THE SPANISH SERIES
ROYAL PALACES OF SPAIN
THE SPANISH SERIES
_EDITED BY ALBERT F. CALVERT_
GOYA
TOLEDO
MADRID
SEVILLE
MURILLO
CORDOVA
EL GRECO
VELAZQUEZ
CERVANTES
THE PRADO
THE ESCORIAL
ROYAL PALACES OF SPAIN
SPANISH ARMS AND ARMOUR
GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA
LEON, BURGOS, AND SALAMANCA
VALLADOLID, OVIEDO, SEGOVIA, ZAMORA,
AVILA, AND ZARAGOZA
_In preparation_--
GALICIA
SCULPTURE IN SPAIN
CITIES OF ANDALUCIA
MURCIA AND VALENCIA
TAPESTRIES OF THE ROYAL PALACE
CATALONIA AND BALEARIC ISLANDS
SANTANDER, VISCAYA, AND NAVARRE
ROYAL PALACES
OF SPAIN
A HISTORICAL & DESCRIPTIVE
ACCOUNT OF THE SEVEN PRINCIPAL
PALACES OF THE SPANISH
KINGS, WITH 164 ILLUSTRATIONS.
BY ALBERT F. CALVERT
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMIX
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
PREFACE
Since despotism has been replaced by constitutional rule the divinity
that doth hedge a King has shed something of its significance, but the
staunchest republican will admit that there is at least a certain
picturesqueness about royalty; and the interest attaching to a crowned
head naturally extends to the ancestral homes of majesty. Spain is
unusually rich in ‘cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces,’ many of
which have been the scenes of stirring and momentous events in her
history. On the gloomy pile of the Escorial--worthier of an Egyptian
Pharaoh--Philip II. stamped conspicuously and indelibly his own sombre
personality; Aranjuez and La Granja reveal to us monarchy in its lighter
aspect; the Alcazar reminds us of the days when Castilian royalty aped
the pomp of the Saracen and became itself half-Oriental; the Royal
Palace of Madrid epitomises the greatest crisis in the nation’s
history, of the expulsion of its legitimate sovereign, and of the
usurpation of the eldest Buonaparte. Napoleon himself ascended its grand
staircase, and looking round at the splendid home of the Spanish
Bourbons, he was able to say to his brother, ‘I hold at last this Spain
so much desired!’
These palaces of the haughtiest royal race in Europe are endowed with
the rarest treasures of art and taste such as only a semi-despotic Power
could accumulate in bygone days. It is the object of this little book to
reveal these riches to the curious in such matters by means of
illustrations, the accompanying text being only to be considered in the
light of explanatory notes and chronological data.
A. F. C.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE ESCORIAL 1
II. LA GRANJA (SAN ILDEFONSO) 19
III. EL PARDO 38
IV. ARANJUEZ 49
V. MIRAMAR 64
VI. EL ALCAZAR (SEVILLE) 74
VII. ROYAL PALACE (MADRID) 91
ILLUSTRATIONS
ESCORIAL
SUBJECT PLATE
View of the Palace, 1
View of the Palace, 2
View of the Palace (east side), 3
North-west angle of the Palace, 4
Principal Façade and Angle of the Palace, 5
View of the Principal Staircase of the Palace, 6
Hall of Ambassadors, 7
Reception Hall, 8
View of the Dining Hall, 9
Pompeian Hall, 10
Library, 11
Chapter Room, 12
The Holy Family, by Raphael, 13
The Last Supper, by Titian, 14
A Smoker, by Teniers, 15
Country Dance, by Goya. Tapestry, 16
Children Picking Fruit, by Goya. Tapestry, 17
The Grape-sellers, by Goya. Tapestry, 18
The China Merchant, by Goya. Tapestry, 19
Diptych, in Ivory, of the 13th Century, 20
SAN ILDEFONSO, LA GRANJA
View of the Palace, 21
View of the Palace and the Cascade, 22
View of the Palace, 23
View of the Palace and Fountain of the Fama, 24
View of the Palace from the Fountain of the Fama, 25
View of the Palace, 26
The Palace in perspective, 27
Entrance to the Palace, 28
View of the Collegiate Church and the Palace, 29
Palace of Rio Frio, 30
Cascade, 31
Palace and Fountain of Fama, 32
Fountain of Fama, 33
Fountain of Fama, 34
Fountain of the Courser, 35
Fountain of the Three Graces, 36
Fountain of the Three Graces, 37
Fountain of Neptune, 38
Fountain of Neptune, 39
Part of the Fountain of Neptune, 40
Fountain of Neptune, 41
Fountain of the Baths of Diana, 42
Fountain of Dragons, 43
Fountain of Latona, 44
Fountain of Eslo, or of the Winds, 45
Fountain of Andromeda, 46
Fountain of the Canastillo, 47
Fountain of the Cup, 48
Fountain of the Cup, 49
Source of the Arno, underground river, 50
The River, 51
The Reservoir, 52
The Reservoir, 53
Cascade of the Reservoir, 54
The Lake, 55
Group of Vases in the Parterre of Andromeda, 56
Three Vases in the Parterre of Andromeda, 57
Vase in the Parterre de la Fama, 58
Vase in the Parterre de la Fama, 59
Vase in the Parterre de la Fama, 60
Vase of the Baths of Diana, 61
Vase in the Parterre of Andromeda, 62
Vase in the Parterre of Andromeda, 63
Vase in the Parterre of Andromeda, 64
EL PARDO
View of the Palace from the Grounds, 65
The Palace, 66
The Palace, 67
The Palace, 68
The Palace, 69
Hall of Ambassadors, 70
Hall of Ambassadors, 71
Dining Room, 72
Ante-Room, 73
Ante-Room, 74
Private Room, 75
Private Room, 76
Scene of the Royal Theatre, 77
Royal Box in the Theatre, 78
Casa del Principe, 79
ARANJUEZ
Principal Façade of the Palace, 80
Southern Façade of the Palace, 81
Royal Palace from the Parterre, 82
Royal Palace from the Gardens, 83
Royal Palace and Suspension Bridge over the Tajo, 84
The Grand Staircase, 85
Porcelain Room, Japanese style, 86
Detail of Porcelain Room, Japanese style, 87
Detail of Porcelain Room, Japanese style, 88
Detail of the Porcelain Room, Japanese style, 89
Detail of the Porcelain Room, Japanese style, 90
Casa del Labrador, 91
Convent of San Antonio, 92
Entrance to the Gardens of the Island, 93
Fountain in the Plaza de San Antonio, 94
Avenue of the Catholic Sovereigns in the
Gardens of the Island, 95
Jupiter, bronze group in the Gardens of the Island, 96
Ceres, bronze group in the Gardens of the Island, 97
Juno, bronze group in the Gardens of the Island, 98
Pavilions of the River, in the Garden of the Prince, 99
Fountain of Apollo, in the Garden of the Prince, 100
Fountain of Ceres, in the Garden of the Prince, 101
Fountain of Narcissus, in the Garden of the Prince, 102
Fountain of the Swan, in the Garden of the Prince, 103
General View of the Tajo and the Parterre, 104
Fountain of Hercules, in the Gardens of the Island, 105
Fountain of Hercules, in the Gardens of the Island, 106
Fountain of Apollo, in the Gardens of the Island, 107
MIRAMAR
Side View of the Palace, 108
Reception Room, 109
Billiard Room, 110
SEVILLE
Façade of the Alcazar, 111
Alcazar, Gates of the Principal Entrance, 112
Interior of the Hall of Ambassadors, 113
Interior of the Hall of Ambassadors, 114
Interior of the Hall of Ambassadors, 115
Hall of Ambassadors, 116
Hall of Ambassadors, 117
Court of the Hundred Virgins, 118
Court of the Dolls, 119
Court of the Dolls, from the Room of the Prince, 120
Court of the Dolls, 121
Court of the Dolls, 122
Court of the Dolls, 123
Upper Part of the Court of the Dolls, 124
Dormitory of the Moorish Kings, 125
Sleeping Saloon of the Moorish Kings, 126
Entrance to the Dormitory of the Moorish Kings, 127
View of the Gallery from the second floor, 128
Hall in which King St. Ferdinand died, 129
Interior of the Hall of St. Ferdinand, 130
Interior of the Hall of St. Ferdinand, 131
MADRID
The Royal Palace, 132
The Royal Palace from the Plaza de Oriente, 133
The Royal Palace, 134
Principal Façade of the Palace, 135
The Royal Palace from the Plaza de Oriente, 136
The Royal Palace, 137
The Royal Palace, 138
Palace from the Plaza de la Armeria, 139
Grand Staircase of the Palace, 140
Principal Staircase of the Palace, 141
Grand Staircase of the Palace, 142
The Grand Staircase, 143
Hall of Columns, 144
General View of the Throne Room, 145
The Throne, 146
The Throne, 147
Detail of Throne Room, 148
Ceiling of the Throne Room, by Tiepolo, 149
Ceiling of the Throne Room, by Tiepolo, 150
Ceiling of the Throne Room, by Tiepolo, 151
The King’s Privy Council Chamber, 152
The Queen’s Room, 153
The Music Room, 154
The Room of Mirrors, 155
Reception Room, 156
Bronze Urn in the Reception Room, 157
Room of Charles III., 158
Chinese Room, by Gasparini, 159
Chinese Room, by Gasparini, 160
Porcelain Room, 161
Corner in the Porcelain Room, 162
The Porcelain Room, 163
Porcelain Group in the Buen Retiro, 164
Royal Palaces of Spain
I
THE ESCORIAL
If men may be known by their works, the Escorial will help us to a
better understanding of Philip of Spain--of his temperament and his
purpose--than can be gained by the study of any other architectural
monument for which he was responsible. Philip II. was guilty of craft
and duplicity; he inflicted suffering and death upon hosts of his
innocent vassals; he has been depicted as a monster of cruelty and
bigoted intolerance. But as a monarch inspired with unfaltering belief
in the divine right of his kingship, he could not be expected to be
tolerant of the stubbornness of others; and as the instrument of God,
appointed to enforce religious unity not only among his own subjects,
but also upon the rest of Europe, he doubtless felt he was justified in
employing any means to accomplish his mission.
The Emperor Charles V. had exhorted Philip to exterminate every trace of
heresy from his dominions, and his son never forgot the injunction nor
sought to escape the obligation that had been thrust upon him.
Throughout his reign, which was inaugurated by an impressive
_auto-da-fé_ at Valladolid--in which twelve tortured creatures were
sacrificed on the fiery altar of their sovereign’s religious zeal--and
closed in an agony of devotion and unshaken faith, he pursued a course
which he never doubted was right. A Spaniard of the Spaniards, convinced
that Spain was the only centre of true religion, he allowed nothing to
stand between him and the attainment of his high purpose. An intense and
dangerous individualist, cursed with the religious exaltation of his
house, his ecstatic asceticism enabled him to endure suffering and
practise rigid mortifications with the same stoicism as that with which
he afflicted others. In his zeal for God and Spain he was sincere; he
never permitted failure, disaster, or catastrophe to daunt him. His most
cherished schemes were frustrated; his beloved country was pauperised
and desolated by his policy; he, who devoted all his energies and power
to the crushing of Protestantism, lived to see the hated faith
enthroned in England, Scotland, Holland, North Germany, and
Scandinavia; yet he died after a lingering illness of indescribable
physical suffering in the great monastery he had built to the honour of
God, convinced to the end of his acceptability as Vicegerent of Jehovah,
and conscious that he had exercised his trust to the brighter glory of
his Maker.
As the inheritor of divine rights, Philip could do no wrong, and as the
greatest king of the greatest kingdom of the world, he always rose
superior to personal or national calamity. His arms suffered
overwhelming reverses in the Netherlands; he retaliated with massacre
and extermination, and was deaf to entreaty. The defeat of his
‘invincible’ Armada was the death-blow to his hopes of converting
England to the true faith, but he heard the news of this crowning
catastrophe of his life without suffering his ‘marble serenity’ to be
ruffled. Into his dying ears was poured the story of the dire
devastation of Cadiz by the English fleet, but he only gnawed his rude
crucifix and resigned himself the more devoutly to the will of God.
This was the man who in the leisure of thirty years of his life stamped
his individuality upon the Royal Palace and Monastery of the Escorial,
and fashioned this mighty pile to be a monument to his power and a
revelation of his mind--a mind diseased with that virus of morbidity
which turned from the contemplation of mercy, charity, and love to
ponder on the awful and retributive side of religion. The man explains
the edifice, and the edifice is the picture of the man. The granite
towers, resting on deep massive foundations, rise boldly into the
heavens--lofty, aspiring, severe, like the prayers his stern heart sent
up to God. The spacious halls and lofty corridors, all leading finally
to the church and the altar, have been likened to the avenues of his
mind.
In 1557, two years before Philip first showed himself to his people as
champion of the purity of the faith, the meeting between the Spanish and
the French arms at St. Quentin credited Spain with a decisive and sorely
needed victory. The battle involved the destruction of a church
dedicated to St. Lawrence, and Philip, who had spent the day invoking
the aid of the martyred saint, bound himself by an oath to found a
monastery to his name. He had also been bound under the will of Charles
V. to provide a royal burial-place for the reception of his father’s
remains, and Philip was probably actuated by a desire to fulfil both
these obligations in building the monastery of the Escorial. In the
‘Carta de Dotacion,’ which appears in Cabrera’s _Vida de Felipe II._,
the king explains his reasons as follows:--
‘In acknowledgment of the many and great blessings which it has
pleased God to heap on us, and continue to us daily, and, inasmuch
as He has been pleased to direct and guide our deeds and acts to
His holy service, and in maintenance and defence of His holy faith
and religion, and of justice and peace within our realms;
considering likewise what the emperor and king, my lord and father,
in a codicil which he lately made, committed to our care, and
charged us with, respecting his tomb, the spot and place where his
body and that of the empress and queen, my lady and mother, should
be placed; it being just and meet that their bodies should be most
duly honoured with a befitting burial-ground, and that for their
souls be said continually masses, prayers, anniversaries, and other
holy records, and because we have, besides, determined that
whenever it may please God to take us away to Him, our body should
rest in the same place and spot near theirs ... for all these
reasons we found and erect the Monastery of San Lorenzo el Real,
near the town of El Escorial, in the diocese and archbishopric of
Toledo, the which we dedicate in the name of the Blessed St.
Lawrence, on account of the special devotion which, as we have
said, we pray to this glorious saint, and in memory of the favour
and victories which on this day we received from God....
Although located in a desolate waste of rugged mountains and treeless
plains, amid surroundings which most men would shun, the site of the
Escorial was selected as the result of much careful thought and personal
investigation by ‘the holy founder,’ as Philip is called by the monks.
His sentimental attachment to the spot is explained by its air of
unrelieved melancholy, but he was also influenced in his choice by the
fact that the district contained the abundance and quality of stone
suitable for his purpose. Already he had conceived the form and
dimensions of his hermitage and sanctuary, the austerity and magnitude
of which were to be in harmony with its natural surroundings. Before the
work of clearing the land was begun he had erected upon the newly
acquired site a rude temporary lodging for his own accommodation. He
entrusted his ideas for the construction of the building to Juan
Bautista de Toledo, whose plans, ambitious and eccentric in the first
place, were severely revised by Philip. On April 23, 1563, the first
stone was laid, and from that time until September 13, 1584, when the
pile was completed, the king, assailed by the fear that he might die
before his scheme was brought to completion, devoted every moment he
could seize from affairs of State to superintending the work, and
urging architects, artists, and decorators to greater efforts in the
accomplishment of their several tasks.
In 1567 Toledo died and was succeeded by Juan de Herrera, who enlarged
the convent and added a bell-tower to the building. In 1574 the
temporary _Panteon_, or royal burying-place, situated under the high
altar of the church, was completed, and to this vault the remains of
Charles V. were transferred in 1574. The solemn service with which they
were received was terminated by a terrific storm which broke over the
monastery and made a wreck of the gorgeous dais that had been erected
for the ceremony. During another storm which visited the district, when
the construction of the edifice was almost finished, a lightning stroke
set fire to the fabric, destroying the fine belfry and its costly peal
of bells and doing much other damage. In 1582 an epidemic, which carried
off the queen, attacked the king, and for a while his life was despaired
of. But Philip survived to see the completion of his initial plans, and
two years later he took formal possession of his royal home which had
cost the then enormous sum of £660,000. Here for fourteen years he
lived, half monarch and half monk, exercising alternately the powers of
a tyrant and the self-sacrificing humiliations of a saint, and boasting
that, from the foot of a mountain, he governed both the old and new
world with two inches of paper.
In the first stages of his fatal illness in 1598, Philip desired to be
removed from Madrid to his beloved Escorial. The distance is only eight
leagues, but the king was so weak that six days were consumed by the
journey. It was his wish to inspect every part of the huge building
before he died, and during the fifty days in which his tortured body
held death at bay his last desire was gratified. He died on the same day
of the same month on which the Escorial was completed. Proudest among
monarchs and the most devout among monks, his gift to posterity is a
convent having the proportions of a palace, and a palace revealing the
austerity of a convent--a structure which is at once the first and
largest Spanish edifice into which the Græco-Roman element was cast. But
although Philip had gratified his ambition, had built monastery, church,
and palace, and had established a court and a college in this Castilian
highland, had laid out gardens and planted elms brought from England,
the royal burying-place at his death was nothing more than a plain
vault. Philip III., in accordance with his father’s wishes, commenced to
enrich the chamber, and the present gorgeous sepulchre was finished in
1654 by Philip IV. ‘No monarchs of the earth,’ it has been written,
‘have a mausoleum comparable to this of the Escorial, which, to the
glory of Spain, was conceived by Charles V., undertaken by Philip II.,
carried on by Philip III., and completed by Philip IV.’ Thus it was more
than a century after the death of the emperor that his remains were laid
to rest in the sepulchre which he had commanded to be built for the
princes of his house.
To-day the Eighth Wonder of the World, the _Octava Maravilla_, which it
is calculated cost from first to last some ten millions, is but a shadow
of its past glory. It is no longer a royal residence, the number of its
monks has become few, its revenues have been wrested from them, and the
spirit of the palace-monastery has departed. A fire which broke out here
in 1671 was not quenched for fifteen days, and the damage then sustained
was repaired in 1676 by the queen-regent, Anne of Austria. Charles III.
effected some further restorations, and his son proposed to make the
place more habitable by the construction of a bull-ring. Later, this
prince, when Charles IV. and fast approaching the close of his ignoble
reign, discovered at the Escorial the plot of the Queen Maria Luisa,
Prince Fernando, and Godoy to betray Spain to France, and the royal
monastery became a royal prison.
The French troops pillaged the monastery in 1807, and during the Carlist
war its treasures were depleted by the removal of about a hundred of the
choicest paintings to the greater security of Madrid. Other pictures
were transferred from the Escorial to the capital after the death of
Ferdinand VII., who had done what he could to repair the ravages of La
Houssaye’s troopers. But the days of the Escorial’s importance as a
centre of political or courtly life were already numbered, and by the
summer of 1861, when the first train arrived at the Escorial station
from Madrid, the palace had ceased to be a royal residence.
It must be admitted that, at first sight, the Escorial produces a
feeling of disappointment; the first impression of the clean granite,
the blue slates, and the leaden roofs is not wholly pleasing. But as one
approaches this ‘grandest and gloomiest failure of modern times,’ the
size and simplicity of the ashy-coloured pile takes possession of the
imagination, its sombreness and its austere magnificence stands out more
and more clearly from its sombre and magnificent surroundings, and one
begins to realise something of the spirit of the place and of the
character of the man that called it into being. The edifice is a
rectangular parallelogram, having a length of 744 feet from north to
south, and a depth of 580 feet. It has been said that the architecture
exhibits a series of solecisms which would have shocked the disciples of
Vignola and Palladio, but Mr. Fergusson in his _History of the Modern
Styles of Architecture_ declares that the whole design shows more of
Gothic character than the masterpieces of Wren and Michael Angelo.
One building, which turns its back on Madrid, faces the Sierra on its
west or principal side and on the north side, while on the east and
south the terraces overlook the hanging gardens and fish ponds. The
building covers an area of 500,000 feet and is 3000 feet in
circumference. It is not proposed to enter here into a detailed
description of the huge structure or its contents. Indeed, a building
which boasts 16 courtyards, 15 cloisters, 40 altars, 88 fountains, 86
staircases, 1200 doors, 2673 windows, 3000 feet of painted fresco, and
120 miles of corridor cannot be dealt with in the space at our
disposal, and an enumeration of the literary and artistic treasures that
are still left to it would occupy some hundreds of pages of print. But
only a tithe remains of the myriad treasures which once adorned its
walls and altars. Before the French invasion its pictures were
priceless, for Philip II. drained Europe of paintings and painters for
the adornment of his palace, and the church teemed with priceless
articles--sacred vessels of gold, a multitude of shrines and
reliquaries, and a tabernacle of such exquisite workmanship that it was
declared to be worthy to be one of the ornaments of the celestial altar.
The grand central portal in the western façade, which was formerly
opened only to admit royalty either alive or dead, leads into the Court
of the Kings, named from the statues of the Kings of Judah connected
with the Temple of Jerusalem. The figures possess little artistic merit,
but they share with the Court and everything connected with the Escorial
the distinction of immensity. They are 17 feet high, and were each cut
by Juan Bautista Monegro out of one block of granite. On the right of
the Court is the Library, with its twenty thousand books and three
thousand Arabic manuscripts, and on the right are the Halls of
Philosophy, the Seminary and the Refectories. The Relicario, from which
one descends to the _Panteon_, is at the extreme right-hand corner of
the church. Philip II. was a relicomaniac, and here in five hundred and
fifteen costly shrines he kept his innumerable precious relics. La
Houssaye scattered the relics to strip the precious metals from the
shrines that contained them. He also stole upwards of a hundred sacred
vessels of gold and silver, the gold and jewelled _custodia_, and the
life-size silver statue of St. Lawrence, which weighed four and a half
hundredweight. A procession of fourteen carts was engaged to convey the
treasure to Madrid. The Court of Evangelists and the Palace Court,
facing the south, are on the right and left of the church, and beyond it
is the palace.
The secret of the grandeur of the Escorial Church is in the conception
and proportion, but also from the point of view of architectural beauty
it is the finest of the several buildings within the walls. The vaulted
roof is ornamented with the frescoes of Luca Giordano, and the screen,
which is 93 feet high by 43 wide, monopolised the energies of Giacomo
Trezzo of Milan for seven years. The high altar and its superb _retablo_
are flanked on either side by the oratories of marble for the royal
family, above which are placed bronze-gilt effigies of Charles V. and
his wife, Philip II. and his fourth wife and their children, inlaid with
marbles and precious stones. Here, in his epitaph, is Philip of Spain’s
challenge to future kings to surpass him in greatness and power. In the
Library are his devotional books, and high up on a pinnacle above the
chapel is a plate of gold, placed there to show that the building of the
Escorial had not left ‘the holy founder’ penniless.
Just beyond the precincts of the church, as one enters the palace, is
the ‘Room of the Founder,’--the name given to the apartment occupied by
Philip II. whenever he visited the monastery--a simple cell rather than
a chamber befitting a king. It was in this room that he died on
September 13, 1598. On the wall is a slab with the following
inscription:--
‘En este estrecho recinto
murió Felipe segundo,
cuando era pequeño el mundo
al hijo de Carlos quinto.’
There still remain the bedroom he had built next to the royal oratory;
the study, some of the chairs he used, and two chairs without arms on
which he used to repose the leg in which he had gout. The ceiling is
smooth and without ornaments; the walls are whitewashed, and the floor
is of brick. From this bedroom the high altar can be seen through two
doors that lead to the galleries.
The palace contains a series of small rooms, the most remarkable of
which are a set of four. The other apartments are covered with beautiful
tapestry made from designs by Rubens, Teniers, and Goya, but the walls
of these particular rooms are covered with the finest inlaid woodwork.
The hinges, locks, and handles of the doors are in gilt-bronze and
steel, and the ceilings are painted by Maella. The entire work is said
to have cost £280,000.
The Battle Room derives its name from the battle-scenes painted on the
walls; these frescoes are by the celebrated Italian artists Granelio and
Fabricio. This gallery is 198 feet long by 28 wide, and 25 high to the
keystone of the vault. The principal fresco, which is very large,
represents the battle of Higueruela and the victory obtained over the
Arabs by John II. on the Vega at Granada. The other frescoes refer to
the battle gained on the day of St. Lawrence, 1557, by Duke Filiberto,
commander of the Spanish army; the capture of the French general, the
Constable de Montmorency, and the siege and capture of San Quentin.
There are also representations of two expeditions to the Azores in the
time of Philip II. The vault contains a variety of figures and caprices
all designed fantastically and ingeniously, with taste and consummate
skill.
Of the three hundred and thirty-eight rich tapestries in the palace, one
hundred and fifty-two of them were manufactured in the old Royal Factory
of Madrid; one hundred and sixty-three in Flanders, from designs for the
most part by David Teniers; twenty in France and five in Italy. Nearly
all represent country scenes, landscapes, Spanish customs, views of
Madrid, and hunting scenes.
The Casa del Principe was built in 1772 by order of Charles IV., when
Prince of the Asturias. When the War of Independence broke out the
treasures that adorned it were taken to Madrid and many of them
disappeared. It was redecorated and embellished in 1824, and carefully
restored some years later. It is entirely built of stone and is called
‘Casita de Abajo,’ to distinguish it from another called ‘Casita de
Arriba,’ built by the Infante Gabriel. The curiosities and works of art
in this pleasant edifice are innumerable. Of the ceilings twenty are of
great merit, painted by Duque, Gómez, Gerroni, Maella, Briles, Pérez,
Japeti, and López. In the nineteen rooms, of which the two floors of the
edifice consist, there are over two hundred oil-paintings and prints,
the subjects for the most part religious, some of them of real merit.
There is also a fine collection of ivory reliefs consisting of
thirty-seven pictures, representing mythological and sacred and profane
scenes, and a beautiful collection of two hundred and twenty-six pieces
of porcelain made at the Buen Retiro factory. In the time of Ferdinand
VII. the house was valued at thirty-seven million pesetas, and it is at
present a veritable museum of curiosities.
The Royal School of Alfonso XII., which occupies the north-east end of
the edifice, is entered from the principal façade. Among its many and
notable apartments is the spacious and magnificent _paraninfo_, the
ceiling of which is formed by a painting of extraordinary size, which is
believed to have been painted by the pupils of Jordán. Two smaller
paintings represent symbolical figures of different sciences, and are
signed by Llamas. Near the _paraninfo_ are the fine Physics and Natural
History rooms, the _lucerna_ or light court, and the children’s
dining-rooms, adorned with a collection of pictures representing
incidents in the life of Alexander. These were painted for the palace of
San Ildefonso by order of Philip V., and they are all signed by eminent
Italian artists. Over the _paraninfo_ is another fine room, the centre
of which is occupied by a beautiful statue of St. Augustine, carved in
wood, conceived and executed by the lay-friar S. Cuñado to commemorate
the fifteenth centenary of the conversion of St. Augustine.
In 1878, by the direction of Alfonso XII., the studies at this Royal
College were reorganised with great success. Later (in 1885) the
teaching being entrusted to the Augustinians, its credit was so enhanced
that now, owing to the unsurpassed position of the place, the
installation of electric light, the perfection and abundance of teaching
material, and still more the competence and zeal with which the learned
corporation carries out its delicate task of the moral, physical, and
scientific education of a large number of youths, the Royal College at
the Escorial well fulfils the high aims of its royal restorer, and is
one of the most important centres of instruction in Spain.
II
LA GRANJA
(SAN ILDEFONSO)
George Borrow loved Spain well, but he loved not the solitude in which
Philip V. found respite from the cares of State and from the dominating
personality of Elizabeth Farnese. ‘So great is the solitude of La
Granja,’ he writes, ‘that wild boars from the neighbouring forests, and
especially from the beautiful pine-covered mountain which rises like a
cone directly behind the palace, frequently find their way into the
streets and squares, and whet their tusks against the pillars of the
porticos.’ But at the time this was written the country was overrun with
Carlists. Candido lurked in the undergrowth, Garcia and his
fellow-conspirators had driven Queen Cristina from the palace, and
nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the town had fled. Even in the season
La Granja may be described as solitary, but it is not desolate, to quote
another word that Borrow employed to describe it. Situated at an
altitude of nearly four thousand feet above the sea, it has been styled,
with much truth, a ‘castle in the air.’ Surrounded as it is by lovely
woods, which extend for leagues in every direction, by gardens, lakes,
and streams, the Palace of San Ildefonso, in the month of flowers, is a
paradise and a miracle combined. For the site, although not exactly hit
upon at random, was selected with a royal inconsequence of the
difficulty and expense involved in the labour of transforming a monkish
farmhouse into a palace rivalling the glittering creations of
Versailles.
The Bourbon Philip V., like his Austrian predecessor Philip II.,
conceived a craving for solitude, and while hunting at Valsain in 1720
he observed La Granja (the Grange, or farmhouse) of the Segovian monks
of El Parral, and coveted it for a place of retirement. Philip’s nature
had undergone a great change since he entered Spain, a handsome,
resolute soldier, in 1701. His first wife, Marie Louise of Savoy, had
been at his side during the troublous, early days of his reign, and in
1714, when Spain was at peace for the first time since he assumed the
crown, his wife died. Under the stress of warlike excitement and the
gentle, sustaining sympathy and influence of Marie Louise, Philip had
proved himself a prince of high spirit, determination, and resource, but
under the domination of the ambitious, intriguing, masterful Elizabeth
he lost all initiative and sunk into a moody inaction, which
subsequently developed into lethargic insanity. It has been said that,
personally, Philip did little good for Spain, and it must be admitted
that, when it was most incumbent on him to play the man, he weakly
involved the country in prolonged wars at the bidding of his wife. If
the national revenue increased enormously during his reign, the
expenditure was more than proportionately increased in the construction
of the three palaces he left to Spain and in the extravagant collection
of works of art with which he furnished them. From Versailles he had
brought the love of letters which prompted him to found the Royal
Spanish Academy, the National Library, the Royal Academy of History, and
the School of Nobles. His training at the Court of Louis XIV. was also
evident in the change in the social customs of the country. The nobles
adopted French fashions in costumes and cookery, they affected French
furniture and French books. The king, who had thus stamped his personal
tastes upon the Court, saw his opportunity of further gratifying his
French sympathies by creating a ‘Spanish Versailles’ and a ‘Spanish
Fontainebleau.’
It was on the rocky eminence of La Granja, overlooking Segovia’s brown
towers and the distant Roman aqueduct, that Philip V. gave orders for an
estate to be laid out that should be reminiscent of his beloved
Versailles. The fact that no suitable level existed on the sharp
mountain slope for the erection of a palace mattered nothing. The level
must be made. Tens of thousands of tons of rock were blasted away; tens
of thousands of tons of soil were brought up from the sunny plain below;
and on the astonishing ledge thus torn out of the sides of the mountain,
the Royal Palace arose in a garden of the most beautiful flowers and
adorned with the choicest fountains in all Spain.
The building itself, which cannot compare with the Palace of Versailles,
is a severe-looking structure of two stories, and is the antithesis of
the proud, gloomy Escorial on which it turns its back. The façade facing
the gardens is white and cheerful, but the multitude of windows gives it
the air of a monster conservatory. The place, which is so essentially
French, appears incongruous amid surroundings which are so
characteristically Spanish; but the Castilian people find no fault with
it on that account. It is, they say, a worthy château of the King of
Spain. As he is the first and loftiest of all earthly sovereigns, so his
abode soars nearest to Heaven. The argument is Spanish and unanswerable!
The cost of building the palace and laying out the gardens, and of
acquiring the pictures and sculptures to adorn the saloons, reached the
enormous total of forty-five million pesetas, the precise sum in which
Philip V. died indebted. In this luxurious retreat in the mountains of
Segovia he surrendered himself to the morbid mysticism of that form of
devotion which exaggerates the vanity of all earthly things. Sunk at
length into a condition of religious melancholy, in January 1724, at La
Granja, he swore to renounce his crown for ever and abdicate in favour
of his son Louis. Seven months later the boy-king died at the age of
seventeen, and Philip, reluctantly acceding to the urgent requests of
his wife, who had already tired of the domestic retirement of La Granja,
resumed the burden of sovereignty.
Many strange historical events have taken place in the Palace of San
Ildefonso since Philip V. declared before the Baño de Diana that it had
cost him three million pesetas and had amused him for three minutes. It
was here, in 1783, that the great king, Charles III., received the
Count d’Artois when he started upon his fruitless mission to wrest
Gibraltar from the English. Here, in 1796, Godoy, the notorious
favourite of Charles IV. and the paramour of his wife--who in the
previous year had earned the title of Prince of the Peace by negotiating
the shameful surrender by which the war between Spain and France was
concluded--signed the famous and fatal treaty by which Spain was dragged
at the tail of France until such time as the French Emperor chose to
annex it.
In 1830, when Ferdinand VII. lay ill at La Granja, and his heir and
brother, Don Carlos, was holding himself in readiness to assume the
responsibility of sovereignty, Queen Cristina, anxious for her
three-year-old daughter’s interest, induced the king to abolish the
Salic law and declare his daughter Isabel to be his successor. Three
years afterwards, Ferdinand died, and three years later the king’s
abrogation of the constitution was revoked by a mob of common soldiers,
led by Sergeant Garcia, who compelled the queen to renounce her royal
rights and proclaim the Cadiz constitution of 1812. George Borrow, who
was in Madrid at the time these events were taking place, had the story
of the revolution of La Granja from eye-witnesses, and it is related
here in his words. ‘Early one morning,’ he writes--‘it was the morning
of 12th August 1836--a party of these soldiers, headed by a certain
Sergeant Garcia, entered her apartment, and proposed that she should
subscribe her hand to this constitution, and swear solemnly to abide by
it. Cristina, however, who was a woman of considerable spirit, refused
to comply with this proposal, and ordered them to withdraw. A scene of
violence and tumult ensued, but the Regent still continuing firm, the
soldiers at length led her down to one of the courts of the palace,
where stood her well-known paramour, Muñoz, bound and blindfolded.
“Swear to the constitution, you she-rogue,” shouted the swarthy
sergeant. “Never!” said the spirited daughter of the Neapolitan
Bourbons. “Then your _cortejo_ (lover)--he was in reality her
husband--shall die!” replied the sergeant. “Ho! ho! my lads; get ready
your arms and send four bullets through the fellow’s brain.” Muñoz was
forthwith led to the wall and compelled to kneel down, the soldiers
levelled their muskets, and another moment would have consigned the
unfortunate wight to eternity, when Cristina, forgetting everything but
the feelings of her woman’s heart, suddenly started forward with a
shriek, exclaiming, “Hold! hold! I sign! I sign!”’
Still more recently, it will be remembered, Alfonso XIII. carried his
English bride from the wedding festivities of Madrid to spend their
honeymoon amid the natural beauties of the scenery of Segovia. The Royal
Palace consists of a large rectangular building, in the centre of which
is preserved the ancient cloister of the friars’ _hospitium_, now called
the Patio de la Fuente. The idea for the central façade of the palace
originated with the Abbé Juvara, the Italian architect who was summoned
to Spain to assist Philip V. in his palace-building operations, but it
was his pupil, Sachetti, who prepared the finished designs. It was
carried out in 1739 at a cost of 3,360,000 reals. The general façade of
the edifice at the back, overlooking the Palace Square, recalls the
Roman-Spanish style created at the Escorial by Herrera. One of the best
views of the palace is from the back, where the building with its
slate-covered towers at the sides, and the Collegiate Church in the
centre, surmounted by its elevated cupola and the simple towers
accompanying it, compose an agreeable picture. The principal entrance to
the edifice is in this façade facing the Palace Square, and leads to
the vestibule of the principal staircase. This is of simple
construction, and is composed of two flights of stairs which meet at the
top landing-place. The steps are of granite, as well as the pillars of
the balustrade which support a small iron banister painted white and
gold. The whole well of the staircase is surmounted by a semicircular
vault finished by a lantern, in which are the windows. This staircase
did not exist in the time of Charles IV., as may be ascertained by
examining the plans of the palace made at that time, and its
construction should be attributed to Ferdinand VII.
The palace is a structure of two stories. On the ground floor are the
‘Galeria baja de estatuas’ (lower gallery of statues), one of the rooms
in which is the dining-room, the High Court of Halberdiers, the offices
of the Lord High Steward, and other dependencies; while the upper floor
consists of the ‘Galeria oficial’ (Official Gallery), used for
receptions, audiences, and councils of ministers, and the private
apartments of their Majesties and Royal Highnesses. The ‘Galeria de
estatuas’ is open to any one provided with a permit supplied by the
Administration Patrimonial when the Court is absent. The apartments are
generally decorated in good style. Most of the furniture is in the
Empire style, especially that in the Official Gallery; but there is also
some in Louis XIV., Regency, and Louis XV. style.
The collection of pictures, especially of the Flemish and Dutch schools,
was very fine, for Queen Isabella Farnese acquired in Rome for this
palace in 1735, through the Venetian painter G. B. Pittoni, and on the
recommendation of the Abbé Juvara, a considerable number of very notable
pictures of these schools. On the creation of the Royal Prado Museum in
1829, the best were taken there by order of Ferdinand VII., and there
are at present in its catalogue three hundred and fifty-one pictures
which came from this palace, among them three by Correggio, two by Luca
Giordano, four by Il Guido, one by Paul Veronese, six by Tintoretto, one
by Claudio Coello, sixteen by Murillo, two by Ribera, four by Velazquez,
four by Van Dyck, fourteen by Rubens, and twenty-four by Teniers.
Among the pictures of the original collection which exist at the present
time, there are none of great merit; but the large number painted by
Michel Ange Houasse, of the French school, who was born in Paris in
1675, and died in Spain in 1730, being the chief painter of Philip V.,
are of no little merit. The marble statues that enrich the Lower
Gallery, some of them Greek ones of great merit, like the Castor and
Pollux group, form the greater part of the sculptures of the Madrid
Museum. They were acquired in Rome through the celebrated Venetian
sculptor Camillo Rusconi, and came from the collection made by Queen
Christina of Sweden. Their cost, 12,000 doubloons, or 36,000 dollars,
was defrayed by Philip V. and Isabella Farnese equally.
The lower gallery of statues were painted _al fresco_ by Bartolomé
Ruscha, and with them were placed, under the direction of Don Domingo
Sanni, and by order of the royal founders, the statues of the collection
formed by Queen Christina of Sweden and acquired by them in Rome. The
sculptors Fremin and Thierri, who at the time were doing work for the
gardens, restored many of them and added some others by themselves, but
the majority of the best statues were removed in 1829 to the sculpture
room in the Madrid Museum, where they are still preserved and constitute
almost its only statuary wealth. At present there are in these rooms
very few marble statues, and nearly all those forming their decoration
are copies in plaster of the original ones, and they have therefore
lost the great artistic value which the pure Greek sculpture in the
collection of Queen Christina of Sweden conferred on them. Among them
the most valuable pieces to be seen here are the group of Castor and
Pollux; two colossal statues of Julius Cæsar and Augustus in alabaster,
with heads, arms, and legs of gilded bronze; a fine urn which it is
believed contained the ashes of Caius Caligula; the representations of
Day and Night; a very handsome Apollo; a Daphne; a Venus coming out of
the bath; a Faun leaning on the trunk of a tree; another Venus with her
knee on a tortoise; many handsome busts of deities and Roman emperors;
the nine Muses; two superb heads of Antinous and Alexander; the
recumbent statue of Ariadne, a replica of the one in the Museum of the
Vatican; a copy of the Venus de Medici; an excellent small statue
representing Seneca; Leda with the swan; a head of Homer; a colossal
head, in bronze, of Queen Christina of Sweden; and Ganymede attacked by
the eagle. With this array of sculpture and antiquities, the Palace of
Ildefonso may be said to be more like a museum than a home; and in
truth, apart from the Royal Chapel which contains the tomb of Philip V.
and his queen, Elizabeth Farnese, and boasts some superbly embroidered
vestments and mantles of the Virgin, the visitor must seek the beauties
of the palace in its church and in its gardens and fountains.
In order to enhance the splendour of the worship that should be
conducted in the Palace Chapel, Philip V. obtained from Pope Benedict
XIII. a bull, _Dum Infatigabilem_, dated 20th December 1724, making it a
collegiate church. Among other provisions in this bull it conceded that
the new collegiate church should be the mother-church of all the
churches and chapels of the town and its abbey; that it should have a
chapter composed of an abbot, four officiating prebendaries, eight
canons, six prebendaries, and four chaplain-acolytes; that the abbots
should be a royal appointment with exclusive ecclesiastical jurisdiction
throughout the district to be marked out by the Pope’s Nuncio, and at
liberty to use the pontifical insignia and dress; that the abbot and
canons should devote half the masses celebrated to the royal founders
during their lifetime, and for their souls after their death, and that
the canons should wear the choral dress of those of St. Peter’s in Rome.
The same bull contained the king’s promise to endow the new collegiate
church with the sum of 8625 gold ducats (276,000 reals of present
Spanish money), to be distributed as follows: 5764 ducats for the fabric
and its dependents, and the remainder, 2861, for the abbot and
prebendaries.
In the reign of Charles III. the collegiate church was renovated at the
expense of the royal treasury and under the direction of Marshal
Sabatini, the vaults were painted with frescoes by Bayeu and Maella, and
the mouldings and reliefs were decorated by Vega. By the decree of
Joseph Bonaparte, given in Madrid on May 30, 1810, the collegiate church
was suppressed, and it was reduced to a simple private chapel of the
Royal Palace, uniting its parish with that of the Cristo Church, and
adding the territory of the abbey to the bishopric of Segovia. The
church was only closed four years, and on June 24, 1814, Ferdinand VII.
restored things to their original condition, this event being celebrated
by four days of public rejoicing and fêtes.
The church is in the shape of a Latin cross, the ends of the four arms
being occupied by the high altar, choir, and two principal doors.
The ‘platillos’ of the four vaults, surrounded by a moulding, were
painted _al fresco_ by Maella, and all the paintings on the cupola are
by Bayeu, brother-in-law of Goya. Some of the studies for these
paintings were purchased by Queen Isabel II., and are now in the Madrid
Museum.