the traveller naturally feels a difficulty in realising the fact that
the extent and splendour of this Convent actually represented what was
once a vital principle of first importance to Spain. To her, until
Mariolatry set in with full intensity, the name of Sant' Iago was a
tower of strength. Not only did the possession of his shrine to which
pilgrims flocked, even from beyond the seas in thousands, bring wealth
to the Church; but the elevation of the Saint into an actual soldier of
the Faith, a leader to material as well as to spiritual victory,
supplied for Spain that fervour under arms which, when passing under the
form of devotion to "the Prophet" had, as both Church and State in Spain
wisely recognised, wrought such marvels in the consolidation of the
power of her natural enemies, the Moors. By the creation of the
religious orders of cavaliers, or rather of the military orders of
priests, Spain at once nourished the spirit of chivalry and the
Christian Faith, the union of which ultimately won for her the
reconquest of all that Mahommedan Chivalry and Mahommedan Faith had
conquered from her.[9] The very length and pertinacity of the struggle
only served to quicken the devotion of the people to their "Gran
Capitan," Sant' Iago, and to induce them to enrich to the utmost the
order which bore his name.
Hence the magnificent scale of buildings, such as the Convent of San
Marcos, the stately cloisters of which once sheltered those whose energy
in council and skill in the field maintained that life and action for
the warlike, and protection and repose for the peaceable, which were
essential to the consolidation and upholding of the monarchy of Spain,
and its supposed indispensable and inseparable adjunct the "Catholic
Faith."
[Illustration: PLATE 11
LEON CASA DE LOS GUSMANES
MDW 1869]
PLATE XI.
_LEON._
EXTERIOR OF THE CASA DE LOS GUSMANES.
IN an ancient house which stood upon the site on which now stands the
Palace which forms the subject of our sketch, there was born, in the
year 1266, a "Cavalier," who, when arrived at manhood, followed the
fortunes of Sancho the Brave. After many struggles, the King having
taken Tarifa in Andalucia from the Moors in 1292, looked round amongst
his followers for one willing to hold what he had won. All refused,
owing to the danger of the position, until Alonso Perez de Guzman, the
Cavalier in question, offered to keep possession of the town for a year.
The story is thus condensed by Ford, from the "Romancero." The Moors
beleaguered it, aided by the Infante Juan, a traitor brother of Sancho's
to whom Alonso's eldest son, aged nine, had been entrusted previously as
a page. "Juan now brought the boy under the walls, and threatened to
kill him if his father would not surrender the place. Alonso drew his
dagger and threw it down exclaiming, 'I prefer honour without a son, to
a son with dishonour.' He retired, and the Prince caused the child to be
put to death. A cry of horror ran through the Spanish battlements.
Alonso rushed forth, beheld his son's body, and returning to his
childless mother, calmly observed, 'I feared that the infidel had gained
the city.' Sancho, the King, likened him to Abraham, from this parental
sacrifice and honoured him with the 'canting' name 'El Bueno.' The good
(Guzman, Gutman, Goodman.) He became the founder of the princely Dukes
of Medina Sidonia, now merged by marriage in the Villafrancas." From
this great head descended ultimately Her Majesty the Empress Eugénie of
France. Gaining strength, riches and power, the original residence of El
Bueno became too small for his aspiring family, and in 1560, Don Juan
Quiñones y Guzman, Bishop of Calahorra, determined upon the erection, on
the same site, of the present fine structure. The name of the architect
does not seem to be known, but it is obviously the work of one who,
rejecting the elaboration of the Plateresque style, followed the simpler
and more chastened proportions recommended by the early Italian writers
on architecture, such as Alberti and Serlio, and by the first Spanish
student of Vitruvius, Diego Sagredo in his "Medidas del Romano,"
(Toledo, 1526.)
It is probable that the use of a large quantity of iron externally, as
in the balconies and other parts of this Palace was somewhat of a
novelty at the date of construction, since the story runs "that when
Philip II. visited Leon, as his courtiers, some friends of the Bishops,
were praising the building, and were mentioning in a friendly way the
thousands of cwts. of iron employed in it, the King severely observed,
punningly by the way, 'En verdad que ha sido mucho _yerro_ para un
obispo.'"[10] The pun turns upon the word _yerro_ which means both iron,
and a mistake. The joke would have been unworthy of Philip II. if it had
not been grim.
[Illustration: PLATE 12
LEON.
CASA DE LOS GUSMANES
MDW. 1869]
PLATE XII.
_LEON._
PATIO OF THE CASA DE LOS GUSMANES.
PALACES, such as supply our twelfth illustration, are now rarely
occupied in Spain by one family only. Instead of serving as the place of
general rendezvous for the dependants and intimate friends only of the
aristocratic proprietor, the Patios are now usually peopled with men,
women and children belonging to the numerous families, between whom the
occupation of the Palace, sadly fallen from its high estate, is divided.
Instead of the mansions being guarded by a grand inquisitor in the shape
of a porter, with armed servants within hail, with almost more than
Oriental jealousy, as in the old days, he who will, may usually find
entrance or exit unheeded, passing but as one more or one less of the
hundreds who go to and fro in the course of the day to the various
apartments which are frequently let and sublet, at ridiculously low
rents, to poor occupants who can afford to pay no other. Poverty, in
fact, revels in halls where magnificence once reigned supreme.
It is no easy task for the imagination to repeople such grand old
residences with the stately Hidalgoes and Señoras, who once occupied and
maintained them with scrupulous care and princely dignity. Happily, the
Countess d'Aulnois comes to our aid with her lively account of the
dwelling at Madrid of the Duchess of Terra Nueva, appointed
Camerera-Mayor to the young Queen, in 1679; and her picturesque sketch
may be freely accepted as expressing the general style in which families
of dignity, such as the Guzmanes, magnates of Leon, lived during the
plenitude of Spanish wealth and power.
"One can hardly see anything," says she,[11] "that looks more splendid
than this house of theirs; they use the upper apartments, which are hung
with tapestry, all done with raised work of gold. In one great chamber,
which is longer than it is broad, you may see several glass doors, which
go into closets, or little cells; the first of which is the Duchess of
Terra Nova's, hung with grey, and a bed of the same, and all other
things very plain. On one side lodges her daughter, the Duchess of
Monteleon, who is a widow, and has her room furnished like her mother's.
Afterwards you come to the Princess of Monteleon's chamber, which is not
larger than the others; but her bed is of gold and green damask, lined
with silver brocade, and trimmed with Point-de-Spain. The sheets were
laced about with an English lace of half an ell deep. Over against it
were the chambers of Monteleon and Hijar's children, which were
furnished with white damask. Next to these is the little chamber of the
Duchess Hijar, furnished with crimson coloured velvet upon a gold
ground. Their rooms were no otherwise divided than by partitions of a
certain sweet wood; and they told me that six of their women lay in
their chambers upon beds brought thither at night. The ladies were in a
great gallery, spread with a very rich foot-cloth. There were set round
it crimson coloured velvet cushions embroidered with gold, and they are
longer than they are broad. There were also several great cabinets
inlaid, and adorned with precious stones; but they are not made in
Spain. And between them were tables of silver, and admirable
looking-glasses, both for their largeness and rich frames, the worst of
which were of silver. But that which I thought finest, were their
escaparates, which is a certain sort of close cabinet with one great
glass, and filled with all the rarities which one can imagine, whether
it be in amber, porcelain, crystal, bezoar-stone, branches of coral,
mother-of-pearl, filligreen in gold, and a thousand other things of
value."
[Illustration: PLATE 13
LEON
MDW 1869
CALLE DELLA TESORIERA. LEON.]
PLATE XIII.
_LEON._
DETAIL FROM A HOUSE IN THE CALLE DE LA TESORIERA.
THIS pretty little keystone, with its acanthus leaf well drawn and
freely cut in good cinque-cento style occurs over the Portal of an old
house in one of the secondary streets of Leon. The pot of lilies which
surmounts it is a pretty little "impresa," quaintly signifying the
devotion of the owner of the house to the especial object of every good
Spaniard's worship, the most holy Virgin "sin pecado concebida." The S
shaped irons, which appear on the right and left of the pot of lilies,
serve to help to support the light balcony, which generally occurs over
entrance doors of minor importance in Spain, and which often serves as a
small open air addition to the common sitting room, in which the women
of the house do much of the usual needle work, spinning, &c.
[Illustration: PLATE 14
SALAMANCA
CASA DE LAS CONCHAS
MDW 1869]
PLATE XIV.
_SALAMANCA._
EXTERIOR OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.
THIS is, upon the whole, the most complete house I met with of its
period, answering in Art, and nearly in point of time, to the florid
Burgundian style of the Low Countries, with which there was much
intercourse at the probable date of its construction--the close of the
fifteenth century. It stands almost opposite the great Church of the
Gesuitas, some of the columns of an unfinished porch or portico of which
may be seen upon the left hand side of the sketch. No doubt this fine
mansion does not possess its original roofing, as testified by the
comparatively modern windows of a portion of the top storey, but with
that exception it is fairly complete, both externally and internally.
The little projections on the masonry looking like nail heads are,
really, as will be seen by the details given in Plates XVII. and XIX.,
representations of shells, the heraldic badge of the owner of the house,
from which, rather than from his name, the cognomen by which the house
is known, has been derived. It is difficult now to divine in what way
the top storey was originally constructed, but judging by analogy with
what was usual in such houses elsewhere in Spain at the time, it
appears probable that it may have consisted of a light open arcading,
serving as a "look out"--"mirador"--and place for exercising for the
ladies of the household, at times when the streets may have been neither
safe nor agreeable.
[Illustration: PLATE 15
SALAMANCA, CASA DE LAS CONCHAS
MDW 1869]
PLATE XV.
_SALAMANCA._
PATIO OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.
THE Patio of this house is yet more perfect than its façade, and, a rare
circumstance in Spain, I found it both clean and well kept. It is not
upon a large scale, and did not, perhaps, look the less elegant on that
account. The upper arcade produces a far better effect than the lower,
since in the latter the principle of the arch seems fantastically and
heedlessly lost sight of. With the exception in the upper arcade of the
way in which the wreaths and escutcheons are placed, as though to
conceal a confusion in the lines of the archivolt, which the architect
(or mason) did not seem quite to know how to bring together comfortably
over the capitals, the whole effect is quiet and pretty. The open work
parapet at the top is the only _motif_ in the design which appears to be
borrowed from the architecture of the Moors.
[Illustration: PLATE 16
CASA DE LAS CONCHAS
MDW 1869]
PLATE XVI.
_SALAMANCA._
STAIRCASE OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.
ON the side of the Patio, opposite to the entrance, occurs the archway
through the wall which forms the back of the arcade on that side of the
Court, and beyond which is seen the staircase which connects the upper
and lower arcades. From its masonry bonded in with the enclosing walls,
it assumes even, while simple in design, a thoroughly architectural
character, while the depth of shade, which almost invariably covers the
back wall and parts of the side wall, serve to throw the lower part of
the staircase into brilliant relief. The graceful and gay figures which,
in the characteristic costume of Salamanca, from time to time, went up
or down the staircase, or linger upon it in groups chatting or smoking,
or flirting, make up occasional pictures not rapidly to be effaced from
the author's memory.
[Illustration: PLATE 17
SALAMANCA
MDW 1869
CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.]
PLATE XVII.
_SALAMANCA._
WINDOW FROM THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.
ONE of the most agreeable features in the design of the Casa de las
Conchas, is the variety of detail of the different windows throughout
the house. On the sketch under consideration, and in the two which
follow it, evidence is afforded of the burning of the "lamp of life," as
Mr. Ruskin would call it. They are all of them conceived in a
transitional and composite but very picturesque style, and however
different or possibly antagonistic the details of each window may appear
amongst themselves, as a whole they agree and look exceedingly well.
This window occurs on the first floor of the façade, and possesses an
additional interest from showing us pretty clearly what kind of windows
may have been superseded in a similar situation by the Italian windows
so much to be regretted in the fine Palace of the Duques del Infantado
at Guadalajara. See Plate LXXVIII.
[Illustration: PLATE 18
SALAMANCA
CASA DE LAS CONCHAS
MDW 1869]
PLATE XVIII.
_SALAMANCA._
WINDOW IN THE PATIO OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.
THIS window with its heavy ironwork, gives light through the back wall
of the arcading of the Patio to a passage running behind a room, which
derives its light from the external wall of the house. Such passages
occur not unfrequently in Spanish houses, and are convenient, as they
serve to bring three rooms into a suite without the necessity of having
to pass through any one room to get to another. Of course of the three
rooms two may be of the full width, extending from the external wall of
the house to the back wall of the arcading of the Patio, and one of that
width less the width of the passage, into which the three doors open,
and which is lighted by a window from the Patio (such as that sketched),
and frequently approached also from the arcading by a doorway adjoining
the window. As the Patio is a comparatively public part of the house,
such windows require, and usually have, the strong close iron work,
which gives security and a certain amount of privacy to the external
windows of the ground-floor of the house.
[Illustration: PLATE 19
SALAMANCA
MDW 1869
CASA DE LAS CONCHAS]
PLATE XIX.
_SALAMANCA._
EXTERNAL WINDOW OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.
THE windows of the first-floors of Spanish houses are always the
largest, airiest, and openest, of the whole of the windows of the house,
excepting in the rare cases where there is a top story consisting of a
large gallery, as frequently at Genoa, serving for promenade and look
out--in fact a species of Belvedere. The importance of the rooms lighted
is generally indicated by the relative richness of the window dressings.
The profusion with which heraldic insignia are used in the window
sketched, suffices, therefore, to show that with others of the same kind
it lighted the principal saloons of the house. Another point of
construction illustrated by the sketch, is the fact that the "conchas"
or carved stone shells have been applied after the general building of
the wall. This is proved by the regularity with which they are placed,
irrespective of the heights of the various courses of masonry, and of
the levels at which the joints occur.
[Illustration: PLATE 20
SALAMANCA CASA MONTEREY.
MDW 1869]
PLATE XX.
_SALAMANCA_.
EXTERIOR OF THE CASA MONTEREY.
OF the very picturesque specimen of domestic architecture illustrated in
Plate XX., and bearing the local name of the Casa de Monterey, but
little seems to be known. Escosura confesses himself reduced to
conjecture, and thus theorises on the subject. As to the exact epoch at
which the Casa de Monterey was built, the following circumstances should
be borne in mind. "The title of Conde de Monterey was created in favour
of Don Baltasar de Zuñiga, who was Viceroy of Naples in the year 1626.
This nobleman caused the Church of the Convent of Nuns which bore his
name, and which stands opposite his palace, to be erected at his expense
from the designs of the fashionable Italian architect, Fontana. May it
be unreasonable to suppose that the Palace was designed at the same time
by the same architect?"
To this question, the proper answer given by some better judge of
architectural style would, probably, be "very," since it is difficult to
perceive any similarity between the modes of design, upon which the two
buildings are based. The architecture of the Church of the Convent, one
angle of which appears on the left hand of the sketch, is in the large
florid manner of the post-Palladian Italians, while that of the Palace
is small in its ornamental parts, and instead of exhibiting Italian
features, seems throughout to show the peculiar reading of Italian style
adopted by the late Plateresque Spanish architects of the second half of
the sixteenth century. This is particularly noticeable in the absence of
a crowning balustrade, and in the substitution for it of the elaborate
pierced cresting which apparently the Spanish architects adopted from
Moorish rather than from any antique models.
The interior of this grand looking palace is said to have been all but
destroyed by the French.
[Illustration: PLATE 21
SALAMANCA
MDW 1869
OPPOSITE SAN BENITO.]
PLATE XXI.
_SALAMANCA_.
RENAISSANCE HOUSE OPPOSITE SAN BENITO.
IN every ancient city the largest and most costly building ever erected
in it is usually the most enduring. The causes of this are various--for
instance--the construction in itself may have been the most solid, the
citizens may have taken such pride in it as to bestow unusual pains upon
its conservation, they may have retained it for uses for which it may
have become more or less unfit (as is the case with the majority of
ancient Ecclesiastical buildings in Protestant countries), rather than
face the expense of re-erecting appropriate buildings, or it may still
be well suited for present purposes. Hence cathedrals, churches,
palaces, (rarely castles, owing to the combative propensities of their
owners), hospitals, great residences of ancient families, and in
Catholic countries, convents and monasteries, of almost all periods, may
remain to attest the changes of architectural style, &c.; but the
ordinary residences of the middle classes, and of the numerous secondary
nobility, get swept away by the tides of history, or are so altered by
them as to leave scarcely any satisfactory land-marks to indicate what
once gave its predominant character to the streets of many an ancient
city. Such changes are effected almost equally by progress and by
decay. By the former, all minor monuments become obliterated or
transformed,--they represent in fact old age, pushed aside to make way
for youth--while by the latter they descend in the social scale until
beggars break up what nobles once built up. How constantly the traveller
meets with some splendid old cathedral still "hale and hearty," with the
weight of half-a-dozen or more centuries upon its head, around which he
knows were once grouped teeming populations full of strength, life, and
wealth, of which not a habitation may be left extending backwards for
more than a hundred years from the present date? Any exceptions to such
illustrations of the way in which fortune turns her wheel become the
especially cherished haunts of the antiquary, who knows that from day to
day they become rarer, and consequently more precious. Hence the
enthusiasm with which the neglected quarters of every old town are
visited in the hope of meeting with some relics of what may therein at
least appear, "remains of an extinct civilization." Some such reward I
met with in encountering, amidst much dirt and apparent poverty in the
quarter of San Benito, in Salamanca, the pretty façades of old
Renaissance houses which form the subjects of this sketch and of the one
which succeeds it.
[Illustration: PLATE 22
SALAMANCA
MDW 1869
CALLE DEL AGUILA]
PLATE XXII.
_SALAMANCA_.
RENAISSANCE HOUSE IN THE CALLE DEL AGUILA.
THE Renaissance house now presented to the reader, although richer in
its ornaments, is not as complete as the one given in the preceding
sketch, having apparently lost its original roof. Instead of the
overhanging eaves casting a constantly cool shade over the open
balustrading, through which light and air still pass to "a chamber
that's next to the sky;" in this case nothing is probably left over the
principal apartment, the window of which richly decorated with heraldry
and arabesque is shown over the strong doorway with its deep flat arch,
excepting a dark and scarcely habitable attic. I think it very likely
that the wreath, coat of arms, and boys, which still occupy their
original position over the principal window, once supported the sill of
a superior window, and that the house which now appears to have two
stories only, had once at least as many as three.
Such houses as these of the ancient nobility, of which I could find only
two or three, must once have been common enough in the fashionable city
of Gil Blas, when the university numbered seven thousand students, and
eighty professors, with salaries of one thousand crowns each--a
bountiful payment in those days for the exercise of the noblest
talents--and swarms of assistants and "Pretendientes" on half-pay and
unattached.[12]
[Illustration: PLATE 23
AVILA
ENTRANCE TO THE CASA POLENTINA
MDW 1869]
PLATE XXIII.
_AVILA_.
ENTRANCE GATEWAY OF THE CASA POLENTINA.
THE Portal which forms the subject of my twenty-third sketch serves as
the entrance to the dilapidated old mansion of the Condes de Polentinos
at Avila, a view of the remains of the Patio of which will be found on
turning over this page. The architectural characteristics of this
striking gateway are certainly very singular. On catching a glimpse of
it from a distance, and seizing the aspect only of its ponderous masonry
and deep machicolations, I fully believed I was coming upon an old bit
of castellated construction of the fourteenth or fifteenth century at
latest. On nearer inspection, however, I found out my mistake, and
arrived at the conclusion that the Señor Conde, late in the sixteenth
century, who had caused the whole structure to be built, had probably
charged his architect, either to preserve the general form of some much
earlier portal of the old house, which he may have caused to be pulled
down, or to imitate the general aspect of some other aristocratic portal
of early date, which the Count may have admired elsewhere. Different as
the corbelling, &c., looks to the gateway, and the window over it, I
found that ornamental detail of a similar nature to, but somewhat
coarser style than that of the door and window dressings was worked over
most of the corbelling, and part of the upper gallery carried by the
corbels, but apparently by a provincial hand. The stone work of the door
and window had probably been left in the rough for awhile, possibly for
some fifty years, and then its carving entrusted to some superior
artist, working according to the latest lights of the fashion of the
close of the sixteenth century. Although the style of all this carving
is plateresque, there are many indications about it of an inclination to
Greco-Roman work. For instance, the griffins, the lions' heads of
antique type, and the arms and armour arranged as trophies, all indicate
acquaintance with the prevalent materials of Italian arabesque design of
late cinque-cento style. Indeed, the very form and fluting of the
corselets, brasses, vambrasses, and cuisses, would indicate that armour
of a date posterior to the middle of the sixteenth century had been
adopted as types for the making up of the trophies.
[Illustration: PLATE 24
AVILA
CASA POLENTINA
MDW 1869]
PLATE XXIV.
_AVILA_.
THE PATIO OF THE CASA POLENTINA.