An Architect's Note-Book in Spain Part 4

SALAMANCA

MDW 1869

CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.]

PLATE XVII.

_SALAMANCA._

WINDOW FROM THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.

ONE of the most agreeable features in the design of the Casa de las Conchas, is the variety of detail of the different windows throughout the house. On the sketch under consideration, and in the two which follow it, evidence is afforded of the burning of the "lamp of life," as Mr. Ruskin would call it. They are all of them conceived in a transitional and composite but very picturesque style, and however different or possibly antagonistic the details of each window may appear amongst themselves, as a whole they agree and look exceedingly well.

This window occurs on the first floor of the facade, and possesses an additional interest from showing us pretty clearly what kind of windows may have been superseded in a similar situation by the Italian windows so much to be regretted in the fine Palace of the Duques del Infantado at Guadalajara. See Plate LXXVIII.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 18

SALAMANCA

CASA DE LAS CONCHAS

MDW 1869]

PLATE XVIII.

_SALAMANCA._

WINDOW IN THE PATIO OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.

THIS window with its heavy ironwork, gives light through the back wall of the arcading of the Patio to a pa.s.sage running behind a room, which derives its light from the external wall of the house. Such pa.s.sages occur not unfrequently in Spanish houses, and are convenient, as they serve to bring three rooms into a suite without the necessity of having to pa.s.s through any one room to get to another. Of course of the three rooms two may be of the full width, extending from the external wall of the house to the back wall of the arcading of the Patio, and one of that width less the width of the pa.s.sage, into which the three doors open, and which is lighted by a window from the Patio (such as that sketched), and frequently approached also from the arcading by a doorway adjoining the window. As the Patio is a comparatively public part of the house, such windows require, and usually have, the strong close iron work, which gives security and a certain amount of privacy to the external windows of the ground-floor of the house.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 19

SALAMANCA

MDW 1869

CASA DE LAS CONCHAS]

PLATE XIX.

_SALAMANCA._

EXTERNAL WINDOW OF THE CASA DE LAS CONCHAS.

THE windows of the first-floors of Spanish houses are always the largest, airiest, and openest, of the whole of the windows of the house, excepting in the rare cases where there is a top story consisting of a large gallery, as frequently at Genoa, serving for promenade and look out--in fact a species of Belvedere. The importance of the rooms lighted is generally indicated by the relative richness of the window dressings.

The profusion with which heraldic insignia are used in the window sketched, suffices, therefore, to show that with others of the same kind it lighted the princ.i.p.al saloons of the house. Another point of construction ill.u.s.trated by the sketch, is the fact that the "conchas"

or carved stone sh.e.l.ls have been applied after the general building of the wall. This is proved by the regularity with which they are placed, irrespective of the heights of the various courses of masonry, and of the levels at which the joints occur.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 20

SALAMANCA CASA MONTEREY.

MDW 1869]

PLATE XX.

_SALAMANCA_.

EXTERIOR OF THE CASA MONTEREY.

OF the very picturesque specimen of domestic architecture ill.u.s.trated in Plate XX., and bearing the local name of the Casa de Monterey, but little seems to be known. Escosura confesses himself reduced to conjecture, and thus theorises on the subject. As to the exact epoch at which the Casa de Monterey was built, the following circ.u.mstances should be borne in mind. "The t.i.tle of Conde de Monterey was created in favour of Don Baltasar de Zuniga, who was Viceroy of Naples in the year 1626.

This n.o.bleman caused the Church of the Convent of Nuns which bore his name, and which stands opposite his palace, to be erected at his expense from the designs of the fashionable Italian architect, Fontana. May it be unreasonable to suppose that the Palace was designed at the same time by the same architect?"

To this question, the proper answer given by some better judge of architectural style would, probably, be "very," since it is difficult to perceive any similarity between the modes of design, upon which the two buildings are based. The architecture of the Church of the Convent, one angle of which appears on the left hand of the sketch, is in the large florid manner of the post-Palladian Italians, while that of the Palace is small in its ornamental parts, and instead of exhibiting Italian features, seems throughout to show the peculiar reading of Italian style adopted by the late Plateresque Spanish architects of the second half of the sixteenth century. This is particularly noticeable in the absence of a crowning bal.u.s.trade, and in the subst.i.tution for it of the elaborate pierced cresting which apparently the Spanish architects adopted from Moorish rather than from any antique models.

The interior of this grand looking palace is said to have been all but destroyed by the French.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 21

SALAMANCA

MDW 1869

OPPOSITE SAN BENITO.]

PLATE XXI.

_SALAMANCA_.