An Architect's Note-Book in Spain Part 22

DETAIL FROM THE CASA DE LA DIPUTACION.

IF Catalonian architecture differs from ordinary Spanish, and it is quite manifest from my sketch that it does in detail, as I have already shown that it does in system, the character of the Catalonian men and women differs even more markedly from that of the Spanish. While one of the latter in his laziness, as Marcos Obregon says, "ni come con gusto, ni duerme con quietud, ni descansa con reposo," the former, on the contrary, eat with appet.i.te, sleep with tranquillity, and throw off their cares healthily in rest. The latter, in fact, chew but scarcely digest the bread of idleness, while the former thrive on that of industry. As a natural consequence, there is no love lost between the two races. The Castilian regards as mean and debasing the cultivation of the very mechanical arts, excellence in which the Catalonian well knows to be the source, not only of wealth, but of power and honour as well.

To Barcelona belongs the credit of having been one of the first cities in the world, out of France, to establish gratuitous schools of design in which poor youths were taught specially to design for manufactures.

Both Laborde and Whittaker[58] testify to the extent and excellence of these schools at the end of the last century and beginning of the present. The latter, writing in 1803, says, "we visited the Academy of Arts inst.i.tuted in the Palace of Commerce, and supported in the most magnificent manner by the merchants of Barcelona. We were conducted through a long suite of apartments, in which seven hundred boys were employed in copying and designing; some of them, who display superior talents, are sent to Rome, and to the Academy of St. Fernando at Madrid; the others are employed in different ways by the merchants and manufacturers. The rooms are large and commodious, and are furnished with casts of celebrated statues and every proper apparatus. We observed a few drawings of considerable merit, produced by the scholars; but the grand picture before us of liberality and industry, amply rewarded our visit; and was the more striking to us, for having of late been continually accustomed to lament the traces of neglect and decay, so visibly impressed on every similar inst.i.tution in the impoverished cities of Italy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 92

BARCELONA

CASA DE LA DEPUTACION

MDW 1869]

PLATE XCII.

_BARCELONA._

WINDOW FROM THE CASA DE LA DIPUTACION.

THIS quaint and very late specimen of Gothic, although Ecclesiastical enough in its sculpture, is purely domestic in its architecture. The latter is in its character rather French or Burgundian than Spanish, while the former was, I have little doubt, the work of a native of the Peninsula. So far as I could see, no preparation had ever been made for glazing this window, and the wooden shutters, both in their form and mode of joinery, were rather Moorish than Spanish. No one can be surprised at such symptoms of internationality, in works executed at a sea-port like Barcelona--in which the Arts, like the prevalent language, may have had a "lingua franca" of cosmopolitan freedom from prejudice.

In most of such Gothic work, and indeed in every kind of building in Spain, however fantastic and not unfrequently over intricate the detail may be, we scarcely ever observe any flimsiness, or want of due substance in the constructional parts. In this matter the Spanish architects merit, for attention to the erection of permanent structures in all their styles, the praise bestowed by Mr. Street upon those mainly who wrought in the mediaeval ones. Of those last, the Spanish critics, who have been sometimes accused of overduly estimating what they call Greco-Roman architecture, early showed what I regard as a fair appreciation. Antonio Ponz, for instance, in the last century certainly praised Berruguete, Covarrubbias, and even Herrera in very glowing terms, but I know few writers who have better expressed an opinion as to the fitness of the mediaeval styles, and especially the old Spanish system of the st.u.r.diest construction, for ecclesiastical purposes.

Of this "Arquitectura Gotica," he says,[59] "nadie puede con razon decir, que falta en la majestad y el decoro: al contrario parece inventada para da.r.s.elo a los Templos, y casas del Senor. Los mas insignes Arquitectos han confessado su solidez, y han tenido mucho que admirar en el capricho de sus adornos, y en la prolixidad con que estan acabadas todas sus partes. Muchos paises de Europa se precian de sus monumentos, y en Espana los hay magnificos, como son la Catedral de Burgos, la de Sevilla, Valencia, y otras."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 93

BARCELONA

THE TOWN HALL

MDW 1869]

PLATE XCIII.

_BARCELONA._

DOORWAY IN THE TOWN HALL.

THE mission to Spain of the Count de Laborde on the part of the French Government at the moment when Napoleon I. thought he had the whole country within his grasp, was essentially economic in its object. Hence his accounts of, and investigations into, its past, present and future capabilities for trade are of far greater value than his topographical and archaeological investigations, most of which are founded on the writings of Ponz and other well known authorities. While Spain was at the height of its prosperity, Seville and subsequently Cadiz commanded the South American trade, but Barcelona remained as it had been from a very early date, the great maritime means of communication and interchange of commodities between Spain and the rest of Europe. The business transactions carried on at its Lonja, or Bourse, and its Town Hall were very extensive, and these buildings were of commensurate importance. Our present sketch represents an internal doorway of the last named building, and the cosmopolitan character of its architecture, of probably the commencement of the sixteenth century, will be manifest at a glance. The following is Laborde's[60] epitome of the history of that great foreign trade of which Barcelona once shared with Valencia and Almeria almost a complete monopoly.

"The state of Spanish manufactures, in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, will form a tolerably accurate clue to that of commerce at the same period. The latter was then in a most flourishing condition, and its ramifications extended to all parts of Europe. The cities of Medina del Campo, Rio Seco, Burgos, Segovia, Toledo, Cuenca, Granada, Almeria, Cordova, Jaen, Seville, Barcelona, Valencia, Ciudad Real, and Sant'

Jago, carried on a very extensive commerce. Almeria, Valencia and Barcelona pushed their commercial concerns into Syria, Egypt, Barbary, and the Archipelago. These cities were equally important, in a mercantile view, with the Hanseatic towns. Barcelona had a very great foreign trade; after the commencement of the fourteenth century; under the Kings of Aragon it equipped and maintained armed ships for the defence of the Catalonian coast and the protection of its trade. It established factories in the extreme parts of Europe and Asia, as far as the river Tanais; kept a consul, who represented the city, and who was presented to Tamerlane the Great in the year 1397, when he returned in triumph from his military expedition into Muscovy and the Kipzac, a country lying east and west of the Caspian Sea and the river Volga.

"Spain at that period had a large navy, and its shipping trade was immense. If the account of Thome Cano in his 'Arte de construir Naves'

be admitted, it possessed a thousand merchant vessels at a time when the European marine was far less extensive than it is at present."

To return for a moment to the picturesque doorway I have sketched. Its sculpture, which in execution is very good of its kind, is as completely Renaissance in character as its architecture is still Gothic; it in fact corresponds to Mudejar work, with this difference, that the admixture with the Gothic in this case is Plateresque, while in the Mudejar work it is Moorish.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 94

BARCELONA

KNOCKER TO OLD HOUSE CALLE SANTA LUCIA.

MDW 1869]

PLATE XCIV.

_BARCELONA._

KNOCKER OF AN OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE SANTA LUCIA.

IN the vicinity of the old church of Sta. Lucia yet exist at Barcelona several interesting stone houses of the fifteenth century. Upon the doors of these are to be still found specimens of excellent iron work of the same period. It is not however to be supposed that the Barcelonese possessed any very special gifts in this line, since evidences of almost equal dexterity are to be found scattered over the whole extent of the Peninsula. In the north and south alike, the "Rejas," or vast screens, sometimes of iron only, sometimes of bra.s.s and bronze, and sometimes of mixed metals, are yet to be found of great importance and interest. The most famous of the "Rejeros," as they were called, or makers of Rejas, were Francesco de Salamanca who flourished in 1533; Christobal Andino of 1540; Francesco de Vilalpando of 1561; and Juan Bautista Celma of 1600.

Because these men's names have become "household words" amongst all students of Spanish Art, it should not be forgotten that great men "to fortune and to fame unknown" lived before those whose good deeds and works encountered fitting record. By some of these were executed many of the various admirable specimens of metal work commented upon in terms of high praise by Ford, Street, O'Shea and other writers. The finest metal worker who really startled his contemporaries by the beauty and splendour of his workmanship, its "elaboracion y prolixedad," was the celebrated Henrique de Arfe, gold and silversmith of Leon, founder of a family which for several generations supplied artist-workmen in the precious metals whose fame rests upon the same platform as that of Cellini and Caradosso di Milano. His princ.i.p.al works were, according to the account given to us of them by his grandson Juan, in the "Varia Commensuracion," the custodias (or "ciboria" for holding the sanctified wafer) of the Cathedrals of Leon, Cordova, Toledo, and Sahagun. Of crosses, paxes, censers, pixes, feretories, candelabra, monstrances, lamps, &c., he scattered specimens broadcast throughout Spain. In all of them he showed, as his descendant declared, "El valor de su ingenio raro, con mayor efecto que puede escribirse."

As the present is the last occasion on which, in this volume at least, I may have to speak of mediaeval metal work, and especially iron work, I may be allowed to allude very briefly to the two princ.i.p.al tools by which it was worked, viz.: the hammer and the pliers. In England and in France the first was used in preference at least to the last; while in Germany, Burgundy and the Low Countries, the last was specially affected, and by its means foliage, both natural and conventional, was rendered with great skill, facility and taste. The Spaniards, as is proved by the present sketch, and that which follows it, were at an early period dexterous in the use of both tools; uniting the ma.s.sive style engendered by the predominant use of the hammer with the more florid and fanciful manner springing out of the light and convoluted forms created by a more liberal use of the pliers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 95

BARCELONA KNOCKER TO OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE SANTA LUCIA.

MDW 1869]

PLATE XCV.

_BARCELONA._

KNOCKER TO AN OLD HOUSE IN THE CALLE SANTA LUCIA.

IN this fanciful little object we meet with another ill.u.s.tration of the spirit of humour as well as of dexterity in their craft, manifested in abundance by the excellent old ironworkers of Spain. Still good as the blacksmiths unquestionably were, the triumphs of Spanish metal working were chiefly embodied in the precious metals. It is rather in the cabinets of connoisseurs than in the churches of the country that specimens should be sought for to justify the splendid reputation those artist-workmen enjoyed in the palmy days of the Spanish Court and Church. Everywhere the traveller comes now only upon exhausted treasuries and emptied sacristies. Even since the days of Ford's inimitable handbook the spoiler has been rampant, and of the custodias and virus, the "blandones" and "portapaces" in which he delighted, so far as my perquisitions extended, scarcely a vestige was to be met with.

Even since my sketches were made, the contents of the treasury of "Nuestra Senora del Pilar" have been brought to the hammer; and the pressure of other engagements alone prevented my return to Saragossa empowered to secure a share of those artistic curiosities for our National collection.