PLATES
This volume is an attempt to supplement the accurate but formal notes
contained in the official catalogue of a picture gallery which is
considered the finest in the world. It has been said that the day one
enters the Prado for the first time is an important event like marriage,
the birth of a child, or the coming into an inheritance; an experience
of which one feels the effects to the day of one’s death.
The excellence of the Madrid gallery is the excellence of exclusion; it
is a collection of magnificent gems. Here one becomes conscious of a
fresh power in Murillo, and is amazed anew by the astonishing apparition
of Velazquez; here is, in truth, a rivalry of the miracles of art.
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_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
VALLADOLID, OVIEDO, SEGOVIA, ZAMORA, AVILA AND ZARAGOZA
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT, WITH 413 PLATES
The glory of Valladolid has departed, but the skeleton remains, and
attached to its ancient stones are the memories that Philip II. was born
here, that here Cervantes lived, and Christopher Columbus died. In this
one-time capital of Spain, in the Plaza Mayor, the fires of the
Inquisition were first lighted, and here Charles V. laid the foundation
of the Royal Armoury, which was afterwards transferred to Madrid.
More than seven hundred years have passed since Oviedo was the proud
capital of the Kingdoms of Las Asturias, Leon, and Castile. Segovia,
though no longer great, has still all the appurtenances of greatness,
and and with her granite massiveness and austerity, she remains an
aristocrat even among the aristocracy of Spanish cities. Zamora, which
has a history dating from time almost without date, was the key of Leon
and the centre of the endless wars between the Moors and the Christians,
which raged round it from the eighth to the eleventh centuries.
In this volume the author has striven to re-create the ancient greatness
of these six cities, and has preserved their memories in a wealth of
excellent and interesting illustrations.
VALENCIA AND MURCIA
A GLANCE AT AFRICAN SPAIN, WITH 300 ILLUSTRATIONS
Every traveller to the fertile Provinces which form the subject of this
volume has been forcibly impressed by their outward resemblance to the
more favoured parts of Northern Africa. And here, only to a degree less
than in Andalusia, the Moors made themselves very much at home, and have
left behind them ineffaceable impressions.
In this delightful region the dusky invaders established themselves at
Valencia, which they dubbed the City of Mirth. The history of the land
is alike a fevered dream of mediævalism. Across its pages flit the
shadowy forms of Theodomir, and the Cid and Jaime lo Conqueridor,
standing out against a back-ground of serried hosts and flaming cities.
The people to-day are true children of the sun, passionate, vivacious,
physically well proportioned. The country is a terrestrial paradise,
where the flowers ever blossom and the sun ever shines. To-day the
Valencian supplements the bounty of Nature by enterprise and industry.
His ports pulsate with traffic, and side by side with memorials of the
life of a thousand years ago, modern social Spain may be studied at
Alicante and El Cabanal, the Brighton and Trouville of the Peninsula.
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_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
THE ROYAL TAPESTRIES
AT MADRID
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE COLLECTION OF BEAUTIFUL
TAPESTRIES IN THE ROYAL PALACE AT MADRID. WITH OVER 200 PLATES
The Royal Palace at Madrid contains the most valuable and interesting
collection of Tapestries in Europe. These were for the most part woven
in Flanders, some in the early fifteenth century, at a time when the
industry in that country had reached its zenith. At a later period the
work of the Flemish artists was imitated in Spain itself with no little
success. Among the designers of these superb works of art were Quentin
Matsys, Pieter Breughel, and the Divine Raphael himself. Not
artistically only but historically the collection is of rare interest.
SPANISH ARMS AND ARMOUR
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE ROYAL ARMOURY AT MADRID.
WITH 386 PLATES
Although several valuable and voluminous catalogues of the Spanish Royal
Armoury have, from time to time, been compiled, this “finest collection
of armour in the world” has been subjected so often to the disturbing
influences of fire, removal and rearrangement, that no hand catalogue of
the Museum is available, and this book has been designed to serve both
as a historical souvenir of the institution and a record of its
treasures.
GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA
WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE MOSLEM RULE IN SPAIN AND OF THE ARCHITECTURE, AND
THE DECORATION OF THE MOORISH PALACE, AND 460 PLATES
This volume is the third and abridged edition of a work which the author
was inspired to undertake by the surpassing loveliness of the Alhambra,
and by his disappointment in the discovery that no such thing as an even
moderately adequate illustrated souvenir of “this glorious sanctuary of
Spain” was obtainable. Keenly conscious of the want himself, he essayed
to supply it, and the result is a volume that has been acclaimed with
enthusiasm alike by critics, artists, architects, and archæologists.
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_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
LEON, BURGOS AND SALAMANCA
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT, WITH 462 PLATES
In Leon, once the capital of the second kingdom in Spain; in Burgos
which boasts one of the most magnificent cathedrals in Spain, and the
custodianship of the bones of the Cid; and in Salamanca, with its
university, which is one of the oldest in Europe the author has selected
three of the most interesting relics of ancient grandeur in this country
of departed greatness. Leon to-day is nothing but a large agricultural
village, torpid, silent, dilapidated; Burgos, which still retains traces
of the Gotho-Castilian character, is a gloomy and depleting capital; and
Salamanca is a city of magnificent buildings, a broken hulk, spent by
the storms that from time to time have devastated her.
CATALONIA AND THE BALEARIC ISLANDS
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT, WITH 250 PLATES
Catalonia is the Spain of to-day and of the future. There are those who
believe that Catalonia contains all the elements essential to the
complete regeneration of Spain, and that she will raise the whole
country to her industrial level. But the old county of Barcelona has a
glorious and stirring past, as well as a promising future. Her history
goes back to the days of Charlemagne, and has to tell of merchant
princes and of hazardous commercial enterprise reminding one of the
Italian maritime republics. The Balearic Islands, one of which (Minorca)
was long an English possession, constitute one of the most flourishing
provinces of the Kingdom. Delightful as a place of sojourn or residence,
Majorca and her sister isles reveal many and conspicuous traces of that
prehistoric race which once offered bloody sacrifices to the Sun on all
the shores of the Inland Sea.
THE ESCORIAL
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE SPANISH ROYAL PALACE,
MONASTERY AND MAUSOLEUM. WITH PLANS AND 278 PLATES
The Royal Palace, Monastery, and Mausoleum of El Escorial, which rears
its gaunt, grey walls in one of the bleakest and most impossible
districts in the whole of Spain, was erected to commemorate a victory
over the French in 1557. It was occupied and pillaged by the French
two-and-a-half centuries later, and twice it has been greatly diminished
by fire; but it remains to-day, not only the incarnate expression of the
fanatic religious character and political genius of Philip II., but the
greatest mass of wrought granite which exists on earth, the leviathan of
architecture, the eighth wonder of the world.
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_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_
GALICIA
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE. A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT.
ILLUSTRATED
The old kingdom of Galicia may not inaptly be termed the Wales of Spain.
Its people approximate closely to the old Celtic type, with a large
admixture of the Teutonic blood of that strange forgotten tribe, the
Suevi, who held sway here for two centuries. Though every traveller in
Spain has met the sturdy patient Gallegos in the capacity of porters,
servants, and workers, few trouble to visit their country, a pleasant
land of green hills, deep valleys smiling lakes, brawling streams and
long fjords like gulfs.
ROYAL PALACES OF SPAIN
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE SEVEN PRINCIPAL PALACES OF
THE SPANISH KINGS. WITH 164 PLATES.
Spain is beyond question the richest country in the world in the number
of its Royal Residences, and while few are without artistic importance,
all are rich in historical memories. Thus from the Alcazar at Seville
which is principally associated with Pedro the Cruel, to the Retiro,
built to divert the attention of Philip IV. from his country’s decay;
from the Escorial, in which the gloomy mind of Philip II. is perpetuated
in stone, to La Granja, which speaks of the anguish and humiliation of
Christina before Sergeant Garcia and his rude soldiery; from Aranjuez to
Rio Frio, and from El Prado, darkened by the agony of a good king, to
Miramar, to which a widowed Queen retired to mourn: all the history of
Spain, from the splendid days of Charles V. to the present time, is
crystallised in the Palaces that constitute the patrimony of the crown.
VIZCAYA AND SANTANDER
SOME ACCOUNT OF THE CANTABRIAN LAND AND OF SPANISH NAVARRE. BY ALBERT F.
CALVERT
Whether or not the Basques be the aboriginal inhabitants of the
Peninsula, they are at least the oldest of its peoples, and among the
most interesting. Their language, their customs their _fueros_ of local
code, above all their mysterious origin, have been the themes of
discussion and speculation among the learned for centuries--and are
likely to continue so. Meanwhile they flourish exceedingly, and their
towns, or at least their sea-ports hum with life and energy.