show such mastery as that of Campana. The attraction of Rome was too strong at this moment to allow young painters to stay at home and form a school ; and though with a little good will one may detect 2 K 517 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Spanish qualities in their work, they all tried to behave themselves in a calm and classic manner so foreign to their nature that the results are unconvincing. The first Sevillian to get out of the rut was Juan de las Roelas (1558-1625), who studied not at Rome but at Venice. When he came home he painted a number of pictures for various churches; his great work is the " Death of San Isidoro " in the parish church of that name, a grand composi- tion, full of life and colour, and painted with a sure hand. Others of his canvases may be seen in the museum and the university church. Roelas was the true founder of the Sevillian school. Zurbaran, his pupil, did not need to go to Italy, and his influence was strong on men who were more nearly his contemporaries like Herrera el Viejo, a powerful colourist and draughtsman, whose works have been cruelly treated by re- storers, and who is better represented by his " Saint Basil dictating his Doctrine" in the Louvre than he is in Spain. The turning point in the short career of the school was reached when the twenty-year-old Velazquez went to Madrid. Though his master Pacheco was a pedant, he seems to have been a friend to art after his own manner, and there were enough painters in the Andalusian capital to have kept a brilliant school alive, had it not been for the exaggerated atmosphere of devotion that 518 SEVILLE prevailed there. Whether Velazquez would have become the man we know had he stayed there instead of travelling in Italy is open to grave doubts ; at any rate the atmosphere of Seville was too close for him. He went to court, and those who stayed had to devote themselves to religious subjects or starve. Velazquez was able to paint as he pleased at Madrid ; and the fact that he seldom undertook a religious subject is good enough evidence that he did not like them. It is not unreasonable to suppose that among the Sevillians who stayed at home there were many who had the same views ; but there sat Pacheco, ap- pointed censor by the Inquisition, proclaiming that the one aim of art was to excite men to devotion. In such circumstances it was impossible that the school should flourish long. Murillo seems to have had a temperament that naturally expressed itself through pious subjects ; thus there was nothing in the air of Seville that made it stifling for him. But what of men like Herrera el Mozo and Valdes Leal ? They both had detestable characters and great aptitude, especially the latter; but seventeenth-century Seville, which was so pleasant to Zurbaran and Murillo, drove them to every sort of bitter excess. One robbed his father and fled the country ; the other spent his time in imagining means for inflicting some sort of misery upon Murillo, or painted scenes of death and cor- 5!9 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS ruption that are grisly to look upon, though well executed. He was a great painter, Valdes Leal, and he might have become a greater in other surroundings. When he and Murillo had died, however, there was nothing but fifth-rate men to succeed them, and the close of the seventeenth century saw the utter extinction of the Sevillian school. The story of Andalusian sculpture is much the same ; though in this field less was accomplished than in the other, Juan Martinez Montanes and his pupil Alonso Cano left magnificent works in the churches of Seville and Granada, works that have the qualities of realism and truth to nature to a high degree. Alonso Cano had an amazing disposition for the arts ; his paintings are well known, and the man who did the fat Gothic kings at the Prado may well have been the author of pictures that have been attributed to more famous names. In spite of all the misfortunes Seville has under- gone, the museum, the Caridad, and the churches contain enough painting and sculpture to occupy one's attention for many days. Works by foreigners there are few : a San Geronimo and a Virgin and Child in terra- cotta attributed to Torregiano, and a good portrait by El Greco, which is often said, with- out the faintest foundation, to be his own likeness. Velazquez, the greatest Andalusian painter who ever lived, has nothing in his native city but a 520 SEVILLE poor and much repainted early work in the Arch- bishop's palace. The San Telmo Gallery has been broken up. 1 cannot attempt to give any individual account of the pictures in this book ; and the history of the Sevillian school has not yet been written. It is a subject that still presents great opportunities to those who do not fear to break fresh ground. After speaking slightingly of Sevillian archi- tecture, it is a relief to turn to the city itself. Seville is a paradise. Nothing can be im- agined more delightful than its spring, when the squares and gardens are full of flowering orange trees and acacias ; or the idle, languorous summer, when the streets are deserted by day and full of people by night. Holy Week, with its crowds of foreigners come to see the processions, is unpleasant ; there is a false atmosphere about the whole thing, which has come to be a sort of national industry. Far more tragic processions, performed by real sinners full of the terror of hell, may be seen at Baeza or Linares, where there is a population of superstitious robbers and assassins unequalled in Spain. Of the delights of low life in Seville, of the haunts of manhood and beauty near the slaughter- house, of the Venta de Eritana, I hesitate to speak. It is another side of Spain, unknown to nearly all foreigners and the enormous majority of Spaniards. Many people who have had the 5 21 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS honour of being treated as mugs by the fancy imagine that they have gained an insight into its manners and customs ; but it is only the tactful fashion the fancy has of relieving the mug of his money that gives rise to such delusions. So much ignorant balderdash has been written about the gypsies of Spain and their art that it would be foolish to attempt to give a just idea of them in a few paragraphs. Borrow, who knew them well, warned Gentiles of putting any trust in their apparent friendliness. They express their unvarying and historic attitude towards the ill-begotten, as they call all non- gypsies, in one of their Christmas songs: — • f En la cueva de Belen gitanitos han entrado^ y al niiio que esta en la cuna los panales le han quitado. picaros gitanos, que a la carne de Dios en cueros habeis dejado." 1 And in another copla : — " Eso no lo firma el rey ; gitanito con buznales que es arate contra la ley." 2 1 The gypsies have entered the cave of Bethlehem ; And have stolen the Child's swaddling clothes. Rascally gypsies, who have left God's flesh naked ! 2 The king will not sign this ; A gypsy allied with gentiles is blood contrary to the Law. 522 GRANADA The second verse is not to be taken to mean that there is any such thing as a king of the gypsies. GRANADA Granada lies in the midst of a rich plain at the foot of the Sierra Nevada on the rivers Darro and Genii. Its early history need not keep us here, for it only became important on the fall of the rest of Moslem Spain towards the middle of the thirteenth century. From that time on until 1492 it was an independent Moorish kingdom under rulers of the Nazrite dynasty, and it is from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that the world- famous Alhambra, their palace, dates. Mohamed I, Alahmar the Magnificent as he was called, who died in 1273, did much of the building, and the decoration is mainly the work of Abul Hachach Yusuf I and his son Mohamed V, who between them ruled from 1333-91. From the latter year down to the end of its independent existence Granada was constantly torn by civil and foreign wars. It is difficult to see how it is possible for even the most fervent admirers of Granada to make the familiar assertion that its history is the most brilliant period of the Moslem rule in Spain. How can this obscure and turbulent kingdom, which created nothing but a stucco palace, be compared with the glories of Cordova in the days 5 2 3 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS of the Khalifate, the city of the arts and sciences, the home of all civilised peoples ? It is true that the hill of the Alhambra, with its countless running brooks, its towers and walls, its trees, and the matchless garden of the Generalife, is a most seductive spot. But truly it is better to look at the crumbling outer walls of the Moorish palace than to roam through its courts, trying in vain to find some part that has not been too much restored and at the same time is free from guides and tourists. I have no space to give an account of how much of the palace has been destroyed ; the Catholic Kings and Charles V seem to have done all in their power to ensure its being kept in good repair ; but in the eighteenth century it fell into great neglect, and was let out to poor families who wrought havoc with the decorations. Charles V's idea in beginning his great palace, which Machuca un- fortunately did not live to complete, does not seem to have been to eclipse the Alhambra, but rather to provide a royal residence on this delicious spot, so that there should be no danger of modifications being undertaken in the old palace. The Alhambra is decorated in the last of the true Moorish styles which flourished on Spanish soil. The main features are the covering of the flat surfaces with painted stucco work, except on the lower parts of the walls which are wainscoted with tiles, and the ornamentation of the conical 5 2 4 GRANADA ceilings with honeycomb stalactite pendentives, also in painted plaster. Of the great arts of the East which played so important a part in the style of the Khalifate there is scarcely a trace except in the sculptured stone lions of the fountain. Apart from the tiles, the only piece of pottery is the great and justly famous Alhambra vase, which is probably a product of Malaga. The very curious paintings on leather in the roof of the Sala de Justicia represent battle scenes and, it is supposed, portraits of kings. The vexed question whether the Spanish Moors, like the Persians and Arabs, practised the art of painting in spite of the prohibition in the Koran is not solved by these works, as there can be little doubt that they were executed by an Italian or by a Spaniard of Italian training. They date from the last years before the fall of Granada, about 1470-5. In the spring of 1908, however, the most important archaeological discovery of modern times, as far as Moorish art is concerned, revealed a wall in the Torre de las Damas, one of the outlying towers of the Alhambra, which is covered with a fresco of undeniably Moslem character. It represents a body of troops passing before the king, and is most interesting in every way, as it consists of several hundred figures, whose dress and accoutrements are treated with much greater under- standing than those in the Sala de Justicia by the evidently Christian painter who was their author. 525 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Thus there can be no doubt that the Spanish Moors did paint ; and more discoveries may bring to light other of their works in the comparatively little-known towers of the outer wall. The Moorish remains in the town itself are neither numerous nor important, and they have been rapidly disappearing of late. The one great building to be noticed there is the cathedral, the foundations of which were begun in 1522. At this time the Real Capilla, founded by the Catholic Kings, who wished to lie in their conquered city, as San Fernando did at Seville, had already been built in the latest Gothic style by Enrique de Egas. For this reason, and not because he was an enemy to the new architecture, as may be seen in his Doric palace on the Alhambra hill, Charles wished to build a Gothic cathedral. The result is the present building, Gothic in its distribution of a nave and double aisles and in the elaborate groin- ing of the vaults, and Renaissance in its detail. It is a curious mixture of styles, this, and more curious still when we find that Diego de Siloe, the architect, died in 1563 leaving it unfinished, that Maeda, Lazaro Velasco, Ambrosio de Vico, Gaspar de la Pena, Alonso Cano, and others worked upon it, and that the above-mentioned Gothic vaults were not closed in until 1704. Gothic vaults in 1704! Nevertheless, the cathedral is a grand and austere place of worship. The principal facade was de- 526 GRANADA signed by Alonso Cano, and is strangely propor- tioned, the three huge enclosing arches at the level of the roof dwarfing the little doors below. Neither the coro nor the trascoro with its bad retablo is of any value. In the chapels, however, there are a number of Cano's paintings and sculp- tures, works of great beauty, and the Virgen de la Antigua, a Gothic carved image brought by the Catholic Kings, which is greatly venerated at Granada. Several of Maeda's carvings in the Sala Capitular are also worth noticing. The re- tablo of the high altar contains magnificent reliefs by Cano and his " Adam and Eve." There are also the statues of Ferdinand and Isabella by Mena and Medrano, and several paintings by the Granadine Bocanegra and Juan de Sevilla, neither of them a great artist. From the south aisle the Real Capilla is entered, the burial-place of the conquerors, simple and severe in style and remarkable for the two splendid monuments of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of their daughter Jane the Mad and her husband Philip the Handsome of Burgundy. These are enclosed by a magnificent reja by Maestro Barto- lome. The monuments were commanded by Charles V, but opinions vary as to who made them. Professor Justi says it was Domenico Fancelli, the author of the royal tombs at Avila ; and there seem to be good reasons for believing that Bartolome Ordonez also had an important 5 2 7 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS share in them. Both these sculptors and many others may have spent years on the work, for the tombs are magnificent examples of Italian Renais- sance sculpture. The very rich retablo behind the high altar, with the fine kneeling figures of Ferdinand and Isabella, is by Felipe Vigarni. The ornaments preserved in the sacristy include a few late Gothic chalices and portapaces, and illuminated books of no great value. There is little else in the town. The Cartuja is a horrible warning of the evils of riches, and the museum, with its second-rate paintings of the school of Granada — even Granada must have its school — is apparently not judged to be secure enough to be trusted with the magnificent Limoges enamel called the Triptico del Gran Capitan, which is deposited in the Bank of Spain. Even the people of Granada seem tacitly to admit that there is less danger of Bocanegra's work being the object of a burglary. This triptych, which depicts the crucifixion and scenes from the Passion, is one of the finest examples in existence of Limoges enamel of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. It is half a metre high, and has all that delicacy of Gothic drawing in the draperies, which soon afterwards fled upon the approach of the Italian Renaissance. 528 XXI SALE IN BANKRUPTCY The story of art in Spain during the last century has been that of a gradual liquidation of every- thing in any degree portable which had been spared by French armies and Spanish revolu- tionaries. What attracted the French looters most was, fortunately, silver and gold. Massive seventeenth-century silver altars, candlesticks, and plate were taken, and infinitely more valuable works in base metals, wood, or stone were left undisturbed. The same is true of the revolutionaries ; though they all committed frightful havoc, it is astonishing how much of the best remained. The country suffered infinitely more from the ravages of dealers which began as soon as peace was restored. Indeed, works of art had been exported from Spain during the eighteenth century, and in such quantities that Floridablanca, Minister to Charles III, tried to put a stop to it. But these eighteenth-century prospectors did no more than scratch the soil. George Borrow, who was in Spain during most of the first Carlist War, speaks of meeting 5 2 9 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Baron Taylor. This Baron Taylor was a thorough judge of pictures ; and he arrived early on the scene. It was he who formed Louis Philippe's Spanish Gallery, which contained many of the finest Spanish pictures to-day in England, for the collection was sold after the revolution of 1848. At the same time agents for London dealers were ransacking the country for pictures that were marketable at the time in England. These were for the most part Italian and Flemish. Among the Spaniards Murillo was easily favourite, Velaz- quez strongly backed by a few fervent admirers, and the rest nowhere. Baron Taylor, who had an eye for painting which rose above fashions, also bought a few Grecos and Zurbarans ; but, for the simple reason that there was no market for it, the work of El Greco and Goya remained almost un- touched until some fifteen years ago, and might have been kept in the country. However, the indifference of all but a very few Spaniards has been such that the last few years have seen many of the finest pictures go to France, and from France to America. This is undoubtedly a matter in which the sphere of legislation is limited, for strict legislation in Italy is defeated every day, and the possession of pictures which the whole civilised world covets is a luxury for private individuals in rich countries. Spanish collectors are not rich enough to buy Spanish masterpieces as they come into the market, and not rich enough to hold them 530 SALE IN BANKRUPTCY even if they do buy ; that is all. The secular clergy are for the most part wretchedly poor, and nothing will prevent them from selling whenever they have a chance, if it is only to fill their churches with the sort of works of art which please people to-day. In spite of the Commission of National Monu- ments and all its works, there never seems to be any serious difficulty in getting a picture out of church, if there is enough money behind. Four or five years ago the Grecos were sold out of the cathedral of Valladolid. In the autumn of 1907 two of the finest Grecos in Toledo were taken out of the Chapel of San Jose by night and hurried off to France in a motor-car, after the interior of the chapel had been filled with scaffolding to prevent their absence being noticed. For a year past everyone in connection with the trade had known that the pictures were sold and that a favourable opportunity was being waited for; but when the matter was brought up in Parliament, the Minister of Education and Fine Arts knew nothing about it, or whether the patron of the chapel had a legal right to sell. There was a series of interpellations on the subject ; the Opposition was naturally glad of the chance. There was talk of the absolute prohibition of the exportation of works of art ; but interest soon failed, and it is probable that in like circum- stances the same thing would happen again to-day. 53i SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS The net result of Sr. Puig y Cadafalch's well- meant campaign was that over-nervous possessors of historic Spanish collections took their pictures out of the country for fear of being caught by an anti-exportation act which as likely as not will never be passed. Such another scare, and not a single private collection of any importance remains in Madrid. And it is to be hoped that some fine pictures may stay in the Spanish capital, if only because of the possibility that the owners may follow the generous and patriotic example of the Duquesa de Villahermosa, who gave her two splendid full-length Velazquez portraits to the Prado. It would be a mistake to suppose that the poor Spaniards, in sore need of money, have been in the habit of parting with historic heirlooms at the buyer's price. There must have been a time when pictures were sold for nothing in Spain, but the memory of man hardly goes back so far. On the contrary, the Spaniards, whose failing is not simplicity, have been able to sell to enthusiastic foreigners at prices very much larger than those the same pictures would bring in London or Paris. The romantic atmosphere which the foreigner is so eager to breathe in Spain is particularly favour- able to tortuous operations in this field. The third person, he who negotiates between the buyer and the often mythical Grandee owner, is able to enlarge upon the irreducible pride of the latter, 53 2 SALE IN BANKRUPTCY and the strict secrecy to be preserved as to where the picture came from. Thus it is easy to avoid inconvenient inquiries into questions of lineage or authenticity until it is too late. When the bargain has been struck, when the money and picture have changed hands, nothing matters much. It is proverbial among dealers that the American is the best customer, not merely because he has money, but because, though often suspicious while negotiations are in progress, once the picture is known to be his property he will listen to nothing against its authenticity ; no, say the Spaniards, not though the Blessed Virgin came down to prove that it was false. The American is clever ; and those who tread devious paths, pro- fessors, in the Spanish phrase, of making straight that which is crooked — "las cosas que estan mal, ponerlas bien" — know that their only hope lies with clever people — primos alumbrados. Hence the axiom : " Al lila no hay quien le engane " — It is impossible to take in the blockhead. Presumably it is also impossible to take in the wise man ; but his appearance on the scene is of such rare occur- rence that one is justified in leaving him out of the account. Though not much is to be done in the way of preventing private individuals from selling their pictures out of the country, there isjstill a great task to be performed if what remains of the stage property of Spain's splendid pageant is to be pre- 2 l 533 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS served. Industrial art is, beyond a doubt, a field in which Spaniards did better and more original work than in that of painting. It is perhaps un- just to call the retablos industrial art ; however, I mean everything that went to the complete furnishing of a church before the end of the seven- teenth century. Up to the present day next to nothing has been done ; not the faintest notion of what the great churches of Spain contain can be formed from the Archaeological Museum at Madrid, with its large, ill-chosen, uncatalogued collection, in which there are magnificent pieces, but which is, to say the least of it, incomplete. What is more, not a soul ever goes there. The provinces are still worse off. When the convents were disestablished in 1835, and again in the uncertain times of the early seventies, it would have been easy to form a representative collec- tion at small expense. Nothing was done then ; D. Juan Riano made the best existing collection of Spanish industrial art for the South Kensington Museum, and the rest either stayed in the churches or fell into the hands of dealers. Of late years a certain amount has been done, especially in Catalonia, where the museums of Barcelona and Vich certainly give a better idea of what existed in the principality than the Madrid museum does of Castilian art. Here another question arises. It is all very well that the museums should be allowed to take, or buy at a nominal price, works 534 SALE IN BANKRUPTCY of art from country churches when they are in danger of theft and clandestine sale ; but should they be allowed to pillage cathedrals and civil buildings in large towns where the things are as safe as in any museum ? A piece has to be very good indeed to stand examination in a museum among half a hundred similar objects ; whereas in a church there is appropriate place for everything. There can be no question that the general run of works of art loses life itself by the change. By all means let a national museum be formed ; but let it be small, consisting of a very few of the finest examples of every style and every period. The objects which go to its composition will hardly be missed in that case, and it will gain greatly in effect and utility by not being large. It is absurd to say that artisans need museums in which they can study in all the big towns. They have a museum in the capital of Spain, and nobody is ever seen in it except some foreigner, who is always harassed unmercifully by hungry cus- todians. Spain is a country in which churches are still a great national institution, and museums are not, never have been, and perhaps never will be. There can be no doubt that more inhabi- tants of Madrid have gone to Toledo to see the cathedral than have crossed the street to see the Archaeological Museum. And what museum would they have better than the cathedral of Toledo ? 535 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Things go slowly in Spain, and even if the powers of darkness prevail in the end and the museums are allowed to spoil the shrines, it is probable that for many years to come Spanish churches will be the paradise of the lover of beautiful things. What possibilities they offer him ! By ingratiating himself with a canon or humble sacristan, he may always discover some glorious piece of tapestry, some reliquary, or carved saint, which he would pass by with a glance in a museum, but which, in San Isidoro at Leon, make him happy for days. The only equipment neces- sary is a lust of discovery sufficient to make him lay aside his conscience for a moment. When the Lord Abbot, to whom he applies for permission to ransack, asks him where he comes from he may say without hesitation, "Londres de Inglaterra," " Paris de Francia " or " Milwaukee de Norte America," as the case may be ; if it amuses him he may invert the order and say, "Londres de Francia " or " Paris de Inglaterra " ; it will do equally well. But when asked whether he is a Catholic he should be prepared to answer in the affirmative and to prove it by crossing himself, bowing to every altar he passes, and kissing any- thing he may be asked to kiss. On closer acquaint- ance the Lord Abbot may turn out to be the other sort, but it is well to make sure. The Spanish sacristan is a remarkable person, and often of great use in opening doors. In 536 SALE IN BANKRUPTCY popular parlance he is termed " Mataperros " (Dog- killer), and he is treated with irreverence by the choir boys ; therefore he is particularly grateful to the considerate stranger. His memory is stocked with gross falsehoods regarding the church and all that it contains. When the stranger expresses admiration for any particular object, he will say, " Ah, the English came here last year and offered a hundred thousand duros for that reja, and when the chapter refused they offered to put up an exact copy of it in gold." " When the Russian Ambas- sador was here, he said that if they ever wished to sell this casket, they should tell him the highest offer they had received, and he would give five thousand duros more." The stranger need not be alarmed by the sacristan's familiarity with large sums of money. Children who play cards for nothing amuse themselves by giving their counters fancy values. As for buying in the Spanish provinces, it is very difficult. Every corner of Spain is now carefully ransacked, and there is no longer much chance of finding an ingenuous owner. In fact, the more ingenuous the owner, the harder he is to deal with ; he is sure to have read in the papers that someone gave thousands for old rubbish, and as all old rubbish is the same in his eyes, his rubbish is also worth thousands. The only people who succeed in getting anything are resident agents of dealers, usually pawnbrokers or usurers. They 537 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS know when the parish priest, or whoever it may be, is in need of money, and they can make their own terms with him. It is necessary to be the solicited in these operations ; the solicitor is met by wildly exorbitant demands, especially if he is a foreigner. It is a melancholy fact that Spain, capital and provinces, is now a poor place in which to buy works of art. Everything that grew on the curiosity -tree — except in inaccessible sacred groves — has been plucked. Further shaking of the tree will bring down nothing but green fruit. There was a time when Madrid, Seville, and Barcelona abounded in well-stocked shops. Now Spanish goods are more plentiful and much cheaper in London or Paris. It is true that there are many shops in Madrid which do a roaring trade. This is because the foreign tourist imagines that he knows more about prices than the dealer, and in Madrid cheerfully pays for a poor, late Hispano- Moresque plate or a piece of tapestry five times more than it would cost him in London, or even New York. In fact, in spite of an entrance duty — for instead of taxing the exportation of works of art the Spaniards protect this truly national in- dustry — one of the most brilliant strokes to be made in the trade to-day is undoubtedly to buy third-rate Spanish goods in London and Paris, take them to Spain, and sell them to English and American tourists. It is rather sad to have to end this book with so 538 SALE IN BANKRUPTCY gloomily titled a chapter ; it would have been pleasanter to have been able to give an account of a great national museum. The formation of one would be possible without seriously disturbing Spain's magnificent church interiors ; but if, as is somewhat to be feared, it meant that curators were to be allowed to pillage right and left and strip the altars of all their retablos and furniture and the sacristies of their paintings and tapestries, it would be a thousand times better that things should remain as they are. 539 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF SPANISH KINGS EMIRS AND KHALIFS OF CORDOVA Dates of Accession. Abderrahman I . . . 756 HixemI . . . . .788 Alhakem I . . . . .796 Abderrahman II . . . .822 Muhamad I .... 852 Almondir . . . . .886 Abdallah . . . . .888 Abderrahman III . . . .912 Alhakem II . . . .961 Hixemll 976 Muhamad II ben Hixem . . . 1009 Suleiman ben Alhakem . . . 1009 Muhamad II ben Hixem (second time) . 1010 Hixem II (second time) . . . 1012 Suleiman ben Alhakem (second time) . 1013 AH ben Hamud el Edrissita . .1016 Abderrahman IV in Southern Spain and | jQ^g Cassim el Mamun in Cordova . . j Yahia ben All disputes the crown with both 1021 Abderrahman IV dies . . . 1023 His party proclaims Abderrahman V . 1023 Muhamed III ... 1024 Yahia ben All (second time) . . 1025 Hixem III .... 1026-31 KINGS OF ASTURIAS Pelayo 718 Favila 737 54o SPANISH KINGS Dates of Accession. Alfonso I, the Catholic . . . 739 Fruelal . . . . .756 Aurelio . . . . .768 Silo 774 Mauregato ..... 783 Bermudo I, the Deacon . . . 789 Alfonso II, the Chaste . . .791 Ramiro I . . . . .842 Ordono I . . . . .850 Alfonso III, the Great . . 866-909 KINGS OF ASTURIAS AND LEON Garcia . . . . . 909 Ordono II . . 914 Fruelall . . 924 Alfonso IV . . 925 Ramiro II . . 930 Ordono III . . 950 Sancho the Pat . 955 Ordono IV . . 956 Sancho the Fat (second time) . 960 Ramiro III . . 967 Bermudo II . 982 Alfonso V . . 999 Bermudo III, last descendant of Alfonso the Catholic . 1027-37 COUNTS OF CASTILE Fernan Gonzales .... 932 Garcia Fernandez .... 970 Sancho Garces . . . . 995 Garcia Sanchez . . . .1021 Sancho the Great, King of Navarre . . 1029 Ferdinand I .... 1035 54i SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS KINGS OF CASTILE, ASTURIAS AND LEON Dates of Accession. Ferdinand I 1037 Sancho II . . . . .1065 Alfonso VI . . . . .1072 Urraca ..... 1109 Alfonso VII (the Emperor) . . 11 26-57 (Crowns again separated.) KINGS OF CASTILE Sancho III . . . . .1157 Alfonso VIII . . . .1158 Henry I . . . . 1214 Ferdinand III, the Saint . . . 1217 KINGS OF ASTURIAS AND LEON Ferdinand II .... 1157 Alfonso IX . . . 1188-1230 KINGS OF CASTILE, ASTURIAS, AND LEON Ferdinand III, the Saint . . . 1230 Alfonso X, the Wise . . . 1252 Sancho IV, the Brave . . .1284 Ferdinand IV, the Summoned . . 1295 Alfonso XI 1312 Peter the Cruel .... 1350 Henry II, the Bastard . . . 1366 Peter the Cruel (second time) . . 1367 Henry II (second time) . . . 1369 John I . . . .1379 Henry III, the Ailing . . . 1390 John II 1406 Henry IV, the Impotent . . . 1454 Ferdinand V and Isabella I, the Catholic Kings 1475 Philip I and Joan the Mad . . 1504 Regency of Ferdinand the Catholic 1506-16 542 SPANISH KINGS SOVEREIGN COUNTS OF BARCELONA Dates of Accession. Wilfred I, the Hairy . . .874 Wilfred II or Borrell I . .898 Sunyer . . . . .912 Borrell II and Miron I . . 954 Miron I (alone) . . . .966 Ramon Borrell III . . . . 999 Berenguer Ramon I, the Crooked . .1018 Ramon Berenguer I, the Old . . 1035 Ramon Berenguer II, the Tow-head, and Berenguer Ramon II . . 1076 Berenguer Ramon II, the Fratricide (alone) 1082 Ramon Berenguer III, the Great . . 1096 Ramon Berenguer IV . . .1131 KINGS OF NAVARRE Garcia Sanchez .... 905 Sancho Abarca .... 905 Garcia Sanchez II, the Coward . . 925 Sancho Garcia or Sancho the Elder . 970 Garcia Sanchez III . . . . 1035 Sancho Garces . . . .1054 KINGS OF ARAGON Ramiro I Sancho Ramirez 1035 1063 KINGS OF ARAGON AND NAVARRE Sancho Ramirez .... 1076 Peter I ..... 1094 Alfonso I, the Fighter . . 1104-34 (Crowns again separated.) Ramiro II, the Monk KINGS OF ARAGON 543 1134-37 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS COUNTS OF BARCELONA, KINGS OF ARAGON Dates of Accession. Ramon Berenguer IV and Petronila (heiress of Aragon) .... 1137 Ramon or Alfonso II . . .1162 Peter II, the Catholic . . . 1196 James I, the Conqueror . . . 1213 Peter III, the Great . . . 1276 Alfonso III 1285 James II ..... 1291 Alfonso IV . . . . . 1327 Peter IV, the Ceremonious . . . 1335 KINGS OF MAJORCA James the Conqueror . . . 1228 James II 1276 Sancho ..... 1311 James III . . . . 1324-43 COUNTS OF BARCELONA, KINGS OF ARAGON AND MAJORCA Peter IV, the Ceremonious . . . 1343 John I, the Lover of Elegance . . 1387 Martin I, the Humane . . 1396-1410 (The House of Aragon becomes extinct.) INTERREGNUM Ferdinand I of Antiquera . . .1412 Alfonso V, the Wise . . . 1416 John II 1458 Ferdinand II, King of Castile, with the title of Ferdinand V .... 1479 544 SPANISH KINGS KINGS OF NAVARRE Dates of Accession. Garcia Ramirez . . . .1134 Sancho V, the Wise . . .1150 Sancho VI, the Strong . . . 1194 Teobaldo I . . . . . 1234 Teobaldo II .... 1253 Henry I, the Fat .... 1270 Joan I and Philip the Handsome of France . 1274 Luis the Quarrelsome, King of France . 1305 Philip the Tall, id. . . . .1316 Charles I, the Handsome, id. . . 1322 Joan II and Philip of Evreux . .1328 Charles II, the Bad . . . .1349 Charles III, the Noble . . . 1387 Blanca and John I, afterwards II in Aragon 1425 John I (alone), usurping the rights of his son Charles of Viana . . . 1441 Leonor of Aragon .... 1479 Francis Febo .... 1479 Catharine and John d'Albret . 1483-1515 1515 Ferdinand the Catholic conquered Navarre south of the Pyrenees and incorporated it with the crown of Castile.) KINGS OF SPAIN Charles I, better known as the Emperor Charles V .... 1516 Philip II 1556 KINGS OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL Philip II 1580 Philip III 1598 Philip IV ..... 1621 (Portugal regained her independence in 1640.) Charles II . .... 1665 545 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS BOURBON KINGS OF SPAIN Dates of Accession. Philip V . . . . . 1700 Ferdinand VI .... 1746 Charles III . . . . . 1759 Charles IV . . . . . 1788 Ferdinand VII ... 1808 Isabel II . . . . .1833 Isabel II (abdicated) . . . 1868 Provisional Government . . 1868-71 Amadeo . 1871-73 Republic .... 1873-74 Alfonso XII .... 1874 Alfonso XIII .... 1886 546 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ARCHITECTS, PAINTERS, SCULPTORS, ETC., MENTIONED IN THE BOOK Abderrahman, Moorish architect, worked at El Paular, near Segovia, middle fifteenth century. Abdiell, Guillermo, of Barcelona, architect, ca. 1416. Agudo, Mahomed, master carpenter of the Alcazar at Seville 1479. Aleman, Rodrigo, wood-carver, worked at Ciudad-Rodrigo, Plasencia, Toledo, Zamora(?), close of fifteenth century. Alfonso, Maestro, of Cordova, painter, worked at San Cugat del Valles 1473. Almedina, Ferrando de (Hernand Yanez), painter, worked at Valencia Cathedral 1507 ; and at Cuenca. Andino, Cristobal, ironworker, worked at Burgos Cathedral, Seville, Palencia, Toledo, first quarter of sixteenth century. Andreu, Ramon, silversmith, worked at Gerona Cathedral 1357. Antigoni, Antonio, of Castellon de Ampurias, architect, present at the Architects' Congress at Gerona 1416. Aregio, Pablo de, Italian painter, worked at Valencia Cathedral 1471. Arfe, Antonio de, son of Enrique de Arfe, worked at Santiago de Compostela, Leon, etc., ca. 1544. Arfe, Enrique de (Harfe), German silversmith, worked at Leon, Toledo, Cordova, etc., early in sixteenth century. 547 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Arfe, Juan de, son of Antonio and grandson of Enrique de Arfe, silversmith, worked at Avila, Valladolid, Seville, Burgos, etc. Born 1535, and died about the end of the sixteenth century. Argenter, Bartolome, silversmith, worked at Gerona 1325- 46. Artado, Francisco, silversmith, worked at Gerona Cathedral 1430. Azcain, Lazaro, Basque ironworker, worked at Astorga 1662. Badajoz, Juan de, architect, worked at San Marcos at Leon, early sixteenth century. Balaguer, Pedro, architect, worked on the Miguelete at Valencia 1414. Bartolome, Maestro, sculptor, worked at Tarragona Cathedral 1278. Bartolome, Maestro, ironworker, worked in the Real Capilla, Granada, early sixteenth century. Bayeu, Francisco, painter, worked at Zaragoza, Madrid, Toledo, etc. Born 1734, died 1795. Becerra, Gaspar, sculptor, worked at Burgos, Astorga, Sala- manca, etc. Born at Baeza 1520, died at Madrid 1570. Benavente, Juan de, silversmith, worked at Palencia, six- teenth century. Bermejo, Bartolome, painter, of Cordova, worked at Barce- lona 1490. Bernaldino, Flemish glass-painter, worked at Seville Cathe- dral, first half of sixteenth century. Bernardo, Maestro, architect, worked at Santiago de Com- postela 1075. Bernardus, Frater, architect, worked at Tarragona Cathedral. Died 1256, 548 ARCHITECTS, PAINTERS, ETC. Berner, Pedro, silversmith, worked at Gerona Cathedral 1357. Berruguete, Alonso, son of Pedro Berruguete, sculptor, architect, and painter, worked at Avila, Valladolid, Salamanca, Toledo, etc. Born 1480, died 1561. Berruguete, Pedro, court-painter to Philip I, worked on retablo mayor in Avila Cathedral, latter years of fifteenth century. Biquerny, Felipe de. See Vigarni. Blay, Pedro, architect, worked on the Audiencia at Barce- lona, seventeenth century. Bocanegra, painter, worked at Granada seventeenth century. Boffiy, architect, worked at Gerona Cathedral, latter four- teenth and early fifteenth century. Bonafe, Matias, wood-carver, worked at Barcelona Cathedral 1457 Borgona, Felipe de. See Vigarni. Borgona, Juan de, painter, worked at Toledo, Avila, etc., from latter part of fifteenth century to ca. 1531. Borrassa, Luis, painter, worked at Barcelona from 1396 to 1424. Bustamente, Bartolome, architect, worked at Toledo, middle of sixteenth century. Cabrera, Juan, of Barcelona, painter, early fifteenth century £a Coma, Pedro, architect, worked at Gerona Cathedral 1368 ; at San Feliu in same city 1392. Campana, Pedro (Kempeneer), painter, worked at Seville in the first half of the sixteenth century. Canet, Antonio, of Barcelona, architect, ca. 1416. Cano, Alonso, painter, sculptor, architect, worked at Granada, Seville, etc. Born 1601, died 1667. 2 m 549 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Cantarella, Giralt, architect, worked at Manresa, fourteenth century (?). Qa Plana, Francisco, architect, worked at Gerona Cathedral 1368. Carbonell, Juan, silversmith, worked at Vich 1394. Castayls, Jaime, sculptor, worked at Tarragona Cathedral 1375. Cellas, Pedro de las, silversmith, of Barcelona, went to Rome 1455. Celma, J.-B., metal-worker, worked at Santiago de Compos- tela, etc., middle sixteenth century. Centellas, wood-carver from Valencia, worked at Palencia Cathedral 1410. Cervia, Berenguer, sculptor, worked at Gerona Cathedral 1486. Cespedes, Domingo de, ironworker, worked at Toledo Cathe- dral, etc., middle of sixteenth century. Churriguera, Jose, architect and sculptor, late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Cicarte, Pedro de, sculptor, worked at Aranda de Duero, sixteenth-seventeenth century. Clapds, Antonio, sculptor, worked at Barcelona Cathedral 1449. Coca, Francisco de, wood-carver, worked at Sigiienza, late fifteenth century. Coello, Alonso Sanchez. See Sanchez Coello. Coello, Claudio, painter, worked at Madrid, the Escorial, Zaragoza, during the latter half of the seventeenth century. ^olivella, Guillermo, architect, worked at Old Cathedral, Lerida, fourteenth century. 55o ARCHITECTS, PAINTERS, ETC. Colonia, Diego de, son of Juan de Colonia, architect, worked at Burgos, late fifteenth century. Colonia, Francisco de, a member of Juan de Colonial family, architect, worked at Burgos and Astorga, early sixteenth century. Colonia, Juan de, German architect, worked at cathedral and Cartuja, Burgos, middle fifteenth century. Colonia, Simon de, son of Juan de Colonia, architect, worked at Burgos Cathedral, late fifteenth century. Comte, Pedro, of Valencia, worked on the Lonja at Valencia from 1482. Contucci, Andrea, Tuscan sculptor, said to have worked at Toledo Cathedral, early sixteenth century. Copin, Diego, Dutch sculptor, worked at Toledo Cathedral, early sixteenth century. Cors, Guillermo de, architect, worked at Gerona Cathedral 1330. Covarrubias, Alfonso de, architect, worked at Toledo, Salamanca, etc., first half of sixteenth century. Cristobal, Maestro, Flemish or German glass-painter, worked at Toledo and Seville cathedrals, early sixteenth century. Cruz, Santos, painter, worked on retablo mayor in Avila Cathedral, late in the fifteenth century. Cumba, Pedro de, architect, worked at Old Cathedral, Lerida, thirteenth century. Dalmau, Luis, painter, worked at Barcelona 1445. Dancart, Flemish wood-carver, worked at Seville Cathedral, late fifteenth century. Delli, Dello, Florentine painter, said by Cean to have come to Spain to the court of Juan II. Some suppose him to have painted the frescoes in the cathedral cloister at Leon, middle of fifteenth century. 5Si SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Deo, Petrus de, architect, worked at San Isidoro at Leon, first half of twelfth century. Diaz, Pedro, of Barcelona, silversmith, went to Rome 1445. Doncel, Guillermo, sculptor, worked on the facade of San Marcos at Leon from 1537 to 1544. Don ys, architect, worked at Sigiienza Cathedral, ca. 1500. Duque, Maestro Rodrigo, wood-carver, worked at Sigiienza, late fifteenth century. Egas, Anequin de (Jan van der Eyken of Brussels), architect and sculptor, worked at Toledo, latter fifteenth century. Egas, Enrique de, architect, worked at Valladolid, Santiago de Compostela, Toledo, etc., late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Escuder, Andres, of Barcelona, architect, worked at Barce- lona Cathedral from 1432 to 1451. Espinosa, Jacinto de, painter at Valencia. Born 1600, died 1680. Esteve, Agustin, painter and engraver, worked at Valencia and Madrid. Court-painter in 1800. Born 1753, died at an advanced age. Fabre, Jaime, of Majorca, architect of Barcelona Cathedral throughout great part of the fourteenth century. Falco, Nicolas, of Valencia, painter. Worked ca. 1515 to 1576. Fancelli, Domenico (Domenico Florentino), sculptor, worked on the royal tombs in Santo Tome at Avila, on those at Granada, and possibly on the monument of Cardinal Jimenez at Alcala de Henares, late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Favariis, Jaime de, architect, worked at Gerona Cathedral 1320. 552 ARCHITECTS, PAINTERS, ETC. Fernandez, Alejo, painter, worked at Seville, early sixteenth century. Fernandez, Gregorio. See Hernandez. Ferrer, Bartolome, architect, worked on the Miguelete at Valencia 1393. Flamenco, Carlos, glass-painter. He or his wife worked at Seville Cathedral, ca. 1559. Flandes, Arnau de, glass-painter, worked at Burgos, Toledo, Avila, Seville, etc., late fifteenth century. Florentino, Nicolas, painter, executed the retablo mayor in the Old Cathedral at Salamanca, early fifteenth century. Font, Juan, architect, worked at Manresa, fourteenth cen- tury (?). Forment, Damian, sculptor, worked at Huesca and Zaragoza, ca. 1511 to 1533. Franch, Juan, architect, worked on the Miguelete at Valencia 1393. Frederic, Juan, German wood-carver, worked at Barcelona Cathedral 1483. Gallegos, Fernando, painter, worked at Salamanca and Zamora. Bora, ca. 1460, died 1550. Garcia, Pedro, architect, worked at Seville Cathedral, early fifteenth century. Gaspar, wood-carver, worked at Siglienza, late fifteenth century. Gelabert, Antonio, worked at Valencia Cathedral, eighteenth century. Geralt, Arnaldo, architect and sculptor, worked at San Cugat del Valles, twelfth century. Giordano, Luca, painter, employed at the Escorial, first half of seventeenth century. 553 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Girona, architect of west front of Barcelona Cathedral, ca. 1900. Gomar, Francisco, of Zaragoza, worked at Tarragona Cathe- dral 1493 ; Lerida Cathedral 1490. Gomez, Alvar de, sculptor, worked at Toledo, latter part of fifteenth century. Goya, Francisco de, of Zaragoza, painter, worked at Zara- goza, Valencia, Madrid, and Bordeaux. Born 1746, died 1828. Greco, El. See Theotocopuli, Domenico. Gual, Bartolome, of Barcelona, architect, worked at Barce- lona Cathedral from 1432 to 1451. Gualterius, architect of Cistercian church of Val-de-Dios in Asturias, ca. 1218. Guas, Juan (Waas), Flemish architect, worked at Toledo and Segovia, ca. 1459-94. Guemez, architect, worked on cloister of Ciudad-Rodrigo Cathedral, sixteenth century. Guinguamps, Juan de, of Narbonne, architect, present at the Gerona Conference 1416. Gumiel, Pedro de, architect, worked at Alcala de Henares, early sixteenth century. Henrique, Maestro, glass-painter, worked at Seville Cathedral 1476. Hernandez, Gregorio, sculptor, worked at Valladolid, Plasen- cia, etc. Born 1566, died 1636. Herrera, Francisco (el Mozo), painter, worked at Seville and Madrid. Born 1622, died 1685. Herrera, Francisco (el Viejo), painter, worked at Seville and Madrid. Born 1576, died 1656. 554 ARCHITECTS, PAINTERS, ETC. Herrera, Juan de, architect of the Escorial, the cathedral of Valladolid, the Lonja at Seville, and is also said to have worked on the Alcazar at Toledo and the Colegio del Patriarca at Valencia, latter part of sixteenth cen- tury. Holanda, Alberto de, glass-painter, worked at Avila Cathedral ca. 1520. Holanda, Juan de, Dutch painter, said to have come to Palencia, where works of his exist, ca. 1505. Holanda, Nicolas de, glazier, worked at Avila Cathedral, etc., early sixteenth century. Hontanon, Juan Gil de, architect, worked at Segovia, Salamanca, etc., early sixteenth century. Hontanon, Rodrigo de, son of Juan Gil de Hontanon, architect, worked at Segovia and Salamanca, early six- teenth century. Huguet, Jaime, painter, worked at Tarrassa 1460. Ibarra, Pedro de, architect, worked at Salamanca 1521. Ingles, Maestro Jorge, painted triptych with portraits of D. Inigo Lopez de Mendoza and his wife for hospital of Buitrago, ca. 1455. Johan, Jordi, architect, worked at Barcelona 1400. Johanes, Maestro, Portuguese glass-painter, worked at Seville Cathedral first half of sixteenth century. Juanes, Juan de (Vicente Macip), painter, worked at Valencia. Born 1505, died 1579. Juni, Juan de, sculptor, worked at Valladolid, El Burgo de Osma, Aranda de Duero, Segovia, Salamanca, etc., middle sixteenth century. Kempeneer. See Campana. 555 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Lambardo, R., Italian architect, worked at the Seo de Urgel, twelfth century. Langres, Juan de, architect and sculptor, worked at Burgos Cathedral, first half of sixteenth century. Leoni, Pompeyo, Italian sculptor, employed at the Escorial, latter half of sixteenth century. Llanos, Ferrando de los, painter, worked at Valencia Cathedral 1507. Llobet, Martin, architect, worked on the Miguelete at Valencia. Loquer, Miguel, German wood-carver, worked at Barcelona Cathedral 1483. Machuca, Pedro, painter, sculptor, and architect, worked on Charles V's palace at Granada, first half of sixteenth century. Maeda, architect, worked at Granada Cathedral, late six- teenth century. Maella, painter, worked at Valencia, Toledo, etc., eighteenth century. Maestre, Francisco, painter, worked in the Audiencia at Valencia, late sixteenth century. Martinez, Alfonso, architect, worked at Seville Cathedral, late fourteenth century. Martorell, Benito, painter, worked at Barcelona and Man- resa, early fifteenth century. Mateo, Maestro, architect and sculptor, worked at cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, 1168-1217. Mathaeus, Maestro. See Mateo. Medrano, sculptor, worked at Granada Cathedral, sixteenth- seventeenth century. 556 ARCHITECTS, PAINTERS, ETC. Melida, D. Arturo, architect who restored S. Juan de los Reyes at Toledo ca. 1900. Mena, Alonso de, sculptor, worked at Granada Cathedral, sixteenth-seventeenth century. Millan, Pedro, sculptor, worked at Seville Cathedral, second half of fifteenth century. Monforte, Raimundo de, architect, worked at Lugo Cathe- dral ca. 1129. Montanes, Juan Martinez, sculptor, worked at Seville, etc., first half of the seventeenth century. Mor or Moro, Antonio, Flemish painter, employed by Philip II, worked at Madrid, middle of sixteenth century. Morales, Luis de, painter, worked at Badajoz, etc., middle of sixteenth century. Morey, Guillermo, architect, worked at Gerona Cathedral 1394. Mota, Guillermo de la, architect, of Tarragona, ca. 1416. Murillo, Bartolome Esteban, painter, worked at Seville. Born 1618, died 1682. Narbona, Enrique de, architect, worked at Gerona Cathedral 1320. Neapoli, Francisco, Italian painter, worked at Valencia Cathe- dral 1471. Nicolau, Pedro, painter, of Valencia, ca. 1400-9. Nolanus, Joannes, sculptor, of Naples, worked at Bellpuig, early seventeenth century. Norman, Juan, architect, worked at Seville Cathedral ca. 1462. Novoa, architect, worked at Santiago de Compostela Cathe- dral, eighteenth century. Nunez, Juan, painter, worked at Seville, late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. 557 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Oiler, Pedro, sculptor, worked at Vich Cathedral, late four- teenth century. Olotzaga, Juan de, architect, worked at Huesca Cathedral, early fifteenth century. Ordonez, Bartolome, sculptor, worked at Granada and, it is believed, at Alcala de Henares and at Barcelona in first half of sixteenth century. Ortiz, Pablo, sculptor, worked at Toledo Cathedral, latter part of fifteenth century. Pacheco, Francisco, painter, worked at Seville and Madrid. Born 1571, died 1654. Pantoja de la Cruz, Juan, court-painter to Philip II, worked at Madrid. Born 1551, died 1610. Pedro, Maestro, architect or sculptor, worked at Old Cathe- dral, Salamanca, 1175. Pena, Gaspar de la, architect, worked at Granada Cathedral, first half of seventeenth century. Penafreyta, Pedro de, architect, worked at Lerida Old Cathe- dral. Died 1286. Petri, Petrus, architect of Toledo Cathedral, said to have worked 1227-90. Pinedo, Gabriel de, sculptor, worked at Aranda de Duero, sixteenth-seventeenth century. Pisano, Francisco Niculoso, painter on glazed tiles, worked at Seville, early sixteenth century. Portell, Berengario, architect, worked at Vich 1325. Pozo, Fernando del, painter, worked at the Audiencia, Valencia, late sixteenth century. Ranc, Bernard (?), architect, worked at Santas Creus, late twelfth or early thirteenth century. 558 ARCHITECTS, PAINTERS, ETC. Repulles y Vargas, D. Enrique, architect, restorer of San Vicente at Avila, ca. 1908. Ribalta, Francisco, painter, worked at Valencia. Born ca. 1651, died 1628. Ribera, Jose de, painter, worked at Valencia and Naples. Born 1588, died 1656. Rincon, Antonio del, court-painter to Fernando and Isabel. Most of his work has disappeared ; but the retablo at Robledo de Chavela, not far from the Escorial, remains. Born ca. 1446, died 1500. Rios, Alonso de los, sculptor, worked at Burgos Cathedral, early sixteenth century. Riquer, Bertran, architect, worked at Barcelona and at Santas Creus, ca. 1291-1327. Roberto, Maestro, architect, worked at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela 1075. Roberto, sculptor, worked at Astorga 1551. Rodriguez, Francisco, architect, worked at Seville Cathedral, ca. 1462. Rodriguez, Ventura, architect, worked at Madrid, Santiago, etc., eighteenth century. Rodulfo, Corrado, sculptor and architect, born in Germany, worked at Valencia Cathedral, ca. beginning of eigh- teenth century. Roelas, Juan de las, painter, worked at Seville. Born 1558, died 1625. Rogent, Elias, architect who restored the monastery of Ripoll 1887. Rojas, Gonzalez de, architect, worked at Seville Cathedral ca. 1507. Roque, Maestro, architect, worked at Barcelona Cathedral 1375-1400. Ros, Jaime, sculptor, worked at Barcelona 1437. 559 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Sabatini, Francisco, architect, worked at El Burgo de Osma 1781, and at the New Cathedral, Lerida. Sachetti, Milanese, architect of the royal palace at Madrid ca. 1735. Sagrera, Guillermo, of Perpinan, architect, came to Gerona Conference 1416. Sanchez, Benito, architect, worked at Ciudad-Rodrigo Cathe- dral, twelfth or thirteenth century. Sanchez Coello, Alonso, court-painter to Charles V and Philip II, worked at Madrid. Died 1590. Sanchez de Castro, Juan, painter, worked at Seville ca. 1484. Sanchez, Martin, wood-carver, worked at Miraflores, late fifteenth century. Sancii, A., architect, worked at Gerona 1357-68. San Juan, Pedro de, architect, worked at Gerona Cathedral 1397. Santillana, Diego de, glass-painter, worked at Burgos Cathe- dral, late fifteenth century. Segovia, Sanchez de, painter, worked at Old Cathedral, Salamanca, 1262. Serra, Pere, painter, worked at Manresa 1394. Sevilla, Juan de, painter, worked at Granada, seventeenth century. Siloe, Diego de, son of Gil de Siloe, architect, sculptor, and designer, worked at Burgos, Granada, etc., first half of sixteenth century. Siloe, Gil de, sculptor, worked at Burgos and Palencia, etc., second half of fifteenth century. Stamina, Gerardo, Florentine, came to Spain as court- painter to D. Juan I. His work has probably not sur- vived. Born 1 354, died 1 405. 560 ARCHITECTS, PAINTERS, ETC. Tacca, Pietro, Italian, worked for the Hapsburg kings, first half of seventeenth century. Tarragona, Juan de, sculptor, worked at Tarragona Cathe- dral, early sixteenth century. Taverant, Jaime de. See Favariis. Theotocopuli, Domenico, born in Crete at uncertain date, painter, sculptor, and architect, worked at Toledo, where he died at an advanced age in 1614. Theotocopuli, Jorge Manuel, architect and painter, son of Domenico Theotocopuli (El Greco), worked at Toledo, first half of seventeenth century. Tioda, architect, worked at San Salvador, Oviedo, ninth century. Toledo, Juan Bautista de, architect, began the Escorial. Died 1563. Tomas, sculptor, worked at Astorga 1551. Torrigiano, Italian sculptor, worked at Seville and died there in the first half of the sixteenth century. Valdes Leal, Juan, painter, worked at Seville. Born 1630, died 1691. Valdivieso, Juan, glass-painter, worked at Burgos Cathedral, late fifteenth century. Vallejo, Juan de, architect, worked at Burgos Cathedral ca. 1550. Valleras, Arnaldo de, architect, worked at Manresa 1416. Vallfogona, Pedro de, of Tarragona, architect, ca. 1416. Vargas, Luis de, painter, worked at Seville. Born 1502, died 1568. Velasco, Lazaro, architect, worked at Granada Cathedral, late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Velazquez, Diego de Silva, painter, worked at Madrid. Born 1599, died 1660. Vergara, Arnau de, glass-painter, worked at Seville Cathe- dral, fifteenth-sixteenth century. Vergara, Nicolas, ironworker, worked at Toledo Cathedral, etc., middle of sixteenth century. Vergos, Pablo, painter, worked in Catalonia, ca. 1460-72. Viader, Pedro, architect, worked at Barcelona Cathedral 1375-1400. Vico, Ambrosio, architect, worked at Granada Cathedral, early seventeenth century. Vigarni, Felipe de, sculptor and architect, worked at Burgos, Toledo, etc., early sixteenth century. Viladomat, Francisco, painter, worked at Barcelona, Tarra- gona, etc. Born 1678, died 1755. Vilar, Pedro, sculptor, worked at Barcelona Cathedral 1564. Villalpando, ironworker, worked at Toledo Cathedral, etc., mid-sixteenth century. Viviano, supposed architect of San Miguel de Escalada, tenth century. Vozmediano, Alonso de, architect, worked at Sigiienza Cathe- dral ca. 1500. Xulbe, Juan de, architect, of Tortosa, came to Gerona Con- ference 1416. Xulbe, Pascasio de, architect, of Tortosa, came to Gerona Conference 1416. Yanez, Hernand. See Ferrando de Almedina. Zabadia, Pedro, architect of the Lonja at Barcelona, four- teenth century. 562 ARCHITECTS, PAINTERS, ETC. Zarcillo, Francisco, sculptor, 1707-81, worked at Murcia. Zarinena, Cristobal, painter, worked at the Audiencia at Valencia. Died 1622. Zurbaran, Francisco, painter, worked at Seville. Born 1598, died 1662. 563 BOOKS RECOMMENDED Historia de la Arqiiitectura Cristiana Espanola. D. Vicente Lamperez y Romea. Madrid, 1908. Viage Liter ario a las Iglesias de Espana. Villanueva. Diccionario de Bellas Artes. Cean Bermudez. Viage de Espana. Antonio Pons. Los Monumentos Arquitectonicos de Espana. (An official publication which has been slowly appearing for the last few years.) Espana, Sus Monumentos y Artes, su Naturaleza e Historia. (One or more volumes on each province by various writers.) Casas de Religiosos en Cataluna. C. Barraquer. Barce- lona, 1906. Noticias de los Arquitedos y Arquitectura de Espana. Llaguno y Amirola, y Cean Bermudez. Madrid, 1829. Estudios Historico-Artisticos. Jose Marti y Monso. Arqueologia Sagrada Catalana. Joseph Gudiol y Cunill. Vich., 1902. Los Cuatrocentistas Catalanes. Sanpere y Miquel. Barcelona, 1904. Sevilla Monumental y Artistica. Gestoso y Perez. Diccionario de Artifices Sevillanos. Gestoso y Perez. Los Barros Vidriados Sevillanos. Gestoso y Perez. Anales de la Vida y de las Obras de Diego de Silva Velazquez. G. Cruzada Villaamil. Madrid, 1885. El Greco. Manuel Cossio. Madrid, 1907. La Catedral de Sigiienza. Manuel Perez Villamil. 1899. 5 6 4 BOOKS RECOMMENDED Diccionario biogrqfico de artistas Valencianos. Baron de Alcahali. Valencia, 1897. Historia de la Santa A.M. Iglesia de Santiago de Compostela. D. Anonio Lopez Ferreiro. 1898. Guia de Granada. Francisco de P. Valladar. Publications of Forma. Barcelona. Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain. George Street. Gatherings in Spain. Richard Ford. Early Editions of Murray's Guide Book. Richard Ford. Spanish Industrial Arts. Juan Riano. Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra. Owen Jones. London, 1842. Santa Teresa : Her Life and Times. Mrs. Cunningham Graham. Catdlogo de los Cuadros del Museo Nacional. Pedro de Madrazo. La Peinture Espagnole. Paul Lefort. Paris, 1893. Miscellaneen aus drei Jahrhunderten Spanischen Kunstle- bens. Carl Justi. Berlin, 1908. Die Wirtschaftliche Bliite Spaniens im XVI Jahrhundert und Ihr Verfall. Konrad Habler. The Spanish Series. Albert F. Calvert. (Useful for the large numbers of illustrations.) Adiciones al Diccionario de Cean Bermudez. Conde de la Vinaza. The Spanish People. Martin Hume. Historia de Espana. Lafuente. Historia de Espana. Rafael Altamira. Francisco de Goya. Valerian von Loga. Goya. Conde de la Vinaza. 2 n 565 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Velazquez and Murillo. Charles B. Curtis. Velazquez. Aureliano de Beruete. Les Maitres Italiens au Service de la Maison d'Autriche. Eugene Plon. Sumario de las Antigiledades Romanas que hay en Esparto. Cean Bermudez. VArt Religieux dans le Rousillon. J. A. Bru tails. Publications of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans. Historia de las Ideas Esteticas en Espana. Menendez y Pelayo. La Statuaire Polichrome en Espagne. M. Dieulafoi. The Prado. Charles Richetts. 566 INDEX Abadesas, San Juan de las, 418, 421 Abbadite rulers of Seville, 494 Abderrahman I of Cordova, 492, 493, 500 Abderrahman III of Cordova, 493 Abderrahman (architect), 118 Abdiell, Guillermo, 414 Aben-Humeya, 498, 499 Abul Hachack Yusuf I,of Granada, 523 Acuila, D. Luis Osorio de, 163 Adaulfo, Bishop, 368 African architecture, 39, 40, 496 Agudo, Maestro Mohamed, 509 Agustina, the Maid of Zaragoza, 298 Aix-la-Chapelle, Rule of, 345 Ajimez, 36 Alava, 273 Alava, Juan de, 510 Albarracin, Sierra de, 293 Albufera, Lake of, 472 Alcahali, Baron de, 30 Alcala de Henares, 259, 269 — Colegiata, 267 — Palace, 97 Alcanar, 320 Alcora ware, 101, 486 Aleman, Rodrigo, 148, 150, 152, 201, 218, 342 Alexander VI, 458, 473, 480 Alfonso I of Aragon (El Batalla- dor), 60, 278, 309 Alfonso II of Aragon, 432 Alfonso IV of Aragon, 309 Alfonso V of Aragon, 325, 326, 381, 456 Alfonso II of Asturias (El Casto), 38, 44, 45, 48 Alfonso VI of Castile and Leon, 38, 79, 119, 131, 199, 207, 261 Alfonso VII of Castile (the Em- peror), 80, 131, 179, 494 Alfonso VIII of Castile, 158 Alfonso III of Leon, 60 Alfonso, Maestro, 352, 374, 394 Al-Hakem II of Cordova, 493, 500 Alhambra, the ; see Granada, the Alhambra Alicante, 452 Almanzor, 60, 78, 179, 283, 323 366, 367, 493, 500 Almedina, Ferrando del, 474 Almeria, 490 Almohades, the, 493-6, 508 Almominiz, 432 Almoravides, the, 493, 494 Alonso, Don, Bishop of Sigiienza, 265 Alpujarras, Rising in the, 498, 499 Altarpieces, see Retablos SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Alvarez de Acosta, Bishop Pedro, 109, 177 Alvarez de Toledo, Bishop, 149 Amador de los Rios, D. Dimitrio, 184, 188 Amandi, S. Juan de, 54 America, 55, 57, 119, 209, 268, 276, 326, 352, 456, 465, 517 Amiens Cathedral, 183 Ampurias, 321, 344 Anarchists, 322, 335 Anaya, Bishop Diego de, 138 Andalusia, 31, 32, 490-528 Andino, Cristobal, 170, 195 Andres, Bishop of Valencia, 468 Andreu, Ramon, 417 Angels, cross of the, 47 Angevin architecture, 66, 121, 159 Anglesola y Vallbona, Raimundo de, 448 " Anjou, House of, 325 Antigom, Antonio, 414 Antipendia, Catalan, 350 Antiquity-dealers, 59, 356-8, 529- 39 Antolhi, San, 195 Aquitaine, architecture of, 131, 263 Arabs, arts of the, 36, 37, 191, 341, 491 et seq. Aragon, Archbishop D. Hernando de, 305 Aragon, Bishop D. Jaime de, 468 Aragon, Constitution of, 295, 296 Aragon, Kingdom of, 278, 293- 489, 497 Aragon, Province of, 293-319 Aragon, River, 310 Aranda de Duero, San Francisco, 178 Aranda de Duero, San Juan, 177 — Sta. Maria, 176, 177, 228 Aranda, Conde de, 486 Aranjuez, 101, 259 Archaeologists, French, 38, 42 Aregio, Pablo de, 474 Aretino, 327 Arfe, Antonio de, 67, 99, 342 — Enrique de, 99, 170, 189, 220, 502 — Juan de, 99, 126, 232, 513 Arga, River, 280 Argenter, Bartolome, 412, 417 Arian heresy, 35, 199 Arlanzon, River, 157, 174 Arles-sur-Tech, 343 Armada, the, 76 Armenians, 59, 82, 344 Artado, Francisco, 417 Artesonados, 210, 488 Astorga, Cathedral, 163, 192, 193 — walls, 182, 191 Asturian architecture, 34 - 54, 82 Asturias, 34-54, etc. — Kingdom of, 34-7 Atares, Don Pedro de, 313-19, 457 Augustin, San, canons of, 284, 372 Austria, Don Juan de, 482 Avila, 118-27 — Cathedral, 123-6 — San Martin, 123 — San Pedro, 122, 123 — Santo Tomas, 126, 127, 527 — San Vicente, 82, 120-22 — San Segundo, 123 Azabacherfa, 63 Azcain, Lazaro, 192 Azulejos, 140, 211, 488, 506-9 568 INDEX Bable, 42 Badajoz, 268, 269 Badajoz, Juan de, 190 Baeza, 521 Bages, San Benet de, 405 Bagpipes, 56, 57, 68 Balaguer, Pedro, 471 Balearic Islands, 325 Bande, Sta. Comba de, 35 Bailos, 8. Juan de, 35, 40, 41, 191 Barcelona, City, 274, 294, 299, 323 et seq., 359-97 — Capilla de Marcus, 367 — Capilla de Sta. Lucia, 369 — Casa Consistorial, 327, 389-91 — Casa de la Diputacidn, 327, 348, 389-91 — Cathedral, 348, 375-86 — Church of the Holy Family, 351, 395 — Consulado del Mar, 326, 348, 391 — Corona de Aragon, 371 — Counts of, 323, 324, 328 — Episcopal Palace, 368 — Exhibition of 1888, 334 — Guilds, 365, 456 — el Montjuich, 359 — Museum, 350, 392-5, 401, 407, 534 — politics in, 336-40 — Santa Agueda, 370 — Santa Ana, 372 — San Cugat, 350, 373-5 — San J usto y San Pastor, 388 — Santa Maria del Mar, 348, 386- 8, 402 — Santa Maria del Pino, 348, 388 — San Pablo del Campo, 345, 366, 367 — San Pedro de las Puellas, 345, 365, 366 Barcelona, Sta. Catalina, 477 — el Tibidabo, 359, 360 — Province, 320, 398-407 Barcello, Canon, 428 Baroque, Spanish, 105, 192, 234, 356, 437, 468, 469 Barres, M. Maurice, 203 Barroso, painter, 227 Bartolome, ironworker, 527 Bartolome, Maestro, 426 Basle, Council of, 87, 162 Basque language, 273-7 Basque Provinces, 273-7, 343 Baturros, 298, 299 Baudilio, San, of Casillas de Ber- langa, 105, 107, 137 Bayeu, Francisco, 300, 301, 306, 479 Beatrix de Suabia, 161, 168 Becerra, Gaspar, 97, 140, 169, 193 Bellini, Giovanni, 219 Bellpuig, 447 Benavente, Juan de, 196 Benedict XIII, 303 Benedictine monks, artistic in- fluence of, 38, 82-4, 158, 175, 263, 346, 419 Bentham, Jeremy, 22 Berenguela, Queen, 161 Bermejo, Bartolome, 352, 382-5 Bermudez, Cean, 28 Bernard, St., monks of ; see Cis- tercians Bernardo, Archbishop of Toledo, 207, 261 Bernardo, Bishop of Sigiienza, 262 Bernardo, Master of Works at Santiago, 61, 66 Bernardus Frater, 424 Berner, Pedro, 417 Bernesga, River, 190 569 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Berruguete, Alonso, 97, 126, 144, 201, 218, 232, 233 Berruguete, Pedro, 126 Berteaux, M., 103 Bertha, Queen, 38 Beruete, D. Aureliano de, 252, 479 Betica, 344 Bible Society, 24 Biguerni ; see Vigarni Bigorre, Count of, 293 Bilbao, 274, 275 Bizet, 20 Bizkaitarras, 276 Black Prince, the, 85 Blai, Pere, 389 Blanes, Bishop Vidal de, 468 Blasco Ibanez, Sr., 467 Blasco Tramoyeres, Sr., 460 Bocanegra (painter), 527, 528 Boffiy, Guillermo, 413, 414 Bohi, Valley of, 346 Bombita, El, 250 Bonafe, Matias, 379 Bonaparte, Joseph, 255 Bordeaux, Sainte Croix, 105 Borgia, see Borja Borgona, Felipe de ; see Vigarni — Juan de (painter), 126, 201, 219 — Juan de (sculptor) ; see Langres Borja, House of, 317, 457, 458, 465, 473, 475, 478, 480 — Cardinal D. Francisco, 480 — San Francisco de, 317, 458, 475 Borra, Mossen, 381 Borrassa, Luis, 374, 404, 407 Borrow, George, 21, 24, 25, 522, 529 Bosch, Hieronymus, 92, 226, 254 — D. Pablo, 252 Bota-fumeiro, el, 68 Bourbon kings, the, 100, 253, 324, 332 Bourges, Cathedral of, 84, 161, 166, 213 Braga, 283 Brittany, 56 Bruges, School of, 220, 514 Brunelleschi, 135 Brussels, 257 Buen Ketiro ware, 101, 257 Bull-fighting, 246-52 Burgo de Osma, el, 84, 100, 107- 110, 214 Burgos, 157-75, 257, 503 — Cartuja de Miraflores, 94, 163, 174, 175 — Casa del Cordon, 173 — Cathedral of, 84, 85, 107, 109, 160-71, 182, 183, 214, 303, 347, 503 — Las Huelgas, 84, 158-60, 167, 172, 448, 449 — Museum, 173, 174 — San Esteban, 171, 172 — San Gil, 172 — San Nicolas, 171 Burgos, Bishop D.Alonso de, 229, 230 Burgos, D. Javier de, 236 Burgundy, artistic influence of, 82, 86-94, 120, 131, 180, 216, 285, 301, 303, 400, 430, 431 Bustamente, Bartolome de, 221 Byron, 19 Byzantine art, 35, 38, 135, 136, 190, 283, 326, 344-45, 367, 399-400, 415, 426, 441, 491-93, 502, 514 Qa Coma, Pedro, 410, 413 Ca Plana, Francisco, 413 gabot, Sr., 354 57o INDEX Cabrera, Juan, 382 Caceres, 268, 269 Cadalso, 201 Cadaque's, 321 Cadiz, 490, 499 Caesarea Augusta, 298 Calatailazor, 105, 110 Calatayud, 294 Calderon, 18-22 Calixtus II, Codex of, 60 Calixtus III, 458, 471, 473, 475 Campafia, Pedro, 517 Campomanes, 50 Canelles, Bishop Vidal de, 455 Canet, Antonio, 414 Cangas de Onis, 54 Cangiagi, Luca, 226 Cano, Alonso, 255, 470, 520, 526, 527 Cantarell, Giralt, 403 Caparroso (painter), 283 Capmany, 344 Capo de Monte ware, 101 Caprichos, los, J 01 Carbonell, Juan, 406 Cardena, San Pedro de, 135, 175 Cardona, Ramon de, 447 Cardoner, River, 402 Carducci, 24 Carlists ; see Wars, Carlist Carmen, 20, 23 Carneros, Archbishop Luis de los, 468 Carreilo, 255 Carrillo, Bishop Don Alonso, 266 Carrion, Infantes de, 81 Carrion, River, 194 Cartagena, Bishop Alonso de, 87, 116, 162, 163, 169, 170 Cartagena, Patriarchate of, 344 Carvajal, Cardinal D. Bernardino Lopez de, 265 Carvajal, painter, 227 Casanova, 66 Casas, Don Ramon, 405 Caspe, 456 Castayls, Maestro Jaime, 426 Castellon de Ampurias, 414, 418 Castellon de la Plana, 452 Castile, Counts of, 78 — Kingdom of, 81, 161, 179, 295, 324, 497 Castile and Leon, 78-101 Catalan architecture, 341-9 — industry, 332-4 — language, 322, 454, 467 — painting, 349-53 Catalonia, 57, 274, 293-6, 320- 451 — liberties of, 324-32 Catholic Kings, the, 88 et seq., 132, 157, 177, 218, 524, 526, 527 Cellas, Perez de las, 355 Celma, J. B., 67, 150 Centellas, mosaic of, 344, 431 Centellas, wood carver, 195 Centralisation, Spanish, 235-7 Cerebruno, Bishop Don, 263, 266 Cerezo, 255 Cerrato, Banos de, 197 Cervantes, 17, 22, 246, 260, 277, 361 Cervia, Berenguer, 415 Cespedes, ironsmith, 218 Charlemagne, 373 Charles V, the Emperor (Charles I of Spain), 89, 235, 253, 256, 257, 295, 296, 329, 461, 524, 526 Charles III (the Noble) of Navarre, 278, 281, 285 Charles III of Spain, 325, 529 Charros, 129, 130 57i SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Chartres, cathedral of, 84, 166, 183, 186 Chavas, Sr., 474 Chinnery, 93 Church, the Spanish, 89, 456, 498 Churriguera, Jose, 232 — style of, 63, 143 Cicarte, Pedro de, 177 Cid, the, 80, 81, 170, 207, 256, 453, 454 Cid, Poema del, 21, 80, 81, 453 Cimborio, 75, 112, 135, 149, 151, 155, 163, 175 Cisneros, Cardinal ; see Jimenez de Cisneros Cistercian monks, artistic influence of, 42, 52, 53, 83, 84, 114, 157- 60, 263, 279, 294, 313-19, 347, 419, 426, 431-42, 448, 449, 503 Ciudad-Real, 260 Ciudad-Rodrigo, cathedral, 144-8, 156, 218, 287 Clapos, Antonio, 381 Clavijo, battle of, 58, 188 Clement V, Pope, 113 Clovio, Giulio, 226 Cluny, artistic influence of monks of, 79, 82, 84, 131, 279, 346 — Museum of, 36, 483 Coca, castle of, 118 Coca, Francisco de, 266 Coello, Alonso Sanchez, 255 Coello, Claudio, 255 Coeur, Jacques, 484 Colivella, Guillermo, 444 Colman, family of, 257 Colonia (family of builders), 87, 88, 159, 162-70, 230, 342 Colonia, Diego de, 163, 164 Colonia, Francisco de, 163 Colonia, Juan de, 162-4, 174 Colonia, Simon de, 163, 164 Columbus, Christopher, 515 Comte, Pedro, 487 Comuneros, rising of the, 89, 111, 114, 163, 462 Constance, Queen of Pedro III of Aragon, 325 Constant!, 422, 431 Constantinian basilicas, 40 Constantinople, 493, 497 — Patriarchate of, 344 — SS. Sergius and Bacchus, 136 — the Theotocos, 136 Constanza, Infanta Dona, 158 Constitutions, Spanish, 236, 332 Contucci, Andrea, 201, 219 Copin, Diego, 201, 218 Cordillera, la Cantabrica, 34 Cordova, 107, 190, 191, 248, 272, 352, 490-4, 499-504, 505, 523 — Khalifs of, 492-4, 499-500, 524, 525 — Mosque of, 36, 491, 493, 499- 502 — Museum, 504 — Palace of Azzahra, 493, 494, 504 — Santa Maria, 504 Cordova, San Miguel, 504 — San Pablo, 503 — Santiago, 504 Cornwall, 56 Corporations, influence of re- ligious, 275, 397 Cors, Guillermo de, 413 Cortes of Aragon, the, 295, 296 — of Castile, the, 81, 89, 90 — of Catalonia, the, 324, 327-30 — of Valencia, 455, 466, 488 Cortes the conquistador, 268 Corticela, Sta. Maria de la, 66 Coruna, La, 55, 76, 77 572 INDEX Cor una, Sta. Maria del Campo, 77 — Santiago, 76 Covadonga, 47, 54 Covarrubias, Alfonso de, 91, 133, 144, 201, 221 Cristobal, Maestro, 201, 217, 513 Cruz, Ramon de la, 331 Cruzada Villaamil, 30 Cuba, 334 Cuenca, 260 Cuerda seca, pottery, 506, 507 Cumba, Pedro de, 444 Custodia, the, 98, 355 Cyclopaean walls, 407, 423 Dacia, 35 Dalman, Luis, 390, 393 Damascus, Khalifs of, 492 Dancart, wood-carver, 512 Dances, 57, 129, 241, 242, 335-6 Dante, 290, 351 Darmstadt, 334 Daroca, 294 Darro, River, 523 David, Gherard, 92 Davillier, Baron, 484, 507 Degas, 205 Delli, Dello, 187 Denis, St., Church of, 183 Deo, Petrus de, 180 Deruta ware, 484 Despla, Archdeacon, 383 Deza, Bishop Suarez de, 63 Diaz, Pedro, 355 Dijon, 430 Divine Comedy, the, 421 Domenech, Sr., 428 Dominguez, Bishop Juan, 107 Doncel, Guillermo, 190 Downie, 509 Drake, Sir Francis, 76 Dresden, 473 Duero, River, 102, 128, 150, 155, 228 Duque, Maestro Rodrigo, 266 Durer, Albrecht, 93, 139 EarPs Court, 492 Ebn-Said, 496 Ebro, River, 286, 293, 296, 297, 320, 345 Edrisi, the traveller, 483 Egara, 398, 399 Egas, family of builders, 91, 217, 342 Egas, Anton de, 133 Egas, Enrique de, 201, 218, 229, 510 Egea, Bishop, 73 Elche, 452, 453 Elne, 343, 415 Ema, Abbess, 421 Emerita Augusta, 270 Emporium, 321 Encisa, 279 England, Spanish alliance with, 333 Enlart, M., 40, 41, 65 Enrique IV of Castile, 88 Eritana, Venta de, 23, 521 Escalada, San Miguel de, 190, 191 Escorial, the, 97, 223-7, 254 Escuder, Andres, 375, 377 Esla, River, 190 Espartero, General, 299 Espinosa, Jacinto de, 482 Espluga, La, 432 Estany, El, 406 Esteban, Bishop of Zamora, 151 Estella, Sto. Domingo, 280 Estella, San Pedro, 279 Esterina, 56 Esteve, D. Rafael, 479 573 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Estremadura, 148-50, 268-72 Eulalia, Saint, of Barcelona, 373 Eunate, Church of, 279 Eusebi, Sr., 255 Fabre, Jaime, 377, 387 Falco, Nicolas, 481 Fancelli, Domenico, of Settignano, 127, 267, 527 Farnese, Dona Isabel, 253, 254 Favariis, Jaime de, 412 Federalism, Swiss, 508 Felipe el Hermoso ; see Philip I of Spain Ferdinand the Catholic, 88, 324, 497, 527 Fergusson, 65 Fernandez, Alejo, 515 Fernandez de Moral, 233 Fernando IV of Aragon, 328 Fernando V of Aragon ; see Fer- dinand Fernando I of Castile and Leon, 79, 179 Fernando III of Castile (El Santo), 80, 84, 85, 145, 161, 183, 200, 212, 213, 494, 495, 496, 503, 513 Fernando VII of Spain, 251, 255 Ferrer, Bartolome, 471 Ferrer, D. Mariano, 479 Fez, 496 Fidel, Bishop, 271 Fielding, 17 Figueras, 418 Finisterre, Cape, 55 Finojosa, D. Martin de, 263 Firenze, Giovanni da, 441 Firenze, Pacio da, 441 Flagino ; see Flainus, 51 Flainus, 51 Flamenco, Bernaldino, 513 Flamenco, Carlos, 513 Flanders, artistic influence of, 87 et seq., 144, 201, 217, 352, 382, 394, 470, 471, 480, 481 Flandes, Arnau de, 163, 342, 513 Flemalle, Master of, 92 Florentino, Domenico ; see Fan- celli Florentino, Nicolas, 87, 138 Floridablanca, Count, 529 Fonseca, Bishop D. Juan, 194-6 Fonseca, Cardinal D. Alfonso de, 97, 143, 177, 267 Font, Juan, 403 Fontfroide, monks from, 432 Ford, Richard, 25, 26, 361, 473 Forment, Damian, 301, 309, 481 Fox-hunting, 250 France, artistic influence of, 38, 42, 66, 79, 82-6, 119, 125, 131, 135, 152, 160-72, 182-9, 213-16, 263, 280, 287, 289, 293, 307, 315, 346-7, 439, 440, 449 Frances, Pedro, 217 Franch, Juan, 444, 471 Francia, Pena de, 128, 130 Francoli, River, 423, 433 Frankish kings, 345 Frederic, Juan, 379 Frederick II, the Emperor, 325 Free Masonry, 460 Fuentes, the bullfighter, 249, 250 Galgo, 131 Galicia, 55-77 Galician dialect, 55 Gallegos, Fernando, 93, 138, 139, 156 Gallito, el, 250 Gallo, Fernando el, 250 Galtes de Ruan, Carlos, 444 Gambling, 244-6, 250, 268 Gandi'a, Dukes of, 317, 458 574 INDEX Garei-Ximenez, 310 Garcia, Pedro, 510 Gardiner collection, 384 Gaspar, Maestro, of Sigiienza, 266 Gata, Sierra de, 128 Gaudi, Sr., 395-7 Gautier, The'ophile, 19 Gayangos, 492 Gelabert, Antonio, 472 Genii, River, 523 Geralt, Arnaldo, 374 Germaina, La, 462, 463 Germany, artistic influence of, 86-94, 144, 162-74, 217, 282, 284, 379, 473 Gerona, 320, 321, 407-21 — Architects' Congress at, 402, 413, 414 — Capuchin convent, 408 — cathedral, 348, 355, 412-18 — San Feliu, 409-12 — San Nicolas, 409 — San Pedro de Galligans, 307, 408, 409 Geronimite monks, 115, 224, 225, 268 Gestoso, Sr., 29, 495, 509 Ghosts, 56, 57 Gijon, 43 Giordano, Luca, 219 Girona, Sr., 375 Glass-blowing, 201, 353, 354 Glass-painting, 163, 184, 187, 188 Gloria, Portico de la, 61, 63, 75, 121 Golden Age, the, 21 Golden Fleece, Order of the, 379 Gomar, Francisco, 428, 444 Gomez, Alvar, 217 Gomez, Moreno, 136 onzalez, Alberto, 188 Gothic style, Catalan ; see Catalan architecture Gothic style, French ; see France Gothic style, German ; see Ger- many Gothic style of the Catholic Kings, 90, 91, 115, 139, 140, 142, 163 et seq., 228-31, 303, 511, 526 Goya, Francisco, 69, 101, 219, 248, 252, 255, 297, 300, 301, 305, 306, 475, 477, 479, 480, 515, 530 Graeco-Phcenician art, 259, 452 Granada, 209, 304, 328, 490, 497- 9, 523-8 — the Alhambra, 211, 491, 495, 523-6 — Alhambra vase, 483, 525 — La Cartuja, 528 — cathedral, 526, 527 — Generalife, 524 — museum, 528 — Royal Tombs at, 127, 526, 527 Granja, La, 101, 118 Greco, El, 25, 30, 48, 95, 96, 126, 196, 202-5, 208, 210, 219, 221- 2, 226, 227, 232, 255, 266, 515, 520, 530, 531 Greek art, 192, 340 Grillparzer, 19 Guadalajara, 247, 266, 267 Guadalquivir, River, 504, 505 Guadalupe, monastery of, 268 Guadarrama, mountains of, 111, 223, 260 Gual, Bartolome, 375, 377, 414 Gualterias, 53 Guara, Sierra de, 306 Guarrazar, crowns of, 36, 49, 199, 256 Guas, Juan, 91, 201, 217, 220, 342 575 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Gubbio ware, 484 Gudiol, Sr., 407 Giiemez, 148 Guerra, Rafael, 249 Guevara, D. Felipe de, 226 Guilds ; see Barcelona, Guilds, and Valencia, Guilds. Guillermo, Bishop of Zamora, 152 Guillotine, the, 400 Guinguamps, Juan de, 414 Guipuzcoa, 273 Guisando, Toros de, 258 Guisasola, Archbishop, 110 Gumiel, Pedro, 91, 267 Gundesiudo, Abbot, 61 Gurb, Bishop Arnaldo de, 369 Gypsies, the, 23, 56, 522 Hair, ivory carver, 283 Hannibal, 452 Hapsburg Kings, the, 95, 256, 328, 457, 465 Havelock Ellis, 22 Havemeyer collection, 255 Head, 28 Heine, 19 Henares, River, 262, 266, 267 Henrique, Maestro, 513 Henry I of England, 60 Henry II of England, 158 Hercules, 198, 362 Hernandez, Gregorio, 149, 233 Herrera, Francisco el Mozo, 255, 300, 519 Herrera, Francisco el Viejo, 255, 518 Herrera, Juan de, 97, 222-4, 231-2, 476, 516 Hindustani, 492 Hirache, church of, 279 Hispano-Moresque ware, 258, 354, 453, 461, 482-7 Hixem, of Cordova, 493, 500 Hoces, Juan de, 510 Holanda, Alberto de, 126, 201, 217 Holanda, Juan de, 196 Holanda, Nicolas de, 126 Holy Sepulchre, monks of the, 372 Hontanon, family of, 91 Hontanon, Juan Gil de, 117, 133, 139, 511 Hontanon, Rodrigo de, 117 Horseshoe arch, the, 36-9, 190 Hoy os, Gaspar de, 193 Hiibner, Herr, 41 Huelgas, Las ; see Burgos Huelva, 490 Huesca, 293, 294 — Cathedral, 308, 309 — Church of Salas, 307, 308 — museum, 310 — Palace of D. Ramiro, 309 — San Pedro el Viejo, 307, 310 Hugo, Victor, 19 Huguet, Jaime, 400 Hulin de Loo, M., 384 Hurtado de Mendoza, Archbishop Diego, 510 Hurtado de Mendoza, D. Diego, 499 Ibarra, Pedro de, 91, 97, 144 Ilerda, 442 Illescas, 259 Independence, War of ; see W ar, Peninsular India, the English in, 492 Industrial art in Spain, 95, 201, 349-58 Ingles, Jorge, 86 Infantado, Dukes del, 267 Inquisition, the, 88, 226, 519 576 INDEX Ireland, 56, 57 Ironwork, 95, 353, 354 Irving, Washington, 19, 492 Isabel I of Castile ; see Isabella Isabel of Portugal, 67, 475 Isabel, Queen of D. Juan II, 174 Isabel, Sta., of Portugal, 67 Isabella the Catholic, 88, 326, 497, 527 Isidoro, San, 36, 179, 181 Italica, 490, 504 Italy, Catalan relations with, 320, 321, 325-7, 352 — Valencian relations with, 456- 9, 480 Ivory, carved, 173, 197 Jaca Cathedral, 293, 306, 310 Jaen, 490, 497 — Cathedral, 499 Jaime I of Aragon (El Conquista- dor), 295, 317, 428, 454, 497 Jaime II of Aragon, 370, 441 Jalon, River, 294 James the Greater, St., 58, 300, 302 James, St., son of Alphaeus, 67 Jane the Mad, 527 Jativa, Colegiata de, 458 Jeronimo, Bishop, 131, 133, 135, 151 Jerte, River, 148 Jerusalem, 103, 114, 279 Jesuits, the, 275, 315 Jews, the, 59, 80, 88, 116, 119, 162, 198, 208-10, 389, 457, 461, 493 Jimenez de Cisneros, Cardinal, 267 Jimon, Maestro, 510 Johan, Jordi, 390 John, Knights of St., 102, 103, 113, 142, 154 Jordaens, 254 Jota Aragonesa, the, 296, 298, 299, 302 Jovellanos, 43 Juan I of Aragon, 328, 455 Juan II of Aragon, 278, 432, 442 Juan II of Castile, 86, 111, 115, 174 Juan, Infante Don, 126 Juanes, Juan de, 93, 475, 481 Juni, Juan de, 97, 109, 110, 117, 140, 178, 229, 233 Jurisdictions, Law of, 275 Justi, Professor, 25, 29, 116, 480, 527 Juvenal, 20 Kabyles, 129 Kempeneer, Pedro ; see Campana, Pedro Kings, position of, in Aragon, 295, 296, 327-30 in Castile, 81, 88, 89 Kipling, Mr., 492 Lacier va, Sr., 252 Lambardo, R., 450 Lamperez y Romea, 80, 31, 39, 41, 42, 135, 344, etc. Langres, Juan de, 163, 169 Lanuza, execution of, 296 Larra, 20 Lauria, Roger de, 326 Ledesma, Don Damaso, 130 Lena, Sta. Cristina de, 39, 50, 51 Leon, 179-90 — kingdom of, 161, 179 — cathedral of, 84, 125, 162, 166, 182-9, 214, 215, 347 — museum of, 36, 190 577 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Leon, Royal Pantheon, 179, 181 — San Isidoro, 82, 179-82 — San Marcos, 190 — walls, 182 Leon, Fray Luis de, 143 Leonardo, manner of, 458, 474, 475 Leoni, family of sculptors, 225 Leoni, Pompeyo, 233 Leonor, Queen, 158 Lerida, 320, 442-51, 454 — new cathedral, 443 — old cathedral, 287, 289, 307, 423, 444-7, 469, 471 — San Lorenzo, 443 Lerma, Dukes of, 233, 463 Lerroux, D. Alejandro, 336-9 Leucate, D. Pedro de, 262, 263 Levi, Don Samuel, 202, 208-10 Levi, tribe of, 162 Liberals, Spanish, 251, 313, 332, 397, 419, 432, 438, 465 Liberum Veto, privilege of, 295 Lieres, 52 Limoges, enamel from, 173, 174, 182, 309, 528 Limousin language, 322 Linares, 521 Linio, S. Miguel de, 39, 48, 49 Llaguna y Amirola, 28 Llanos, Ferrando de, 474 Lleyda ; see Lerida Llobet, Martin, 472 Llobregat, River, 323 Logrono, 345 Lombard architecture, 289, 307, 345-7, 400, 405, 423, 447, 450, 451 Longfellow, 19 Lopez Ferreiro, 58, 64, 66 Lopez, Pedro, 510 Loquer, Miguel, 376 Louis VI of France, 60 Louis Philippe, 530 Louis, Saint, King of France, 513 Louvre, the, 384, 394, 453, 518 Low Countries, artistic influence of, 86-94 Loyola, 277 Loyola, San Ignacio de, 274, 401 Ludovicus Pius, 345 Lugo Cathedral, 55, 70-2 Lugo, walls, 70, 182 Lull, Ramon, 381 Luna, family of, 303, 436 Luna, D. Alvaro de, 86, 209, 217 Lusitania, 344 Macarrona, la, 23 Machaquito, el, 250 Machuca, Pedro, 524 Macip, Vicente ; see J uanes, Juan de Madoz, 28 Madrazo, family of, 256, 495 Madrazo, D. Juan, 184, 188 Madrid, 57, 198, 234-59, 518, 519 — Academia de la Historia, 259 — Academia de S. Fernando, 256 — Archaeological Museum, 251-7, 453, 534 — the Armoury, 36, 256 — politics in, 236-8 — the Prado, 94, 115, 253-6, 481, 519, 532 — Royal Palace, 257 — San Antonio de la Florida, 252 — San Francisco el Grande, 252 — theatres, 239-42 Madrigal, Bishop Alfonso de, 126 Madrigal de las Altas Torres, 118 Maeda, sculptor, 526, 527 Maella, 475 INDEX Maestre, Francisco, 488 Magreb, 496 Maine, sinking of the, 464 Majolica ware, 484 Maladetta, peak of, 320 Malaga, 490, 491, 499 — pottery of, 483, 505, 525 Mallorqum dialect, 323 Mancha, la, 260, 268, 452 Manfred of Sicily, 325 Manises, pottery of, 371, 485 Manresa, Colegiata, 348, 387, 402-5 Manrique, Bishop Don, 182 Mans, Le, Cathedral, 215 Mansuriah, 496 Mantegna, 253 Maragatos, the, 192 Marignan, M., 40, 41 Marrakesh, 496 Marti, Fray Lleonar, 380 Marti y Monsd, 30 Martin I of Aragon (el Humano), 328, 434, 455 Martinez, Alfonso, 510 Martorell, Benito, 382, 404 Martorell, Marquesa de, 255 Mateo, Maestro, 61, 63, 64, 66 Matheus, Maestro ; see Mateo Maura, Sr., 466 Mauricio, Bishop of Burgos, 84, 161, 169, 213 Mazzantini, Luis, 249 Meaux, cathedral of, 73 Medici, House of, 485 Medina del Campo, 247 Medrano, sculptor, 527 Melida, Sr., 206 Melkarth, 362 Mena, sculptor, 527 Mendoza, House of, 274 Mendoza, D. Inigo Lopez de, 87 Mendoza, Dona Mencia de, 164, 169, 173 Mendoza, Cardinal D. Pedro Gonzalez de, 164, 218, 229, 265 Menendez Pelayo, D. Marcelino, 249 Merida, 36, 227, 270-2, 501 — Roman remains, 270, 271, 422 — Santa Eulalia, 271 Merimee, 19 Michael Angelo, 97, 517 Michel, M. Andre, 103, 110 Migeon, M., 483 Milesian traditions, 56 Millan, Pedro, 513 Mino, River, 55, 72, 74 Miraflores, Convent of ; see Burgos Mohamed I of Granada, 523 Mohamed V of Granada, 523 Moissac, monastery of, 176, 290 Moncayo, el, 287, 311, 314, 319 Monforte, Maestro Raimundo de, 70 Monistrol, 402 Monstrance, the, 355 Montserrat, 398, 401, 402 Mont St. Michel, 68 Montanes, Juan Martinez, 513 Monte Casino, 135 Monterrey, Conde de, 144, 482 Montes, Antonio, 250 Moorish art, 90, 91, 103, 106, 107, 112, 113, 118, 180, 200, 220, 256, 272, 304, 434, 443, 461, 491-6 et seq. Moors, the, 19, 78-83, 198-200, 260-1, 293, 323, 362, 408, 422, 442, 452-4, 457-65, 490 et seq. Mor, or Moro, Antonio, 225, 226, 255 579 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Morales, el Divino, 269 Morales, the traveller, 45 Morena, Sierra, 260 Moreruela, Abbey of, 158 Morey, Guillen, 413 Moriscos, 89, 463, 464, 498 Morlata, 294 Morocco, 495 Moslem invasion, the, 34, 36, 37, 157, 190, 260, 293, 341, 343, 398, 493 Mota, Guillelmo de la, 414 Moustiers ware, 101, 486 Moya, 406 Mozarabes, the, 37, 38, 39, 42, 190, 191, 199, 206, 271, 491-4 Mozarabic ritual, the, 137, 219 Mudejares, artistic influence of, 83, 85, 90, 91, 114, 200, 208-11, 214, 259, 266, 267, 294, 297, 304, 311, 503, 515, 516 Muneiras, 57 Munich, glass from, 110, 170 Muntaner, Ramon, 497 Mur, Bishop Dalmacio de, 413 Murcia, 100, 452, 497 Murillo, 21, 515, 519, 520, 530 Murray (Guide Book), 25, 65, 145, 262 Murviedro ; see Sagunto Naples, 325, 456, 482 — church of Sta. Chiara, 441 Naranco, Sta. Maria de, 39, 49-51 Narbona, Enrique de, 412 Narbonne, 293, 412 Navarre, 277-92, 293 Navarrete (el Mudo), 140, 227 Navas de Tolosa, battle at Las, 284, 494 Nave, San Pedro de la, 35 Nasrite rulers of Granada, 497, 523 Neapoli, Francisco, 474 Negroli, family of, 257 Nicolau, Pedro, 480 Nobles, position of, in Aragon, 295, 296 in Castile, 81 in Valencia, 295, 457-9 Nolanus, Johannes, 447 Nomayr ben Mohamed Alanmeri, 283 Norman builders, 424 Norman, Juan, 510 Novoa, 63 Nozaleda, Archbishop, 466 Numancia, 105 Nunez, Juan, 514, 517 Obeidat, ivory carver, 283 Obradoiro, el, 63 Olegar, Bishop, 346, 424 Oliva, Abbey of, 158, 280 Oiler, Pedro, 406 Olot, 356 Olotzaga, Juan de, 308 Ordoilo II of Leon, 189 Ordonez, Bartolome, 267, 379, 527 Orellana, 472 Orense, cathedral of, 55, 74-6 — San Francisco, 75 Ortegal, Cape, 55 Ortiz, Pablo, 217 Osma, Sr., 258 Osuna, 110 Othon, Bishop of Vich, 373 Oviedo, 39, 43-52 — Camara Santa, 43, 45-7 — cathedral, 43-7 Pacheco, Juan, 518, 519 ;o INDEX Pacheco, J uan, Marques de Villena, 115 Padilla, D. Juan de, 173 Padilla, Maria de, 208 Pahoner, 471 Palencia, 193-7 — cathedral of, 86, 194-7 — San Francisco, 194 — San Lazaro, 194 — San Pablo, 194 Palencia, Gaspar de, 193 Palma de Mallorca, cathedral, 348, 377, 403 Pamplona, 279, 280-6 — cathedral, 280-6 — casket of, 173, 197, 283 — San Nicolas, 286 — San Saturnino, 286 Pantoja de la Cruz, 255 Paredes, D. Vicente, 258 Paris, cathedral of, 84, 161, 166 — Musee des Arts De'coratifs, 350 Parliament ; see Cortes Pasos (Passion groups), 98 Patinir, Joachim, 92, 254 Paular, el, 87, 96, 118 Pavia, 420 Peasants of Castile, 106 Pedret, mural paintings of, 349 Pedro III of Aragon, 325, 326, 441 Pedro IV of Aragon (el Cere- • monioso), 326, 422, 455 Pedro I of Castile ; see Peter the Cruel Pedro, Maestro, of Salamanca, 136 Pelaez, Bishop Diego, 60 Pelayo, 47, 256 Pelota, game of, 243-5 Peria, Gaspar de la, 526 Pena, San Juan de la, 310 Peilafreyta, Pedro de, 444 Peregrino, Bishop D. Pedro, 70 Perez, Pedro ; see Petrus Petri Perez Villamil, Sr., 29, 262, 460 Perpignan, 343 Peter the Cruel, 202, 208, 496, 509 Petri, Petrus, 213 Petronilla, heiress to Ramiro II of Aragon, 309, 324 Phidias, 309 Philip the Handsome of Burgun- dy ; see Philip I of Spain Philip I of Spain, 92, 527 Philip II of Spain, 89, 223-7, 235, 253, 295, 296, 461, 498 Philip III of Spain, 463, 498 Philip IV of Spain, 253, 482 Philip V of Spain, 118, 254, 324, 466 Philippe Auguste, 161 Philippines, the, 334 Phoenicians, 57, 362, 422, 452 Piedra, monastery of, 259, 294 Piferrer, 402, 432 Pignatelli, Canon, 297 Pilar, N. S. del, 58, 296 et seq., 319 Pilgrims, 58, 59, 68, 273, 279, 310, 345 Pinedo, Gabriel de, 177 Pinturicchio, 480 Pisano, Francisco Niculoso, 507 Pisuerga, River, 228 Pizarro, the Conquistador, 268 Plasencia Cathedral, 148-50, 218, 269 Plateresque style, the, 96, 142, 266, 309, 513 Poblet, Abbey of, 158, 313-15, 324, 347, 428, 430-8, 448, 503 2 o 581 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Poitevin architecture, 105 Poitiers, Notre Dame la Grande of, 105, 263 Pola de Lena, 50 Poland, Diet of, 295 Polavieja, General, 321 Pons, 28, 29, 432, 473 Pontevedra, 55 Porcelain, 101, 257 Port-Bou, 320 Portell, Berengario, 407 Portugal, 55, 115, 227 — D. Fadrique de, 266 Pottery ; see Valencia, Malaga, Seville, Alcora — Moorish ; see Hispano-Mor- esque — Persian, 354 Poussin, Nicholas, 205, 254 Pozo, Fernando, 488 Prado, the ; see Madrid Praxiteles, 309 Priesca, S. Salvador de, 38 Primitives, Castilian, 92 et seq. , 139 — Catalan, 94, 349-53 — Flemish, 91 et seq., 169, 170, 189, 254, 282, 292 — Florentine, 138, 187 — Sevillian, 514, 517 — Valencian, 466, 478, 480 Provence, 263, 293, 323 Puig y Cadafalch, Sr., 532 Pyrenees, the, 278, 293, 321, 343, 443, 447 — treaty of the, 325 Quadrado, Sr., 199 Queiles, River, 311 Quentin, St., battle of, 224 Quevedo, 17, 246 Quintero, the brothers, 241 Quirce, San (near Burgos), 175 Rabat, 496 Raimundo of Burgundy, 79, 118, 119, 130 Ramirez, Don Garcia, 279 Ramiro I of Aragon, 293, 310 Ramiro II of Aragon (el Monje), 293, 309, 310, 324 Ramiro I of Asturias, 48 Ramon Berenguer IV of Barce- lona, 324, 372, 432, 438 Ranc, Bernard, 439 Raphael, 254, 304, 517 Ravenna, 344, 399, 426, 431 Recared, 35, 199 Reccesvinto, 41, 197 Reconquest, the, 78, 81, 150, 157, 271, 293, 300, 423, 505 Regla, Sta. Maria de ; see Leon, cathedral Renaissance, Castilian, 96-100, 142, 143, 192, 193, 200, 229, 231, 232, 499, 516, 524 — Italian, 87, 96, 118, 127, 140, 144, 459, 473-5, 528 Rene', King of Anjou, 384, 484 Republicans, Spanish, 336, 337 Repulles, Sr., 122 Retablos, 88 et seq., 354-6, 403 Reus, 356 Revolution, the French, 236 Rhages, pottery of, 354, 483 Rheims, cathedral of, 84, 166, 183 — museum, 431 Riario, D. Juan, 283, 534 Ribalta, 467, 476, 481 Ribera, Archbishop, 463-5, 476 Ribera, Jose, 144, 254, 467, 475 Rincon, Antonio, 92 Rios, Alonso de los, 169 Ripoll, Abbey of, 324, 353, 418-21 I Riquer, Bertran, 370, 441 INDEX Rivadeo, Ria de, 34 Robbia, Luca della, 477 Robert of Anjou, King of Naples, 441 Roberto, carver at Astorga, 192 Roberto of Santiago, 61 Roda, S. Pedro de, 418 Rodolfo, Corrado, 473 Rodrigo, Don, 37 Rodriguez, Alonso, 510 Rodriguez, Francisco, 510 Rodriguez, Gaspar, 195 Rodriguez, Ventura, 63 Roelas, Juan de las, 255, 518 Rogent, Don Elias, 419 Rojas, Gonzalez de, 610 Roman art, 149, 199, 268, 270, 340, 409, 422, 423, 430, 431, 490 Romanesque architecture, 83, 85, 103-5, 111, 119, 136, 146, 149, 154, 175, 176, 180, 228, 279, 287, 307, 345-7, 369, 407, 411, 419, 447, 503, 515 Romans, the, 57, 149, 179, 191, 193, 198, 268, 270, 271, 293, 340, 362, 422, 452, 504 Romantic writers, 18-23 Roncesvalles, 273, 279 Ronda, 499 Roque, Maestro, 377 Ros, Jaime, 404 Rosas, 344 Roumania, 35 Roussillon, 323, 325, 343 Rubens, 254 Rubf, Bishop, 493 Rueda, monastery of, 294 Rusifiol, Don Santiago, 353 Sabatini, Francisco, 100 Sachetti, 257 Sadurni, Antonio, 391 Sagrera, Guillermo, 414 Sagunto, 452 Sainetes, 240-2 Salamanca, 99, 128-44, 220, 247, 258 — Las Agustina, 144 — Casa de las Conchas, 143 — Casa de las Muertes, 143 — Casa de las Salinas, 143 — Colegio del Arzobispo, 97, 143, 267 — Convento de la Vega, 142 — new cathedral, 97, 117 — old cathedral, 133-9, 149, 151, 287 — Palacio de Monterrey, 143 — Plaza Mayor, 143 — San Esteban, 143 — San Marcos, 141, 142 — San Martin, 141, 155 — Torre del Gallo, 134-6, 146, 147, 156 — University, 142, 193 Salcedo, Padre, 306 Salmerdn, D. Nicolas, 338 Salonika, Church of the Apostles, 136 San Juan, Pedro de, 413 Sanchez, Benito, 147 Sanchez, Martin, 175 Sanchez de Castro, Juan, 514, 517 Sanchez de Segovia, 138 Sanchez de Toca, D. Joaquin, 236 Sancho of Aragon, 278 Sancho the Great, of Navarre, 277 Sancii, A., 411 Sanpere y Miguel, Sr., 30, 352, 353, 383-5, 404 Santander, 43 Santas Creus, Abbey of, 158, 313- 15, 324, 347, 438-42, 448 583 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Santiago de Compostela, Cathe- dral, 58-70, 73, 74, 75, 273, 279, 345, 420 — Sta. Maria de Sar, 69, 70 Santillana, Diego de, 163 Santos Cruz, 126 Santullano, 39, 48 Sar, Sta. Maria de ; see Santiago de Compostela Sardanas, the, 335-6 Sarvistan, palace of, 175 Scala Dei, monks from, 313 Schlegel, 19 Schoenegauer, Martin, 92, 514 Segovia, 111-18, 228 — Alcazar, 115, 116 — cathedral of, 116, 117, 140 — Corpus Cristi, 114 — El Parral, 115, 116 — San Andres, 114 — San Clemente, 114 — San Esteban, 113 — San Juan de los Caballeros, 113 — San Justo, 114 — San Lorenzo, 114 — San Martin, 113 — San Millan, 83, 111-13, 137 — San Quirce, 114 — San Salvador, 114 — La Vera Cruz, 83, 113, 114, 137 Segre, River, 442 Seguino, Bishop D. Pedro, 75 Seo de Urgel, cathedral, 450, 451 — San Pedro, 451 Separatists, Catalan, 335-40 Sepulveda, 118 Serra, Pere, 404 Sert, Sr., 406 Sevilla, Juan de, 527 Seville, 235, 248, 490, 494-6, 504-23 — the Alcazar, 492, 496, 504, 506-9 — Ayuntamiento, 516 — La Caridad, 520 — Casa de Pilatos, 496, 516 — cathedral of, 92, 163, 303, 509-15 — Church of Omnium Sanctorum, 515 — the Giralda, 496, 505, 510 — Lonja, 516 — museum, 520 — Torre del Oro, 505 — San Andres, 515 — San Esteban, 516 — Sta. Lucia, 515 — San Marcos, 516 — Santa Marina, 515 -- San Telmo Palace, 521 — Seville, Triana, 507 — school of, 255, 514-21 Sevillian pottery, 505-8 Shakespeare, 277 Sicily, 325 Siculo- Arabic art, 103 Siena, school of, 374, 382, 394 Sierra Nevada, the, 523 Sigerido, 61 Siguenza, 260, 261-6 — cathedral, 84, 108, 262-6 — San Vicente, 266 Siloe, family of, 91 Siloe, Diego de, 170, 526 Siloe, Gil de, 94, 170, 173, 174, 196 Silos, Santo Domingo de, 135, 173, 175, 176 Silversmiths, 98, 99, 342 Sitges, 353 Socialists, 43, 322, 466 INDEX Solidaridad Catalana, la, 336-9, 467 Soria, 102-5 Soria, el Mirdn, 105 — La Merced, 105 — Santo Domingo, 103-5 — San Juan de Duero, 102, 103, 154 — San Nicolas, 105 — San Pedro, 105 — Santo Tome ; see Santo Do- mingo Sorolla, Sr., 467 South Kensington Museum, 534 Southey, 19 Spencer, Herbert, 22 Spier, 84, 161 Stendhal, 430 Sterne, 17 Stirling, 28 Storks, 145, 159 Street, George, 27-9, 64, 214, 262, 341, 376 Suevi, 56 Sultanabad, pottery of, 354, 483 Sunyer, Count of Barcelona, 366 Syrians, 59, 82, 344 Tabachetti, 233 Tapestry, 95, 101, 154, 159, 196, 220, 257, 303, 304, 416 Tarazona, 294, 311-13 — cathedral, 100, 292, 311-13 — La Magdalena, 311 Tarragona, city, 324, 343, 422-31 — aqueduct, 431 — cathedral, 287, 423-9, 446 — museum, 429-31 — San PablO — walls, 423 — province, 320, 422-42 Tarragona, Juan de, 428 Tarrassa, Sta. Maria, 398, 400 — S. Miguel, 35, 41, 344 — San Pedro, 345, 350 Tarrega, 447 Tavera, Cardinal, 146, 267 Taylor, Baron, 530 Templars, Knights, 113, 114, 154, 279, 346, 424, 476 Teniers, 69 Tenorio, Archbishop, 216 Ter, River, 406, 407, 418, 421 Teresa, Santa, 26, 119, 143 Teruel, 293, 294 Textiles, Oriental, 326, 354, 443 Thaull, San Clemente de, 350 Theotocopuli, Domenico ; see El Greco Theotocopuli, Jorge Manuel, 217 Tibaldi, Pellegrino, 226 Tieck, 19 Tiepolo, 257 Tinamayor, Ria de, 34 Tintoretto, 226, 253 Tioda, 46 Titian, 225, 253 Toledo, 83, 198-222 — Alcazar, 221 — Ayuntamiento, 221 — Casa del Greco, 210, 222 — Castle of S. Servando, 221 — cathedral of, 84, 161, 166, 182, 183, 212-20, 347, 502 — La Concepcion, 211 — Hospital de Santa Cruz, 221 — Hospital de Tavera, 221 — Mosque de las Tornerias, 207 — Puerta de Bisagra, 212 — Puerta del Sol, 212 — Sto. Cristo de la Luz, 206, 207 — Sto. Domingo el Antiguo, 221 — Sta. Eulalia, 206 — Sta. Isabel de los Reyes, 211 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Toledo, San Jose, 222, 531 — S. Juan de la Penitencia, 211 — San Juan de los Reyes, 206, 220 — Sta. Maria la Blanca, 208, 210 — San Roman, 208 — San Sebastian, 206 — Santo Tome, 202 — San Vicente, 222 - Santiago del Arrabal, 207 — el Transito, 208, 209 — el Zocodover, 221 Toledo, D. Pedro de, 223 Toledo, Juan Bautista de, 223, 227 Tomas, carver at Astorga, 192 Torcello, 426 Tormes, River, 128 Toro, Collegiate Church, 155, 156, 287 — San Lorenzo, 156 Torres Villaroel, 132 Torrigiano, Pietro, 226, 520 Tortajada, la, 23 Tortosa, 414 Toulouse, dialect of, 323 — Counts of, 293 — museum, 427 — St. Sernin, 65, 66, 67 Trajan, 270 Trasmoz, castle of, 313 Trastamara, House of, 85 Trujillo, 268 Tubal, 198 Tudela, 286-92 — Colegiata, 279, 287-92, 308 — La Magdalena, 287 Tunis, 496 Turegano, castle of, 118 Turia, River, 468 Tuy, cathedral, 55, 72-4 — Santo Domingo, 74 Unamuno, Miguel de, 24, 275 Urraca, Da., daughter of Fer- nando I of Castile, 179 Urraca, Dona, heiress of Alfonso VI, 79, 80, 119, 130, 131 Val-de-Dios, S. Salvador de, 38, 41, 52-4 Valbonne, monks of, 305 Valdes Leal, Juan de, 255, 504, 519, 520 Valdivieso, Juan, 163 Valencia, 100, 293-5, 354, 452- 89 — Academia de S. Carlos, 465, 479-82 — Audiencia, 488 — cathedral, 458, 468-76 — Colegio del Patriarca, 476 — guilds, 456, 459-64 — liberties of, 455, 466 — Lonja de la Seda, 487 — El Miguelete, 444, 454, 468, 469, 471, 472 — N. S. de los Desamparados, 476 — Palacio Dos Aguas, 477 — Puerta de Serranos, 460, 487 — Sto. Domingo, 476 — Santos Juanes, 477 — San Martin, 477 — San Nicolas, 458 — La Trinidad, 477 Valencian dialect, 323, 454, 467 Valladolid, 220, 228-33 — cathedral of, 97, 231, 232 — Hospital de : Sta. Cruz, 229, 232 — museum, 232, 233 — San Gregorio, 228, 230 — Sta. Maria la Antigua, 228, 229 INDEX Valladolid, San Martin, 229 — San Pablo, 228, 230 Vallbona de las Monjas, 158, 160, 314, 347 Vallejo, Juan de, 163 Valleras, Arnaldo de, 402, 414 Vallfogona, Pedro de, 414 Vails, 438, 508 Van de Put, Mr., 483, 484 Van der Weyden, 92 Van Dyck, 254 Van Eyck, Jan, 87, 91, 115, 116, 394 Varallo, 233 Vargas, Luis de, 255, 517 Vauclair, monks of, 305 Vaults, Moorish, 83, 106, 112, 114, 137 Vega Inclan, Marques de la, 210, 222 Vega, Virgen de la, 140, 141 Velasco, Lazaro, 526 Velazco, Don Pedro Fernandez de, 164, 165, 169 Velazquez, 30, 93, 98, 205, 254, 255, 478, 482, 518-20, 530 Venice, St. Mark's, 417 — school of, 253 Vergara, Nicolas de, 163 Vergos, Pablo, 371, 394, 401 Verona, 420 Veronese, Paul, 253 Versailles, 118 Veruela, Abbey of, 158, 294, 313- 19 Viader, Pedro, 377 Viana, Prince of, 278 Vicarto, 61 Vicente Ferrer, San, 210, 456 Vich, cathedral, 406, 407 — museum of, 350, 407, 534 Vico, Ambrosio de, 526 Victory, Cross of the, 47 Vigarni, Felipe, 163, 164, 169, 201, 218, 528 Vilar, Pedro, 379 Vilardell, Soler de, 376 Villacastin, Antonio de, 224 Villafane, Canon, 148 Villahermosa, Duquesa de, 532 Villalar, battle of, 89 Villalpando, ironsmith, 218 Villanueva, 28, 345, 387, 409, 413, 439, 450 Villaviciosa, 52, 54 Villegas, Sr., 256 Villeneuve-les-Avignon, Pieta of, 384 Villia Espesa, Don Francis de, 292 Violante, Queen of Jaime I of Aragon, 449 — Queen of Juan I of Aragon, 328, 431 Visigoths, arts of the, 34-42, 191, 192, 197, 199, 256, 271, 272, 399, 453, 491, 500, 502, 504 Vitoria, 277 Viviano, 190 Vizcaya, 273 Voltaire, 277 Vozmediano, Alonso de, 265 War, the Peninsular, 18, 26, 128, 170, 225, 299, 332, 474, 529 — Spanish-American, 334, 339, 464 Wars, Carlist, 274, 332, 333, 451, 529 — of the Spanish Succession, 331, 444 Watteau, 254 Wells, H. G., 22 Wellington, 26 SPAIN: HER LIFE AND ARTS Wilara, Bishop, 366 YVilfredo I, Count of Barcelona, 421 VVilfredo II, Count of Barcelona, 366 Winkelmann, 270 Wood-carving, 88, 91, 94-6, 98 et seq., 109, 150, 177 W ren, Sir Christopher, 232 Wycherley, 17 Xulbe, Juan de, 414 Xulbe, Pascasio de, 414 Yacub-el-Mansur, Amir of the Almohades, 496 Yailez, Hernand, 474 Yusef, Amir of the Almohades, 496 Zabadfa, Pedro, 391 Zamora, 150-5 — Casa de los Monos, 154 — Cathedral, 131, 151-4, 218, 287 Zamora, la Magdalena, 154 — San Claudio, 154 — Santa Maria de la Orta, 154 — Santiago del Burgo, 154 — Santo Tome, 154 Zaragoza, 293, 294, 296-30G, 325 — Aljaferfa, 304 — the canal, 297 — Cartuja de Aula Dei, 301, 305, 306 — Lonja, 304 — el Pilar, 296-306, 476 — Santa Engracia, 304 — La Seo, 163, 294, 302-4 — the siege, 298, 305 — Torre Nueva, 296,^297 Zarcillo, Francisco, 100, 563 Zarinena, Cristobal, 488 Zarzuelas, 240-2 Ziyar, Mohaimed ben, 173 Zorilla, the poet, 239, 240 Zuccaro, Francesco, 226 Zuloaga, Ignacio, 113 Zurbaran, 255, 268, 518,^ 519, 530 588 PLANS OF CATHEDRALS, CHURCHES, ETC. \ 59i 592 Cath., Tuy. Cath., Segovia. 593 S. Vicente, Avila. 595 597 59 3 Colegiata, Toro. I I I I Cath., Zamora. Cath., Burgos. 600 Sta. Eulalia, Merida. 606 Veruela. 607 6o3 Cath. , Palma de Mallorca. S. Benet de Bages. S. Pedro el Viejo, Huesca. 615 6i8 620 J oTvnAdcUson,, 31 ExUma>~toriRoa-d, N.