An Architect's Note-Book in Spain Part 17

LA SALA DE LAS DOS HERMANAS

MDW 1869]

PLATE LXXIII.

_GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._

NICHE IN LA SALA DE LAS DOS HERMANAS.

THAT the Moors themselves were fully conscious that in creating the Alhambra they were creating types of beauty for all generations, would be clearly manifest from the inscriptions of the Hall of the two Sisters, (from which our ill.u.s.tration is taken), even if every other of the hundreds of inscriptions the building contains in other apartments were destroyed.

"I am the garden, and every morning do I appear decked out in beauty.

Look attentively at my elegance, and thou wilt reap the benefit of a commentary on decoration."

"Indeed, we never saw a palace more lofty than this in its exterior, or more brilliantly decorated in its interior; or having more extensive apartments--markets they are, where those provided with money are paid in beauty, and where the judge of elegance is perpetually sitting to p.r.o.nounce sentence."

"Here is the wonderful cupola, at sight of whose beautiful proportions, all other cupolas vanish and disappear."

Such inscriptions are not all of them of this hyperbolic stamp, since some of them serve to record the names of ill.u.s.trious founders, and to explain the uses of various parts of the structure. To an inscription of this kind we are indebted for an accurate knowledge of the uses of such niches as the one represented in my sketch. Many travellers and writers had supposed that their purpose had been to hold the slippers of the visitors, but this theory was entirely dispelled, when M. Pasqual de Gayangos read the inscription of the left niche of the Hall de las dos Hermanas.

"Praise to G.o.d! With my ornaments and tiara[44] I surpa.s.s beauty itself, nay the luminaries in the Zodiac out of envy descend to me.

"The water vase within me, they say, is like a devout man standing towards the Kiblah of the Mihrab,[45] ready to begin his prayers."

The idea that these niches were used to hold water-bottles is further strengthened, as Mr. Owen Jones has justly remarked, by the existence of the mosaic linings amid the plaster work by which they were surrounded; as well as by the white marble slabs which serve for their base or floor. The wall and pier dados, which extend from these marble slabs to the beautiful Azulejos floor, are all made in elegant mosaic. Above the niche in the sketch appears the ingenious pendentive impost from which spring the great arches carried by the piers, with the characteristic ingrailed fringe work which was almost always retained even, as we see at Seville, in the latest Renaissance Mudejar work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 74

MDW 1869

GRANADA

THE ALHAMBRA SALA DEL TRIBUNAL

BORDER FULL SIZE]

PLATE LXXIV.

_GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._

STUCCO DETAIL FROM THE SALA DEL TRIBUNAL.

THE correctness of this sketch, as to dimension at least, has been ensured by the mode in which it was obtained, viz., by gently pressing a piece of paper against the surface of the piece of ornament (so as to obtain a slight impression of its outline,) then marking it faintly with pencil, pressing it out again quite flat, and finishing it in ink on the spot. It may be looked upon, therefore, as giving, as nearly as is possible on a plane surface, an accurate transcript of the elegant ornament from the Sala del Tribunal selected for ill.u.s.tration. My reason for this selection was, chiefly because I desired to show the minute scale and extreme delicacy of much of the decoration in relief with which the walls of the princ.i.p.al apartments of the Alhambra are covered.

It was partly also because this particular specimen retained faint tracing lines drawn, most likely with a silver or lead point, and a free hand, upon the flat surfaces of certain parts of the ornament in relief.

These served as guide lines for the yet more delicate labour of the painter, who carried the subdivision of parts, by means of the application of contrasting colours and gilding, into yet more microscopic superficial enrichment.

As this is the last ill.u.s.tration I have to offer of the Alhambra, it may be well to direct the reader's attention briefly to the general system upon which such Art as the Moors practised, and most dearly loved, was based. Those who would know "all about it," must give themselves diligently to a study of all Owen Jones' works; from the ponderous "Alhambra," with its magnificent ill.u.s.trations, to the little guide to the "Alhambra Courts of the Crystal Palace," not forgetting to test his theory by his practice in the beautiful reproductions of Moorish Art he has created for their edification at Sydenham. In the pages of the smaller volume they will find the system epitomised simply and delightfully in nine propositions under the following heads.

First, to decorate construction, never to construct decoration.

Second, to let all lines grow out of each other in gradual undulations--always so as to conduce to repose.

Third, to care first for general forms and then for harmonious subdivisions and fillings.

Fourth, to balance straight, inclined, and curved forms so as to produce harmony and repose by contrast.

Fifth, to let all lines flow out of a parent stem, traceable throughout its course.

Sixth, either radially (as in nature with the human hand or in a chestnut leaf.).

Seventh, or tangentially,--as stems from branches.

Eighth, to avoid the simpler curves and use only those of a higher order.

Ninth, to treat all ornament conventionally, _i.e._, not in direct imitation of Nature, but in a mode of imitation subordinated to the architectural conditions of the surface or form to be ornamented.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 75

GRANADA

MDW 1869

CATHEDRAL FROM THE BACK OF THE HIGH ALTAR]

PLATE LXXV.

_GRANADA._

VIEW OF THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE BACK OF THE HIGH ALTAR

IT is always interesting to watch the first rays of light which dissipate clouds of darkness or prejudice; and this, by the aid of the annals of the early printing press, we are enabled to do (with comparative certainty as to chronology) in the case of the dawn of the revival of cla.s.sical architecture in every country of Europe except Italy. In that favoured land, the sacred fire of Roman tradition was never quite extinguished, and in its great cities the renascent flame was already lambent, and gaining strength, before Sweynheim and Pannarz started their celebrated press at Subiaco.

The first edition of the ten books of Vitruvius printed by G. Herolt at Rome, _circa_ 1486, was immediately followed by the edition of Florence, under the editorship of Leon Baptista Alberti, bearing the imprint of the previous year. At least two other editions were exhausted in Italy before the close of the century, and succeeded by many more previous to the middle, of the sixteenth century.

Alberti's own admirable writings on Architecture and the other Fine Arts moved all Italy, giving a thoroughly practical direction to the lessons somewhat obscurely inculated by Vitruvius; whose writings, without Alberti's comments, would have been of little practical use in countries in which ample remains of cla.s.sical art were not at hand for reference and study.

The first French edition of the text of Vitruvius is of 1523; the first German is of 1543. The first French translation dates from 1547; the first German from 1548, published at Nuremburg. It was "volgarizzato" in Italy from 1521.