clad with graceful elms, with orange and pomegranate trees bearing deep
red and golden fruit and with the mulberry's glistening olive green.
Here and there are open spaces between the groves; fields of roses and
lilies. The Darro and the Xenil flow by the foot of the hill, and from
their banks for almost thirty miles stretches the Vega. At the base of
the fortress, between the rivers, lies the city of Granada,--
The artist's and the poet's theme,
The young man's vision, the old man's dream,--
Granada, by its winding stream,
The City of the Moor.
Out on the plain the settlement becomes gradually sparser, the houses
more scattered. White stucco walls are interspersed with plots of green
garden, the ochre houses are smaller shining patches amid the
yellow-flowering fig-cactus and the regularly planted olive groves,
until finally the eye must search for the farmhouse hidden among
vineyards, orchards and waving fields of corn. The gleaming villas and
farmhouses still look as they did to the Moor, like "oriental pearls set
in a cup of emeralds."
The endless plain, once the fertile bosom of fourteen cities,
innumerable strong castles and high watch-towers, is shut in from the
outside world like a very Garden of Eden, by the mountain walls of the
Alpujarras and Sierra Alhama. Far away on the horizon the barrier is
broken at a single point, the Loja gorge. This was once guarded by
sentinels ever on the watch for the distant gleam of Christian lances to
light the fires that signaled approaching danger to the distant citadel.
Most Spanish cities were densely built within high walls, but Granada
felt so secure in her mountain fortress that her dwellings were strewn
broadcast over the plain. Behind the walls of the Alhambra, on a second
slope wooded with cypress, the brilliant towers of the Generaliffe gleam
against the dark foliage. Beyond, across the whole southern sweep, rises
the chalky, hazy blue of the Sierra Nevada, capped with glittering,
everlasting snow. Gazing up from the valley below, one might fancy it a
white veil thrown back from the lovely features of the landscape.
Thus lies Granada, a verdant and perfumed valley wrapt in the soft
mystery of its hazy atmosphere,--"Grenade,--plus éclatante que la fleur
et plus savoureuse que le fruit, dont elle porte le nom, semble une
vierge paresseuse qui s'est couchée au soleil depuis le jour de la
création dans un lit de bruyères et de mousse, défendue par une muraille
de cactus et d'aloes,--elle s'endort gaiement aux chansons des oiseaux
et le matin s'éveille souriante au murmure de ses cascatelles."[19]
More than any other spot on earth, Granada seems haunted by memories of
bygone glory. The wide plains, now inhabited by less than seventy-five
thousand, once swarmed with over half a million souls. The artist feels
poignantly the charm of those long centuries of Arabian Days and Nights
that were forever blotted out by the zeal of the Christian sword. The
ruined temples still attest the thrift and industry, the refinement and
learning of the vanished race; the squalid poverty that has replaced it
is deaf and blind to the records of ancient grandeur, but the traveler
and the historian may still be thrilled by the struggle that destroyed
"the most voluptuous of all retirements" and feel there as nowhere else
the relentless power of the most Catholic Kings, the pathos of the Moor.
Granada is a very old city, and like Cordova and Seville, it was one of
the principal Moorish centres; in fact after their fall, the industries
and culture which had been theirs went to swell the inheritance of
Granada. Its name has always been associated with the scarlet-blossoming
tree which covers its slopes, whose fruit the Catholic sovereigns
proudly placed in the point of their shield, with stalks and leaves and
shell open-grained. During the Roman occupation, a settlement had been
made on the wooded slopes at the foot of the Sierra Nevada and called
Granatum (pomegranate). The Goths in their turn swept over the peninsula
until, in 711, they were driven out of the valley by the advancing Arab
hordes. These transformed the name given it by the Romans to Karnattah.
Seven hundred and eighty-two years passed before the Crescent set
forever on the Iberian peninsula. Dynasties had succeeded one another in
the various kingdoms formed of larger and smaller portions of southern
and central Spain, but in the north, hardy monarchs had founded more
stable thrones on the ruins of the Gothic Empire, and they were eagerly
watching the advancing decay, the domestic discord of the Mohammedan
power and grasping every opportunity for the aggrandizement of their own
states.
[Illustration: KEY OF PLAN OF GRANADA CATHEDRAL
A. Sagrario.
B. Royal Chapel.
C. Capilla Mayor.
D. Choir.
E. Door of the Perdon.
F. Door of St. Jeronimo.
G. Main Entrance.]
In the tenth century, the Moorish power was at its zenith. During the
eleventh, Granada had become strong enough to break away from the
caliphate of Cordova. There the Almorvides and Almohades dynasties had
alternated while the Nasrides ruled in the kingdom and city of Granada
until the luckless Boabdil surrendered its keys.
During the last three centuries of Moorish rule, the northern Cross cast
an ever longer shadow before it. Alfonso of Aragon advanced to within
the walls of the outer forts in 1125, and in the two and a half
centuries following, tribute was exacted by the crown of Castile. The
Moors of Cordova were more hardy and warlike than the Arabs of Granada.
The arts of peace flourished with this latter poetical, artistic and
commercial race, who as time went on became less and less able to defend
themselves against the fanaticism and skill of the Spanish armies. Like
Hannibal's soldiers on the fertile plains of Lombardy, they had become
enervated in the luxury of their beautiful valley. When their imprudent
ruler answered the Castilian envoys who had come to collect the usual
tribute, "that the Kings of Granada who paid tribute were dead, and that
the mint now only coined blades of scimeters and heads of lances," the
hour of Granada's destiny had struck. The smiling valley became for ten
years a field of blood and carnage, after which its devastation was
relentlessly completed by the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
Ferdinand and Isabella entered the last stronghold of the Moors in the
very year when the history of the civilized world was changing its
course. Its helmsman, Columbus, was received in the Castilian camp
outside the walls of the beleaguered city. On the second of January,
1492, Hernando, Bishop of Avila, raised the Christian Cross beside the
banner of Castile on the ramparts of the highest tower of the Alhambra;
four days later, on the day of the Kings and the festival of the
Epiphany, Ferdinand and Isabella entered the city.
"The royal procession advanced to the principal mosque, which had been
consecrated as a cathedral. Here the sovereigns offered up prayers and
thanksgivings and the choir of the royal chapel chanted a triumphant
anthem, in which they were joined by the courtiers and cavaliers.
Nothing could exceed the thankfulness to God of the pious King Ferdinand
for having enabled him to eradicate from Spain the empire and name of
that accursed heathen race, and for the elevation of the Cross in that
city where the impious doctrines of Mohamed had so long been
cherished."[20]
Bells were rung and masses celebrated in gratitude throughout the
Christian world. As far away as Saint Paul's in London town, a special
Te Deum was chanted by order of the good King Henry the Seventh. Spain
had reached the summit of her glory, before which yawned the abyss.
And now in the name of Christ the Inquisition was established and one of
its chief offices founded; in His name the Jews were driven out,
Christian oaths and covenants broken, and the peaceful Moorish
inhabitants hounded from their hearths. Under Philip III, in 1609, their
last descendants were banished from the realm.
No scene of chivalry during the middle ages displayed a more brilliant
and bloody pageant than the battlefield of Granada. It was the
culmination of the work of Spain's greatest rulers,--the great crisis in
her history.
Here gallants held it little thing for ladies' sake to die,
Or for the Prophet's honour, or pride of Soldenry.
For here did Valour flourish and deeds of warlike might
Ennobled lordly palaces in which was our delight.[21]
Gazing over this famous plain, the Vega, that "Pearl of Price," with its
courtyards now desolate, its gardens parched and well-nigh calcined by
the sun, one recalls Voltaire's words: "Great wrongs are always recent
wounds!" and long years have passed since the iron heel of Austria set
its first impress on the soil.
James Howell, the English traveler and busybody in the capital at the
time Prince Charles went surreptitiously wooing, writes home in 1623,
after visiting Granada: "Since the expulsion of the Moors, it is also
grown thinner, and not so full of corn; for those Moors would grub up
wheat out of the very tops of the craggy hills, yet they used another
grain for their bread, so that the Spaniard had nought else to do but go
with his ass to the market and buy the corn of the Moors."
Only once more does Granada's name emerge from the oblivion of
ages,--when the Iron Duke occupied the city during the Peninsular War.
He covered with a kindly hand some of her barrenness, planting English
elms beneath her fortress.
II
In the heart of a crumbling mass of chalky, chrome-colored walls and
vermilion roofs, rises the dome of the Cathedral. Here, as in Seville,
the ground once sanctified to Moslem prayer was cleansed by the
Catholics from the pollution of the Moor, and the Christian edifice was
reared on the foundations of the Mohammedan mosque. As already noted,
one of the first religious acts of the conquerors was the consecration,
in January, 1492, of the ancient mosque, which thereafter was used for
Christian worship under the direction of the wise and tolerant Talavera,
as first Bishop of Granada. The new building was not begun until the
year 1523, an exceedingly late date in cathedral-building,--a time when
the great art was slowly dying down, and, in northern countries,
flickering in its last flamboyancy.
On March 25, 1525, the corner stone was laid of the new Cathedral of
Santa Maria de la Encarnacion. It was planned on a much more elaborate
scale than the previous mosque, which, however, continued to be
independently used as a Christian church until the middle of the
seventeenth century and was not demolished till the beginning of the
eighteenth, to make room for the new sagrario, or parish church, of
Santa Maria de la O.
The old mosque was of the usual type of Moslem house of prayer, its
eleven aisles subdivided by a forest of columns and resembling in
general aspect the far greater mosque of Cordova. Prior to the actual
commencement of the new Cathedral, though not to its design, the Royal
Chapel was erected, between the years 1506 and 1517, and when the
Cathedral was built, it became its southern, lateral termination and by
far the most magnificent and interesting portion of the interior. It was
planned and executed by the original designer of the church, and even
after this was finished, the Royal Chapel remained, like the chapel of
Saint Ferdinand of Seville, an independent church with its own Chapter
and clergy and independent services.
About a dozen master-builders, almost all working under foreign
influence, are known as the architects of the great Spanish cathedrals.
They seem generally to have worked more or less in conjunction with each
other, several being employed on the same building, or called in turn to
advise in one place or superintend in another. Sometimes a whole body of
them reported together, or several of them were jointly consulted by a
cathedral chapter.
The original conception of the Cathedral of Granada was the work of
Enrique de Egas of Brussels, who, when he was commissioned by the new
Chapter to plan a fitting memorial to the final triumph of Christianity
over Islam in Spain, was among the most celebrated builders of his day.
He had already succeeded his father as Maestro Mayor of the Cathedral of
Toledo when, just before his death, in 1534, he executed the Royal
Chapel of Granada Cathedral, as well as built the hospital of Santa Cruz
in the same city. The Colegio de Santa Cruz at Valladolid was also his
work, and he had been summoned with other leading architects to decide
the best mode of procedure in Seville Cathedral after the disastrous
collapse of its dome. At times he was giving advice in both Saragossa
and Salamanca. Enrique de Egas' designs were accepted in 1523. He had
hardly proceeded further in two years than to lay out the general plan
of the Cathedral, when, either through misunderstanding or some
controversy, he was supplanted in his office by the equally celebrated
Diego de Siloé. Like Egas, his activity was not confined to Granada, but
extended to Seville and Malaga.
In the year 1561, two years before Siloé's death, the building was
sufficiently completed to be opened for public worship, and consequently
on August 17th of that year it was solemnly consecrated. The foundations
and lower portion of the northern tower were executed about this time by
Siloé's successor, Juan de Maeda. The tower was completed and partially
taken down again during the following twenty years by Ambrosio de Vico.
Then follows the main portion of the exterior work, especially the west
façade (of the first half of the seventeenth century), by the
celebrated, not to say notorious, Alfonso de Cano, and José Granados.
The decoration of the interior, the addition of chapels and the building
of the sagrario were continued through the latter part of the
seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries.
[Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
CATHEDRAL OF GRANADA
The exterior cornices of the Royal Chapel]
The building operations thus extended over a period of two hundred and
fifty years. Alfonso de Cano's reputation was of various kinds; the son
of a carpenter and a native of Granada, as soon as his talents were
recognized, he was apprenticed to the great Montañes. To judge from
contemporaneous accounts, he must have been as hot-headed and
quarrelsome as the Florentine goldsmith of similar talents and
versatility. He was always ready to exchange the paint-brush or chisel
for his good sword, and there was scarcely a day during the years of his
connection with the Cathedral in which he was not enjoying a hot
controversy with the Chapter. His favor with the weak monarch and the
powerful ruling Conde-Duc was so great that they had the audacity to
appoint him a prebendary of the Chapter after he had been forced to fly
from justice in Valladolid on a charge of murder, as well as for having
beaten his wife on his return from a meeting of the ecclesiastical body.
The Chapter deprived him of his office as soon as they dared, which was
six years after his appointment.
Egas' original plan, like the work he actually carried out in the Royal
Chapel, was undoubtedly for a Gothic edifice, as this style was
understood and executed in Spain. From the fact that the original Gothic
intention was abandoned for a Spanish Renaissance church, many
authorities give the date of its commencement as 1529, when Diego de
Siloé's Renaissance work was under way. In the end of the fifteenth and
beginning of the sixteenth centuries, the great turning-point had come.
Italian influences were beginning to predominate over earlier styles and
the last exquisite flames of the Gothic fire were slowly dying out to
give place to the heavy Renaissance structure of ecclesiastical
inspiration. Spaniards who had returned fresh from Italian soil and
tutelage evolved with their ornate sense and characteristic love for
magnificence, the style, or rather decorative treatment, which marks the
first stage of Spanish Renaissance architecture called "Estilo
Plateresco." This is a happy name for it, its derivation being from
"plata," or silver plate, and indicating that architects were attempting
to decorate the huge superficial spaces on their churches with the same
intricacy and sparkle as the silversmiths were hammering on their
ornaments. There was evolved the same lace-like quality, the same
sparkling light and shade. Wonderful results were indeed obtained by the
stone-cutters of the sixteenth century.
The Cathedral of Granada is not at all remarkable. Its interest is
derived from the city of which it is the chief Christian edifice and the
great bodies which it contains; to students of architecture it is in a
manner a connecting link between the Gothic building of the middle ages
and the modern revival of classical building methods.
It is the death of the old and the birth of the new; it marks the advent
of stagnant, uninspired formalism in constructive forms. Its sarcophagi
and much of its decoration are both in design and execution most
exquisite and appropriate examples of Renaissance art in Spain. Its easy
victory in decorative forms was owing to the fact that there had
practically been evolved little or no Spanish ornamental design outside
of that produced by the ingenuity and peculiar skill of the Moors. The
influence of Moorish design is long traceable in Christian decoration.
The Spanish nature craves rich adornment in all material. The art of the
great sculptors who, like Berruguete, returned at the beginning of the
new century with inspiration gained in the workshops of the Florentine
Michael Angelo, soon found a host of pupils and followers. Not only in
stone, but in wood, metal, plaster, and on canvas, the new forms were
carried to a gorgeous profusion never dreamt of before. Charles V stands
out amid its glories in as clear relief as in the tumult of the
battlefield. The decline and frigid formality did not set in until the
reign of his unimpassioned and repulsive son. The grandest epoch in
Spain's history thus corresponds to the most inspired period of its
sculpture. The first architects of this period worked on Granada
Cathedral; the work of the greatest sculptor, the Burgundian Vigarny, is
found in inferior form on the retablo of the Royal Chapel. In Spain,
where the climate made small window openings desirable, the churches
offered great wall spaces to the sculptor. The splendid portals, window
frames, turrets and parapets, the capitals and string courses and niches
all became rich fields for Spanish interpretation of the exquisite art
of Lombardy.
The new art first found tentative expression in decorative forms, then
in more radical and structural changes. The world-empire of which
Ferdinand had dreamed, and which his grandson almost possessed, placed
untold wealth and the art of every kingdom at the disposal of Spain.
Granada Cathedral has a strange exterior, meaningless except in certain
portions, which are essentially Spanish. To the Granadines it is as
marvelous as Saint Peter's to the Romans. Its view is obstructed on all
sides by a maze of crumbling walls, yellow hovels, and shop fronts
shockingly modern and out of keeping. It is all very, very provincial.
The stream of the world has left it behind and its pageants and glories
had departed centuries ago. Donkeys heavily laden with baskets of market
produce stand--personifications of wronged and unremonstrating
patience--hitched to the iron rails before its main portals. Goats
browse on the grass in its courtyards, and are milked between the
buttresses. Immediately to the south of it lies the old episcopal
palace, where the archbishop preached the sermons criticized by the
ingenuous Gil Blas.
The main entrance is to the west. This front is the latest portion of
the building with the exception of certain portions of the interior.
Though not as corrupt as some of the surgical decorations in the
trascoro, it is the heaviest and least interesting part of the church.
It bears no relation to the sides of the building, but seems to have
been clapped on like a mask. The central portion is subdivided into
three huge bays, the spring of the arch, which rises from the
intermediate piers, being considerably higher in the centre than those
of the two to the north and south. Diego de Siloé probably designed the
composition, intending that it should be flanked and terminated by great
towers. Three stages, rising to a height of some 185 feet, stand to the
north. Corinthian and Ionic orders superimpose a Doric entablature over
a plain and restrained base. Arches frame more or less meaningless and
unpierced designs between the pilasters and engaged columns of the
orders. The whole is as painfully dry as the transfer of a student's
compass from a page of Vignola. Old cuts and descriptions represent this
northern tower crowned by an octagonal termination with a height of 265
feet. Despite the apparent massiveness of the substructure, this soon
made the whole so alarmingly insecure that it was pulled down. The
present tower scarcely reaches above the broken lines and flat surfaces
of the roof tiles and, particularly at a distance, has the effect of a
huge buttress. The southern tower was never erected, but in place of it
the front was supported by a makeshift portion of base. The northern
tower is the work of Maeda, the façade principally by Cano, although
much of the sculpture, such as the Incarnation over the central doorway,
and the Annunciation and Assumption over the side portals, are by other
inferior eighteenth-century sculptors.
Statues, cartouches and ornamental medallions relieve the paneled
surfaces of the stonework, the masonry of which has been laid and
jointed with the utmost conceivable mechanical skill. The whole central
composition fizzles out in a meaningless mass of parapets and variously
carved stone terminations. One feels as if the original designer had
started on such a gigantic scale that he either had to give up finishing
his work proportionately or keep on till it reached the sky,--he wisely
chose the former alternative.
In Granada, as in most of the Spanish cathedrals, the decoration of the
doorways and portals forms one of the principal features of exterior
interest. Their ornamentation, with that of the parapets crowning the
outer walls of chapels and aisles, is practically all that relieves the
huge surfaces of ochre masonry. The walls themselves indicate in no
manner the interior construction; the windows which pierce them are very
low and narrow and Gothic in outline. The north and south façades,--if
despite their many obstructions they may be spoken of as such,--differ
radically. The northern is to a great extent executed in the same
ponderous magnificence as the western. Two doorways pierce it, the
Puerta de San Jeronimo with mediocre sculpture by Diego de Siloé and his
pupil and successor, Juan de Maeda, and the Puerta del Perdon, leading
into the transept. The decoration of this doorway is as good pure
Renaissance work as was executed in Spain during the first quarter of
the sixteenth century. It consists of a double Corinthian order crowned
by a broken pediment. The shafts of both orders are wreathed. The
pilasters, the moldings of the arch, the archivolt and jambs are all, in
the lower order, most profusely covered with exquisite designs,
admirably fitted to their respective fields, full of imagination and
virility. They are as good as the best corresponding work in Italy.Above the
arch key of the main door, splendidly treated bas-reliefs of
Faith and Justice support from the spandrels an inscription recounting
the defeat of the Moors. The frieze band of both lower and upper orders
is profusely filled with ornament, while small cherubs in excellent
scale replace the conventional volutes of the Corinthian capitals. In
the upper order the niches have unfortunately been left uncompleted. A
bas-relief of God the Father fills the semicircle of the main arch;
Moses and David occupy the lunettes.