Читать книгу The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain (Vol. 1-3) - Leonard Williams - Страница 8

Table of Contents

The earliest objects of bronze discovered in this country are comparatively few. As in other parts of Europe, they consist mostly of weapons, such as spear-heads and hatchets (which will be noticed under Arms), or bracelets, necklaces, and clasps or brooches. Earrings (inaures), brooches (fibulæ), and other objects of a similar purpose dating from the Roman period have been discovered in Galicia, while plates of the same alloy⁸⁵ which imitate a shell were used as personal ornaments by the men and women of the ancient Spanish tribes.

The province of Palencia is a fertile field for archæological discovery. Here have been found some curious clasps, intended, it would seem, to represent the old Iberian mounted warrior, sometimes brandishing the typical Iberian lance. The following is a sketch in outline of an object of this kind, fashioned as clumsily and crudely as the cheapest wooden plaything of our time:—

Two parts—the figure of the horseman, and a four-wheeled stand on which the warrior's steed is resolutely set—compose this comical antiquity. The rider's only article of clothing is a helmet; while the horse, without a saddle or a bridle, is completely nude. This toy, or table ornament, or whatever it may be, was found not far from Badajoz, where other prehistoric bronzes are preserved in the museum of the province;⁸⁶ and Mr. E. S. Dodgson says that in possession of an Englishman at Comillas he has seen another bronze rider of primitive workmanship, with the head of a wild boar under his left arm. Those who are interested in the meaning of these early bronzes should consult an article, El jinete ibérico, by Señor Mélida, published in Nos. 90–92 of the Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones.

“MELEAGER'S HUNT”

(Primitive Spanish Bronze)

We know that the use of Roman lamps grew to be general in this land—a fact which justifies my noticing the specimens preserved in the museum of Madrid; and more particularly so because their shape and general character have been perpetuated through the Spanish Moors and Christians of the Middle Ages till this very moment.

The Roman lamp, shaped somewhat like a boat by reason of the rostrum or beakish receptacle for the wick, consisted of an earthenware or metal vessel with a circular or oblong body and a handle, together with at least one hole for pouring in the oil. The commonest material was earthenware, and next to this, bronze. The lamp was either suspended by a chain or chains, or else was rested on a stand. Plato and Petronius tell us that the stand was borrowed from the rustic makeshift of a stick, or the stout stem of a plant, thrust into the ground. As time went on, the stem or stick in imitative metal-work was rendered more or less artistic and ornate. But there was more than a single kind of lampstand. The lychnuchus (λυχνουχος), invented by the Greeks, held various lamps suspended from its branches, while, on the other hand, the Roman candelabrum supported but a solitary lamp upon the disc or platform at its top extremity.⁸⁷ The island of Egina was famed for the production of these discs, and Pliny tells us that the decorated stem or scapus was chiefly manufactured at Tarentum.

The Roman lampstands also varied in their height. When the stem was long they stood upon the ground—a fashion we have seen revived in recent years, and even where electricity replaces oil. When, on the contrary, the stem was short, the stand was known as a candelabrum humile, and rested on a table or a stool.

A CANDIL (Modern)

The Madrid Museum contains a remarkable bronze lamp in the form of an ass's head adorned with flowers and with ivy. The ass is holding in its mouth the rostrum for the wick. The hole for the oil is shaped like a flower with eleven petals, under one of which is the monogram M†R. The back of this lamp consists of an uncouth human male figure, in a reclining posture, wearing a Phrygian cap and holding the ass's head between his legs.

Other lamps of bronze, including several of an interesting character, are in the same collection. One of these represents a sea-deity; another has its handle shaped like a horse's head and neck; and in a third the orifice for the oil is heart-shaped, while the handle terminates in the head of a swan.

There is also a series of three pensile lamps—two in the likeness of the head and neck of a griffin, and the third in that of a theatrical mask; as well as a candelabrum fourteen inches high, terminating beneath in three legs with lions' claws (foreshadowing or repeating oriental motives), and above in a two-handled vessel on which to place the lamp. This vessel supports at present a fine lucerna in the form of a peacock.

Probably no people in the world have kept extant, or rather, kept alive, their oldest forms of pottery or instruments for giving light more steadfastly or more solicitously than the Spaniards. Their iron candil⁸⁸ and brass velón of nowadays (Pls. xxviii. and xxix.)—the one of these the primitive lamp that hangs; the other, the primitive lamp that rests upon a table or the ground—are borrowed with but a minimum of alteration from the lighting apparatus of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and possess, for all their coarse and cheap and unpretentious workmanship, a subtle interest and elegance attributable only to the inspiration of antiquity.

A VELÓN (Modern)

More than the shape of these old objects seems to have passed to modern Spain—if any phase at all of Spanish life can ever justly be accounted modern. The ancients had an almost superstitious reverence for a lighted lamp, and were accustomed to declare that “lucerna, cum extinguitur, vocem emittit, quasi necata”; “a lamp, on being put out, utters a sound as though it were being murdered.” Now, it may be a coincidence—although I cannot but regard it as distinctly more than a coincidence—that even at this day a large proportion of the Andalusian people are markedly averse to blowing out a kindled match; nor do they think it of good augury to be in a room where three lights—candles, matches, or whatever they may be—are simultaneously aflame. I have noticed, too, that, whether from utter carelessness or whether from ancestral superstition handed down from Rome, one rarely sees upon the staircase or the doorstep of a Spanish public building a vesta that has been (if I may be allowed the term) extinguished artificially.⁸⁹

In the Madrid Museum are several military bronze signa which were found in Spain and date from the Roman era, as well as a vexillum, or one of the T-shaped frames on which the warriors of that people used to hang their standards. One of these signa is in the form of a wild boar; another in that of a saddled and bridled horse. Beneath this latter is the word VIVA and a cross, which shows that the object dates from a period not earlier than the reign of Constantine.

It is strange—or rather, would be strange in any country that had been less constantly afflicted both with civil and external warfare—that hardly anything remains of all the bronze artistic objects manufactured by the Spanish Moors. Poets of this race have sung of gold and silver fountains, door-knockers, and statues that adorned the buildings of Cordova. In many of these instances the hyperbolic gold and silver of the writers would undoubtedly be bronze. Al-Makkari quotes an Arab poet who extols in passionate terms Almanzor's dazzling mansion of Az-zahyra. “Lions of metal,” sang this poet, “bite the knockers of thy doors, and as those doors resound appear to be exclaiming Allahu akbar” (“God is great”). Another bard describes the fountains of the same enchanted palace. “The lions who repose majestically in this home of princes, instead of roaring, allow the waters to fall in murmuring music from their mouths. Their bodies seem to be covered with gold, and in their mouths crystal is made liquid.

“Though in reality these lions are at rest, they seem to move and, when provoked, to grow enraged. One would imagine that they remembered their carnage of past days, and bellowing turned once more to the attack.

BRONZE LION

(Found in the Province of Palencia)

“When the sun is reflected from their bronze surface, they seem to be of fire, with tongues of flame that issue from their mouths.

“Nevertheless, when we observe them to be vomiting water, one would think this water to be swords which melt without the help of fire, and are confounded with the crystal of the fountain.”

Figures in bronze, of eagles, peacocks, swans, stags, dragons, lions, and many other creatures were set about in garden and in hall, to decorate these splendid palaces of ancient Cordova.

A specimen of this class of objects is a bronze lion of small dimensions (Plate xxx.) found not many years ago in the province of Palencia, and believed to date from the reign of Al-Hakem the Second of Cordova. It belonged for some time to the painter Fortuny—a diligent and lucky hunter of antiquities—and was subsequently purchased in 1875 by M. Piot. The modelling and decoration of this beast, especially the mannered and symmetrical curls which are supposed to form its mane, are quite conventional and strongly reminiscent of Assyrian art, such as pervades the various lions rudely wrought in stone and still existing at Granada; whether the celebrated dozen that support and guard the fountain in the courtyard of the Moorish palace,⁹⁰ or else the greater pair of grinning brutes proceeding from the ruins of the palace of Azaque (miscalled the Moorish Mint), which may be noticed squatting with their rumps towards the road, beside the garden entrance to the Carmen de la Mezquita.

This little bronze lion measures about twelve inches high by fourteen inches long. The legs and part of the body are covered with a pattern representing flowers. The mane is described by comma-shaped marks. The tail, bent not ungracefully along the animal's back, is decorated with a kind of plait through nearly all its length. The eyes are now two cavities, but seem in other days to have contained two coloured stones or gems. Upon the back and flanks is a Cufic inscription which says, “Perfect blessing. Complete happiness.”

Mussulman historians have described, in terms of cloying praise, the “red gold animals contrived with subtle skill and spread with precious stones” which Abderrahman placed at Cordova upon the fountains of his palaces. “Rivers of water issued from the mouth of every animal, and fell into a jasper basin.” The words “red gold” are patently an oriental term for bronze. In view of this, and of the fact that the lion of Palencia is hollow-bellied, with his mouth wide open for ejecting water, and with a tail of cunning craftsmanship, which would avail, on being rotated, to produce or check the current of the “liquid crystal,” we may conclude that it was intended both to form a part of, and to decorate a Moorish fountain of old days, and is the kind of beast “with precious stones for eyes” so often and so ecstatically lauded by the Muslim writers.

BRONZE STAG

(Moorish. Museum of Cordova.)

Similar to the foregoing object, and dating from about the same period, is a small bronze stag (Pl. xxxi.) in the provincial museum of Cordova. It is believed to proceed originally from the famous palace (tenth century) of Az-zahra, and used to be kept, some centuries ago, in the convent of San Jerónimo de Valparaiso.

The museum of Granada contains some interesting Moorish bronzes, found on the site of the ancient city of Illiberis, abandoned by its occupants on their removal to Granada at the beginning of the eleventh century. The most remarkable of these discoveries are pieces of a fountain, a small temple (Plate xxxii.), an almirez or mortar (Plate xxxiii.), similar to one (not mentioned by Riaño) which was discovered at Monzón, and a few lamps. The fragments of a fountain end in the characteristic Assyrian-looking lions' heads, with lines in regular zones to represent the eyes and other features. One of the lamps (Pl. xxxiii.) is far superior to the rest. Notwithstanding Riaño's assertion that all of these antiquities are “incomplete and mutilated,” this lamp is well preserved, and still retains, secured by a chain, the little metal trimming-piece or emunctorium of the Romans. The small bronze temple is sometimes thought (but this hypothesis seems rather fanciful) to be a case, or part of a case, designed for keeping jewellery. The height of it is two-and-twenty inches, and the form hexagonal, “with twelve small columns supporting bands of open work, frescoes, cupola, and turrets; in the angles are birds” (Riaño).

BRONZE TEMPLE

(Moorish. Museum of Granada)

The most important object in this substance now extant in any part of Spain is probably the huge and finely decorated lamp of Mohammed the Third of Granada (Pl. xxxiv.), called sometimes “the lamp of Oran,” from a mistaken belief that it had formed part of the booty yielded by this city after her capture in 1509 by Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros.

The material of this lamp is bronze, possibly provided by the bells of Christian churches taken and pillaged by the Moors. It has four parts or tiers of varying shape, delicately wrought in open-work, and reaching a height of nearly seven feet in all. The third and largest tier, corresponding to the shade, is in the form of a truncated pyramid, and shows a different design on each of its four sides. The lamp bears several inscriptions, interrupted here and there through breakage of the metal. The longest of these legends is interpreted as follows:—

“In the name of God the Merciful. (May) the blessing of God be on our lord Mohammed and his kin; health and peace. (This lamp) was ordered (to be made) by our Lord the egregious sultan, the favoured, the victorious, the just, the happy, the conqueror of cities, and the extreme boundary of just conduct among the servants (of God); the emir of the Mussulmans Abu-Abdillah, son of our lord the emir of the Mussulmans Abu-Abdillah, son of our lord Al-Galib-Billah, the conqueror through God's protection, the emir of the Mussulmans Abu-Abdillah; (may) God aid him (praised be God).” Here is a breakage and a corresponding gap in the inscription, which continues, “beneath it, lighted by my light for its magnificence and the care of its xeque, with righteous purpose and unerring certainty. And this was in the month of Rabié the first blessed, in the year 705.⁹¹ May (God) be praised.”

The history of this lamp has been explored with scholarly care by Rodrigo Amador de los Ríos, whose monograph will be found in the Museo Español de Antigüedades. He says that the lamp was formerly suspended from the ceiling of the chapel of San Ildefonso in the university of Alcalá de Henares. Here, too, he has discovered entries which relate to it in two separate inventories, dated 1526 and 1531, from which we gather that the lamp, excepting the lowest part or tier, which probably proceeded from Oran, was brought to Alcalá by Cardinal Cisneros from the mosque of the Alhambra of Granada.

MOORISH LAMP AND MORTAR

(Moorish. Museum of Granada)

All of the lamp (continues Amador) that properly belongs to it, is the open-work shade, together with the graduated set of spheres which we now observe on top.⁹² The lowest part is clearly an inverted bell, from which project four decorative pieces. This is believed by Amador to be a Spanish bell, dating from the fifteenth century, designed for striking with a hammer, and proceeding from some monastery or convent plundered by the Moors. Indeed, one of the two inventories discovered at Alcalá mentions “a bell with a hole in it, which used to belong to a Moorish lamp,” thus countenancing the widespread supposition that the lamps of the mosque of Cordova were made of the Christian bells of Compostela, which the fierce Almanzor caused to be conveyed upon the aching backs of Christian captives to the Moorish court and capital of Andalusia.

It is probable, therefore, that the lamp of the third Mohammed of Granada is now composed of two lamps, and that the primitive arrangement of its parts was altered by the ignorant. Eight chains would formerly suspend it, in the following order of its tiers or stages, from the dome of the mezquita. First and uppermost would come the shade; then, next to this, the set of tapering spheres; and, last and lowest, the saucer or platillo, which has disappeared. Further, and as Koranic law prescribed, the lamp would hold two lights—one to be kindled on the saucer, and the other underneath the shade.

Other articles of Spanish-Moorish ornamented bronze are thimbles, buckets, and the spherical perfume-burners which were used to roll upon the stone or marble pavement of a dwelling. Moorish thimbles, conical and uncouthly large, are not uncommonly met with at Granada. I have one, of which the above is an outline sketched to size.

Sometimes these Moorish thimbles are inscribed in Cufic lettering with phrases such as—“(May) the blessing of God and every kind of happiness (be destined for the owner of this thimble)”; or else the maker's name—“The work of Saif”; or a single word—“Blessing.”

LAMP OF MOHAMMED THE THIRD

(Madrid Museum)

The thimbles from which I quote these legends are in the National Museum. The same collection includes a very finely wrought bronze bucket or acetre (Latin situlus; Arabic as-setl, the utensil for drawing water for a bath). The outside is covered with delicate ornamentation, varied with inscriptions of no great interest, invoking Allah's blessing on the owner or employer of the bucket, which is thought by Amador to be of Granadino workmanship, and to date from about the middle of the fourteenth century.

Not many specimens remain of early mediæval Spanish bronzes wrought by Christian hands. Riaño, who admits that “we can hardly trace any bronze of this period other than cathedral bells,” mentions as probably proceeding from abroad the altar-fronts and statuettes, in gilt enamelled bronze, of Salamanca and elsewhere,⁹³ and gives a short description of the bell, about six inches high (Pl. xxxv.), known as the Abbot Samson's, now in Cordova Museum. This object bears an early date (875 A.D.), and is inscribed, “Offert hoc munus Samson abbatis in domum Sancti Sebastiani martyris Christi, Era D.C.C.C.C.XIII.”

It is curious that Riaño should make no mention of Spanish bronze processional crosses. In my chapter on gold, silver, and jewel work I mentioned those belonging to churches in the north of Spain. A bronze crucifix (Plate xxxvi.), believed to date from the beginning of the twelfth century, and proceeding from the monastery of Arbós, in the province of León, is now in the possession of Don Felix Granda Builla. It is undoubtedly of Spanish make, and probably was carried in processions. The style is pure Romanic, and the drawing of the ribs, extremities, and limbs is typically primitive. The sudarium is secured by the belt or parazonium. The feet, unpierced, rest on a supedaneum.

ABBOT SAMSON'S BELL

(9th Century. Museum of Cordova)

A bronze Renaissance parish cross of the sixteenth century, once hidden in a village of Asturias, was bought some thirty years ago by the museum of Madrid. The body of the cross is wood, covered on both sides with bronze plates wrought with figures of the Saviour as the holy infant and as full-grown man, and also with a figure of the Virgin. These figures were formerly painted, and traces of the colour yet remain. The cross was also silvered. The rest of the ornamentation consists of vases, flowers, and other subjects proper to Renaissance art.

A similar cross belongs to the parish church of San Julian de Recaré, in the province of Lugo, while San Pedro de Donas, near Santiago in Galicia, possesses a processional cross of bronze, pierced along the edges in a pattern of trefoils and fleurs-de-lis, but otherwise undecorated.

Sometimes in Spanish bronze we find the handiwork of Moors and Christians picturesquely intermingled, as in the gates of Toledo cathedral (1337), and the Puertas del Perdón—forming the principal entrance to the Court of Orange Trees—of the mosque of Cordova, made of wood and covered with bronze plating decorated with irregular hexagons and Gothic and Arabic inscriptions. The knockers contain a scroll and flowers, and on the scroll the words, Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel. The gate of the same name of Seville cathedral (Pl. xxxvii.) is similar in workmanship, and is considered by Riaño to be a good example of Moresque bronze-work.

While speaking of these doors, we should remember that Moorish craftsmen were employed to decorate or to repair the mosque of Cordova long after it had been converted to the worship of the Christians. When he was acting as viceroy in the year 1275, the Infante Don Fernando confirmed a letter of his father, King Alfonso, remitting tolls and taxes that would otherwise be leviable upon four Moors who worked in the cathedral. The Infante's confirmation, after recording that “one (of the four Moors) is dead and the other blind, in such wise that he can work no more,” consents to the engagement of another two, Famet and Zahec by name, to fill their places, and who also are hereby exempted from the payment of all dues. Five years afterwards this privilege was reconfirmed by King Alfonso, and we are further told on this occasion that two of the Moorish four were albañís, or masons, and the others añaiares, or carpenters. As time progressed, the situation of the vanquished and humiliated Mussulmans grew more irksome. On October 25th, 1320, the Infante Don Sancho, who had usurped the throne, proclaimed, in ratification of a letter issued by his father, that all the Moorish carpenters, masons, sawyers, and other workmen and artificers of Cordova must work in the cathedral (presumably without a wage) for two days in every year.⁹⁴

BRONZE CRUCIFIX

(12th Century)

In the latter half of the sixteenth century, Bartolomé Morel, a Sevillano, produced some notable work in bronze.⁹⁵ Three objects by his hand—namely, the choir lectern and the tenebrarium of Seville cathedral, and the weathercock or Giraldillo which crowns the celebrated tower of the same enormous temple—are specially distinguished for their vigour and effectiveness.

The least important of these objects is the choir lectern, for which Morel was paid six hundred ducats. The decoration is of statuettes and rilievi, well designed and better executed. The tenebrarium, aptly defined by Amador as “an article of church furniture intended to make a show of light,”⁹⁶ is more ambitious and original. “It was designed and made by Morel in the year 1562. Juan Giralte, a native of Flanders, and Juan Bautista Vazquez helped him to make the statues at the head of this candelabrum, and Pedro Delgado, another noted sculptor of Seville, worked at the foot of it. It is eight and a half yards high, and the triangular head is three yards across. Upon this upper part are fifteen statues, representing the Saviour, the apostles, and two other disciples or evangelists. In the vacant space of the triangle is a circle adorned with leaves, and in the centre of this circle is a bust of the Virgin in relief, and, lower down, the figure of a king. All of this part is of bronzed wood, and rests upon four small bronze columns. The remainder of the candelabrum is all of this material, and the small columns are supported by four caryatides, resting upon an order of noble design decorated with lions' heads, scrolls, pendants, and other ornamentation, the whole resting upon a graceful border enriched with harpies.”

THE PUERTA DEL PERDÓN (Seville Cathedral)

This description of the Seville tenebrarium is translated from Cean Bermudez, and is the one most commonly quoted, though Amador complains that it is not precise, and fails to dwell upon the symbolism of this mighty mass of bronze.⁹⁷ Thus, what Cean affirms to be the bust of a king is declared by Amador to be the head of a pope, probably Saint Gregory the Great. Metal, as Cean remarks, is not employed throughout. In order to preserve its balance, the upper part of the tenebrarium, containing the triangle which is said by some to symbolize “the divinity of Jesus as God the triple and the one,” is merely wood bronzed over. Amador adds that the foot and stem are intended to represent “the people of Israel in their perfidy and ingratitude.” He also says that the statue in the centre of the triangle is that of Faith, and that which crowns the entire tenebrarium, of the Virgin Mary.

Morel, like Brunelleschi, was an architect as well as a craftsman in bronze.⁹⁸ He completed this tenebrarium in 1562, and the chapter of the cathedral were so contented with it that instead of paying him the stipulated price, namely, eight hundred ducats, they added of their own accord a further two hundred and fifty. They also commissioned him to make a handsome case to keep it in; but the case has disappeared, and the naked tenebrarium now stands in the Sacristy of Chalices of the cathedral.⁹⁹ It is still used at the Matin service during the last three days of Holy Week, and still, in the Oficio de Tinieblas, the custom is observed of extinguishing the fifteen tapers, one by one, at the conclusion of each psalm.

The title of the object which surmounts the famed Giralda tower of Seville is properly “the Statue of Faith, the triumph of the Church” (Pl. xxxviii.); but it is known in common language as the Giraldillo (weathercock), which name has passed into the word Giralda, now applied to all the tower. The populace of Seville also call it, in the argot of their cheerful town, the muñeco or “doll,” the “Victory,” and the “Santa Juana.”

THE WEATHERCOCK OF THE GIRALDA TOWER

(16th Century. Seville Cathedral)

This statue, made of hollow bronze, rotates upon an iron rod piercing the great bronze globe which lies immediately beneath the figure's feet. The globe is nearly six feet in diameter. The figure itself represents a Roman matron wearing a flowing tunic partly covering her legs and arms. Sandals are secured to her feet by straps. Upon her head she wears a Roman helmet crested by a triple plume. In her right hand she holds the semicircular Roman standard of the time of Constantine, which points the direction of the wind and causes the figure to revolve, excepting when the air is very faint, in which case it is caught by two diminutive banners springing from the large one.¹⁰⁰ So huge are the proportions of this metal lady that the medal on her breast contains a life-size head which represents an angel.

The Spanish Moors were also well acquainted with the use of weathercocks. During the reign, in the eleventh century, of the Zirite kingling of Granada, Badis ben Habbus, a weathercock of strange design surmounted his alcázar. The historian Marmol wrote in the sixteenth century that it was still existing on a little tower, and consisted of a horseman in Moorish dress, with a long lance and his shield upon his arm, the whole of bronze, with an inscription on the shield which says: “Badis ben Habbus declares that in this attitude should the Andalusian be discovered (at his post).”

Not many other objects in this substance can be instanced as the work of Spanish craftsmen of the sixteenth and succeeding centuries, or of the later-Gothic age immediately preceding. Among them are the pulpits of Santiago cathedral, made by Celma, an Aragonese, in 1563; the choir-screen (1574–1579) in the cathedral of Zaragoza, made by Juan Tomás Cela, also a native of Aragon; the gilt lecterns of Toledo cathedral, which are the work of Nicolás Vergara and his son; the Gothic lectern of the mosque of Cordova; the choir-lectern (1557) of Cuenca, made by Hernando de Arenas, who will also be remembered as having made the reja of the same cathedral; and the octagonal gilt-bronze pulpits of Toledo, wrought by Francisco de Villalpando, as are the bas-reliefs (1564) upon the door of Lions, executed by the same craftsman from designs by Berruguete.

These last-named pulpits are associated with a legend. Within this temple, once upon a time, rested the metal sepulchre of the great Don Alvaro de Luna, so constructed by his orders that upon the touching of a secret spring the statue of the Constable himself would rise into a kneeling posture throughout the celebration of the mass. His lifelong and relentless foe, the Infante Enrique of Aragon, tore up the tomb in 1449; and from its fragments, superstition says, were made these pulpits.

Spanish Renaissance door-knockers in bronze are often curious. Fifteen large bronze rings adorned with garlands, heads of lions and of eagles, or with the pair of columns and the motto PLUS OULTRE of Charles the Fifth, were formerly upon the pilasters of the roofless, semi-ruined palace of that emperor at Granada. Removed elsewhere for greater safety,¹⁰¹ they will now be found among the couple of dozen curiosities preserved in a chamber of the Moorish royal residence of the Alhambra.

Herewith I end my sketch of Spanish bronzes, without delaying to describe the tasteless transparente behind the altar of Toledo cathedral, or the neo-classic, Frenchified productions of the reign of Charles the Third, such as the table-mountings of the Buen Retiro, or trifles from the silver factory of Antonio Martinez. At the Escorial, the shrine of the Sagrario de la Santa Forma and the altar-front of the pantheon of the kings of Spain, wrought by Fray Eugenio de la Cruz, Fray Juan de la Concepción, and Fray Marcos de Perpignan, are meritorious objects of their time. But the history of Spanish bronzes properly ends with the Renaissance. This material, possibly from its cost, has not at any time been greatly popular in Spain. Wood, plain or painted, was preferred to bronze in nearly all her statuary. Her mediæval and Renaissance reja and custodia makers can challenge all the world. So can her potters, armourers, leather-workers, and wood-carvers. But if we look for masterpieces in the art of shaping bronze, our eyes must turn to Italy, where, to astonish modern men, the powers of a Donatello or Ghiberti vibrate across all ages in the bas-reliefs of Saint Anthony at Padua, or in the gates of the Baptistery of Florence.

⁸⁵ Le Hon reminds us, in L'homme fossile, that before the Iron Age all bronzes of our western world contained one part of tin to nine of copper.

⁸⁶ See Romero de Castilla, Inventarios de los objetos recogidos en el Museo Arqueológico de la Comisión de Monumentos de Badajoz. Badajoz, 1896. Plate xxvii. represents another of these objects.

⁸⁷ Undoubtedly the use of the Roman candelabrum was continued by the Spanish Visigoths. “Candelabrum,” says Saint Isidore, “a candelis dictum, quasi candela feram, quod candelam ferat” (Originum, book xx., chap. x.). The Spanish word candela is loosely used to-day for almost any kind of light or fire, or even for a match; but an ordinary candle is generally called a vela or bugía (bougie).

⁸⁸ “A small open lamp with a beak, and a hook to hang it, within which is another of the same make that contains oil and a wick to give light, commonly used in kitchens, stables, and inns.”—Fathers Connelly and Higgins, Spanish-English and English-Spanish Dictionary. Swinburne wrote of these candiles:—“The Spaniards delight in wine that tastes strong of the pitched skin, and of oil that has a rank smell and taste; indeed, the same oil feeds their lamp, swims in their pottage, and dresses their salad; in inns the lighted lamp is frequently handed down to the table, that each man may take the quantity he chooses.”

⁸⁹ Perhaps it is not foreign to my theme to add that the current name in Spanish for an oil lamp is quinqué, from Quinquet, the Parisian chemist who invented the tuyau-cheminée a hundred and odd years ago. The same word passes also into Spanish slang, “tener quinqué”—i.e. to be quick-witted and perceptive.

⁹⁰ Swinburne fell into a comical error concerning these. “In the centre of the court are twelve ill-made lions muzzled, their fore-parts smooth, their hind-parts rough, which bear upon their backs an enormous bason, out of which a lesser rises.”—Travels through Spain, p. 180.

⁹¹ September 20th to October 19th, A.D. 1305.

⁹² These spheres recall the four great gilded globes of bronze, tapering from the bottom to the top, that crowned in olden days the Giralda tower of Seville. According to the Crónica General the glitter of these globes “de tan grande obra, é tan grandes, que no se podríen hacer otras tales,” could be distinguished at a distance of eight leagues. On August 24th, 1395, when Seville was assailed by a frightful tempest accompanied by an earthquake, the metal rod which pierced and held the globes was snapped, and the globes themselves were dashed into a myriad pieces on the azotea, scores of yards below.

⁹³ See p. 50.

⁹⁴ Libro de las Tablas, pp. 17, 18. See Madrazo, Cordova, pp. 273 et seq.

⁹⁵ In documents which relate to him (see Gestoso's Dictionary of Sevillian Artificers) Morel is often called an artillero. His father, Juan Morel, was also a founder of cannon, and signed a contract in 1564 to cast two bronze pieces or tiros, with the royal arms on them.

⁹⁶ The efficacy of light in illuminating, or may be in dazzling and confounding, Christian worshippers is too self-evident to call for illustration. The symbolic meaning of church candles is, however, neatly indicated by the wise Alfonso in his compilation of the seven Partidas. “Because three virtues dwell in candles, namely, wick, wax, and flame, so do we understand that persons three dwell in the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and we may understand three other things that dwell in Jesus Christ; to wit, body, soul, and godhead. Hence the twelve lighted candles manifested to each quarter of the church exhibit unto us the twelve apostles who preached the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ through all the earth, and manifesting truest wisdom illumined all the world.”

⁹⁷ The English rendering of Cean's description inserted by Riaño is inaccurate throughout.

⁹⁸ As architect, he made a monument (which exists no longer) for the festivals of Holy Week at Seville.

⁹⁹ In 1565 Juan del Pozo, an ironsmith, received one hundred reales “on account of an engine which he made of iron for moving the tenebrarium of the cathedral, and other heavy things.”—Gestoso, Diccionario de Artífices Sevillanos, vol. i. p. 313.

¹⁰⁰ The statue, which looks so tiny from the street, measures nearly fourteen feet in height, and weighs more than two thousand two hundred pounds. The banner alone weighs close upon four hundred pounds. The figure was raised into its place in 1568, in which year I find that eighteen Moriscos were paid seventy-eight reales between them all for doing the work of carriage (Gestoso, Diccionario). Gestoso also mentions a large bronze plate made by Morel for the pavement of the cathedral, and which has disappeared. It weighed 2269 pounds, or about the same as the weathercock of the Giralda, and Morel was paid for it the sum of 289,361 maravedis.

¹⁰¹ Spaniards have a very scanty confidence in one another's honesty, as well as in the competence of their police. Often, at Madrid, and at this day, the porter of a house, as soon as it is dark, unscrews the knockers from the downstairs door, and guards them in his conciergerie until the morning.