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The ancient iron mines of Spain were no less celebrated than her mines of silver and of gold. Nevertheless, the history of Spanish iron-work begins comparatively late. Excepting certain swords and other weapons which require to be noticed under Arms, and owing to the commonness and cheapness of this metal, as well as to the ease with which it decomposes under damp, few of the earliest Spanish objects made of iron have descended to our time.⁶¹ Even Riaño pays but little notice to this craft in the Peninsula before the second half of the fifteenth century. Henceforth, he says, “it continued to progress in the sixteenth, and produced, undoubtedly, at that period works which were unrivalled in Europe.”

The decorative iron-work of Spain may suitably be dealt with in three classes: railings, screens, or pulpits of churches, chapels, and cathedrals; balconies and other parts or fittings applied to public or private buildings of a non-ecclesiastical character; and smaller, though not necessarily less attractive or important objects, such as knockers, locks and keys, and nail-heads.

The last of these divisions, as embracing Spanish-Moorish craftsmanship, shall have, as far as order is concerned, our preferential notice.

Surely, in the whole domain of history, no object has a grander symbolism than the key. In mediæval times the keys of cities, castles, towns, and fortresses were held to be significant of ownership, or vigilance, or conquest. Especially was this the case in Spain—a nation incessantly engaged in war. Probably in no country in the world has the ceremony of delivering up this mark of tenure of a guarded and defended place occurred so often as here. Do we not read of it in stirring stanzas of her literature? Do we not find it in her paintings, on her stone and metal rilievi, or carved in wood upon the stalls of her cathedrals? Therefore the key, just like the sword, seemed, in the warm imagination of the Spaniards, to be something almost sacred. The legislative codes of Old Castile are most minute in their relation of its venerated attributes. Nor were the Spanish Muslims less alive to its importance than their foe, taking it also for an emblem of their own, and planting it in lordly eminence upon their gates and towers of Cordova, and Seville, and Granada. For what was Tarik's Mountain but the key of the narrow gate that led to their enchanted land, as sunny as, and yet less sultry than, their sandy home; truly a land of promise to the fiery children of the desert, panting for the paradise that smiled at them across the storied strip of emerald and sapphire water?

So was it that both Moors and Spaniards made their keys of fortresses and citadels almost into an object of their worship. In hearing or in reading of such keys, the mind at once recurs to those of Seville (Plate xix.), two in number, famed throughout the world of mediæval art, and stored among the holiest relics in the sacristy of her cathedral. The larger is of silver, in the style now known as Mudejar, and dates from the second half of the thirteenth century. The length is rather more than eight inches, and the whole key is divided into five compartments, ornamented in enamels and in gold. Castles, ships, and lions adorn the thicker portion of the stem between the barrel proper and the handle; and on the rim of the latter is this inscription, in Hebrew characters:—

“The King of Kings will open; the king of all the land shall enter.”⁶²

The wards are also beautifully carved into the following legend, distributed in two rows, one superposed upon the other, of two words and of ten letters apiece:—

“Dios abrirá; Rey entrará.” “God will open; the king shall enter.”

The iron key is purely Moorish, smaller than its fellow, and measures just over six inches. Like the other, it consists of five divisions, and the wards are in the form of an inscription in African Cufic characters, which Gayangos and other Arabists have variously interpreted. Five of the commonest readings are as follows:—

(1) “May Allah permit that the rule (of Islam) last for ever in this city.”

(2) “By the grace of God may (this key) last for ever.”

(3) “May peace be in the King's mansion.”

(4) “May God grant us the boon of the preservation of the city.”

(5) “To God (belongs) all the empire and the power.”

Our earliest tidings of this iron key are from the Jesuit Bernal, who wrote in the seventeenth century. It was not then the property of the cathedral chapter, for Ortiz de Zúñiga says that it belonged, in the same century, to a gentleman of Seville named Don Antonio Lopez de Mesa, who had inherited it from his father. Tradition declares that both this key and its companion were laid at the feet of Ferdinand the Third by Axataf, governor of Seville, when the city capitulated to the Christian prince on November 23rd, 1248. But Ortiz is careful to inform us that he neither countenances nor rejects the popular notion that the iron key was thus delivered as the token of surrender, “although,” he says, “the owners of it are strongly of this judgment.” What we do know is that on June 16th, 1698, the iron key was presented to the cathedral by Doña Catalina Basilia Domonte y Pinto, niece of the Señor Lopez de Mesa aforesaid; and that the chapter forthwith accepted it with solemn gratitude as “one of the keys delivered by the Moors to the Rey Santo on the conquest of the city,” ordering it to be guarded in a special box.

Such is the popular fancy still accepted by the Sevillanos. However, Amador de los Ríos has sifted out a good deal of the truth, showing that the iron and the silver key are wrought in different styles, and were intended for a different purpose. He places the iron instrument among the “keys of conquered cities,” and its silver neighbour among the “keys of honour, or of dedication”; and he declares as certain (although the reasons he adduces do not quite convince me) that this iron key is actually the one which figured in the ceremony of surrender. The other he considers to have been a gift from the Sevillians to the tenth Alfonso, son of Ferdinand the saint and conqueror, as a loyal and a grateful offering in return for his protection of their industries and commerce. However this may be, the decorative aspect of the larger key, together with the choice material of which it is made, appears to prove that it was not associated with the rigours of a siege, but served in some way as a symbol of prosperity and peace. It was a common custom at a later age for Spanish cities to present their sovereign, when he came among them, with a richly ornamented key. Such keys were offered to Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second when, in 1526 and 1570, respectively, they visited Seville; while Riaño reminds us that “even in the present day the ceremony is still kept up of offering a key to the foreign princes who stay at the royal palace of Madrid.” Similarly, as an ordinary form of salutation, does the well-bred Spaniard place his house at your disposal.

Five Moorish keys—one of bronze and four of iron—are in the Museum of Segovia, and bear, as Amador observes, a general resemblance to the iron key of Seville. The wards of four of them are shaped into the following inscriptions: the first key, “In Secovia (Segovia)”; the second, “(This) key was curiously wrought at Medina Huelma, God protect her”; the third, “Open”; and the fourth, “This work is by Abdallah.”

The first and smallest of these keys informs us, therefore, that it was manufactured at Segovia. The third key is that which is of bronze, and bears the word “Open,” probably addressed to Allah. The second, which is also the largest and the most artistic and ornate, belonged, we read upon its wards, to Huelma, a fortress-town upon the frontiers of the kingdom of Granada. This town was wrested from the Moors on April 20th, 1438, by Iñigo Lopez de Mendoza, first Marquis of Santillana, who possibly sent this key to Castile as a present to his sovereign, Juan the Second, in company with the usual papers of capitulation.

Other Moorish keys are scattered over Spain in various of her public and private collections, though none are so remarkable as those of Seville and Segovia. The town of Sepúlveda possesses seven early iron keys, several of which are Moorish. Others are at Burgos, Valencia, Palma, Jaen, and Granada. At the last-named city the following key, dating undoubtedly from the period of the Muslim domination, was discovered, in 1901, among the débris of the Palace of Seti Meriem.⁶³

Keys of awe-inspiring magnitude are still preferred among the Spaniards to a handier and slighter instrument, this people seeming to believe that the bigger the key the more inviolable is the custody which it affords—a theory not at all upheld by modern experts in this venerable craft. Perhaps this singular and local preference is derived from Barbary. At any rate it still obtains across the Strait. “Our host,” wrote Mr. Cunninghame Graham in Mogreb-El-Acksa, “knocks off great pieces from a loaf of cheap French sugar with the key of the house, drawing it from his belt and hammering lustily, as the key weighs about four ounces, and is eight or nine inches long.” Of such a length are nearly all the house-keys of contemporary Spain; and with this apparatus bulging in his belt the somnolent sereno or night-watchman of this sleepy, unprogressive, Latino-Mussulmanic land prowls to this hour along the starlit streets of Barcelona, Seville, or Madrid.

The city Ordinances of Granada form a valuable and interesting link between the Spanish-Moorish craftsmanship and that of Spaniards Christian-born. The Ordenanzas de Cerrageros, or Locksmiths' Ordinances, though not voluminous, are curious and informative beyond the rest, and show us that a general rascality was prevalent in Granada after her reconquest from the Moor. Locksmiths were forbidden now to make a lock the impression of which was put into their hands in wax, even if the order should be sweetened by “a quantity of maravedis,” since the effect of such commissions, whose very secrecy betrayed illicit and improper ends in view, was stated to be “very greatly perilous and mischief-making.”

Another Ordinance reveals the Christian locksmiths of Granada as arrant scoundrels, almost as troublesome to deal with as the pestering little shoeblacks of to-day. “Word is brought us,” groaned the aldermen, “how many locksmiths, foreigners that dwell within this city as well as naturals that go up and down our thoroughfares, in taking locks and padlocks to repair, do, at the same time that they set the keys in order, contrive to fit them with new wards inferior to the older ones, so as to be able to open and close them with the keys they have themselves in store, wherein is grave deceitfulness, seeing that the aforesaid locks and padlocks may be opened in such wise without a key at all.”⁶⁴

If we except the vast dimensions of the common keys of houses, this branch of Spanish craftsmanship has now no quality to point it from the rest of Europe, having become, in Riaño's words, “simply practical and useful.” Laborde observed in 1809 that “locks and various iron utensils are made in divers places. Locksmiths are numerous at Vega de Ribadeo in Galicia, at Helgoivar in Biscay, at Vergara in Guipuscoa, at Solsona and Cardona in Catalonia. Different kinds of iron goods are manufactured at Vergara, Solsona, and Cardona. The articles made of iron and steel at Solsona are in high estimation, notwithstanding they are destitute of taste and elegance, badly finished, and worse polished; and can by no means be put in competition with similar articles introduced from other countries.”⁶⁵

Iron nails with ornamented heads and decorative door-knockers are other objects which reveal the influence of Mohammedan Spain. A number of artistic Spanish nails are in the South Kensington Museum. “Some doors,” says Riaño, “still exist at the Alhambra, Granada, covered with enormous heads of nails of a half-spherical form with embossed pattern. These same nails are constantly to be found on old Spanish houses, to which are added in the angles pieces of iron of a most artistic order” (Pl. xix.a). In the same city, though not precisely in the Alhambra, I have seen upon the doors of private houses nails of a decorative kind which appear to consist of a single piece, but which are really formed of two—an ornamental boss perforated through its centre, and the nail proper, which fastens through it to the woodwork of the door behind. Thus, when the nail is hammered tight upon the boss, the effect is naturally that of a single piece of metal. Similar nails are on the door of Tavera's hospital at Toledo.

DECORATIVE NAIL-HEADS

(Convent of San Antonio, Toledo)

The Ordenanzas of Granada tell us minutely of the nails which were produced there in the sixteenth century. They were denominated cabriales, costaneros, palmares, bolayques, vizcainos, sabetinos, and moriscos; of all of which I can only find that the cabriales and costaneros were used for beams and rafters, and the moriscos for fixing horse-shoes. In Spain the custom of fastening down the decorative coverings of chairs or benches dates from comparatively late; and it was probably with this innovation that iron-workers began to exercise their ingenuity upon the heads of nails.

Towards the close of the Middle Ages the city of Segovia was celebrated for her locks and keys, her knockers, and her rejas. In 1892, collections of iron objects, chiefly manufactured in this town, were shown by the duke of Segovia, Don Nicolás Duque, and Don Adolfo Herrera at the Exposición Histórico-Europea of Madrid. Segovia still preserves an old door covered with extraordinary iron spikes, that once belonged to the castle of Pedraza; many curious balconies, such as that in a first floor of the Calle del Carmen; and the grilles—proceeding from the old cathedral—of the chapel of the Cristo del Consuelo and the chapel of the Piedad.

Another interesting collection of early decorative Spanish iron, belonging to the well-known painter, Señor Rusiñol, is kept at the town of Sitjes, in Cataluña. The late Marquis of Arcicollar possessed a number of specimens of Spanish manufactured iron of the later Middle Ages, such as boxes, candelabra, locks, nails, door-knockers, braseros, and a rare and curious iron desk (fourteenth century), with leather fittings.

The collection of the late Count of Valencia de Don Juan included four door-knockers of Spanish iron, dating from late in the fifteenth century or early in the sixteenth. I give a reproduction of these knockers (Pl. xx.). The two which occupy the centre are evidently from a sacred building; while the other pair are just as evidently señoriales, and belonged to a noble house. In the former pair, the clumsy carving of the saints, Peter and James, is attributed by Serrano Fatigati to the native coarseness of the iron.

DOOR-KNOCKERS

(15th Century)

Proceeding from the same collection are a pair of ceremonial maces and a ceremonial lantern, which I also reproduce (Pl. xxi.), since the Spanish writer from whom I have just quoted pronounces them to be “excellent specimens of the iron-work of our country at the close of the Middle Ages.” He says that, as we notice in the pinnacles, they show a tendency to copy architectural detail, and are otherwise characteristic of the period. Towards the fourteenth century the file replaced the hammer, and the sheet of iron was substituted for the bar. These objects, dating from the fifteenth century, duly reveal this change. Also, as was usual at the time, they are composed of separate pieces stoutly riveted. In the knockers with the figures of the saints “we notice the partial use of the chisel, which became general in the sixteenth century, at the same time that iron objects were loaded with images, forms of animals, and other capricious figures. These may be said to belong to a period of transition, culminating in the rejas.”⁶⁶

The Madrid Museum contains a sixteenth-century cross of repoussé iron, in the Greek form, and which is certainly of Spanish make. According to Villa-amil, it formerly had a gilded border and was painted black, which leads this writer to suppose that it was used at funerals. Iron crosses may be seen occasionally on churches and on other public buildings, and Stirling has inserted cuts of several in his Annals of the Artists of Spain. Crosses of large size were sometimes planted on the highway. Such was the elaborate but ugly iron cross, measuring three yards in height, made by Sebastian Conde in 1692 for the Plazuela de la Cerrajeriá in Seville, and now preserved in her Museum.

CEREMONIAL MACES AND LANTERN

(15th Century)

The iron balustrade or verja of the marble tomb of Cardinal Cisneros is finely wrought in Plateresque-Renaissance, with elaborate designs of gryphons, foliage, urns, birds, masks, sheep's heads, swans, coats of arms, dolphins, and other ornament in great profusion. The craftsman was Nicolás de Vergara the elder. Lesser in size, though not less striking in its execution, is the railing, by Francisco de Villalpando, which surrounds the Altar de Prima in the choir of Toledo Cathedral.

“Iron pulpits,” says Riaño, “have been made in Spain with great success.” He mentions five: two in Avila Cathedral (Plate xxii.); two at Seville; and one at the church of San Gil at Burgos. The latter is described by Street, who says: “It is of very late date, end of the fifteenth century, but I think it quite worthy of illustration. The support is of iron, resting on stone, and the staircase modern. The framework at the angles, top and bottom, is of wood, upon which the iron-work is laid. The traceries are cut out of two plates of iron, laid one over the other, and the iron-work is in part gilded, but I do not think that this is original. The canopy is of the same age and character, and the whole effect is very rich at the same time that it is very novel. I saw other pulpits, but none so old as this.”

The iron pulpits of Salamanca, “covered with bas-reliefs representing the Evangelists and subjects taken from the Acts of the Apostles and the apocalypse,” were made at the same time as the reja by Fray Francisco de Zalamea or Salamanca, Fray Juan, and other artists. The two at Avila are stationed one on either side of the Capilla Mayor, and are of gilded iron, hexagonal in form, and measuring about ten feet in height. Gryphons or other beasts support the pulpit on its stem or column. The body of each pulpit bears the arms of the cathedral, namely, the Agnus Dei, a lion, and a castle—the whole surmounted by a crown—and is divided lengthways by a central band into a double tier, closed by a richly decorated cornice at the upper and the lower border. Otherwise the pulpits are quite dissimilar. In one the decorative scheme is almost purely geometrical, while in the other it consists of foliage, birds and beasts, and niches containing statuettes of saints. The stair-railings are modern; but the primitive carving still adorns the end of every step.⁶⁷

IRON PULPIT

(Avila Cathedral)

We do not know who was the maker of these pulpits. Some believe him to have been a certain Juan Francés, to whom our notice will again be called as figuring among the earliest masters of this eminently Spanish craft, and who, on strongish evidence, is thought to be the author of the rejas in the same cathedral which enclose the choir, and the front and sides of the Capilla Mayor. This is the only reason for supposing him to have made the pulpits also. One of these, however, is in the Flamboyant, and the other in the Renaissance style; so it may well be doubted whether both were produced by the same hand, or even at exactly the same period.⁶⁸

It is, however, in the rejas that the craftsmanship of older Spain attains its loftiest pinnacle. They consist, says Banister Fletcher, of “rich and lofty grilles in hammered and chiselled iron … strongly characteristic of the national art. The formality of the long and vertical bars is relieved by figures beaten in repoussé, in duplicates, attached back to back, and by crestings and traceries adapted to the material, and freely employed. Few things in Spain are more original and artistic.”⁶⁹

The reja generally was not, as many have supposed, of late invention. It existed from the earliest days of Christianity; but it was only in the Gothic and Renaissance ages that Spain converted it into a vehicle for decorative art. The growth of these ornamental rejas may be traced in cities of Old Castile, together with Seville, Salamanca, Cuenca, and Toledo. Spain, it is idle to observe, was at no moment so appreciative of her craftsmen as was Italy, so that our information as to mediæval Spanish craftsmen and the process of their lives and labours is, upon the whole, deplorably deficient. Nevertheless, among the oldest of her artists known in Spanish as rejeros, or (a finer and more venerable term) “reja-masters”—maestros de rexas—appears Juan Francés, working in 1494 in Toledo Cathedral and, in the same capacity (for he seems to have been an armourer besides, and to have held the title of “master-maker of iron arms in Spain”)⁷⁰ at Alcalá de Henares, as well as, in 1505, at Osma, in whose cathedral he made the rejas of the choir and high chapel.⁷¹

Although the craftsman's name has rarely been recorded, we know that excellent rejería was made at Barcelona in the fifteenth century. Also dating from the fifteenth century, and therefore prior to the Plateresque, is the reja, ornamented with leaves and figures of centaurs and other creatures, mythical and real, enclosing the sepulchre of the Anayas in the old cathedral of Salamanca. During the first quarter of the sixteenth century much work in decorative rejería was completed in Seville Cathedral by Fernando Prieto, Fray Francisco de Salamanca,⁷² Sancho Muñoz, Diego de Adrobo, and others (vide Frontispiece). Taught by these, while yet belonging to a slightly later time, and linking in this way the riper and decadent Gothic with the new Renaissance and the Plateresque, were Pedro de Andino, Antonio de Palencia, and Juan Delgado. Rosell observes that without doubt these artists, excepting only Juan Francés—the pioneer of them all—were Spanish-born; and they in their turn were succeeded by other Spaniards who worked most regularly at Toledo; such as Bartolomé Rodriguez, Luis de Peñafiel, and Francisco de Silva.

An excellent rejero named Hernando de Arenas completed the grille of Cuenca Cathedral in 1557. Three years before, a Cordovese, Fernando de Valencia, had made the intricate Renaissance reja of the Chapel of the Asunción in the mosque of that most ancient capital—a noble piece of work, which still exists. Other rejeros who were either natives of, or who resided in, this city were Pedro Sanchez, Alonso Perez, Pedro Sanchez Cardenosa, Francisco Lopez, Juan Martinez Cano, and Diego de Valencia.

One of these men, Alonso Perez, a native of Jaen, contracted, on April 13th, 1576, to make the rejas of the Capilla Mayor in the church of the convent of the Trinity at Cordova. He was to finish them within one year, at a cost of fifty-one maravedis for every pound of iron, of sixteen ounces to the pound. Ramírez de Arellano, who has extracted these notices of Cordovese artists from the city archives⁷³, says that the reja in question is no longer standing; but a document of the time informs us that it was of an elaborate character, and carried architraves, cornices, and the usual decorative detail of the Spanish Renaissance.

In 1593 Pedro Sanchez agreed to make, within four years, a grille for the old chapel of the Concepción, also in Cordova, at a cost of forty-nine maravedis for every pound of iron that the finished reja should contain; and a year later the same artist signed a contract for what is thought to be his masterpiece—the reja of the chapel of the Holy Cross, in the nave of the sagrario of the same temple. The stipulated time was two years only; but the cost amounted in this instance to one hundred maravedis for every pound of the completed reja.

Marvels of power and of patience are among the rejas of this land. In them, obedient to the genius of the craftsman, the ponderous metal assumes the gossamer lightness of the finest gauze, now seeming to be breathed rather than built across the entrance to some side-chapel, now tapering skyward till we fancy it to melt away, like vapour, on the surface of the lofty roof. Such are the screens—which here demand a brief description—of Toledo and Palencia and Granada; that of Cuenca, where Arenas plied his master-hand; and, first in merit of them all, the peerless reja, royal in magnificence and faultless taste, that closes in at Burgos the no less royal-looking chapel of a Count of Haro, sometime Constable of all Castile.

The reja of the Capilla Mayor of Toledo Cathedral is twenty-one feet high by forty-six in breadth. “Armies of workmen,” wrote Méndez Silva, referring to this screen and to its neighbour, that of the coro, “were toiling at them for ten years, nor would their cost have been greater had they been of founded silver.” The cost of which he speaks was more than a quarter of a million reales, although the workmen's daily wage was only two reales and a half, or, in the case of the particularly skilled, four reales.

The author of this admirable screen was Francisco de Villalpando, whose plans and estimate were approved by Cardinal Tavera in 1540. “The reja consists of two tiers resting on different kinds of marble. Attic columns ornamented with handsome rilievi and terminated by bronze caryatides, divide these tiers into several spaces. The upper tier is formed by seven columns of ornate pattern, containing, on a frieze of complicated tracery, figures of animals and angels, and other delicately drawn and executed objects in relief. Upon the cornice are coats of arms, angels, and other decoration; and in the centre, the imperial arms of Charles the Fifth, together with a large crucifix pendent from a massive gilded chain. On the frieze of the second tier are the words, ADORATE DOMINUM IN ATRIO SANCTO EJUS KALENDAS APRILIS 1548, and on the inner side, PLUS ULTRA.” ⁷⁴

REJA OF CHAPEL ROYAL (Granada Cathedral)

The other of the larger rejas in this temple—that of the choir—is not inferior in a great degree to Villalpando's masterpiece. It was made by “Maestre” Domingo (de Céspedes),⁷⁵ who, in his estimate of June 18th, 1540, engaged to finish it at a total cost of 5000 ducats, “he to be given the necessary gold and silver for the plating” (Archives of Toledo Cathedral, quoted by Rosell). This Maestre Domingo was aided by his son-in-law, Fernando Bravo, and both of them, says de la Rada y Delgado, were probably natives of Toledo.⁷⁶ In the same city they also made the rejas for the Baptismal Chapel, and for the chapels of the Reyes Viejos and Reyes Nuevos.

REJA OF CHAPEL ROYAL (View from interior. Granada Cathedral)

Excellent Plateresque rejas are those of the Capilla Mayor and Coro of Palencia Cathedral—the latter from the hand of Gaspar Rodriguez of Segovia, who finished it in 1571 at a cost of 3400 ducats. In the same city is the reja of the chapel of Nuestra Señora la Blanca, finished in 1512 by Juan Relojero, a Palencian, who received for his labour 25,000 maravedis and a load and a half of wheat.

The noble and colossal gilt and painted⁷⁷ reja of the Chapel Royal of Granada Cathedral was wrought between the years 1518 and 1523 by one Master Bartholomew, whose name is near the keyhole. This was a person of obscure life though mighty powers as a craftsman. We know that he resided at Jaen, and, from a document which still remains,⁷⁸ that he petitioned Charles the Fifth for payment (sixteen hundred ducats) of this grille, because the clergy had continually refused to liquidate it. He made, besides the work I herewith describe, the reja of the presbytery for Seville cathedral,⁷⁹ and possibly, as Sentenach suggests, the iron tenebrarium, ten feet high by five across, for the cathedral of Jaen.

The reja of the Chapel Royal of Granada, “of two faces, the finest that was ever made of this material,” ⁸⁰ has three tiers. “The first tier contains six Corinthian pilasters and a broad frieze covered with Plateresque ornamentation, as are the pedestals on which the pilasters rest. In the second tier are the arms of Ferdinand and Isabella within a garland supported by two lions, and other crowns together with the yoke and arrows;⁸¹ all intertwined with stems, leaves, and little angels of an exquisite effect. Before the pilasters of this tier and of the one immediately above it are figures of the apostles on Gothic brackets—a style we also notice on the fastening of the gate and on the twisted railing; but every other detail of the grille is Plateresque. Upon the top are scenes of martyrdoms and of the life of Christ, the whole surmounted by a decorative scheme of leaves and candelabra, and, over this, a crucifix together with the figures of the Virgin and Saint John. The designing of the figures is only moderately good, but all remaining detail and the craftsmanship are admirable” ⁸² (Plates xxiii. and xxiv.).

Last on my list of Spanish reja-makers I place the greatest and most honoured of them all—Cristóbal de Andino, who, as a modern writer has expressed it, “uttered the last word in the matter of giving shape to iron.” Cristóbal, son of Pedro de Andino—himself an artist of no mean capacity—excelled in architecture, sculpture, rejería, and probably in silver-work as well. “Good craftsmen,” wrote his contemporary, Diego de Sagredo, “and those who wish their work to breathe the spirit of authority and pass without rebuke, should follow—like your fellow-townsman, Cristóbal de Andino—ancient precepts, in that his works have greater elegance and beauty than any others that I witnessed heretofore. If this (you think) be not the case, look at that reja he is making for my lord the Constable, which reja is well known to be superior to all others of this kingdom.”

Such is the reja thought, both then and now, to be the finest ever made. The style is pure Renaissance. Two tiers of equal height consist of four-and-twenty ornamented rails or balusters disposed, above, between four columns; below, between four pilasters. An attic is upon the cornice, and contains two central, semi-naked, kneeling figures which support a large, crowned shield. This is surmounted by a bust of God the Father, enclosed in a triangular frame, and raising the hand to bless. On either side of the attic are S-shaped crests sustaining circular medallions with the likenesses, in bold relief, of Christ and Mary. Along the friezes are the legends; EGO SUM ALPHA ET Ω; EGO SUM LUX VERA; and ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI, together with the words, referring to the artist, AB ANDINO, and the date A.D. MDXXIII. The decorative scheme is spirited and delicate at once, whether we observe it on the railing, pilasters, and columns, or on the horizontal parts and members of the reja. The attic which surmounts the double tier and cornice is finally surmounted by a gilt Saint Andrew's cross; and the entire screen is lavishly painted and gilded throughout.

Here is a thing—almost a being—created out of iron, so intensely lovely that the eye would wish to contemplate it to the end of time; and, as we linger in its presence, if perchance the dead are privileged to hear their earthly praises echoed in the silence of the tomb, surely from his marble sepulchre Cristóbal de Andino listens to such praises at this hour. For yonder, in the neighbouring parish church of San Cosmé, beside a wife devoted and well-loved the great artificer is laid to rest, where Latin words (although of idle purport while the reja of the Constable remains) are deep engraved to thus remind us of his worth:—

CHRISTOPHORUS ANDINO EGREGIUS

ARTIFEX ET IN ARCHITECTURA OMNIUM

SUI SECULI FACILE PRINCEPS

MONUMENTUM SIBI PONENDUM LE

GAVIT ET CATERINA FRIAS EJUS

UXOR HONESTISSIMA STATIM MARITI

VOTIS ET SUIS SATISFACIENDUM B

ENIGNE CHRISTIANEQUE CURAVIT URNAM CU

JUS LAPIDES SOLUM AMBORUM OSSA TEGUNT

SED ADMONET ETIAM CERTIS ANNUI HE

BDOMADE CUJUSQUE DIEBUS SACRIFICIA

PRO EIS ESSE PERPETUO FACIENDA

But if these splendid rejas of her temples constitute to-day a special glory of this nation, her private balconies and window-gratings were in former times, though from profaner motives, almost or quite as notable. Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, few of the foreigners who visited Spain omitted to record their admiration of these balconies, crowded upon a holiday with pretty women. “Il y avoit,” wrote Bertaut de Rouen in 1659, “autant de foule à proportion qu'à Paris; et mesme ce qu'il y avoit de plus beau, c'estoit que comme il y avoit des balcons à toutes les fenestres et qu'elles estoient occupées par toutes les dames de la ville, cela faisoit un plus bel effet que les échaffauts que l'on fait dans les rues de Paris en semblables rencontres.”

REJA (Casa de Pilatos, Seville)

Pinheiro da Veiga, in his queer Pincigraphia, or “Description and Natural and Moral History of Valladolid,” written earlier in the same century, and published twenty years ago by Gayangos from a manuscript in the British Museum, is more plain-spoken than the Frenchman on the various merits and peculiarities of the Spanish balconies and rejas. “All of these churches have the most beautiful iron balustrades and iron open-work doors (cancelas) that can be found in Europe, for nowhere is iron worked so skilfully as here in Valladolid. These objects are made by the Moriscos with turned balusters, foliage, boughs, fruits, war-material, trophies, and other contrivances, which afterwards they gild and silver into the very likeness of these metals. I say the same of window-balconies; for nearly every window has its balcony. There are in Valladolid houses up which one might clamber to the very roof from balcony to balcony, as though these were a hand-ladder. So too from balcony to balcony (for the distance from one to other is never greater than a palm's breadth) one might climb round the whole Plaza. By reason of this, we Portuguese were wont to say that if there were as many thieves or lovers in Valladolid as in Portugal, verily both one and other of this kind of folks would have but little need of hand-ladders. Yet here the thieves content themselves with stealing by the light of day, while as for the women (crafty creatures that they are!), they perpetrate their thefts away from home; and, having all the day at their disposal, prefer to thieve while daylight lasts, rather than pass the night uncomfortably. To this I heard a lady of Castile declare, when one of my friends, a Portuguese, petitioned her for leave to speak with her at night across her reja: ‘That would be tantamount to passing from one hierro to another yerro;⁸³ and in my house (which is also your worship's) it would not look well for you to seem a window-climbing thief.’ ”

REJA OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS (Salamanca)

It is curious, in the foregoing narrative, to read of Morisco craftsmen working as late as 1600, and as far north as Castile. Perhaps the notice of Moriscos doing Spanish iron-work may be traced to certain Ordinances of Granada, published about three-quarters of a century before. On October 14th, 1522, the councillors of that town confabulated very lengthily and seriously as to the damage caused by “balconies and rejas in the streets, fixed in the basements and the lower rooms of houses, or projecting portals which extend beyond the level of the wall. For we have witnessed, and do witness daily, numerous mishaps to wayfarers, alike on horseback and on foot, whether by day or night, because the highways, narrow in themselves, are rendered yet more narrow by such balconies and rejas. Whereas in winter persons seeking to escape the filth by keeping to the wall are thwarted, or at night-time injured, by these rejas. Or yet in summer, when the waters swell, and conduits burst and overflow the middle of the street, then neither can they keep the middle of the way, nor pass aside (by reason of the balconies aforesaid) to its edges.”

Having regard to all these grievances, the councillors decreed that “none of whatsoever order or condition shall dare henceforth to place, or cause to be placed, about the lower floors or entrance of their dwelling, rejas or iron balconies, or anything projecting much or little from the level of the wall. But all projections shall be set three yards, not any less, above the street. If not so much, they shall be set within the wall, on pain of a fine of ten thousand maravedis, and five thousand maravedis to the mason and the carpenter that shall repair their fixing. Further, we order that all balconies and rejas now at a height of less than the aforesaid three yards be taken away within three days from the crying in public of these Ordinances.”⁸⁴

For this deplorable state of things a double influence was to blame; namely, the oriental narrowness of the street, and also the elaborate ornamentation, proceeding very largely from a northern Gothic and non-Spanish source, of these annoying yet impressive gratings. Some of them, sweeping the very soil, and boldly and fantastically curved, may yet be seen at Toro. Those of Granada are no more. Indeed, not only have the rejas of the Spanish private house long ceased to show the decorative cunning of the craftsman, but even in their present unartistic form are largely limited to Andalusia. Yet even thus, they seem to guard a typical and national air, mixed with a subtle, semi-Mussulmanic poetry. Across them, while the term of courtship lasts, the lover whispers with his mistress, oblivious of the outer world, fixing his gaze within, until his sultaness emerges from the gloom, and holds his hand, and looks into his eyes, and listens to his vow. Therefore, in “April's ivory moonlight,” beneath the velvet skies of Andalusia, one always is well pleased to pass beside these children of romantic Spain, warming the frigid iron with the breath of youth, and hope, and happiness, and telling to each other a secret that is known unto us all—at once the sweetest and the saddest, the newest and the oldest story of all stories.

⁶¹ A small collection, formed by Don Emilio Rotondo, of primitive iron rings, bracelets, brooches, and other ornaments, is preserved in the Schools of Aguirre at Madrid. Villa-amil y Castro (Antigüedades prehistóricas y célticas, and Castros y Mamoas de Galicia, published in the Museo Español de Antigüedades), describes some iron objects of uncertain use discovered in Galicia, together with spear-heads and other weapons or pieces of weapons which will be noticed under Arms, and also an object which he says may once have been a candlestick, or else a kind of flute. All these are probably pre-Roman. Dating from the Roman period are an iron ploughshare and some sickles, discovered at Ronda in Andalusia, and now in the Madrid Museum. Góngora, however (Antigüedades prehistóricas de Andalucía), inclines to think that previous to the Roman conquest the occupants of Betica were ignorant of this metal, though not of gold, from which they fashioned diadems and other articles of wear. See also Caballero Infante, Aureos y barras de oro y plata encontrados en el pueblo de Santiponce, Seville, 1898.

⁶² Riaño's reading was, “the King of the whole Earth will enter.” But is not this contradicted by the other inscription on the same key?

⁶³ La Alhambra (from which this sketch is taken) for September 30th, 1901; article on the Palace of Seti Meriem, by F. de Paula Valladar.

⁶⁴ Ordenanzas de Granada, p. 191.

⁶⁵ Those of my readers who have visited Spain will probably have seen the inlaid iron-work of Eibar and Toledo. The objects chiefly manufactured in this style are brooches, bracelets, scarf and hat pins, photograph frames, jewel and trinket boxes, watches, and cigarette cases. The workmanship is often elaborate and costly, nor can it be denied that the red or greenish gold has an effective look against the jet-black surface of the polished or unpolished iron. Upon the other hand, the taste displayed in the design is seldom good; while in a climate with the slightest tendency to damp, the iron is apt to rust and tarnish, and the fine inlay to loosen.

⁶⁶ Serrano Fatigati, in the Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones.

⁶⁷ For a detailed account of these pulpits see Villa-amil y Castro's article in the Museo Español de Antigüedades.

⁶⁸ Payments made to “Master Juan Francés” are recorded by Zarco del Valle, Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de las Bellas Artes en España, pp. 320, 321.

⁶⁹ History of Architecture, p. 303. They possess, too, the advantage, from their ponderous solidity and fixedness, that most of them are still extant and in the best of preservation, although Napoleon's Vandals rooted up the chapel rejas of the Church of Santo Domingo at Granada, and turned them into bullets; just as their general, Sebastiani, threw down the tower of San Jerónimo to make a trumpery bridge across the trickling stream of the Genil. Scores of thousands of such crimes, not to forget the blowing up of the gate and tower of the Siete Suelos, were perpetrated by the French all over Spain; yet Washington Irving, in a strangely infelicitous passage of his Tales of the Alhambra, congratulates the invaders for their reverential treatment of the noblest monuments of Spanish art!

⁷⁰ So, in Spain, does war appear to have been connected even with the peaceful reja. Similarly, in 1518, the contractors for the grille of the Chapel Royal of Granada were Juan Zagala and Juan de Cubillana, “master-artillerymen to their highnesses.” Valladar, Guía de Granada, 1st ed., p. 302, note.

⁷¹ A quaint but somewhat tautological and prosy letter concerning matters of his craft, addressed by Francés to the cardinal-archbishop of Toledo, is published in the Museo Español de Antigüedades, article Los Púlpitos de la Catedral de Avila, by Villa-amil y Castro. The reja of the presbytery at Burgo de Osma is thus inscribed: “Izo esta obra maestre Joan Francés maestre mayor.” The top consists of repetitions of a shield containing five stars and supported by angels, lions, and gryphons. Two iron pulpits project from the lower part of the grille, and a swan of the same metal, with extended wings, rests upon either pulpit.

⁷² A Dominican friar, summoned to Seville in 1518, to make her cathedral rejas. He also made the pulpits of the high altar in 1531, and was working in this city as late as 1547. Account-sheets penned by his hand were still extant a century ago, and Cean conveys to us some knowledge of Fray Francisco, receiving as the wages of his labour, now a score or so of ducats, now a bushel or two of corn. The friar, whom the canons spoke of with affection for his many virtues, seems to have been a handy man, seeing that between his spells of reja-making he put the clock of the Giralda into trim, and built an alarum apparatus to rouse the cathedral bell-ringer at early morning.

For the sums paid to Fray Francisco and to Sancho Muñoz for their work, see Gestoso, Diccionario de Artífices Sevillanos, vol. ii. pp. 365 et seq.

⁷³ Consult his valuable studies, Artistas exhumados, published in various numbers of the Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursionistas.

⁷⁴ Rosell y Torres; La Reja de la Capilla del Condestable en la Catedral de Burgos, published in the Museo Español de Antigüedades.

⁷⁵ He is called Domingo de Céspedes by Cean Bermudez, although, as Zarco del Valle remarks, the surname does not appear in any of the documents relating to this craftsman which are yet preserved in the archives of Toledo cathedral. These documents merely tell us that Domingo was his Christian name, that his own signature was Maestre Domingo, and that he and Fernando Bravo were required to find surety to the value of 375,000 maravedis for the faithful and expert performance of their work, which they were to complete within two years, receiving for it the sum of six thousand ducats.

⁷⁶ Conde de Cedillo, Toledo en el Siglo XVI. Reply to the Count's address, by J. de Dios de la Rada y Delgado.

⁷⁷ The painting of a reja was commonly executed by the “image-painter” (pintor de imaginería). As the term implies, it was this artist's business to gild or colour sacred furniture, such as altars, panels, images, and decorative doors and ceilings.

⁷⁸ Archives of Simancas. Descargos de las R.C.; Legajo 23 prov. Valladar, Guía de Granada (1st ed.), p. 302, note.

⁷⁹ “To Master Bartholomew, rexero, twenty gold ducats for the days he took in travelling from Jaen, and for those on which he was at work upon the reja of the high altar here in Seville.” On March 18th, 1524, the same craftsman was paid 13,125 maravedis for making the “samples and other things belonging to the reja of the high altar.”—Libro de Fábrica of Seville Cathedral. Gestoso, Sevilla Monumental y Artística, and Diccionario de Artífices Sevillanos, vol. xi. p. 362.

⁸⁰ Pedraza, Historia de Granada (1636), p. 40.

⁸¹ The yoke and sheaf of arrows were the emblems of these princes—the yoke, of Ferdinand; the arrows, of his queen. Shields of their reign, whether employed in architecture or on title-pages, almost invariably include these emblems and the well-known motto, Tanto Monta.

⁸² Gómez Moreno, Guía de Granada, p. 291.

⁸³ Hierro means iron; yerro, a fault, faux pas. Thus glossed, the somewhat feeble pleasantry or pun is able to explain itself.

⁸⁴ These laws affecting balconies were not, or not as time went on, restricted to Granada. “Nobody,” prescribes the general Spanish code in force in 1628, “shall make a balcony or oversailing part to fall upon the street, nor yet rebuild or repair any that shall fall.”—Pradilla, Suma de Todas las Leyes Penales, Canonicas, Civiles, y destos Reynos.