The oratory was built by order of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1504. It contains an admirable retablo in blue glazed tiles—probably the finest work of the kind in Spain—designed by an Italian, Francesco Niculoso. The centre-piece representsthe Visitation. It is believed that some parts of the work were drawn by Pedro Millán, a sculptor of Seville.
The oratory is on the upper floor of the palace. On the same storey is the Comedor, or dining-hall, a long, narrow room with a fine fifteenth-century ceiling, and good tapestries on the walls. A more interesting apartment is the bed-chamber of Don Pedro, which has a good carved roof and dados ofazulejosand stucco. Over the door four heads may be seen painted. They represent the skulls of the corrupt judges on whom the unjust king executed summary justice. The decoration of this chamber is of the sixteenth century.
The royal apartments on this floor contain several important works of art. In the room of the Infantes is a portrait of Maria Luisa by Goya. The Salón Azul (Blue Room), so-called from the colour of its tapestries, contains some fine pastel paintings by Muraton, and some notable miniatures on ivory. The portraits of the family of Isabel II. by Bartolomé López are worthy of inspection.
Returning to the ground floor, we enter the spacious Salón de Carlos V., occupying one side of the Patio de las Doncellas. Here, it is asserted, St Ferdinand died; but it is more probable thathe expired in the old Moorish Alcazar. The fine ceiling, decorated with the heads of warriors and ladies, was built by the Emperor after whom the hall is named. The stucco and the work are very beautiful.
An uninteresting apartment was erected by Ferdinand VI. over the famous Baths of Maria de Padilla, which are approached through an arched entrance, and, surrounded by thick walls, have more the appearance of a dungeon than of a resort of Love and Beauty. The pool still remains where the lovely favourite bathed her fair limbs. In her time it had no other roof than the blue sky of Andalusia, and no further protection from prying eyes than that afforded by the orange and lemon trees. At Pedro’s court it was esteemed a mark of gallantry and loyalty to drink the waters of the bath, after Maria had performed her ablutions. Observing that one of his knights refrained from this act of homage, the king questioned him and elicited the reply, “I dare not drink of the water, lest, having tasted the sauce, I should covet the partridge.” These baths were no doubt used by the ladies of the harem in Moorish days.
The gardens of the Alcazar form a delicious pleasaunce, where the orange and the citron diffuse their fragrance, and fairy-like fountains spring upsuddenly beneath the unwary passenger’s feet, sprinkling him with a cooling and perhaps not unwelcome dew. But this paradise has its serpent, and that is the truculent shade of the cruel king, which for ever seems to haunt the Alcazar. Here Pedro prowled one day, when four candidates for the office of judge presented themselves before him. To test their fitness for the post, the king pointed to an orange floating on the surface of a pool close by. He asked each of the lawyers in succession what the floating object was. The three first replied without consideration, “An orange, sire.” But the fourth drew the fruit from the water with his staff, glanced at it, and replied with absolute accuracy, “Halfan orange, sire.” He was appointed to the vacant magistracy.
Before leaving the Alcazar, we will briefly summarise the history of its transformations and reconstructions. As we have seen, the palace generally may be considered the work of Don Pedro. In the reign of Juan II., the Salón de los Embajadores was enriched with its fine cupola. A tablet, discovered in 1843, testifies that the architect was Don Diego Roiz, and that the artisans employed in the work were made freemen of the city.
Various parts of the building were built or reconstructed by order of Ferdinand and Isabella. The architects were for the most part Christianised Moors, among whom are mentioned Maestre Mohammed Agudo (1479), Juan Fernandez (1479), Diego Fernandez (1496), and Francisco Fernandez. The latter was appointed Master of the Alcazar in 1502, and previous to his adoption of Catholicism was named Hamet Kubeji. According to Gestoso y Perez, a surprising number of artificers and craftsmen were engaged about the Alcazar at this time, a powerful inducement being exemption from taxes and military service. The names of Juan and Francisco de Limpias (1479-1540) have been preserved among the carpenters; and Diego Sanchez (1437), Alfonso Ruiz (1479), and the two Sanchez de Castro (1500), among the painters.
Several improvements were carried out under Charles V. and Philip II., and a great deal of restoration was unfortunately necessitated by the fires which seemed to break out with increasing frequency during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Still more disastrous was the effect of the great earthquake of 1755. Then began the reign of the vandal, which did more damage to the palace than time, fire, and earthquake combined.
In 1762, the minister Wall ordered the Alcazar to be repaired in “the modern manner.” Theceilings which had been destroyed by fire were replaced by others much too low, and valuable arabesques were recklessly sacrificed. In 1805, some director with a genius for transmogrification whitewashed the fine stucco work in the Salon del Principe, and altered the main entrance. He also substituted a plaster ceiling for the bowl-shaped Arab roofing, and made strenuous efforts to impair the beauty of the Ambassadors’ Hall. In 1833 a reaction took place. Don Joaquin Cortes and Señor Raso effected an artistic and sympathetic restoration both of the Prince’s Hall and the Patio de las Muñecas. A more serious restoration was begun in 1842, at the instance of the administrator, Don Domingo de Alcega. The artist Becquer contributed materially to the success of the work. In the ’fifties, the task of replacing and restoring the stucco ornamentation was completed; and under Isabel II. the thirty-six arches of the Patio de las Doncellas were restored. Since that date the reconstructions have not always displayed good taste; but the revival of interest in her ancient monuments which has taken place in Spain of late years encourages us to hope, at least, that the appalling blunders of the early nineteenth century will never be repeated.
After the Alcazar, the most noteworthy monument in Seville, dating from the reign of Don Pedro, is the church of Omnium Sanctorum. This edifice occupies the site of a Roman temple, and was built by the Cruel King in 1356. It exhibits a very happy combination of the Moorish and Gothic styles. It is entered by three ogival doors, and is divided into three naves. To the left of the façade is a graceful tower, the first storey of which is Moorish, ornamented somewhat after the style of the Giralda. On one of the doors is a shield bearing the arms of Portugal, which, tradition says, commemorates the pious generosity of Diniz, king of that country, when he visited Alfonso the Wise. If the Sevillians have writ their annals true, this goes to prove that an earlier structure than the present must have existed here. This, by the way, was the parish church of Rioja the poet.
San Lorenzo exhibits the fusion of the contending styles in an interesting fashion. It has five naves; and the horseshoe windows in its tower were converted into ogives at the time of its adaptation to the Christian cult. The arcades of the naves are ogival in the middle, and become by degrees semi-circular towards the extremities as the roof becomes lower. This church containsthe miraculous picture of Nuestra Señora de Rocamadour. Rocamadour, in southern France, was a celebrated shrine of pilgrims in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Several other churches in Seville date from this epoch, and present, to a greater or less extent, evidences of the conflict between the Moorish and Gothic styles. In addition to those mentioned, Madrazo names the following: Santa Marina, San Ildefonso, San Vicente, San Julián, San Esteban, Santa Catalina, San Andrés, San Miguel, San Nicolas, San Martin, San Gil, Santa Lucia, San Pedro, and San Isidoro. When a mosque was converted into a Christian church, the same authority remarks, the horseshoe arch was pointed, bells were placed in the minaret, and the orientation was altered from north to south, to east to west. The five last-named churches were erected in the thirteenth century. Santa Maria de las Nieves was, until the year 1391, a synagogue. The decoration is in the plateresco style, and the doors are Gothic. The church contains a painting by Luis de Vargas, and a picture attributed to Murillo.
Nearly in the centre of the city is the Convent of Santa Inés, with a beautiful and tastefully restored chapel. The façade is ancient and graceful. This church contains the remains (said tobe uncorrupted) of the foundress, Doña Maria Coronel, one of Don Pedro’s numerous victims. That monarch had conceived a violent passion for her, in the hopes of gratifying which he put her husband to death in the Torre del Oro. The widow, far from yielding to his solicitations, took the veil, and at last, to secure herself from his persecutions, destroyed her beauty by means of vitriol—a species of self-immolation much applauded by the devout in the ages of faith. Her sister, Doña Aldonza, was less successful in resisting the ardent monarch, but died, in the odour of sanctity, Abbess of Santa Inés.
Among the secular buildings erected under the Castilianrégimewas the existing Tower of Don Fadrique, standing in the gardens of the Convent of the Poor Clares. It was named after the son of St Ferdinand and Beatriz of Swabia, who was put to death by Alfonso el Sabio in 1276. The tower is a fine square structure of Roman workmanship, seemingly, in its lowest floor, and showing a mixture of Moorish and Gothic architecture in its upper half. It formed part of a sumptuous palace erected in 1252, and bestowed in 1289 on the Poor Clares by King Sancho the Brave.
In the Calle Guzman el Bueno is a mansioncalled the Casa Olea. It contains a fine hall, 8½ metres square, the work of Moorish artisans of the time of Don Pedro. The beautiful inlaid and gildedartesonadoceiling was removed about a century ago; light is admitted through windows of the horseshoe pattern, and the decorations consist of the characteristic stucco-work, latticing, andajaracaor trellis-work, as fine as any to be seen at the Lindaraja of Granada. The dado of coloured tiles has almost completely disappeared. The Palacio de Montijo, near the church of Omnium Sanctorum, reveals many traces of Mudejar workmanship, as also does a hall in theCasa moriscaof the Calle de Abades—not to be confounded with the Casa de Abades, belonging to the Renaissance.
Seville in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries possessed no doubt many palaces and private dwellings of magnificence; but it was in ecclesiastical architecture that the spirit of the age found its truest expression and noblest monuments.
Onthe eighth day of July in the year 1401, the Dean and Chapter of Seville assembled in the Court of the Elms, and solemnly resolved that, the Cathedral having been practically ruined by recent earthquakes, a new one should be built so splendid that it should have no equal; and that, if the revenue of the See should not prove sufficient for the cost of the undertaking, each one present should contribute from his own stipend as much as might be necessary. Then uprose a zealous prebendary, and cried, “Let us build a church so great that those who come after us may think us mad to have attempted it!”
Such was the greatness of spirit in which the foundation of the existing Cathedral of Seville was undertaken. And the result is worthy of the deep and fervid zeal of those old Catholics of Spain.
The church took one hundred and twenty years to build. Pity it was that the noble-hearted priests who decreed the raising of the fane should never have gazed upon much more than its skeleton! First of all, the mosque-cathedral ofYakub was demolished, only the Giralda and thePatio de los Naranjos, with the northern, eastern, and western gates, being spared. The Royal Chapel was pulled down in 1432, by permission of Juan II. The first stone had been laid in 1402; but, strangely and sadly enough, the name of the architect who traced the plan has not been preserved. Some believe him to have been Alonso Martinez; others, Pero García. Fame, we may well believe, was a prize which the pious builder esteemed but lightly. His reward lay in the greater glorification of his faith.
In 1462, we find Juan Normán directing the works; in 1488, he had passed from the scene and was succeeded by Juan de Hoz. Then came Alonso Ruiz and Alonso Rodriguez. The building was practically finished when, in 1511, the cupola collapsed. In 1519, Juan Gil de Hontañon, the architect of Salamanca Cathedral, completed the reconstruction, and the cathedral may be considered as having been finished, though restorations and remodelling of various parts of the edifice have been going on ever since, and masons are to this day engaged upon the dome.
This magnificent church is pre-eminent for size among the cathedrals of Spain, and ranks third in this respect among the sacred edifices of theworld. St Peter’s covers 230,000 square feet, the Mezquita at Cordova 160,000, and the Cathedral of Seville 125,000. Our St Paul’s covers only 84,000 square feet. It follows that this cathedral is the largest of Gothic temples.
So stupendous a monument has naturally attracted comment from distinguished travellers and critics. All have come under the spell of its majesty and massive nobility. Théophile Gautier expressed himself as follows: “The most extravagant and most monstrously prodigious Hindoo pagodas are not to be mentioned in the same century as the Cathedral of Seville. It is a mountain scooped out, a valley turned topsy-turvy; Notre Dame de Paris might walk erect in the middle nave, which is of frightful height; pillars with the girth of towers, and which appear so slender that they make you shudder, rise out of the ground or descend from the vaulted roof, like stalactites in a giant’s grotto.”
The Italian, De Amicis, is less fantastical in his rhapsodies. “At your first entrance, you are bewildered, you feel as if you are wandering in an abyss, and for several moments you can only glance around in this vast spaciousness, to assure yourself that your eyes do not deceive you, that your fancy is playing you no trick; you approachone of the pillars, measure it, and look at those in the distance; though large as towers, they appear so slender that you tremble to think the building is resting upon them. You traverse them with a glance from floor to ceiling, and it seems that you could almost count the moments it would take for the eye to climb them.... In the central aisle, another cathedral, with its cupola and bell-tower, could easily stand.”
Lomas, who is no great admirer of the building, admits that “the first view of the interior is one of the supreme moments of a lifetime. The glory and majesty of it are almost terrible. No other building, surely, is so fortunate as this in what may be called its presence.”
The Cathedral is oblong in shape, and is 414 feet long by 271 feet wide. The nave is 100 feet and the dome 121 feet high.
The principal façade looks west. Here is the principal entrance (Puerta Mayor), and two side doors, the Puertas de San Miguel and del Bautismo. Over the central door is a fine relief, representing the Assumption, by Ricardo Bellver, placed here in 1885. This entrance is elaborately decorated, and adorned with thirty-two statues in niches.
The Puertas San Miguel and del Bautismo aredecorated with terra-cotta statues of saints and prelates, the work of Pedro Millan, a fifteenth-century sculptor. Herr Schmidt thinks very highly of these fine performances. Each figure has life and distinct personality, and the treatment of the drapery harmonises wonderfully with the gestures and physiognomy of the wearers. The upper part of the façade is poor, and dates only from 1827.
The southern façade is flanked by sacristies, offices, and courts, above which appear the graceful flying buttresses, gargoyles, and windows, and the majestic dome of the main building. In the middle of this side is a modern entrance, the Puerta de San Cristóbal, added by Casanova in 1887. In the eastern façade are two entrances—the Puertas de las Campanillas and de los Palos—both enriched with fine sculpture by Pedro Millan; the Puerta de los Palos has also a fine Adoration of the Magi by Miguel Florentin (1520).
On the northern side of the Cathedral we find the most important remains of the pre-existing mosque, the Giralda, already described, and thePatio de los Naranjos, with the original fountain at which the Muslims performed their ablutions. Thepatiois entered from the street by the Puerta del Perdón, a richly decorated horseshoe archerected by Moorish hands by order of Alfonso XI., to commemorate the victory of the Salado in the year 1340. In the sixteenth century this door was restored and adorned with sculptures. The colossal statues of Saints Peter and Paul, in terra-cotta, are the work of Miguel Florentin. He was among the earliest of the Renaissance sculptors to settle in Spain. By him also is the relief of the Expulsion of the Money-Changers from the Temple, celebrating the substitution of the Lonja or Bourse for this gate as a rendezvous for merchants. The plateresco work was executed by Bartolomé López in 1522. The doors date from Alfonso’s reign, and are faced with bronze plates, on which are Arabic inscriptions.
Close to the Puerta del Perdón is a shrine built in the wall with a Christ on the Cross by Luis de Vargas.
Entering thepatio, to the right we find the Sagrario, or parish church, and to the left (reached by a staircase) the Biblioteca Colombina or Chapter Library, founded by Fernando Colon, son of Christopher Columbus. Among the treasures it contains are a manuscript of the great discoverer’s travels, with notes in his own hand; a manuscript tract, written by him in prison, to prove that the existence of America was not contrary to Scripture;the sword of Garcia Perez de Vargas, the great hero of the conquest of Seville, and a very interesting thirteenth-century translation of the Bible.
The northern façade of the Cathedral is entered through three portals, the westernmost of which, the Puerta del Sagrario, is unfinished. The Puerta de los Naranjos and the Puerta del Lagarto lead from thepatio. The Puerta del Lagarto retains some traces of its Moorish origin. It is named after the patched and painted stuffed alligator, which has hung here since about the thirteenth century. Here may also be seen a huge elephant’s tusk, and a bridle said to have belonged to the Cid.
Referring more particularly to the exterior of the Cathedral, Caveda says: “The general effect is truly majestic. The open-work parapets which crown the roofs, the graceful lanterns of the eight winding stairs that ascend in the corners to the vaults and galleries, the flying buttresses that spring lightly from aisle to nave, as the jets of a cascade from cliff to cliff, the slender pinnacles that cap them, the proportions of the arms of the transept and of the buttresses supporting the side walls, the large pointed windows that open, one above another, just as the aisles and chapels to which they belong rise over each other, thepointed portals and entrances—all these combine in an almost miraculous manner, although lacking the wealth of detail, the airy grace, and the delicate elegance that characterise the cathedrals of Léon and Burgos.”
Entering the church, the gloom renders it difficult for a time to distinguish its exact configuration. We find it is divided into a nave and four aisles, the former being fifty feet in width. The fine marble floor was laid in the years 1787 to 1795. There is little ornamentation, the interior displaying a noble simplicity, the beautiful effect being produced mainly by the grandeur and symmetry of the vaultings, archings, and pillars. The seventy-four exquisite stained-glass windows, however, form a decorative series of the richest kind. They are, for the most part, the work of northern artists. Micer Cristóbal Aleman (Master Christoph the German) began the first—the first stained-glass window seen in Seville—in 1504, the work being carried on by the German Heinrich, the Flemings Bernardino of Zeeland and Juan Bernardino, Carlos of Bruges, and the great master Arnao of Flanders. The two latter designers are said to have received ninety thousand ducats for their work. The last window was completed in 1662 by a Spaniard named Juan Bautista de Léon.The finest windows are generally considered to be those representing the Ascension, St Mary Magdalen, Lazarus, and the Entry into Jerusalem, by Arnao the Fleming and his brother (1525), and the Resurrection, by Carlos of Bruges (1558).
Passing up the nave, from the Puerta Mayor, we find midway between that entrance and the choir the Tomb of Fernando Colon, son of the great Columbus—“who would have been considered a great man,” says Ford, “had he been the son of a less great father.” The slab is engraved with pictures of the discoverer’s vessels, and the inscription,À Castilla y á León Mundo nuevo dio Colon. At this spot, during Holy Week, is set up theMonumento, an enormous wooden temple in the shape of a Greek cross, in which the Sacrament is enshrined. The structure was made by Antonio Florentin in 1544.
Extending to the middle of the nave is the Coro or Choir, open towards the east or High Altar. Thetrascoroor choir-screen is faced with marbles, eight columns of redbrecciabeing especially fine. The marble reliefs are fine examples of Genoese work. Over the altar is a fourteenth-century painting of the Madonna, and there is also a picture by Pacheco, the inquisitor, representing St Ferdinand receiving the keys of Seville from“Axataf.” The side walls of the choir accommodate four little chapels, exhibiting a harmonious combination of the Gothic and plateresco styles in translucent alabaster. The Capilla de la Concepcion contains one of the finest examples of statuary in the Cathedral—the Virgin, by Juan Martinez Montañez. Ford says, “This sweet and dignified model was the favourite of his great pupil, Alonso Cano.” The choir was severely injured by the collapse of the dome in 1888. The pillars and baldachino are richly adorned with Gothic figures and stonework. The fine gilt railing is the work of Sancho Muñoz (1519). But the chief glory of the choir is its exquisitely carved stalls, 117 in number, executed between 1475 and 1548, by Nufro Sanchez, Dancart, and Guillen. Moorish influence may be traced in the patterns and the coloured inlaid work of the chairbacks. The handsome lectern bespeaks the skill of Bartolomé Morel. Till the collapse of the dome, the choir was the repository of a number of priceless missals, illuminated in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. The organs are huge but inartistic. As instruments, they are beyond all praise. The older, dating from 1777, was built by Jorge Bosch, the other by Valentin Verdalonga in 1817.
“Between the choir and High Altar is put up during Holy Week the exquisite bronze candlestick, 25 feet high, called El Tenebrario, one of the finest specimens of bronze work of the sixteenth century that exists (it may be seen in the Sacristy), and wrought, in 1562, by Morel; when theMiserereis sung, it is lighted with thirteen candles, twelve of which are put out one after another, indicating that the Apostles deserted Christ; one alone of white wax is left burning, and is a symbol of the Virgin, true to the last. At Easter, also, the Ciro Pascual or fount candle, equal to a large marble pillar, 24 feet high, and weighing seven or eight hundredweight of wax, is placed to the left of the High Altar” (Ford).
Facing the choir stands the isolated Capilla Mayor, containing the High Altar. It is enclosed on three sides by a railing of wrought iron, and on the fourth by a superb Gothic retablo. Schmidt considers this work the quintessence of late Gothic sculpture. The middle parts date from the fifteenth, the outer from the sixteenth century. The ornamentation is of extraordinary delicacy and richness. It is divided into forty-five compartments, each containing subjects from the Scriptures and the lives of the saints in sculpture painted and gilded. It is crowned by a crucifixand the statues of the Virgin and St John. This fine altar-piece was begun by the Fleming Dancart in 1479, and was completed by Spanish artists in 1526.
Behind the altar is the Sacristy, adorned with terra-cotta statues by Miguel Florentin, Juan Marin, and others. Here is kept a reliquary shaped like a triptych, presented to the church by Alfonso the Wise, and called the Alphonsine Tables.
Behind the Capilla Mayor, at the eastern extremity of the nave, is the Capilla Real (Royal Chapel). The building—which, as Ford remarks, is almost a church by itself—was begun by Gainza in 1514, and finished in 1566 by his successors, Fernan Ruiz, Diaz de Palacios, and Maeda. The chapel is of the Renaissance style, and has a lofty dome. There is a handsome frieze showing the figures of children carrying shields and lances. The chapel is divided by light pillars into seven compartments, of which the midmost is occupied by the altar of the Virgin de los Reyes. This image was the gift of St Louis of France to St Ferdinand. “It is of great archæological interest,” says Ford; “it is made like a movable lay-figure; the hair is of spun gold, and the shoes are like those used in the thirteenthcentury, ornamented with the lilies of France and the word “Amor.” In 1873, the fine gold crown belonging to this image [a sixteenth-century work] was stolen. This image is seated on a silver throne, thirteenth-century work, embossed with the arms of Castile and Leon.” The body of St Ferdinand, remarkably well preserved, is contained in a silver urn, placed on the original sepulchre, which is engraved with epitaphs in Latin, Spanish, Hebrew, and Arabic. In the vault beneath is the ivory figure of the Virgin de las Batallas, which the king always carried with him on his campaigns. It is a fine piece of Gothic statuary. Ferdinand’s sword is also preserved in this chapel. Here are the tombs of Alfonso el Sabio, of Beatriz of Swabia, his mother, of Pedro I., Maria de Padilla, and various Infantes. An interesting trophy is the flag of the Polish Legion of the French army, taken by the Spaniards at Bailen. The twelve statues in the entrance to the Capilla Real are after the designs of Peter Kempener; there is a Mater Dolorosa by Murillo in the sacristy. Some of the later work in this chapel exhibits those fantastic and grotesque features which became common, under the name ofEstilo Monstruoso, in Seville.
The entrance to this chapel is flanked by theCapillas de San Pedro and de la Concepcion Grande. In the south aisle is the chapel of the Purification or of the Marshal, containing a remarkable altar-piece by Peter Kempener—exhibiting the portraits of the founder, Marshal Pedro Caballero, and his family. Adjacent is the Sala Capitular, in fine Renaissance style, the work of Gainza and Diego de Riaño (1531). The roof is formed by a fine cupola, supported by Ionic columns, beneath which is some admirable plateresco work, with escutcheons, triglyphs, etc. The hall contains a portrait of St Ferdinand by Francisco Pacheco, the “Conception” and ovals by Murillo, and the “Four Virtues” by Pablo de Céspedes. Beneath the windows are seen reliefs by Velasco, Cabrera, and Vazquez.
The sacristy (Sacristia Mayor) is in the Renaissance style, and lies south of the Sala Capitular. It was built by Gainza in 1535, after designs by Riaño, who had died two years earlier. One of the three altars against the southern wall is adorned by the beautiful “Descent from the Cross” by Peter Kempener (a native of Brussels, called by the Spaniards Campaña), before which Murillo used to stand for hours in rapt contemplation. This priceless work of art was cut in five pieces by the French, with a view to itsremoval, and has not been very well restored. The sacristy contains also three interesting paintings, dating from the early sixteenth century, by Alejo Fernandez; and the “San Leandro” and “San Isidore” of Murillo.
In this chamber is kept the treasury of the Cathedral. In it might be included the superb silver monstrance by Juan de Arfe (1580-87). It is twelve feet high, and richly adorned with columns, reliefs, and statuettes. The treasury likewise contains another monstrance, studded with 1200 jewels; a rock-crystal cup, said to have belonged to St Ferdinand; and the keys presented to that sovereign on the surrender of the city. That given by the Jews is of iron gilt, with the words,Melech hammelakim giphthohh Melek kolhaaretz gabo(the King of kings will open, the King of all the earth will enter); the other key is of silver gilt and was surrendered by Sakkáf. The inscription upon it is in Arabic, and reads,May Allah render eternal the dominion of Islam in this city.
Proceeding along the south aisle, towards the main entrance, we first reach the Capilla de San Andrés, the burying-place of the ancient family of Guzman. Behind the chapel of Nuestra Señora de las Dolores is the fine Sacristia de los Calices.It is the work of those who built the Sacristia Mayor. It contains several fine paintings—the Saints Justa and Rufina (patrons of Seville) by Goya (among his finest works), the “Angel de la Guarda” and the “St Dorothy” of Murillo, the “Death of a Saint” by Zurbarán, the “Trinity of Theotocopuli” (El Greco), a triptych by Morales, and “The Death of the Virgin”—an old German picture. This crucifix over the altar is one of the most admirable productions of Montañez.
The next chapel (de la Santa Cruz) is adorned by a fine “Descent from the Cross” by Fernandez de Guadelupe (1527). The Puerta de la Lonja has a fresco, painted in 1584, of “St Christopher carrying the Infant Jesus across a River.” A representation of this saint is to be found in nearly all Spanish cathedrals, owing to a curious superstition that to look upon it secures the beholder for the rest of that day from an evil death. This fresco, which measures thirty-two feet high, is opposite the “Capilla de la Gamba” (or, of the leg—of Adam). Here we find “La Generacion”—Luis de Vargas’s masterpiece. “The picture,” says Herr Schmidt, “is wholly in the Italian style, and one of the best examples of this phase of the Spanish Renaissance.”
The large chapel of the Antigua contains thefine tomb of Archbishop Mendoza, by Miguel Florentin, erected in 1509. Here is also a very ancient mural painting, after the Byzantine style, of the “Madonna and Child,” which was placed here in 1578, and is of unknown and rather mysterious origin. The retablo is distinguished by marble statues in the baroque style by Pedro Duque Cornejo. The small sacristy behind this chapel contains pictures by Zurbarán, Morales, and others.
The Capilla de San Hermenegildo has a good statue of the saint by Montañez, and a fine sepulchral monument to Archbishop Juan de Cervantes (1453), by Lorenzo Mercadante de Bretaña, the master of Nufro Sanchez. The Capilla de San José contains “The Espousals of the Virgin” by Valdés Leal, a “Nativity of Christ” by Antolinez, and an inferior retablo (“The Massacre of the Innocents”). The Capilla de Santa Ana possesses a Gothic retablo, dating from about 1450, and divided into fourteen sections. It comes from the old Mosque-Cathedral. The lower part of the work, illustrating the life of St Anne, dates from 1504, the artists having been Hernandez and Barbara Marmolejo. From beneath the tribune a staircase leads to the Archives, which escaped demolition at the hands of the French, through having been sent to Cadiz. Thelast chapel in the south aisle (San Laureano) is dedicated to a saint, who, like St Denis of France, having been decapitated, performed the unusual feat of walking away with his head under his arm. Here is the tomb of Archbishop de Ejea, who died in 1417.
On the west side of the Cathedral are five small chapels. The Nacimiento chapel contains an admirable “Nativity with the Four Evangelists” by Luis de Vargas, and a “Virgin and St Anne” by Morales. To the right of the Puerta Mayor is the altar of Nuestra Señora del Consuelo, with a “Holy Family,” the masterpiece of Alonso Miguel de Tobar (1678-1738), esteemed the ablest of Murillo’s pupils. Facing this is the little altar of Santo Angel, with a “Guardian Angel” by Murillo. The altar of the Visitation has a good retablo by Pedro Villegas de Marmolejo (1502-1569), and a statue of St Jerome by his namesake, Geronimo Hernandez.
Near the north-western corner of the church the Puerta del Sagrario leads into the Sagrario or Parish Church. This was built between 1618 and 1662 in the Baroque style by Miguel Zumarraga and Fernandez de Iglesias. The width of the single arch of which the roof consists is believed to endanger the safety of the edifice. The richstatues that adorn the interior are by Dayne and Jose de Arce. There is a notable retablo by Pedro Roldan which came from a Franciscan convent now suppressed. The wall of the sacristy is faced with beautifulazulejosof the Arabian period, and in one of the side-chapels is a noteworthy statue of the Virgin by Montañez. In the vault beneath this impressive church the Archbishops of Seville are buried.
Returning to the Cathedral, we find on the left the Capilla del Bautisterio or of San Antonio. It is famous for one of Murillo’s finest works, “St Anthony of Padua’s Vision of the Child Jesus.” This is the picture which was stolen in 1874, conveyed to New York, sold to a Mr Schaus for £50, and by him returned to the ecclesiastical authorities. This chapel is also remarkable for itspilaor font, the work of Antonio Florentin, and Giralda windows. Next to it is the Capilla de las Escalas, with two pictures by Luca Giordano, “strong in character, drawing, and colour,” and the sepulchre of Bishop Baltasar del Rio (about 1500); then comes the Capilla de Santiago, with paintings by Valdés Leal and Juan de las Roelas, a stained-glass window with the richest tones, and the tomb of Archbishop Gonzalo de Mena (1401); and the Capilla de San Francisco, with another finewindow, and an ambitious “Apotheosis of St Francis” by Herrera el Mozo.
Separated from this chapel by the Puerta de los Naranjos is the Capilla de la Visitacion (or Doncellas). The Puerta is furnished with two altars, one, the Altar de la Asunción, the other, the Virgen de Belén. The former has a painting by Carlo Maratta, the latter a “Virgin and Child” by Alonso Cano. The Capilla de los Evangelistas has an altar-piece in nine parts by Hernando de Sturmio (1555), which shows us the Giralda as it was before the present upper part had been added. Crossing before the Puerta Lagarto we reach the little chapel of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, with a notable “Madonna and Child” by Pedro Millan. The altar-piece of the Capilla de San Pedro, between this chapel and the Capilla Real, has paintings by Zurbarán, hardly distinguishable in the dim light. On the other side of the Capilla Real is the Chapel of la Concepcion Grande, containing pictures relating to the Immaculate Conception, and a crucifix attributed to Alonso Cano. Here is also a fine modern monument to Cardinal Cienfuegos.
Closeto the Church of San Marcos is the Convent of Santa Paula with a chapel dating from about 1475. The house, which is of the religious of St Augustine, was founded by Doña Ana de Santillan and the Portuguese Donha Isabel Henriquez, Marqueza de Montemayor. This illustrious lady and her consort, Dom João, Constable of Portugal, are entombed in the Capilla Mayor in separate niches. The portal of this church is one of the richest in Europe. It is magnificently decorated with white and blueazulejos, over the arch being seven medallions representing the birth of Christ and the life of St Paul, encircled with garlands of flowers and fruit, and the figures white on a blue ground. In the tympanum of the arch are displayed the Arms of Spain in white marble on a field of blue tiles, supported by an eagle, and flanked by the escutcheons of the Catholic sovereigns. Theazulejowork was jointly executed by Francesco Niculoso of Pisa and Pedro Millan. The interior of the church is in the sixteenth-century style, and, except for the tombs of the Marqueses de Montemayor, not specially interesting.
In 1472 Maese Rodrigo founded a college, which afterwards became the seat of the University of Seville, and is now a seminary. Attached to it is a chapel built in the first years of the sixteenth century. It is a fine example of the late Gothic style. The retablo exhibits good painting and carving by unknown artists. The front of the altar displays fine specimens of Andalusian ceramic art. “The students of the seminary,” says Ford, “wear a scarf of brilliant scarlet upon a black gown.”
The most important monument of this period in Seville is the Casa Pilatos. It illustrates the fusion of the Moorish and Renaissance styles, almost to the effacement of the former. In the architecture of this period we usually find an Arabic groundwork nearly obscured by ornamentation of the newer style. In the schemes of decoration the conventional floral designs and geometrical patterns remain, while the inscriptions, which figured so largely in earlier work, disappear. The stucco andazulejosno longer cover the whole walls, and the windows and doors become larger and less graceful. As HerrSchmidt remarks, effect was no longer sought for in the innately elegant but in bold, monumental compositions.
Mr Digby Wyatt (“An Architect’s Note-Book in Spain”) indicates as the two special points of architectural value possessed by the Casa de Pilatos, “the entirely moresque character of the stucco-work at a comparatively late date, and the profuse use ofazulejosor coloured tiles. It is ... in and about the splendid staircase that this charming tile lining, of the use of which we have here of very late years commenced a very satisfactory revival, asserts its value as a beautiful mode of introducing clean and permanent polychromatic decoration.”
The history of this beautiful building is of singular interest. Its erection was begun in 1500 by theadelantado(governor), Don Per Enriquez, continued by his son, Don Fadrique Enriquez de Ribera, first Marqués de Tarifa, after his return from a two years’ pilgrimage in the Holy Land, and finished by Don Per Afan, first Duque de Alcalá, and sometime Viceroy of Naples, in 1533. Authorities differ whether it received its name from its having been modelled on the House of Pilate, seen by Don Fadrique, or from the relics presented to the Duque de Alcalá by Pope Pius V. The ex-Viceroy was a liberal patron of the arts.He enriched his house with priceless works of art and a fine library—since removed to Madrid. He played the part of Mæcenas to the Varros of his generation. Here the wits, the savants, and the virtuosi of Spain were made welcome, and here they met together in a noble coterie. Among the frequenters of the house may be named Pacheco the painter, Céspedes, the Herreras, Góngora the poet, Jauregui, Baltasar de Alcazár, Rioja, Juan de Arguizo, and (probably) Cervantes. Herr Schmidt tells us that Seville did not stand alone among the cities of Spain in boasting such a rallying-point for genius: “In Guadalajara, the palace of the Mendozas, in Alba de Tormes and Abadia, the castles of the Duque de Alba, in Madrid, the arts were treasured by Antonio Perez; in Zaragoza by the Duque de Villahermosa, in Plasencia by Don Luis de Avila, in Burgos by the Velascos. These and other families in Spain followed the example set by the Medici in Italy.”
The ground-plan of the Casa de Pilatos is Moorish, with an inner court, two storeys, guest-chambers, and high outer walls surrounding a garden. The exterior is plain and dignified. The portal is of marble, and over the arch is the text, “Nisi Dominus ædificaverit domum, in vanum laboraverunt qui ædificant eam,” etc. To the leftof the door is a jasper cross fixed in the wall. In October 1521, the Marqués de Tarifa returned from the Holy Land, and having traversed the path trodden by Christ on His way from Pilate’s house to Calvary, he placed this cross on the wall and counted thence the fourteen stations of the cross. The last fortuitously coincided with the Cruz del Campo, raised near the Caños de Carmona, in the year 1482.
The centralpatiois markedly Moorish in character, and is encircled with arcades of extraordinary symmetry and beauty. Pedro de Madrazo calls attention to the harmonious variety and irregularity of the arches and windows, comparing the effect thus produced to the admired disorder of the forest and plantation. The decoration of the walls and arches bears a general resemblance to that of the Alcazar, but on closer examination the influence of the plateresco, Late Gothic, and Renaissance styles is revealed. The fountain in the middle of thepatiois adorned with dolphins and four huge statues belonging to the best period of Roman art. The chapel is in the mixed pointed and Moorish styles. In the vestibule theajaraca, or trellis-work, theazulejos, and theajimeces, or twin-windows (now converted into ordinary windows) recall Moorish art; while theceiling is in the plateresco style. The arch of the chapel is Gothic, and its walls are laid withazulejosand stucco. In the middle of the floor stands a short marble column, a copy of the pillar at which Christ is supposed to have been scourged, preserved at Rome; it was the gift of Pius V.
The room called the Prætorium has a fine coffered ceiling and good tiling. The staircase is magnificent. Its walls are faced withazulejos, and its ceiling is in the cupola or half-orange style of the Salón de los Embajadores. Another room on the upper floor is adorned with paintings by Pacheco, the subject being Dædalus and Icarus. The view from the roof is perhaps the finest in the city.
The Casa de Pilatos, as might be inferred from the character of its founder, is a veritable cabinet of antiques and precious objects, marbles and fragments from Italica figuring largely in the collection.
A notable private residence, dating probably in its foundations from the beginning of the fifteenth century, is the Casa de Abades, sometimes called the Casa de los Pinelos. It passed into the hands of the Genoese family from which it derives its second name, and thence to the Cathedral Chapter (composed ofabbésorabades).In the sixteenth century it became the property of the Ribera family, the owners of the Casa de Pilatos. It is described by Madrazo as presenting a fine example of the Sevillian Renaissance style, which would appear to be compounded of all pre-existing styles. Mr Digby Wyatt, on the other hand, thinks the house more Italian than Spanish. But the beautifulpatio, the dados ofazulejos, and theajimeceslooking on the courtyard are distinctly Andalusian features. There are also traces of Moorish geometrical ornamentation, covered with repeated coats of whitewash.
The Palacio de las Dueñas, more properly the Palace of the Dukes of Alba, and sometimes called Palacio de las Pinedas, is a vast and once splendid mansion, partaking of the mixed style of the two buildings last described. It boasted at one time elevenpatios, with nine fountains, and over one hundred marble columns. A finepatioremains, surrounded by a gallery with graceful columns. The staircase, with its vaulted roof, recalls that of the Casa de Pilatos. In the lower part is a chapel of the fifteenth century, which has fared very badly at the hands of restorers or rather demolishers. This palace was for a time the residence of Lord Holland, an ardent admirer of Spanish literature, and theauthor (1805) of a memoir on Lope de Vega and Guillen de Castro.
Other notable residences of the nobility in Seville are the Casa de Bustos Tavera, and the Palaces of the Dukes of Osuna and Palomares and the Count of Peñaflor. These all date from what may be loosely called Mudejar times.
The Church of the University of Seville is of interest. The university itself was originally a college of the Society of Jesus, and was built in the middle of the sixteenth century, after designs ascribed to Herrera. Madrazo thinks it more likely that these were the work of the Jesuit Bartolomé de Bustamante. The church forms a Latin cross, a spacious half-orange dome covering the transept. The Renaissance style is followed. Here repose the members of the illustrious Ribera family, their remains having been transported hither on the suppression of the Cartuja (Carthusian Monastery). The oldest of the tombs is also that of the oldest Ribera, who died in 1423, aged 105 years. The finest is that of Doña Catalina (died 1505), the work of a Genoese sculptor. Other tombs are those of Don Pedro Henriquez, Diego Gomez de Ribera, Don Perafan de Ribera (1455), and Beatriz Portocarrero (1458). Let into the pavement isa magnificent bronze slab, to the memory of the Duque de Alcalá, the owner of the Casa de Pilatos. Among the sepulchres are those of the founder, Lorenzo Suarez de Figueroa, whose favourite dog is sculptured at his feet, and Benito Arias Montano, asavantwho died in 1598. Over the altar are three paintings: the “Holy Family,” the “Adoration of the Magi,” and the “Nativity”; the first by Roelas, the other two by his pupil, Juan de Varela. These, especially the first, are among the finest pictures in the city. The statue of St Ignatius Loyola by Montañez, coloured by Pacheco, is probably the only faithful likeness of the Saint. In this church are also to be seen two admirable works of Alonso Cano, “St John the Baptist” and “St John the Divine.”
The Renaissance made itself felt in Spain during the reign of Charles V., and was productive of the plateresco style. Seville contains two imposing monuments of this type of architecture—the Ayuntamiento (Town Hall) and Lonja (Exchange). The first-named was begun in 1527 by Diego de Riaño, and completed under Felipe II., about forty years later. Madrazo considers the building “somewhat inharmonious through the variety, a little excessive, of its lines, but admirable for the richness of the decoration and for fine and delicateexecution—a merit of the first importance in structures of this style, where the sculptor or stone-cutter ranked with the architect.”
The lower and older storey has three façades, all elaborately chased and designed like silversmiths’ work. The central façade, facing the Calle de Génova, bears the statues of Saints Ferdinand, Leandro, and Isidoro—symbolical of the temporal and spiritual power. The right façade is the purest and most regular of the three. The upper storey, belonging to the reign of Felipe II., appears almost plain in comparison with the tower. In the vestibule is a noble Latin inscription relating to justice. The lower Sala Capitular is a magnificent apartment worthy, as Madrazo remarks, of the Senate of a great republic. It is adorned with the statues of the Castilian kings down to Charles V., with a rich frieze designed with genii, masks, and animals, and with appropriate legends. The upper Sala Capitular has a magnificentartesonadoceiling. Over the grand staircase are a fine coffered ceiling and another in the form of a cupola. The archives of the municipality contain several valuable historical documents, and the embroidered banner of St Ferdinand.
The Lonja or Exchange dates from Felipe II.’sreign. The Patio de los Naranjos was formerly frequented by the merchants and brokers of Seville for the transaction of business, and this practice interfering seriously with divine worship in the Cathedral, the Archbishop, Cristobal de Rojas, petitioned Felipe II. to follow the precedent just established by Sir Thomas Gresham and to build an Exchange or Casa de Contratacion. The preparation of the plans was confided to Herrera, and the building, under the direction of Juan de Minjares, was finished in 1598—at precisely the time, as Ford remarks, that the commerce of Seville began to decline. The Lonja in its stern simplicity reflects, like the Escorial, the temper of Felipe II.—a sovereign, unpopular though he may have been, in whom it is impossible not to recognise the elements of greatness. The edifice forms a perfectly regular quadrangle, and the sobriety of the decoration affords a striking contrast to the gorgeous profusion of the Ayuntamiento. The inner court is noble and severe with its gallery of Doric and Ionic columns. The dignity of the whole has been impaired by later additions and restorations. Here are deposited the archives of the Indies (i.e.South America), the documents being arranged in handsome mahogany cases. They have never beenthoroughly gone through and examined. The business men of Seville soon abandoned their Exchange, and it is chiefly to be remembered as the seat of Murillo’s Academy of Painters, founded in 1660.
In connection with the American traffic of Seville it should be mentioned that in the village of Castilleja la Cuesta, near the city, is the house where Hernando Cortés died in 1547. The place has been acquired by the Duc de Montpensier, by whom it has been converted into a sort of museum. The Conquistador’s bones rest in the country which, with such intrepidity, he won for the Spanish race.
The Civil Hospital of Seville, otherwise known by the ghastly designation of the Hospital de las Cinco Llagas or del Sangre (of the Five Wounds or of the Blood), was designed in 1540 by Martin Gainza. It is a massive stone edifice of two storeys, the lower Doric and the upper Ionic. In the centralpatiois the chapel in the form of a Greek cross, the façade exhibiting a tasteful combination of the three Grecian styles. The altarpiece is by Maeda and Alonzo Vazquez. The pictures of saints are by Zurbarán, and the “Apotheosis of St Hermenegild” and the “Descent from the Cross” by Roelas.
Aboutthe middle of the seventeenth century there lived at Seville a young gallant, Don Miguel de Mañara by name, whose excesses and escapades horrified even that lax generation. Marriage with the heiress of the Mendozas did not sober him. Of him, at this period of his life, this much good may be said, that he patronised and encouraged Murillo. But one day something happened: quite suddenly the rake changed into a devotee, an ascetic—a saint in the seventeenth-century acceptation of the word. The wine-bibber forswore even chocolate as too tempting a beverage.
What had happened to produce this startling reformation? Accounts vary. Some say that Don Miguel, traversing the streets in insensate rage against some custom-house officials, was suddenly and vividly made conscious of the enormous wickedness of his life. A more picturesque version is the following: Returning froma carousal one night, the Don found himself absolutely unable to discover his house or the way thither. Wandering desperately up and down distressed, and in perplexity of mind, he perceived a funeral cortège approaching. Impelled by irresistible curiosity, he stepped up to the bearers of the bier and asked whose body they were carrying. Came the reply: “The corpse of Don Miguel de Mañara.” The horror-stricken prodigal tore aside the pall, and lo! the face of the dead man was his own. The vision disappeared, and the same instant the Don found himself at the door of his own house. He entered it a changed man.
The church and hospital of La Caridad are the existing fruits of Don Miguel’s conversion. As far back as 1578, there had existed at Seville a confraternity, the objects of which were to assist condemned criminals at their last moments and to provide them with Christian burial. To this association the reformed rake turned his attention. He converted the chapel into a hospital for the sick, the poor, and the pilgrims of all nations, and liberally endowed it out of his ample resources.
The edifice is in the decadent Greco-Roman style, and was designed by Bernardo Simón dePereda. The Baroque façade is adorned with five large blue faïence designs on a white ground, the subjects being Faith, Hope, and Charity, St James, and St George. Tradition has it that these were made after drawings by Murillo at theazulejofactory of Triana. The church hardly appears to us to warrant the description “one of the most elegant in Seville,” applied to it by Sir W. Stirling-Maxwell. Under the High Altar is buried the founder, Don Miguel. His own wish was to be buried at the entrance to the church, with the epitaph:Aqui yacen los huesos y cenizas del peor hombre que ha habido en el mundo(Here lie the bones and ashes of the worst man that ever lived in this world). His sword, and his portrait painted by Valdés Leal, are preserved in the Hospital.
As a museum of Spanish art, La Caridad possesses great importance. The altarpiece, “The Descent from the Cross,” is the masterpiece of Pedro Roldan. The two paintings near the entrance by Juan de Valdés Leal (1630-1691) are regarded by Herr Schmidt as entitling that artist to rank as one of the greatest masters of realism of any age. This opinion is not shared by a recent writer (C. Gasquoine Hartley), who considers the pictures theatrical, though the execution exhibits a certain power. “In one of them a hand holds a pair of scales, in which the sins of the world—represented by bats, peacocks, serpents, and other objects—are weighed against the emblems of Christ’s Passion; in the other, which is the finer composition, Death, with a coffin under one arm, is about to extinguish a taper, which lights a table spread with crowns, jewels, and all the gewgaws of earthly pomp. The words ‘In Ictu Oculi’ circle the gleaming light of the taper, while upon the ground rests an open coffin, dimly revealing the corpse within.” Murillo said this picture had to be looked at with the nostrils closed. For the two paintings Valdés received 5740 reals.
Of the eleven pictures painted by Murillo for this church, only six remain, the others having been carried off by the French. The subjects are “Moses striking the Rock,” the “Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes,” the “Charity of San Juan de Dios,” the “Annunciation,” the “Infant Jesus,” and “St John.” The first picture, depicting, as it does, the terrible thirst experienced by the Israelites, is known asLa Sed(Thirst). Some critics think this is one of the finest of the master’s productions. As is usual in his compositions, the figures are all those of ordinary Sevillian types.“The personality of Christ in the ‘Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes,’”says C. Gasquoine Hartley, “lacks the force of the ancient prophet, and the work as a whole is inferior to its companion picture.” The “Charity of San Juan de Dios”—representing the Saint carrying a beggar with the help of an angel—is the best and most characteristic of the six paintings. The “Infant Jesus” and the “St John” are also very fine. For the “San Juan de Dios” and the “St Elizabeth of Hungary”—El Tiñoso—(now at Madrid) together, Murillo was paid 18,840 reals; for the Moses, 13,300 reals; and for the “Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes,” 15,973 reals.
The last building which may be said to rank as an architectural monument erected in Seville is the Palacio de San Telmo, now the residence of the Duc de Montpensier. In the year 1682 the Naval School of San Telmo was founded on the site of the former palace of the Bishops of Morocco and the tribunal of the Holy Office. The present edifice, begun, after plans by Antonio Rodriguez, in 1734, was not completed till 1796. The palace adjoins the beautiful gardens of the Delicias. The façade is exceedingly ornate, the decoration being in the Plateresco style. The general effect is pleasing, but critics have beenunsparing in their denunciations of the structure. It certainly reflects the debasing influence of the architect Jose Churriguera (1665-1725), who has given his name (Churrigueresque) to one of the most tawdry and tasteless styles of architecture.
The Archiepiscopal Palace, adjacent to the Cathedral, is also in the bad style of the later seventeenth century. The interior, however, is worth visiting for the sake of the noble marble staircase, one of the finest in the city. Here are three paintings by Alejo Fernandez, an early seventeenth-century artist, whom Lord Leighton considered “the most conspicuous among the Gothic painters.”
The Fabrica de Tabacos is a vast building completed in 1757. Apart from its size, it possesses no architectural interest, and though a favourite showplace for tourists, does not come within the scope of a work of this character.
By
Albert F. Calvert and C. Gasquoine Hartley
InSeville, perhaps to a greater extent than in any city, even in Spain, the country of passionate individualism, art is the reflection of the life and temper of the people; and to understand Seville we must know her painters. As we look at the pictures of the Spanish primitives, at the emphatic canvases of Juan de las Roelas and Herrera, for instance; at the realism of Zubarán, or, still more, at the ecstatic visions of Murillo—as we see them in the old Convento de la Merced, now the Museo Provincial, in the Cathedral, or in one or another of the numerous churches in the city, we find the special spirit of Andalusia.
There is one quality that, at a first glance, impresses us in these pictures, so different, and yet all having one aim. It is their profound seriousness. Rarely, indeed, shall we find a picture in which the idea of beauty, whether it is the beauty of colour or the beauty of form, has stood first in the painter’s mind; almostin vain shall we search for any love of landscape, for any passage introduced just for its own sake. For, let it be remembered, in Andalusia art was devotional always. “The chief end of art,” says Pacheco, the master of Velazquez, in hisArte de la Pintura, “is to persuade men to piety and to incline them to God.” Pictures had other purposes to serve than that of beauty. They were painted for the Church to enforce its lessons, they were used as warnings, and as a means of recording the lives of the Saints. In other countries, it is true, painters have spent their strength in religious art, but almost always we can find as well as the sacred, some outside motive, some human love of the subject for itself—for its opportunities of beauty. The intense realism of these Spanish pictures is a thing apart; these Assumptions, Martyrdoms, and Saintly Legends were painted with a vivid sense of the reality of these things by men who felt upon them the hand of God. We know that Luis de Vargas daily humbled himself by scourging and by wearing a hair shirt, and Juan Juanes prepared himself for a new picture by communion and confession. These are two examples chosen out of many. A legend we read of Don Miguel de Mañara, the founder of the Hospital of LaCaridad, illustrates this dramatic religious sense of Spain. One day in church Don Miguel saw a beautiful nun, and, forgetful of her habit, made amorous proposals. She did not speak; instead, she turned to look at him; whereupon he saw the side of her face which had been hidden from his eyes: it was eaten away, corrupted by a hideous disease, so that it seemed more horrible than the face of death. It was such scenes as this that the Spanish artists chose to paint. But, indeed, it would be tedious to enumerate the examples which Spain offers of this curious, often, it would seem to us, corrupted sense of the gloom of life, carrying with it as one result the passionate responsibility of art. Always, we feel certain that the Spanish painters felt all that they express.
And this overpowering, if mistaken, understanding of the presence of the divine life gave a profound seriousness to human life. The shadow of earth was felt, not its light; and emotion expressed itself in an intense seriousness, that is over-emphatic too often—always, in fact, when the painter’s idea is not centred in reality. This is the reason why a Spanish painter had to treat a vision as a real scene. We have pictures horrible with the sense of human corruption—such, for instance, are the two gruesome canvases of Valdés Leal, in La Caridad. Again and again is enforced the Catholic lesson of humility, expressing itself in acts of charity to the poor, so essential an idea when this life is held as but a threshold to a divine life. We find a sort of wild delight in martyrdom; a joy that is perfectly sincere in the scourging of the body. All the Spanish pictures tell stories. Was not their aim to translate life?—the life of earth and the, to them, truer life of heaven—and life itself is a story? Their successes in art are due to this, their failures to the sacrifice of all endeavours to this aim; a danger from which, perhaps, no painter except Velazquez quite escaped. He, faultless in balance, in his exquisite statement of life, expresses perfectly the truth his predecessors had tried for, but missed, except indeed now and again, in some unusual triumph over themselves. We find hardly a painter able to free himself from the traditions of his subject. Only Velazquez, controlled by the northern strain that mingles with the passion of his Andalusian temper, was saved quite from this danger of over-statement. And Velazquez does not belong to Seville, though he was born in the southern city on June 5, 1599, in the house, No. 8, Calle deGorgoja; though the first years of his life were spent there, the time of childhood, the few months of work with the violent Herrera, the five years in the studio of Pacheco, his master; though—a fact of greater import—his temper was Andalusian; and though his early pictures—thebodégones, so familiar to us in England, whither so many have travelled through the fortune of wars—are entirely Spanish in their direct realism. Velazquez worked contemporaneously with the Realistic movement that quickened the arts in Seville in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but he worked outside it. This explains the silence of his art in Seville. Of the pictures of his youth, painted while he was there, none remain, except one in the Archiepiscopal Palace, “The Virgin delivering the Chasuble to San Ildefonso”; and the authenticity of this picture has been denied until very recently, a fact explained by the bad condition of the canvas. To see the wonderful art of Velazquez you must leave Seville and visit the Museo del Prado at Madrid. Seville is the home of religious art. The habit of her painters was serious; in their profound religious sense, in their adherence, almost brutal at times, to facts, as well as in those interludes of sensuous sweetness that nowand again, as, for instance in the art of Murillo, burst out so strangely like an exotic bloom, they reflect the temper of Spain. It is contended sometimes that these pictures in Seville are wanting in dignity, wanting in beauty. But are we not too apt to confine beauty to certain forms of accepted expression? Surely any art that has life; has dignity, has beauty; and no one can deny that life was the inspiration of the Andalusian painters.
We must remember these things if we would understand the pictures in Seville.
But first we find ourselves carried away from the reality and darkness of life back to a happy childhood of art, as we look at the three fourteenth-century frescoes of the Virgin—the “Antigua,” in the chapel named after it in the Cathedral, “Nuestra Señora del Corral” in San Ildefonso, and “Señora Maria de Rocamador” in San Lorenzo—an art when the painter, less conscious of life and of himself, was content to paint beautiful patterns. In these three pictures—all that are left to us—we see the last of Byzantine art in Spain. The figures, with long oval faces all of one type, are placed stiffly against a background of Gothic gold. Look at “Señora Maria de Rocamador,” as she sits holding theChild upon her knees; while two little angels kneel, one upon the left, one on the right. She wears a blue robe, partly covered with a mantle of deep purple, very beautiful with ornaments of gold and bordered with gold braid. A bent coronet around her head stands out against the glowing halo; the background is all of gold woven into a delicate pattern. It is a picture of pure convention in which is no effort to carry the mind beyond what is actually seen; it makes its appeal just as so much decoration. This fresco, as well as the “Antigua” and “Nuestra Señora del Corral,” have been much repainted—the ill-fortune of so many early Spanish works.
But, in the fifteenth century, a new spirit came into art; and with the work of Juan Sánchez de Castro the school of Seville may be said to begin. No knowledge has come down to us of his life; we know only that he was painting in Seville between 1454 and 1516. In his great fresco of “San Cristóbal,” that covers the wall near to the main door in the old Church of San Julian—alas! now spoiled by re-painting and by the subsequent rotting away of the plaster—we find a different, human, almost playful treatment of a sacred story. And for the first time in Seville,we see the special Spanish quality, characteristic of the whole school from this time to the time of Goya, of rendering a scene just as the painter supposed it might have happened. “A child’s dream of a picture,” Mr Arthur Symons has called it. San Cristóbal, many times the size of life, stretching from floor to ceiling, fills the whole picture; he leans upon a pine-staff as he supports the Child Christ upon his shoulders, who holds in his hands a globe of the world upon which the shadow of a cross has fallen. The other figures, the hermit and two pilgrims with staves and cloaks, are quite small; they reach just to the Saint’s knees. And this immense grotesque figure is painted in all seriousness, as a child might picture such a scene. To understand the sincerity of the Spanish painter, we must compare his work with that other fresco of “San Cristóbal,” painted, much later, by Perez de Alesio, which is in the Cathedral. The Italian picture is an attempt to illustrate a popular miracle, perfectly unconvincing; De Castro’s Saint compels us to accept and realise what the painter himself believed in. This is the difference between them.
In the smaller pictures of Sánchez de Castro that remain to us, such, for instance, as the panel of the “Madonna with St Peter and St Jerome,”once in San Julian, but now in the Cathedral, we find him more bound by convention, less himself. We see the immense debt Spanish painting owed to Flemish art. And this influence, always so beneficial, the Northern art being, for reasons of race not possible to state here, the true affinity of Spain in art, remains, with different and more certain knowledge, in the “Pietà” of Juan Nuñez, which still hangs in the Cathedral where it was painted. It meets us again in the fine and interesting “Entombment” by Pedro Sánchez, a painter of whom we know nothing, except that his name is given by Cean Bermudez among the illustrious artists of Spain. The picture may be seen in the collection of Don José López Cepero, at No. 7 Plaza de Alfaro, the house in which Murillo is said to have lived. In all three pictures, and in other work of the same period not possible to mention here, we are face to face with that special Spanish trait, the pre-occupation with grief, that is quite absent from the early fourteenth-century Madonnas, as from the simple child-art of De Castro’s “San Cristóbal.” The shadow of the Inquisition had fallen; art, the handmaid of the Church, could express itself no longer in quaint and beautiful symbols. Instead, it had to force itself to be taken seriously, being occupied whollywith emphatic statements, its aim an insistence on the relation of human life to the divine life.
But the joy of life did not die easily.
Juan Nuñez, once, at least, in those pictures in the Cathedral in which he has painted the archangels Michael and Gabriel quite gaily, their wings bright with peacock’s feathers, returns to the child-humour of De Castro. And Nuñez carries us forward to Alejo Fernandez, the most important painter of this early period, much of whose work remains for us in the Cathedral and in the old churches of Seville.
Go to the suburb of Triana, and in the Church of Santa Ana there is the sweetest Madonna and Child, in which we find a new suggestion in the joy of the Mother in her Babe, a human attitude, making the picture something more than mere illustration. And we notice a delicate care for beauty found very rarely in Seville, perhaps never as perfectly as in the work of this painter. The “Virgen de la Rosa” is the name given to the picture. The Mother sits enthroned under a canopy of gold, in a beautiful robe of elaborate pattern, pale gold on brown. She holds a white rose out to her Child. Typical of Fernandez is this fortunate use of the flower; typical, too, of his new mood of invention is the smalllandscape of rocky and wooded country that fills the distance. The gracious pose of the Virgin, the beauty in the Child, show an advance in ease upon earlier pictures. But the other figures, four angels who guard the Mother, all posed a little awkwardly, suggest a scheme on whose design the early Byzantine models may have had a forming influence, though the result is different enough. For Fernandez understood the very spirit of the Renaissance; he saw life beautifully and strongly. The attraction of the picture is in its effect of joy, in the charming way in which it forms a pattern of beautiful colour, and in its new sense of humanity that carries us beyond the scene itself.