reckoned Juan de Arfe y Villafañe, acknowledged their dependence upon
the great Italian masters for all they considered most excellent in
style, may be gathered from the curious account of the development of
good art in his time[50] that he gives in his celebrated Treatise on
Sculpture and Architecture. After dwelling upon what he curiously enough
calls the "obra moderna," with which the great cathedrals of Spain had
been, as he considers, built, he observes, "This _barbarous work_,
having arrived at its end, its disuse having commenced in our times,
gave place to the ancient styles of the Greeks and Romans. Although this
style of work had been revived at an earlier period in Italy by the
diligence and study of Bramante, Master of the Works of St. Peter's at
Rome, Baldassare Perruzzi and Leon Baptista Alberti, celebrated
architects, it also began to flourish in Spain through the industry of
the excellent Alonso de Covarrubbias, Master of the Works of the
Cathedral at Toledo, and of the Royal Palace, father of the most famous
doctor, Don Diego Covarrubbias, President of the Supreme Council of his
Majesty and Bishop of Segovia, and of Diego Siloe, Master of the Works
of the Cathedral and Palace of Granada. These masters began to use this
kind of work in many places wherever they built, although always with
some admixture of the modern work (Gothic or early Plateresque) which
they could never entirely forget."
[Illustration: PLATE 78
GUADALAXARA
PALACE OF THE DUQUÉ DEL INFANTADO
MDW 1869]
PLATE LXXVIII.
_GUADALAXARA._
PALACIO DE LOS DUQUES DEL INFANTADO.
THIS is unquestionably one of the most important of the Palaces of the
ancient nobility left in Spain, worthy of the renown of the Mendozas,
long Seigneurs of Guadalaxara. In spite of its present picturesque
aspect, however, architecturally speaking, it is a strange jumble of
incongruities; and offers but a ghost of the beauty it must have
possessed upon its first construction towards the end of the fifteenth
century from 1461 onwards. Splendour it must have possessed in
perfection at the date at which it excited warm admiration in the breast
of the captive sovereign, Francis I. of France, who was here
magnificently entertained by the then Duque del Infantado. The top story
with its remains of continuous arcading and balconies, the walls, the
splendid doorway, and above all the Patio, with the exception probably
of the top cornice and the Doric columns of the ground-floor arcade, all
belong to the original construction. These remains afford sufficient
indication of what has been destroyed to make way for Italian decoration
and barbarous repair, to enable the practised eye to see the whole as it
once existed; before a vulgar desire for novelty, and especially for
foreign novelty induced the desecration of the integrity of the design.
One might have fancied that every true Spaniard would have regarded this
palace almost as a holy place, from its having received the last breath
of the great Cardinal Mendoza--the "Rex tertius," whom Felipe Vigarny,
or some other dextrous sculptor, portrayed in the carvings of the
Cathedral at Granada,[51] riding with Ferdinand and Isabella, and
receiving the keys of the Alhambra from the hands of the unfortunate
"Boabdil el Chico."
The interior of this Palace is fully as rich and remarkable as the
exterior. The Patio which is about eighty feet long by fifty-six wide,
(about two-thirds of the size of the court-yards of the Royal Exchange
and the India Office), is surrounded by arcades of two stories, each
about twenty feet in height. Both series of arches are of a Gothic and
fantastic form, with spandrels filled in on the lower story with lions,
and on the upper with winged griffins. Between each arch are columns,
surmounted with armorial bearings, eagles, and grouped finials. The
whole, if coarsely, is very spiritedly carved, and produces a stately
and simple, though rich effect. The saloons are large and lofty, with
remains of beautiful half Moorish ceilings, and much effective Italian
fresco decoration of good colour and enriched with harmonious Arabesque
ornament.
The state of this once splendid structure is unfortunately as
dilapidated as the national finances. What more can or need be said?
Everything going to pieces for want of that "stitch in time," which
nowhere, and in nothing, in Spain, seems ever likely "to save nine."
[Illustration: PLATE 79
GUADALAXARA SAN MIGUEL
MDW 1869]
PLATE LXXIX.
_GUADALAXARA._
DOORWAY OF THE MONASTERY OF SAN MIGUEL.
IN and about Guadalaxara may be found many indications of the
traditional preservation, long after the expulsion of the Moors, not
only from New Castille, but from Spain generally as well, of their
excellence in the technical arts, amongst which brick-making, combining,
and laying were conspicuous. Hence, especially throughout the two
Castilles, Aragon, and Andalucia, the common method of using brick-work
is peculiarly Oriental and effective. The entrance doorway to the
Monastery of San Miguel, which forms the subject of our seventy-ninth
sketch, illustrates this mixture; as well it may, since traces are yet
to be found of the structure having been originally a mosque converted,
probably, shortly before the year 1500 to Christian uses. The round
instead of square buttresses, with conical terminations, the segmental
arch, with its ponderous archivolt, the great strength and almost
heaviness given by the regular rectangular setting out of the
woodwork--and a coarseness and yet spirit in the execution of carving,
are marked features of Aragonese style; the echoes of which may not
unfrequently be met with at Naples, especially in the entrance gateways
to many an old house. I well remember being puzzled by several of those
which I sketched there, and which appeared to me to differ from ordinary
contemporary Italian architecture in other localities. I subsequently
recognized similar features in Palermo, and elsewhere in Sicily.
[Illustration: PLATE 80
GUADALAXARA CASA DEL DUQUÉ DE RIBAS
MDW 1869]
PLATE LXXX.
_GUADALAXARA._
CASA DEL DUQUÉ DE RIBAS.
THE traveller who takes his seat for an hour or so before some old
portal of a Spanish provincial mansion, garnished with heraldic
insignia, proclaiming the rank, if not the dignity, of the possible
owner, can scarcely fail to be struck by the usual incongruity between
the assumption of the structure, and the modesty, not to say meanness,
of those who pass in and out of it generally at long intervals. The
sketcher's operations naturally, after a little while, attract the
attention of some few, and "their name is legion" throughout Spain, of
those who have nothing to do; or who, at any rate, do nothing, but
wander lazily but restlessly up and down to while away the time. After a
compliment or two, and probably a request that the spectators will not
stand exactly between the artist and the object he may be drawing, an
inquiry very generally follows as to "whose house that may be?" If the
answer extends beyond the usual "Quien sabe Caballero?" it may chance to
be "del Señor Duqué," or "del Señor Marques," something or other, or at
any rate of a "Señor somebody," "somebody," "somebody." To the next
inquiry, as to where the Hidalgo, if he be such, may be? the usual
answer will be "Madrid" or "Paris," or at any rate the "chef-lieu" of
the Province. The next demand may likely enough be, "Who lives there
then, now?" If the answer is not the usual "No puedo decir a Usted," it
may possibly be, "El Señor Administrador," the Steward, or "Algunos
Pobres," or "Don Manoel, the shoemaker," or "Don Juan, the carpenter."
Where the nobility live, if they are not all absentees, it seems very
difficult to find out; and hence it is that instead of ladies and
gentlemen, and liveried servants, who pass in and out of these grand
looking "portone," the sketcher usually sees only extremely picturesque
poverty. Sometimes this presents itself in the shape of a ragged girl or
two, carrying antique-shaped earthen water-jars, sometimes an old woman
with a heap of long-haired unkempt children sitting down to spin, or
reel off yarn, or lolling against the wall, distaff in hand; and
sometimes, possibly, two or three boys or young men assemble, who, after
smoking out some cigarrilos or stumps of cigars, coil themselves up on
the threshold, and go off into a comatose condition closely resembling
sleep.
Such were my experiences whilst trying to gain some local information as
to the mansion of the very noble, the Duqué de Ribas at Guadalaxara.
[Illustration: PLATE 81
GUADALAXARA DOOR HANDLE
CALLE DEL BARRIO NUEVO Nº 10
MDW 1869]
PLATE LXXXI.
_GUADALAXARA._
DOOR HANDLE FROM THE CALLE DEL BARRIO NUEVO.
THE outskirts of Guadalaxara are very picturesque, and the traveller who
wanders about in quest of beauty, old or new, cannot fail to be
rewarded; not only by glimpses of scenery, but by the discovery of many
quaint little fragments of art which have escaped the attention of the
many despoiling locusts--native as well as foreign--who have done their
best at different times to "devour the land." Of such, a specimen is
given in the "knowing" little knocker, or door-handle illustrated in my
eighty-first sketch. It is no doubt a joke on the part of some cunning
smith, of the last century, mindful of the still greater cunning of his
handicraft, traditions of which may have descended to him, from the days
when the armourers of Spain rivalled those of Milan and Augsburg.
[Illustration: PLATE 82
SARAGOSSA
PALACIO DELLA INFANTA
MDW 1869]
PLATE LXXXII.
_SARAGOSSA._
VIEW OF THE PATIO OF THE PALACIO DE LA INFANTA.
PONZ speaks with great complacency of the sumptuousness of the houses of
Saragossa--particularly those with columns, (such as that of the Marques
de Monistol) and those the Patios of which are adorned with
sculptures--"such costly and sumptuous works," he says, "as no one
undertakes now a days." Amongst these he particularises the house which
forms the subject of the present sketch. Before his time it appears to
have belonged to the Citizen Gabriel Zaporta, "muy distinguido y rico,"
as Ponz calls him. From him it was bought by the widow of a certain Don
Gabriel Franco. At the close of the last century it was the home of the
Infante Don Luis, (uncle of Charles IV. of Spain), a Cardinal and
Archbishop of Toledo! who married "La Vallabriga," earning exile to
Saragossa for his pains. She lived here with him, and procured for the
house its popular and best known name, la Casa de la Infanta. Their
eldest daughter was bestowed, as an Infanta of Spain, upon the
detestable Godoy--"Prince of Peace,"--the recognised lover of her first
cousin by marriage, the Queen, wife of Charles IV., thus crowning a
double mésalliance.
"On the ground floor," says Ponz,[52] "of the Patio are twelve arches
supported on columns wrought with a thousand fancies, as are those also
of the first floor. On the lower floor of this house is a painter's
studio. Both floors are enriched with medallions representing kings,
fanciful foliage, and infinite labour in cornices, mouldings, &c."
Similar elaboration, now much defaced, is to be seen in the staircase
with vaulting, and handrail with medallions recalling those of the first
floor.
Amongst the most important palaces, next to the house of Zaporta or de
la Infanta, and that of the Marques de Monistol, were those known as the
"Castel-Florit," which belonged in Ponz's time to the Count Aranda--and
another the property of the Duqué de Hijar. The "Casa de Comercio" which
forms the subject of my eighty-fifth sketch was less important as to
quantity, but more important as to quality, than those last mentioned
appear to have been. As a general rule, the Saragossan houses appear
very large but coarsely treated as to detail, even in the richest, such
as those with showy windows behind the Seminario, in the Plazuela de San
Carlos.
My sketch sufficiently shows the "base uses" to which the truly palatial
Casa de Zaporta, or de la Infanta, has "come at last." It is well that
as many as possible of the rising generation of art-students should see
it, for it is not likely that any of it will be left for their
children.
[Illustration: PLATE 83
CASA DE LOS INFANTES ZARAGOZA
MDW 1869]
PLATE LXXXIII.
_SARAGOSSA._
DETAIL OF THE ARCADING OF THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE CASA DE LA INFANTA.
THIS sketch gives to an enlarged scale some of the architectural
features represented in little in the preceding sketch. Many of the
arches which were once open in a beautiful arcading are now closed up in
lath and plaster; with a heartless indifference to everything else than
getting as much room as possible to let to the poor lodgers who swarm in
this once splendid Palace. The whitewash brush goes recklessly over any
surfaces with which it is brought into contact at the command of
sanitary inspectors, who enforce perfunctory cleansings from time to
time of at least the "outside of the platter." As I sat sketching and
"poking about" for some hours in this apparent "rabbit warren" of a
house, I could not but become conscious that the Arragonese had by no
means lost their old character for devotion, not to say bigotry. "Our
Lady of the pillar," the tutelary of Saragossa in spite of all alleged
pilferings from her shrine, seemed still at a premium in popular
estimation; and casts of her in the poorest plaster were multiplied even
in the poorest tenements. In fact, this seemed to be the very place for
meeting with the truly Spanish couple of the lower middle class, so well
sketched by the German Fischer in his travels at the close of the last
century. "I cannot conclude this letter," says he, "without saying a
word or two of my hosts. Both the man and his wife are originals not to
be met with but in Catholic countries; both bigots to excess, but each
in a different way. In the husband, this disposition has assumed a
silent and gloomy cast of character, while in his wife it bears all the
symptoms of tenderness. The husband has filled the whole house, and
especially his own apartment, with images of saints, resembling an
entire collection of the little Augsburg toys so well known in Germany.
In fulfilment of a vow, he mutters his prayers three times a day before
these idols, an occupation which daily employs two full hours. He also
imposes on himself very painful mortifications, talks very little, reads
gloomy books, and remains whole hours with his eyes shut, so that he is
on the high road to become either a madman or a saint. The wife's
fanaticism is much more social, and her pious imaginations bear the
stamp of the mildness and softness of her sex. She has got herself
received a "slave of the Holy Trinity" (esclava de la Santissima
Trinidad), of which she has obtained a certificate in form from her
confessor, and in consequence of which she is bound every day to
decorate a large picture with flowers and tapers, to repeat a certain
number of prayers before it, and to pay a certain sum weekly to her
confessor, an agent of the Trinity; yet all this does not seem to her
sufficient for salvation, and she has besides an image of the Holy
Virgin, which she very punctually supplies with all the necessary
habiliments, both for day and night, besides tapers, flowers and all
that can contribute to ornament the happy idol.
"This devout esclava is a little woman very affable and complaisant,
whose religious sentiments do not at all interfere with other
terrestrial feelings, while her impassive husband seems to have arrived
at all the spirituality of the blessed."
[Illustration: PLATE 84
SARAGOZA LA LONJA
MDW 1869]
PLATE LXXXIV.
_SARAGOSSA._
EXTERIOR OF THE EXCHANGE.
THERE is something about the exterior of this fine building essentially
Florentine in style. The bold overhanging and crowning cornice, the
Ricardi-Palace kind of windows, the simplicity of the Mezzanine, and
indeed the introduction of a Mezzanine at all, associated with the
severity of the rectangular structure, massive in a noble simplicity,
rather recall the work of the grand masters of Tuscan Architecture at
the end of the fifteenth century, than any styles, Plateresque or
Greco-Roman, one recognises as peculiarly Spanish.
The name of the architect appears to have been lost, but there is no
question as to the date of its erection, which is given by an
inscription which runs beneath a cornice in the interior, and states
that it was completed in "1551, reynando Donya Jona y Don Carlos su
hijo."
The "Lonjas," or Exchanges, of Spain, constitute an important and
interesting class of buildings, dating, from mediæval times in the most
commercial of the towns on the seaboard, and from the Renaissance period
in those of the interior. The term Lonja, originally only implied a
"long place" or platform, the sort of spot in a town on which merchants
would meet, as on "the flags" at Liverpool. In process of time the
Lonjas came to be covered in, and converted into handsome "Exchanges."
The earliest structure of this class is, or rather was, at Barcelona.
All the fine old building of 1383, Mr. Street tells us, has "been
completely destroyed, with the one exception of its grand Hall, which
still does service as of old. This consists of three naves, divided by
lofty and slender columns, which carry stilted semi-circular arches. The
ceiling is flat ... and the dimensions about one hundred feet by
seventy-five." The "Casa Lonja" of Valencia, which Mr. Street has also
fully illustrated[53] is one of the prettiest of the late Gothic
buildings in Spain. It was erected between 1482 and the close of the
fifteenth century. The next important Lonja in point of date was the
Saragossan of 1551. The last was that of Seville built by Herrera
between 1585 and 1598, and certainly one of his best works. It was
avowedly built in rivalry with Gresham's Royal Exchange--completed in
1571.
To the interior of the fine building under notice I could not obtain
access, and have therefore to trust to Ponz's description of it. "It
forms," he says, "a splendid saloon with an internal double gallery of
Doric columns and arches, to the number of fifty." Within it are erected
an altar to, and statue of, the guardian angel, in fact the building had
its Lararium. Ponz mentions, further, many paintings. These appear no
longer to exist, since all I could learn by personal inquiry on the spot
was that the place, having long been used as a carpenter's shop and
warehouse was now absolutely empty and unused. I fear therefore that the
"Angelo Custode" has had too much to do, and has broken down under his
task.
[Illustration: PLATE 85
SARAGOZA CASA DE COMERCIO
MDW 1869]
PLATE LXXXV.
_SARAGOSSA._
PATIO OF THE CASA DE COMERCIO.
THIS house, originally a Gothic one, in some of its earliest details,
still acknowledges its allegiance to the noble family of the Torrellas,
its founders. Their arms, with a lion, and the three little towers which
pun heraldically upon their name, as charges, still exist upon a Gothic
escutcheon over one of the doorways. The house is locally stated, I know
not on what authority, to have been occupied, and altered by a company
of Genoese merchants, whence, no doubt, its popular name "de Comercio."
It is situated in the Calle de Sant' Jago, and is now the property of
the Marquis de Ayerve.
Although retaining the usual Saragossan bracket-capitals and "Anillos,"
in the shape of quasi bases and dies or pedestals united, the symmetry
of the plan and the regularity of the cinque-cento ornament and
Arabesque of the panels and pilasters certainly bear out the tradition
of the Genoese occupation and alteration of an original mediæval
structure early in the sixteenth century.
At that time, and for nearly a couple of centuries afterwards, the bulk
of the commercial transactions of Spain were administered by foreigners,
principally at first Italians, and subsequently Flemings and Frenchmen.
The expulsion of the Moors, the persecutions of the Jews, and the
pouring in of American silver opened up a splendid field in Spain,
during this period, for the trafficking talents of people endowed with
greater activity and commercial genius than the Spaniards themselves
possessed. Their function was to despise trade, and use, but detest, the
foreigners, whose aptitude for work supplied the wants engendered by one
of their besetting sins--laziness. "Ociedad, raiz de los vicios, y
sepulchro de las virtudes," as Marcos Obregon exclaims. "En quatro
cosas," he continues, "gasta la vida el ocioso, en dormir sin tiempo, en
comer sin sagon, en solicitar quietas, en murmurar de todos."[54]
The following are the Countess d'Aulnois' comments on the effects of the
mixed jealousy and laziness of the Spaniards in her time--the latter
part of the seventeenth century.
"All strangers," she says, "what services soever they may have done, the
Spaniards ought to fear them, they considering themselves and interests
only, in such a manner that the Italians and Flemings, that are this
king's subjects, are used no more favourably than if born under another
master. If they pretend to imployments, either at Court or in the
armies, they are told they are not natural Spaniards who engross all, as
well to keep up the glory of the nation, as out of diffidence of others,
whom they in a manner declare incapable of all trust because not born in
Spain; this country, nevertheless, abounds in strangers, but they are
only artificers and mercenaries invited by gain, and that meddle with
nothing but their peddling traffick. It is thought that there are above
forty thousand French in Madrid, who, wearing the Spanish habit, and
calling themselves Burgundinians, Walloons and Lorraines, keep up
commerce and manufacture; it concerns them to conceal their country,
for if it be discovered, they are obliged to pay a daily Pole-money of
about a penny to the town, and, any bad success happening to the
publick, appearing in the streets, are liable to a thousand insolencies,
even to blows.
"They that know what number of strangers are in this town, report, that
would they undertake it, they might make themselves masters, and drive
out the Spaniards."
[Illustration: PLATE 86
1869 MDW
SARAGOSSA HOUSE OF THE MARQUIS OF MONISTOL]
PLATE LXXXVI.
_SARAGOSSA._
PATIO OF THE HOUSE OF THE MARQUIS OF MONISTOL.
THE great dimensions of this house, and its massive strength and
solidity are no bad emblems of the old sturdiness, wealth, and pride of
the Aragonese nobility, whose Plateresque architecture "differed" as Mr.
O'Shea justly remarks, "in many points from its countertype the Seville
Moro-Italian, or strictly Andalusian style, applied to private
dwellings." Although apparently far ruder in execution than either of
the other two houses I sketched--that of the Infanta and that known as
de Comercio--in the same city, I have little doubt that this is of
considerably later date. The florid Spanish Plateresque of the former,
and the cinque-cento carving of the latter, took precedence of the more
regular Greco-Roman architecture aimed at by the architect of the house
now under notice. The retention of the bracket capital in lieu of either
arches or a lengthened column, and of the "anillo" or ring dividing the
shaft into two heights, illustrate the way in which local habits
interfered with the adoption of the rigid rules prescribed by the
writers on architecture, and practised by contemporary architects, of
the Herrera type.
Considering the terrible "fortunes of war," to which Saragossa has been
exposed, and its frightful hand to hand fighting in the heart of the
city, it is only wonderful that so much of the past should still linger
within the lines of defence. If the ruinous sieges have left Saragossa
poorer than they found her, they certainly do not appear to have left
her weaker or less fierce. She struck me as being poorer and prouder
than any other city I visited in Spain. At the same time, both men and
women show a hardy activity and lively inclination to pugnacity I did
not see elsewhere. The only answer I got from a Madrileño to my question
as to "why the Saragossans did not work?" was, that "they preferred
fighting," adding that "while they would look hard at a peseta before
they would undertake even a trifling job for it, they would at any time
do a good day's fighting for one half of that coin."
[Illustration: PLATE 87
SARAGOZA
PLAZUELA ADUANA
MDW 1869
BRONZE RENAISSANCE KNOCKER]
PLATE LXXXVII.
_SARAGOSSA._
BRONZE RENAISSANCE KNOCKER OF A HOUSE IN THE PLAZUELA ADUANA.