in Roelas we have at last a Spanish painter who learnt from Italy
something more than mere technical imitation. And in spite of a
want of concentration--the accustomed insincerity, the result, it
would seem, of a too persistent effort to express his art in the art
of Venice, in which city he is thought to have painted, perhaps in
the studio of some follower of Titian, he does realise his scenes
with something of the old intensity. Roelas anticipates Murillo, not
altogether unworthily, giving us, with less originality, but with much
sweetness, an expression of that mood of religious sensuousness that is
one phase of Spanish painting. Seville is the single home of Roelas;[A]
here we may see his pictures in the Cathedral, in the Museum, and in
many of the churches. His art is unequal in its merit. In his large
compositions often there is confusion--“Santiago destroying the Moors
at the Battle of Clavijo,” his picture in the Cathedral, is one
instance--spaces are left uncared for, the composition is a little
awkward, the brush-work is careless, a fault that is common to much of
his work. The “Martyrdom of St Andrew,” in the Museum, is perhaps his
most original picture. Here Roelas is a realist. And how expressive of
life--Spanish life, are all the powerfully contrasted figures that so
truly take their part in the scene depicted. In some of his pictures
Roelas gives us the brightest visions. Such is “El Transito de San
Isidore,” in the parish church of the saint, a picture in which we see
in the treatment of Christ and Mary and the child-angels a manner that
seems, indeed, to forestall Murillo; such, too, are the “Apotheosis of
San Hermenegildo,” and the “Descent of the Holy Spirit,” both in the
church of the Hospital of La Sangre. All three pictures are difficult
to see: one is hidden behind the altar, the other two hang at a great
height in the church where the light is dim. There are good pictures
by Roelas in the University, a “Holy Child,” the “Adoration of the
Kings,” and the “Presentation of the Child Christ in the Temple”; and
in this last picture, with its soft colour and human gaiety, again we
are reminded of Murillo. But a work of perhaps more interest, certainly
of more strength, is “St Peter freed from Prison by the Angel,” which
is hidden in a side-chapel in the Church of San Pedro. Then, how quiet,
with a repose uncommon enough in Spain, is his “Virgin and Santa Ana,”
in the Museo de la Merced. The figures--the girl Virgin, her mother,
and the angels who crowd the space above them--all have the fairness
Roelas gives to women; the soft glow of their flesh is beautiful. Look
at the cat and dog that play so naturally in the foreground, beside a
work-basket, and what a happy “note” is given by the open drawer, which
shows the linen and lace within. Certainly this picture is more Italian
than Spanish.
As the years passed, and art in Seville grew older, many painters
trod in the steps worn by these others. It is not possible, nor is it
necessary, to wait to look at their pictures; too often they exaggerate
the faults of the masters they copied, and by a slavish repetition of
accepted ideas--the inevitable fault of the age--they weakened still
further native art. And, when we come to the next century, which
gives us Alonso Cano, sculptor, architect, and painter, described
admirably by Lord Leighton as “an eclectic with a Spanish accent,”
many of whose facile, meaningless pictures may be seen in Seville, to
the much inferior work of the younger Herrera, and to the exaggerated
over-statements of Juan de Valdés Leal, in whose art Sevillian painting
may be said to die, we realise into what degradation pseudo-Italianism
had dragged painting.
But there is a reverse side to the picture. The spirit of Spain was too
strong to sleep in an art that was borrowed. Already Luis de Morales,
a native of Estremadura, known as “the divine,” on account of the
exclusively religious character of the subjects he painted, and of
the strange intensity with which he impregnated them, had evolved for
himself a sincere expression of Spanish art; already Navarrete, the
mute painter of Navarre, had broken from conventions, and taken for
himself inspiration from the marvellous pictures of Titian which he
had seen at the Escorial; already, Theotócopuli, known better as El
Greco, was painting with wonderful genius in Toledo, pictures, so new,
so personal, that to-day they command the attention of the world. But
Seville does not represent these painters.[B]
It has been the fashion, since the tradition was started by Cean
Bermudez, to call Herrera _el viejo_ (1576-1656) “the anticipator of
the true Spanish school.” Herrera had a studio in Seville, in which
worked many painters, and among them Velazquez, Antonio Castillo y
Saavedra, and perhaps Alonso Cano; and it seems certain that he owes
his position to-day in large measure to this fact; had he not been for
a few months the master of Velazquez his impossible art would remain
unknown outside Seville. For the truth is Herrera said nothing that
Roelas had not already said better.
His temper was Spanish enough, but his work is without originality,
if emphatic and personal in a too vehemently Spanish way. Yet it is
worth while to see, yes, and to study, each one of his half-dozen
pictures. Even in Seville, Herrera’s work is rare; the “Apotheosis
of San Hermenegildo,” and the later, more violent “San Basil,” are
in the Museum, where, too, are the less known, but much better,
portrait-pictures of apostles and saints; while the “Final Judgment,”
his most personal work, is still where it was painted in the darkness
of the Parroquina of San Bernado. One quality we may grant to
Herrera; he did resist the popular Italian influence. These pictures,
sensational as they are, with their hot disagreeable colour--“macaroni
in tomato sauce” Mr Ricketts aptly terms it--their mannerism,
extravagant contortions and splash brush-work, have little apart from
this to recommend them. But you will understand better the esteem
Herrera has gained if you will compare his work with the paintings of
his contemporaries; the conscientious, academic Pacheco, for instance,
the last, and, in himself, the most interesting of the Mannerists,
or with Murillo’s master, Juan del Castillo, the worst painter of
Seville, whose pictures fill with formal tedium so many buildings in
the city. This is why Herrera’s pictures claim notice from the student
of Andalusian art to-day: they form a link in the unbroken chain of the
national pictures.
Now turn to Zurbarán.
You pass at once into a world of realism, a world in which facts,
obvious facts, are set forth with a downright passion of statement that
for a moment tricks us; we think we have found life, and, instead,
we have the outward form, too monotonously literal, and without
suggestion. Upon Zurbarán lies the weight of the sadness of Spain. It
is something of this that we realise as we see the thirty or forty of
his pictures that are in Seville, gathered together for the most part
in the Museo de la Merced, where the light is so much better than it
is in the Cathedral and in the churches, though there certainly his
pictures seem to be more fittingly at home. Each picture is so true to
life, and yet without life. Look at his Saints, all are portraits,
faces caught in a mirror that seems to sum up the old world of Spain.
Contrast these Saints with the Saints of Murillo. What honesty is
here; what singular striving to record the truth. Note the gravity and
simplicity of the Scriptural scenes; his conception of the Christ; the
intensity of the three renderings of the Crucifixion, in which for once
Zurbarán finds a subject suited exactly to his art; then mark how the
peasants[C] he depicts are almost startling in their outward nearness
to life.
Look especially at the Carthusian pictures in the Museum, “San Hugo
visiting the Monks in their Refectory,” the “Virgen de las Cuevas,”
and “St Bruno conversing with Pope Urban II.” They are typical of
Zurbarán’s special gift. In the first of these three pictures, which
is the best, the monks clad in the soft white robes of their order are
seated around a table at their mid-day meal. The aged Hugo stands in
the foreground, attended by a boy-page; he has come to reprove them
for dining upon flesh-meat. His purple vestments give a note of colour
in contrast with the white frocks of the brothers. But, as is customary
with Zurbarán, colour counts for very little, and atmosphere for less,
in this picture in which all care is given to formal outline and exact
expression. Once only in the “Apotheosis of St Thomas Aquinas,” also
in the Museo, does he give us some of that warm colour he should have
learnt from Roelas, whose pupil he is said to have been. This is one
reason why his figures, so true to the facts of life, do not live. But
no one has painted ecclesiastics and monks quite as Zurbarán has done.
His sincerity is annoying almost; for he tells us nothing that we could
not have seen for ourselves; we are no nearer than a photograph would
bring us to the character of these men. Zurbarán was hardly consciously
an artist; and with all his sincerity, his vision was ordinary. He was
a recorder and not an interpreter of life, and in gaining reality he
has just missed truth.
On coming to the work of Murillo it is quite another phase of the
religious sentiment of Spain that we see developed: we gain an
over-statement of sweetness, not an over-statement of facts. The spirit
in which he painted was happier, more trustful, more personal than was
that of Zurbarán; he is more Andalusian and less Spanish, and certainly
better equipped as a painter.
Murillo forms part of your life while you are in Seville, he is more
or less around you everywhere; and though to some of us, perhaps
not unjustly, he is a painter we have tried in vain to love, he
does express in a special way the very aspect of the southern city
he himself loved with such single devotion. This is why we like him
so much better in Seville than we are able to do anywhere else. His
pictures repeat the full life of Andalusia--its religious emotion, its
splendour, its poverty, its stark contrasts, its rich sense of life;
and his colours are the same colours that we see in the landscape, warm
and deep, the soft, hot light of southern Spain. You don’t visit the
Museum, La Caridad, the Cathedral, and the churches to see his pictures
as a change of amusement from the streets; you go because they renew
the same atmosphere, and offer a reproduction of so much that surrounds
you.
No one has ever painted ecstasy with quite the facility of Murillo. And
in the Museum, where the Capuchin Series and other famous pictures are
gathered, you can learn all that is essential to his art; his happy
Saints swim before you in mists of luscious colour; cherubs flutter
around as they minister to beggars clad in rags carefully draped;
Virgins, garbed in the conventional blue and white, their feet resting
upon the crescent moon, vanish into luminous vapour, their robes rustle
in the air, and their sun-lighted faces repeat the very complexion of
Seville. Murillo had neither the power nor the desire to idealise his
models. His Saints--St Francis of Assisi, St Felix of Cantalicio, St
Anthony, St Thomas of Villanueva--and how many more? are men such as
may be seen to-day in the streets of Seville; all are alike, the name
alone differs. His Madonnas are peasants whose emotions are purely
human. More perhaps than any painter Murillo’s work is personal--he
translated the divine life and made it his own common human life--the
fault is that his personality is not interesting. And seeing these
pictures, and, even more, his other work--pictures hanging still in the
churches for which they were painted, where they seem to share in the
pervading religious emotion and to take their part in the life of the
building--the “Vision of St Anthony of Padua” in the Baptistery of the
Cathedral, for instance, or the great pictures of La Caridad; you will
understand how Murillo came to be idolised in Spain; how his pictures
held, for a time, the admiration of Europe; and how to-day he has
ceased to interest a world that has grown older and seeks, above all,
the truth.
Murillo was impelled by a desire for realism. There is much of the
spirit and manner of Zurbarán in his early pictures: “San Leandro
and San Buenaventura,” two early “Virgins and the Child,” and the
“Adoration of the Shepherds,” all in the Museum, are examples. The same
careful characterisation meets us in the much later “Last Supper” of
Santa Maria la Blanca, his most truthful Scriptural scene. Then his
portraits, such as those of SS. Leandro and Isidore in the Sacristia
Mayor of the Cathedral, or that of St Dorothy in the Sacristia de
los Cálices, are serious studies after nature. Once or twice in his
landscapes we find a sincerity that surprises us. But a painter must
be judged by the main output of his art. And the truth is that, with
a natural gift that certainly was great, added to unusual facility,
Murillo’s personality was commonplace. His self-assurance amazes
us. His emotion, neither profound nor simple, but always perfectly
satisfied, perfectly happy, exactly fitted him to give voice to the
common sentiments of his age. He did create a sort of life, but his
compositions are the work of his hand rather than of his soul. All
his Saints, his Madonnas--pose unthinkingly in the subtly interwoven
light he knew so well how to paint, living only in the moment which
their conventionalised attitudes perpetuate. You do not realise them as
personalities greeting you from the canvas like the intense, painful
faces of El Greco, or the wonderful creations of Velazquez; if you
remember them at all it is part of a pleasing picture. This is the
reason why these religious idylls have lost so much of their meaning;
their over-statement of sweetness cloys. Murillo gives us one aspect
of Andalusia; it was left for El Greco, Ribera, Velazquez, and Goya to
interpret Spain to the world.
THE OLD ROMAN CITY.
Moor and Spaniard have, between them, effaced almost all traces of the
ancient Hispalis or Romula, the little Rome; but the sister-city of
Italica, early deserted by man, has been dealt not too harshly with by
time. Its remains--a Spanish league to the north-west of Seville--still
attract the artist and the archæologist. There, where the wretched
hamlet of Santi Ponce now stands, was in the dim past the Iberian
village of Sancios. Scipio the Elder, after his long and victorious
campaign, passed this way, and selected the spot as a place of rest and
refreshment for his war-worn veterans. “Relicto utpote pacata regione
valido præsidio, Scipio milites omnes vulneribus debiles in unam urbem
compulit, quam ab Italia Italicam nominavit,” says Appian. Señor de
Madrazo remarks that this must have been the first Latin-speaking town
founded outside Italy. It was not at first a municipium, but a place
for meeting and council of the Roman citizens. The municipal status it
owed to Augustus. Subsequently, its citizens petitioned to be classed
as a colony of Rome.
The colony proved not unworthy of the great capital. Hence sprang the
illustrious line of the Ælii, and most of the eminent Roman Spaniards
who conferred such lustre on the early Empire are believed to have
been natives of the place. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at
that the citizens should have preferred a nominal dependence on the
Mother City to the quasi-independence of a provincial municipality.
But Italica never seems to have been a city in the modern sense of
the word. Excavations have revealed extremely few remains of private
habitations or bazaars. The only vestiges are those of great public
monuments--temples, palaces, amphitheatres, baths. The Emperors seem to
have delighted to embellish this small town with ornaments quite out of
proportion to its size and population, and it is clear that it never
was a serious rival to its older neighbour, Hispalis.
Its downfall, like its history, is mysterious. Leovigild occupied it
while besieging Seville, which was held by his son, Hermenigild. Later
on, the Arabs are said to have demolished it almost completely, and
to have carried off numerous statues, columns, and blocks of masonry
to serve in the construction and adornment of the neighbouring city.
Then Italica disappeared from history. Earthquakes finished the work
of ruin, and the scattered stones went to the making of the miserable
village of Santi Ponce--a name which some derive from that of San
Geroncio, a Bishop of Italica in early times.
The amphitheatre is now all that remains to attest the erstwhile
splendour of the darling colony of the Ælii. It is a melancholy and
yet a pretty spot, approached through olive plantations. Some of the
walls are still standing, and enable us to determine the dimensions,
which are stated at 291 feet length and 204 feet breadth. You may still
see the Podium or stone platform, whereon the civic dignitaries sate,
and the upper tiers appropriated to the populace. You may pass down
the vomitoria, through which the spectators streamed, glutted with
the sight of blood, and penetrate to the dens and chambers, wherein
gladiators and wild beasts were confined before the combat. Italica is
more a place to muse in than to explore. The place has long since been
rifled of all its treasures. Extensive ruins of what was believed to
have been the palace of Trajan existed down till the great earthquake
of 1755, and all that was spared were three statues preserved in the
Museo Provincial or Picture Gallery.
Close to the ruins is the convent of San Isidoro del Campo, founded in
1301 by Don Alonso Perez de Guzman, as a place of sepulture for him and
his family. The establishment was peopled first by the Cistercians,
later by the Hermits of St Jerome. The edifice presents the appearance
of a fortified abbey of the Middle Ages, though not without traces of
Mudejar influence. The church is Gothic, and divided into two naves,
united by a transept, and constituting each a distinct church. One of
these structures was built by the hero of Tarifa, Guzman the Good, and
contains his tomb and that of his wife, together with a fine retablo
by Montañes; the other, founded by the hero’s son, Don Juan Alonso
Perez de Guzman, contains his tomb, marked by a fine recumbent figure,
and that of Doña Urraca Osorio, burnt by order of Pedro the Cruel. In
the cloisters of the convent are some mural paintings of the fifteenth
century, which though much damaged repay inspection.
With the excursion to Italica the traveller should combine a visit
to the Cartuja, more properly called Santa Maria de las Cuevas. It
lies close to the suburb of Triana. The monastery was founded in the
first decade of the fifteenth century, at the instance of the great
Archbishop Gonzalo de Mena, and became the burying-place of the Ribera
family, whose magnificent tombs are now to be seen in the University
Church. Of the original structure only a little antique chapel remains.
The refectory, chapter-hall, and cloisters all date from a restoration
effected by the first Marqués de Tarifa in the sixteenth century. The
building became, in 1839, the seat of the pottery manufacture of the
(then) English firm of Pickman & Co. The establishment has produced
some fine porcelain, and is worth inspection by all those interested
in the ceramic art. Pottery has been associated from time immemorial
with this locality and the adjoining suburb of Triana, and it will be
remembered that the patron saints of Seville, Justa and Rufina, were,
according to tradition, potters by trade.
[Illustration: PLATE 1.
General View of Seville from the Giralda Tower, West Side of the City.
First View.]
[Illustration: PLATE 2.
General View of Seville from the Giralda Tower, West Side of the City.
Second View.]
[Illustration: PLATE 3.
General View of Seville from the Giralda Tower, East Side.]
[Illustration: PLATE 4.
General View of Seville from the Giralda Tower, Central Part of the
City.]
[Illustration: PLATE 5.
General View of Seville from the Giralda Tower, North Side.]
[Illustration: PLATE 6.
Procession of the Conception of the Virgin passing through the Plaza de
San Francisco.]
[Illustration: PLATE 7.
View of Seville.]
[Illustration: PLATE 8.
View of Seville.]
[Illustration: PLATE 9.
View of Seville.]
[Illustration: PLATE 10.
View of Seville.]
[Illustration: PLATE 11.
View of Seville.]
[Illustration: PLATE 12.
View of Seville.]
[Illustration: PLATE 13.
View of Seville.]
[Illustration: PLATE 14.
View of Seville.]
[Illustration: PLATE 15.
Bridge over the Guadalquivir.]
[Illustration: PLATE 16.
Hercules Avenue.]
[Illustration: PLATE 17.
The Plaza Nueva.]
[Illustration: PLATE 18.
View of Triana from the Tower of Gold.]
[Illustration: PLATE 19.
General View from Triana.]
[Illustration: PLATE 20.
General View from Triana.]
[Illustration: PLATE 21.
The Tower of Gold from San Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 22.
A Street in Seville.]
[Illustration: PLATE 23.
The Tower of Gold.]
[Illustration: PLATE 24.
Church of San Marcos, from the Palace of the Dueñas.]
[Illustration: PLATE 25.
Church of San Marcos.]
[Illustration: PLATE 26.
Court of the Hotel de Madrid.]
[Illustration: PLATE 27.
Hospital, with the Mosaics painted by Murillo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 28.
Portal of the Convent of Santa Paula.]
[Illustration: PLATE 29.
Church of Santa Catalina.]
[Illustration: PLATE 30.
Church of Todos Santos.]
[Illustration: PLATE 31.
The Provincial Museum, with Murillo’s Statue.]
[Illustration: PLATE 32.
Statue of Murillo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 33.
General View of the Town Hall.]
[Illustration: PLATE 34.
The Town Hall, Left Side.]
[Illustration: PLATE 35.
The Town Hall, Left Side, Detail of the Interior Angle.]
[Illustration: PLATE 36.
Door of the Town Hall.]
[Illustration: PLATE 37.
The Town Hall, Detail of the Principal Part.]
[Illustration: PLATE 38.
General View of the Town Hall.]
[Illustration: PLATE 39.
The Town Hall, Detail of the Façade.]
[Illustration: PLATE 40.
The Town Hall, Detail of the Principal Door.]
[Illustration: PLATE 41.
Window in the Town Hall.]
[Illustration: PLATE 42.
Principal Façade of the Tobacco Factory.]
[Illustration: PLATE 43.
The Tobacco Factory.]
[Illustration: PLATE 44.
Cigar Makers, Seville.]
[Illustration: PLATE 45.
The “Sevillanas” Dance.]
[Illustration: PLATE 46.
Sevillian Costumes--A Courtyard.]
[Illustration: PLATE 47.
General View of the Exchange.]
[Illustration: PLATE 48.
Court in the Exchange.]
[Illustration: PLATE 49.
The Aceite Postern and Ancient Ramparts.]
[Illustration: PLATE 50.
The Roman Walls near the Gate of the Macarena.]
[Illustration: PLATE 51.
The Roman Amphitheatre of Italica.]
[Illustration: PLATE 52.
General View of the Palace of San Telmo from the River.]
[Illustration: PLATE 53.
Principal Portal of the San Telmo Palace.]
[Illustration: PLATE 54.
Interior of the Hall of Columns in the San Telmo Palace.]
[Illustration: PLATE 55.
Interior View of the Duke of Montpensier’s Study In San Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 56.
Various Objects found in the Sepulchres at San Telmo.
(In the Palace of San Telmo.)]
[Illustration: PLATE 57.
Palms in the Gardens of San Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 58.
The Sepulchres of the Victims of Don Juan Tenorio in the Gardens of San
Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 59.
The Roman Sepulchres in the Gardens of San Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 60.
View in the Gardens of San Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 61.
The Aviary in the Gardens of San Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 62.
The River in the Gardens of San Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 63.
The Cocoa Tree and East Side of San Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 64.
The Zapote, a Tree in the Gardens of San Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 65.
The Island and River in the Gardens of San Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 66.
The Yucca, a rare Tree in the Gardens of San Telmo.]
[Illustration: PLATE 67.
General View of the Hospital de la Sangre.]
[Illustration: PLATE 68.
Church of the Sagrario, North Side.]
[Illustration: PLATE 69.
Principal Façade of the Hospital de la Sangre.]
[Illustration: PLATE 70.
Porch of the Church of the Hospital de la Sangre.]
[Illustration: PLATE 71.
Bas-relief. Hospital de la Sangre, the Work of Torregiano.]
[Illustration: PLATE 72.
General View of the Exterior of the Cathedral.]
[Illustration: PLATE 73.
The Giralda, from the Patio de los Naranjos.]
[Illustration: PLATE 74.
The Top of the Giralda.]
[Illustration: PLATE 75.
The Dancing Choir Boys, Seville Cathedral.]
[Illustration: PLATE 76.
Dancing Boys, Seville Cathedral.]
[Illustration: PLATE 77.
The Gate of the Archbishop.]
[Illustration: PLATE 78.
Plaza de San Francisco, with the Giralda and Cathedral.]
[Illustration: PLATE 79.
Plaza del Triunfo, the Cathedral, and the Exchange, from the Gate of
the Lion.]
[Illustration: PLATE 80.
The Fête.]
[Illustration: PLATE 81