rien de prêt, non pas même un pot sur le feu. L'hôtel ne vous donne que
le couvert et le lit, pour tout le reste, il le faut envoyer chercher,
si vous ne voulez prendre la peine d'y aller vous-même. On donne
l'argent nécessaire, et l'on va vous chercher du pain, du vin, de la
viande, et généralement tout ce que l'on souhaite, si tant est qu'on le
puisse trouver. Il est vrai que cette coutume a son bon côté.
"Le prix de toutes ces choses est réglé, l'on sait ce qu'il faut payer,
et un hôte ne peut pas friponner. On vous apprête votre viande, et l'on
donne une réale et demie, ou deux réaux pour le _servicio_, comme ils
parlent, et autant pour le lit, ce qui revient environ à quinze sous de
France. Si l'on se trouve dans quelque grande ville, on aura une nappe
grande comme une serviette, et une serviette grande comme un mouchoir de
poche; dans d'autres endroits il faut s'en passer.
"Les lits ne sont pas fort ragoutans; quelque matelas, ou quelque
paillasse, ou tout au plus une couverture de coton; à la campagne il
faut passer la nuit sur le carreau, ou bien sur quelque botte de paille,
qu'on doit avoir soin de faire bien secouer, pour en chasser la
vermine."
The statements in this passage relative to the lack of food in Spanish
hostelries are confirmed, nearly a century later, by Townsend, who
records that on reaching a certain village his first proceeding was to
turn his steps, not to the _fonda_ or _posada_ where he would engage
his bed, but to the butcher's, wine-seller's, and so forth, "to see what
was to be had, as I had travelled all day fasting."
It is beyond the province of this work to dwell upon the foreign taste
in furniture which invaded Spain from France upon the advent of the
Bourbon dynasty, and so I limit my notice of the eighteenth century to
quoting from Laborde the following comprehensive passage:--
"If the Spaniards," this traveller wrote in 1809, "take many precautions
against heat, they take scarcely any against cold; it is very uncommon
to find doors or windows that shut close, and the rooms are very little
and very ill-warmed. The use of chimneys even is very uncommon, and only
prevails in the houses of such Spaniards as have travelled. Brasiers of
copper or silver are generally employed, which are set in the middle of
the apartment, filled with burning charcoal, and round which the family
place themselves.
[Illustration: XII
DOOR OF THE _SALON DE EMBAJADORES_
(_Alcázar of Seville_)]
"The beds in Spain are hard. They are only made of mattresses, more or
fewer, laid on paillasses which rest upon a boarded bottom; for neither
sacking nor feather beds are known. No bolsters are used, but in
their place little, short, flat pillows are heaped up, sometimes to the
number of six or eight. The sheets are in general short and narrow; and
napkins scarcely as big as a small pocket handkerchief.
"The furniture of the houses is usually very simple. The floor is
covered with a matting of _esparto_ in winter, and of rushes or palm
leaves in summer. A matting of the same kind, a painted cloth, or
painting in panels, covers the walls from the floor to the height of
four or five feet; above, the wall is bare, painted white, and adorned
with pictures of saints and a kind of ornamented metal chandeliers;
these are covered with a glass, surrounded with a border of gilt
ornaments; and a little branch of gilt copper proceeds from them forming
zig-zags or festoons, on which the candles are placed; they are called
cornucopias; they are from one to three feet in height, and give the
apartment the air of a coffee room, or billiard room. Mirrors are placed
between the windows, and a lustre of clear glass in imitation of crystal
is suspended from the middle of the handsomest saloons. The chairs have
straw bottoms; in some provinces, as Murcia, Andalusia, and Valencia,
they are of different heights; those on one side of the room being of
the common height, and the others one third lower. The latter are
intended for the ladies. In some of the principal cities one also sees
chairs and sofas of walnut wood, the backs of which are bare, and the
seats covered with damask; usually crimson or yellow.
"Luxury begins, however, to show itself in these objects. In the chief
cities many hangings are of painted paper or linen; even hangings of
brocades, of one and of three colours, and of various other kinds of
silk; large and beautiful mirrors, and a number of sofas may be seen.
The houses of the grandees in Madrid are magnificently furnished, but
usually with more cost than taste. Hangings of silk, velvet, and damask,
adorned with rich fringes and gold embroidery, are very common, and the
seats are of corresponding magnificence. Many houses in Barcelona,
Cadiz, Valencia, and Madrid are decorated with equal study and elegance.
"The custom of painting the walls is of late introducing itself into
Spain. They are covered with representations of men and animals, with
trees, flowers, landscapes, houses, urns, vases, or history pieces,
divided into compartments, adorned with pillars, pilasters, friezes,
cornices, and arabesques; the effect of the whole is often very
agreeable. This kind of decoration was imported from Italy."[23]
[23] Vol. v., pp. 301-304.
[Illustration: XIII
ALCÁZAR OF SEVILLE
(_Façade and principal entrance_)]
In this account we clearly trace each various and successive influence
that had permeated older Spain, leaving her, at the close of every
period, a nation that produced illustrious artists, but never a nation
deeply versed in, or devoted to, the arts. The beds and brasiers of
these modern Spaniards were derived from ancient Rome; their general
dearth of comfortable furniture, together with the lower, and therefore
more humiliating, seats for women, from the Spanish Moors; the typically
ponderous hangings from mediæval Spain herself; the fresco
wall-paintings, such as may still be seen in many a Spanish country
home, from classic or Renaissance Italy; and the finicking gilt, rococo
cornucopias from France; while the use of mirrors and of lustres in
hideous combination with straw-bottomed chairs, almost reminds us of the
days of Visigothic barbarism.
LEATHER
_Guadamacilería_, or the art of decorating leather with painting,
gilding, and impressions in relief, is commonly believed to have crossed
from Africa to Spain at some time in the Middle Ages. According to
Duveyrier, the word _guadamecí_ or _guadamecil_ is taken from Ghadames,
a town in Barbary where the craft was practised long ago; but
Covarrubias gives it an origin directly Spanish, supposing that the
title and the craft alike proceeded from a certain town of Andalusia.
However this may be, the preparation of these leathers grew to be a most
important industry in various parts of Spain, and spread, as time went
on, to Italy, France, and other European countries.[24]
[24] "Spain lays claim to the invention of the art of gilding leather;
it is asserted that, after being discovered there, the secret was
carried to Naples by Peter Paul Majorano."--Laborde, vol. v.,
p. 231.
In the Peninsula, the principal centres of this work were Cordova,
Seville, Lerida, Barcelona, Ciudad Real, and Valladolid. Cordova,
however, was so far ahead of all the rest that leathers decorated in
this style were known throughout the world as _cueros de Córdoba_, or
"Cordova leathers." Another name for them is said to have been
_cordobanes_; but possibly the application of this latter word was less
restricted. Bertaut de Rouen wrote in the seventeenth century of Ciudad
Real:--"C'est une ville située dans une grande plaine, et dont
l'enceinte est assez grande, qui estoit mesme fort peuplée autrefois,
mais elle est quasi deserte à present. Il ne luy reste plus rien sinon
que c'est là où l'on appreste le mieux les peaux de _Cordouan_, dont on
fait les gans d'Espagne. C'est delà aussi d'où elles viennent pour la
pluspart à Madrid. J'en achetay quelques-unes."
[Illustration: XIV
DOOR OF THE CAPILLA DE LOS VARGAS
(_Madrid_)]
In 1197 Alfonso the Ninth presented the town of Castro de los Judíos to
León Cathedral and its bishop, confirming at the same time the tribute
which the Jews who occupied that town were bound to render upon Saint
Martin's day in every year, and which consisted of two hundred
_sueldos_, a fine skin, and two _guadamecís_. This tribute had existed
since the reign of Ferdinand the First: that is, towards the middle of
the preceding century.[25]
[25] Count of Clonard; _Memorias para la historia del traje español_.
None of these primitive leathers now exist, and consequently the details
of their workmanship have perished with them. Ramírez de Arellano
mentions two small coffers in the Cluny Museum, which date from about
the fourteenth century and are decorated with the forms of animals cut
from leather and overlaid on velvet. Other _guadamecís_, though not of
the oldest, are in the South Kensington Museum. "The earliest
_guadamecileros_," says Ramírez de Arellano, speaking particularly of
this art at Cordova, "were accustomed to imitate brocade upon their
leathers, employing beaten silver together with the colours red, green,
blue, black, white, and carmine, applied in oils, or sometimes (although
the law prohibited this) in tempera. Gold was not used till 1529, when
Charles the Fifth confirmed the Ordinances of this industry. The
leather-workers tanned the hides themselves, stamping the pattern from a
wooden mould, and then (if we may call it so) engraving on them. The
hides were those of rams. The spaces between the decoration were either
coloured red or blue, or simply left the colour of the skin; or else the
pattern would be wrought in colours on the natural hide. Gold, which at
a later epoch almost totally replaces silver, was introduced between
1529 and 1543, and was applied as follows. The artists smeared with
oil the parts they wished to figure in raised or sunk relief, and laid
the beaten gold upon the oil. They then applied a heated iron or copper
mould; the pattern in relief was stamped; and the gold, superfluous
shreds of which were wiped away with lint, adhered upon the leather. The
irons required to be moderately hot, because if overheated they would
burn the hide, or, if not hot enough, the fixing of the gold would not
be permanent."
[Illustration: XV
MUDEJAR DOOR
(_Palacio de las Dueñas, Seville_)]
The importance of this industry in Spain may be judged of from the fact
that towards the close of the Middle Ages the _guadamacileros_ of
Seville occupied nearly the whole of an important street--the Calle
Placentines. Similarly, at Cordova they filled the quarter of the city
known as the Ajerquía. "So many _guadamecíes_ are made here," wrote
Ambrosio de Morales, "that in this craft no other capital can compare
with her; and in such quantities that they supply all Europe and the
Indies. This industry enriches Cordova and also beautifies her; for
since the gilded, wrought, and painted leathers are fixed upon large
boards and placed in the sun in order to be dried, by reason of their
splendour and variety they make her principal streets right fair to look
upon."
We owe to Rafael Ramírez de Arellano most valuable and recent
information respecting this ancient Spanish-Moorish craft.[26] He has
discovered the names of nearly forty _guadamacileros_ who lived and
worked at Cordova, principally in the sixteenth century. It is not worth
while to repeat these names alone, but one or two particulars connected
with a few of them are interesting. In 1557 four of these artificers,
named Benito Ruiz, Diego de San Llorente, Diego de Ayora, and Anton de
Valdelomar, signed a contract to prepare the cut and painted
_guadamaciles_ for decorating a palace at Rome. This contract, which is
most precise and technical, is published in No. 101 of the _Boletín de
la Sociedad Española de Excursiones_. The only further notice which
Señor Ramírez de Arellano has discovered relating to any of these four
craftsmen, tells us that nine years after the signing of the document
just mentioned, Diego de Ayora leased some houses in the Calle de la
Feria for a yearly rental of twenty-two ducats and three pairs of live
hens.
[26] _Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones_, Nos. 101, 102;
Art. _Guadamacíes_.
Another interesting contract is dated April 17th, 1587. By it the
_guadamacilero_ Andrés Lopez de Valdelomar agreed, in company with
Hernando del Olmo of Marchena, and with Francisco de Gaviria and
Francisco Delgado, painters, of Cordova, to make a number of pieces of
_guadamecí_ for the Duke of Arcos. The work was to be terminated by July
of the same year. Valdelomar was to receive from the duke's agent three
_reales_ for each piece, and the painters two _reales_ and a half; this
money to be paid them by instalments as the work proceeded.
[Illustration: XVI
_CELOSÍA_
(_Alhambra, Granada_)]
On August 26th, 1567, before the mayor of Cordova and the two inspectors
of this trade, Pedro de Blancas was officially examined and approved in
"cutting, working, and completing a _guadamecí_ of red damask with gold
and silver borders on a green field, and a cushion with green and
crimson decoration and faced with silver brocade."
The Ordinances of Cordova also tell us much about this industry. The
oldest of these city laws which deal with it are dated 1529. Those of
1543 were ratified by a Crown pragmatic early in the seventeenth
century, and at this later date we learn that the craft had much
declined, the leather being by now "of wretched quality, the colouring
imperfect, and the pieces undersized." The Ordinances published in the
sixteenth century provide that every applicant for official licence to
pursue this craft and open business as a _guadamacilero_, must prove
himself, in presence of the examiners, able to mix his colours and
design with them, and to make a canopy together with its fringe, as well
as "a cushion of any size or style that were demanded of him; nor shall
he explain merely by word of mouth the making of the same, but make it
with his very hands in whatsoever house or place shall be appointed by
the mayor and the overseers of the craft aforesaid."
It was also provided by these Ordinances that the pieces of leather were
to be dyed, not with Brazil-wood, but with madder, and that their size,
whether the hide were silvered, gilt, or painted, was to be strictly
uniform, namely, "the size of the primitive mould," or "three-quarters
of a yard in length by two-thirds of a yard, all but one inch, in
width." The standard measures, made of iron and stamped with the city
seal, were guarded under lock and key; and the Ordinances of 1567
establish the penalty of death for every _guadamacilero_ who shall seek,
in silvering his wares, to palm off tin for silver.
[Illustration: XVII
CARVED _ALERO_]
These leathers served a great variety of purposes, public or private,
sacred or profane. They were used upon the walls and floors of
palaces and castles, as table-covers, counterpanes, bed-hangings,
cushions, curtains for doors, linings for travelling-litters, coverings
of chests and boxes,[27] and seats and backs of chairs and benches
(Plate vii.). In churches and cathedrals, especially throughout the
sixteenth century, we find them used as tapestry and carpets,[28]
altar-fronts (such as one which is preserved in the chapel of San Isidro
in Palencia cathedral), or crowns for images of the Virgin.[29] As time
advanced, gold and a coat or so of colour was succeeded by elaborate
painting. Thus painted, they were often cut into the forms of columns,
pilasters, or friezes in the Plateresco or Renaissance style,[30] until
the growing popularity of wall-pictures, together with the importation
of French fashions at the death of Charles the Second, crippled and
ultimately killed the decorative leather industry of Spain.
[27] The _Poem of the Cid_ tells us of the two chests, covered with red
_guadamecí_, which the hero filled with sand to cheat the Jewish
money-lenders:--
"_Con vuestro consejo bastir quiero dos archas.
Incamosla d'arena, cá bien serán pesadas,
Cubiertas de guadamecí é bien enclavadas;
Los guadamecís bermeios é los clavos bien dorados._"
Nevertheless, the "coffer of the Cid" at Burgos (see p. 12) does
not appear to have been thus fitted.
[28] The same usage obtained in Morocco. Lancelot Addison wrote in 1669
that on the first day of their "Little Feast" the Moors across the
Strait "spread the floor of their Giammas with coloured
leather."--_West Barbary_, p. 213.
[29] An inventory of effects belonging to the Hospital of San José at
Jerez de la Frontera mentions, in 1589, "clothes and trimmings for
the image of Our Lady. A crown of gilded _guadamecí_."--Gestoso,
_Diccionario de Artífices Sevillanos_, vol. i., p. xxii, _note_.
[30] A hall, says Ramírez de Arellano, would often be embellished by
surrounding it with arches wrought of leather in relief and
superposed on leather. As a rule the arches were gilt and silvered,
and rested upon pilasters or columns. When pilasters were used,
their centres would be ornamented with Italian devices such as
flowers, trophies, imitated cameos, and foliage. Landscapes with a
far horizon and no figures, known as _boscaje_ or _pintura verde_
were painted on the space between the arches, so that the general
effect was that of a pavilion with arches on all sides, displaying
everywhere a wide expanse of fertile country. The arches rested on
a broad bordering of _guadamecíes_, and running round the lower
part was a _zócalo_ or socle, commonly made of tiling.
Such is the kind of decoration which was most in vogue in Spain
throughout the latter half of the sixteenth century; that which was
exported to Rome; and that which was commissioned by the Duke of Arcos.
CARPENTRY AND WOOD-CARVING
The artistic carpentry of older Spain produced as its most typical and
striking monuments, three groups of objects which may be included
generally under Furniture. These are the _celosía_ or window-lattice,
the door of _lazo_-work, and the _artesonado_-ceiling which adorns a
hall or chamber, corridor or staircase.
[Illustration: XVIII
CARVED _ZAPATAS_
(_Casa de Salinas, Salamanca_)]
These happy and effective styles of decoration came originally from the
East. Their passage may be traced along the coast of Africa from Egypt
into Spain; and they flourished in Spain for the same reason which had
caused them to flourish at Cairo. "When we remember," says Professor
Lane-Poole, "how little wood grows in Egypt, the extensive use made of
this material in the mosques and houses of Cairo appears very
remarkable. In mosques, the ceilings, some of the windows, the pulpit,
lectern or Koran desk, tribune, tomb-casing, doors, and cupboards, are
of wood, and often there are carved wooden inscriptions and stalactites
of the same material leading up to the circle of the dome. In the older
houses, ceilings, doors, cupboards, and furniture are made of wood, and
carved lattice windows, or meshrebiyas, abound. In a cold climate, such
employment of the most easily worked of substances is natural enough;
but in Egypt, apart from the scarcity of the material, and the
necessity of importing it, the heat offers serious obstacles to its
use. A plain board of wood properly seasoned may keep its shape well
enough in England, but when exposed to the sun of Cairo it will speedily
lose its accurate proportions; and when employed in combination with
other pieces, to form windows or doors, boxes or pulpits, its joints
will open, its carvings split, and the whole work will become unsightly
and unstable. The leading characteristic of Cairo wood-work is its
subdivision into numerous panels; and this principle is obviously the
result of climatic considerations, rather than any doctrine of art. The
only mode of combating the shrinking and warping effects of the sun was
found in a skilful division of the surfaces into panels small enough,
and sufficiently easy in their setting, to permit of slight shrinking
without injury to the general outline. The little panels of a Cairo door
or pulpit may expand without encountering enough resistance to cause any
cracking or splitting in the surrounding portions, and the Egyptian
workmen soon learned to accommodate themselves to the conditions of
their art in a hot climate."[31]
[31] _The Art of the Saracens in Egypt_, pp. 124, 125.
[Illustration: XIX
CARVED _ZAPATAS_
(_Museum of Zaragoza_)]
These valuable and interesting observations apply with equal justice
to the decorative woodwork of the Spanish Muslims. A further point of
interest lies in the fact that window-grilles and ceilings of the kind
referred to, grew to be extremely fashionable through the whole
Peninsula. Carried by Moorish or Mudejar craftsmen far beyond the
frontiers of the Mussulman sultans of this European land, we find to-day
surviving specimens in every part of Spain--most of them, it is true, in
sultry Andalus; but many also in the old seigniorial mansions of
Castile, or even in the cold and humid towns and cities of Cantabria.
The man who did this kind of work was not a common carpenter. Such work
was largely practical and prosaic, but also it was largely decorative
and poetical. Probably, both in his own and in his customer's regard,
the decorative quality was set before the practical. Therefore, beyond
the dry, comparatively facile details of technique, this workman
studied, with an artist's reverence and zeal, the inner, subtler,
sweeter mysteries of line and form; harmonies of curve and angle;
patterns, now geometrical, now floral, now these two combined with magic
ingenuity; steeping himself in the æsthetic sense; making, indeed, his
work the literal fact or fitting of prosaic application that was
indispensable; but also, and as if upon some loftier initiative of his
own, a miracle of art for people of a later day to come and stand before
and wonder at.
[Illustration: XX
_ALERO_ AND CORNICE OF CARVED WOOD
(_Cuarto de Comares, Alhambra, Granada_)]
Indeed, whether because Our Lord had practised it, or from some other
motive, carpentry was always well esteemed among the Spaniards. The
Ordinances of Seville eulogize it, in conjunction with its sister-work
of masonry and building, as "a noble art and self-contained, that
increaseth the nobleness of the King and of his kingdom, that pacifieth
the people, and spreadeth love among mankind, conducing to much
good."[32] The same Ordinances divide these honourable craftsmen into
half a dozen classes and sub-classes; carvers or _entalladores_,
carpenters who kept a shop (_carpinteros de tienda_), _carpinteros de lo
prieto_, and _carpinteros de lo blanco_. The latter are the class we are
considering here, and these, in turn, were subdivided into _lazeros_ or
makers of _lazo_-work, _non-lazeros_ or those who did not make it, and
_jumetricos_ or _geómetricos_. The statutory examination was severe
in all these branches. Thus, the _lazero_-carpenters of Seville were
required to make a chamber of octagonal _lazo_-work, including its
pendentives at the corners; while the wood-carvers of the same city were
required to be experienced draughtsmen and to make and carve "artistic
altar-screens with decorated columns, pedestals for images, and
tabernacles (_i.e._ the part of an altar where the cibory and the Host
are kept), as well as tombs and chambranles with their covering,
tabernacles of the utmost art (_de grande arte_), and rich
choir-stalls."
[32] _"Es noble arte, complida en sí; è acrescienta la nobleza del rey
y del reyno, si en ella pararen mientes, como deuen; è pone paz en
el pueblo y amor entre los omes, onde es carrera para muchos
bienes."_--_Ordenanzas de Sevilla_, Part 1, p. 141.