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Title: Royal Palaces of Spain
Author: Calvert, Albert Frederick
Language: English
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THE SPANISH SERIES
ROYAL PALACES OF SPAIN
THE SPANISH SERIES
_EDITED BY ALBERT F. CALVERT_
GOYA
TOLEDO
MADRID
SEVILLE
MURILLO
CORDOVA
EL GRECO
VELAZQUEZ
CERVANTES
THE PRADO
THE ESCORIAL
ROYAL PALACES OF SPAIN
SPANISH ARMS AND ARMOUR
GRANADA AND THE ALHAMBRA
LEON, BURGOS, AND SALAMANCA
VALLADOLID, OVIEDO, SEGOVIA, ZAMORA,
AVILA, AND ZARAGOZA
_In preparation_--
GALICIA
SCULPTURE IN SPAIN
CITIES OF ANDALUCIA
MURCIA AND VALENCIA
TAPESTRIES OF THE ROYAL PALACE
CATALONIA AND BALEARIC ISLANDS
SANTANDER, VISCAYA, AND NAVARRE
ROYAL PALACES
OF SPAIN
A HISTORICAL & DESCRIPTIVE
ACCOUNT OF THE SEVEN PRINCIPAL
PALACES OF THE SPANISH
KINGS, WITH 164 ILLUSTRATIONS.
BY ALBERT F. CALVERT
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMIX
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
PREFACE
Since despotism has been replaced by constitutional rule the divinity
that doth hedge a King has shed something of its significance, but the
staunchest republican will admit that there is at least a certain
picturesqueness about royalty; and the interest attaching to a crowned
head naturally extends to the ancestral homes of majesty. Spain is
unusually rich in ‘cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces,’ many of
which have been the scenes of stirring and momentous events in her
history. On the gloomy pile of the Escorial--worthier of an Egyptian
Pharaoh--Philip II. stamped conspicuously and indelibly his own sombre
personality; Aranjuez and La Granja reveal to us monarchy in its lighter
aspect; the Alcazar reminds us of the days when Castilian royalty aped
the pomp of the Saracen and became itself half-Oriental; the Royal
Palace of Madrid epitomises the greatest crisis in the nation’s
history, of the expulsion of its legitimate sovereign, and of the
usurpation of the eldest Buonaparte. Napoleon himself ascended its grand
staircase, and looking round at the splendid home of the Spanish
Bourbons, he was able to say to his brother, ‘I hold at last this Spain
so much desired!’
These palaces of the haughtiest royal race in Europe are endowed with
the rarest treasures of art and taste such as only a semi-despotic Power
could accumulate in bygone days. It is the object of this little book to
reveal these riches to the curious in such matters by means of
illustrations, the accompanying text being only to be considered in the
light of explanatory notes and chronological data.
A. F. C.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE ESCORIAL 1
II. LA GRANJA (SAN ILDEFONSO) 19
III. EL PARDO 38
IV. ARANJUEZ 49
V. MIRAMAR 64
VI. EL ALCAZAR (SEVILLE) 74
VII. ROYAL PALACE (MADRID) 91
ILLUSTRATIONS
ESCORIAL
SUBJECT PLATE
View of the Palace, 1
View of the Palace, 2
View of the Palace (east side), 3
North-west angle of the Palace, 4
Principal Façade and Angle of the Palace, 5
View of the Principal Staircase of the Palace, 6
Hall of Ambassadors, 7
Reception Hall, 8
View of the Dining Hall, 9
Pompeian Hall, 10
Library, 11
Chapter Room, 12
The Holy Family, by Raphael, 13
The Last Supper, by Titian, 14
A Smoker, by Teniers, 15
Country Dance, by Goya. Tapestry, 16
Children Picking Fruit, by Goya. Tapestry, 17
The Grape-sellers, by Goya. Tapestry, 18
The China Merchant, by Goya. Tapestry, 19
Diptych, in Ivory, of the 13th Century, 20
SAN ILDEFONSO, LA GRANJA
View of the Palace, 21
View of the Palace and the Cascade, 22
View of the Palace, 23
View of the Palace and Fountain of the Fama, 24
View of the Palace from the Fountain of the Fama, 25
View of the Palace, 26
The Palace in perspective, 27
Entrance to the Palace, 28
View of the Collegiate Church and the Palace, 29
Palace of Rio Frio, 30
Cascade, 31
Palace and Fountain of Fama, 32
Fountain of Fama, 33
Fountain of Fama, 34
Fountain of the Courser, 35
Fountain of the Three Graces, 36
Fountain of the Three Graces, 37
Fountain of Neptune, 38
Fountain of Neptune, 39
Part of the Fountain of Neptune, 40
Fountain of Neptune, 41
Fountain of the Baths of Diana, 42
Fountain of Dragons, 43
Fountain of Latona, 44
Fountain of Eslo, or of the Winds, 45
Fountain of Andromeda, 46
Fountain of the Canastillo, 47
Fountain of the Cup, 48
Fountain of the Cup, 49
Source of the Arno, underground river, 50
The River, 51
The Reservoir, 52
The Reservoir, 53
Cascade of the Reservoir, 54
The Lake, 55
Group of Vases in the Parterre of Andromeda, 56
Three Vases in the Parterre of Andromeda, 57
Vase in the Parterre de la Fama, 58
Vase in the Parterre de la Fama, 59
Vase in the Parterre de la Fama, 60
Vase of the Baths of Diana, 61
Vase in the Parterre of Andromeda, 62
Vase in the Parterre of Andromeda, 63
Vase in the Parterre of Andromeda, 64
EL PARDO
View of the Palace from the Grounds, 65
The Palace, 66
The Palace, 67
The Palace, 68
The Palace, 69
Hall of Ambassadors, 70
Hall of Ambassadors, 71
Dining Room, 72
Ante-Room, 73
Ante-Room, 74
Private Room, 75
Private Room, 76
Scene of the Royal Theatre, 77
Royal Box in the Theatre, 78
Casa del Principe, 79
ARANJUEZ
Principal Façade of the Palace, 80
Southern Façade of the Palace, 81
Royal Palace from the Parterre, 82
Royal Palace from the Gardens, 83
Royal Palace and Suspension Bridge over the Tajo, 84
The Grand Staircase, 85
Porcelain Room, Japanese style, 86
Detail of Porcelain Room, Japanese style, 87
Detail of Porcelain Room, Japanese style, 88
Detail of the Porcelain Room, Japanese style, 89
Detail of the Porcelain Room, Japanese style, 90
Casa del Labrador, 91
Convent of San Antonio, 92
Entrance to the Gardens of the Island, 93
Fountain in the Plaza de San Antonio, 94
Avenue of the Catholic Sovereigns in the
Gardens of the Island, 95
Jupiter, bronze group in the Gardens of the Island, 96
Ceres, bronze group in the Gardens of the Island, 97
Juno, bronze group in the Gardens of the Island, 98
Pavilions of the River, in the Garden of the Prince, 99
Fountain of Apollo, in the Garden of the Prince, 100
Fountain of Ceres, in the Garden of the Prince, 101
Fountain of Narcissus, in the Garden of the Prince, 102
Fountain of the Swan, in the Garden of the Prince, 103
General View of the Tajo and the Parterre, 104
Fountain of Hercules, in the Gardens of the Island, 105
Fountain of Hercules, in the Gardens of the Island, 106
Fountain of Apollo, in the Gardens of the Island, 107
MIRAMAR
Side View of the Palace, 108
Reception Room, 109
Billiard Room, 110
SEVILLE
Façade of the Alcazar, 111
Alcazar, Gates of the Principal Entrance, 112
Interior of the Hall of Ambassadors, 113
Interior of the Hall of Ambassadors, 114
Interior of the Hall of Ambassadors, 115
Hall of Ambassadors, 116
Hall of Ambassadors, 117
Court of the Hundred Virgins, 118
Court of the Dolls, 119
Court of the Dolls, from the Room of the Prince, 120
Court of the Dolls, 121
Court of the Dolls, 122
Court of the Dolls, 123
Upper Part of the Court of the Dolls, 124
Dormitory of the Moorish Kings, 125
Sleeping Saloon of the Moorish Kings, 126
Entrance to the Dormitory of the Moorish Kings, 127
View of the Gallery from the second floor, 128
Hall in which King St. Ferdinand died, 129
Interior of the Hall of St. Ferdinand, 130
Interior of the Hall of St. Ferdinand, 131
MADRID
The Royal Palace, 132
The Royal Palace from the Plaza de Oriente, 133
The Royal Palace, 134
Principal Façade of the Palace, 135
The Royal Palace from the Plaza de Oriente, 136
The Royal Palace, 137
The Royal Palace, 138
Palace from the Plaza de la Armeria, 139
Grand Staircase of the Palace, 140
Principal Staircase of the Palace, 141
Grand Staircase of the Palace, 142
The Grand Staircase, 143
Hall of Columns, 144
General View of the Throne Room, 145
The Throne, 146
The Throne, 147
Detail of Throne Room, 148
Ceiling of the Throne Room, by Tiepolo, 149
Ceiling of the Throne Room, by Tiepolo, 150
Ceiling of the Throne Room, by Tiepolo, 151
The King’s Privy Council Chamber, 152
The Queen’s Room, 153
The Music Room, 154
The Room of Mirrors, 155
Reception Room, 156
Bronze Urn in the Reception Room, 157
Room of Charles III., 158
Chinese Room, by Gasparini, 159
Chinese Room, by Gasparini, 160
Porcelain Room, 161
Corner in the Porcelain Room, 162
The Porcelain Room, 163
Porcelain Group in the Buen Retiro, 164
Royal Palaces of Spain
I
THE ESCORIAL
If men may be known by their works, the Escorial will help us to a
better understanding of Philip of Spain--of his temperament and his
purpose--than can be gained by the study of any other architectural
monument for which he was responsible. Philip II. was guilty of craft
and duplicity; he inflicted suffering and death upon hosts of his
innocent vassals; he has been depicted as a monster of cruelty and
bigoted intolerance. But as a monarch inspired with unfaltering belief
in the divine right of his kingship, he could not be expected to be
tolerant of the stubbornness of others; and as the instrument of God,
appointed to enforce religious unity not only among his own subjects,
but also upon the rest of Europe, he doubtless felt he was justified in
employing any means to accomplish his mission.
The Emperor Charles V. had exhorted Philip to exterminate every trace of
heresy from his dominions, and his son never forgot the injunction nor
sought to escape the obligation that had been thrust upon him.
Throughout his reign, which was inaugurated by an impressive
_auto-da-fé_ at Valladolid--in which twelve tortured creatures were
sacrificed on the fiery altar of their sovereign’s religious zeal--and
closed in an agony of devotion and unshaken faith, he pursued a course
which he never doubted was right. A Spaniard of the Spaniards, convinced
that Spain was the only centre of true religion, he allowed nothing to
stand between him and the attainment of his high purpose. An intense and
dangerous individualist, cursed with the religious exaltation of his
house, his ecstatic asceticism enabled him to endure suffering and
practise rigid mortifications with the same stoicism as that with which
he afflicted others. In his zeal for God and Spain he was sincere; he
never permitted failure, disaster, or catastrophe to daunt him. His most
cherished schemes were frustrated; his beloved country was pauperised
and desolated by his policy; he, who devoted all his energies and power
to the crushing of Protestantism, lived to see the hated faith
enthroned in England, Scotland, Holland, North Germany, and
Scandinavia; yet he died after a lingering illness of indescribable
physical suffering in the great monastery he had built to the honour of
God, convinced to the end of his acceptability as Vicegerent of Jehovah,
and conscious that he had exercised his trust to the brighter glory of
his Maker.
As the inheritor of divine rights, Philip could do no wrong, and as the
greatest king of the greatest kingdom of the world, he always rose
superior to personal or national calamity. His arms suffered
overwhelming reverses in the Netherlands; he retaliated with massacre
and extermination, and was deaf to entreaty. The defeat of his
‘invincible’ Armada was the death-blow to his hopes of converting
England to the true faith, but he heard the news of this crowning
catastrophe of his life without suffering his ‘marble serenity’ to be
ruffled. Into his dying ears was poured the story of the dire
devastation of Cadiz by the English fleet, but he only gnawed his rude
crucifix and resigned himself the more devoutly to the will of God.
This was the man who in the leisure of thirty years of his life stamped
his individuality upon the Royal Palace and Monastery of the Escorial,
and fashioned this mighty pile to be a monument to his power and a
revelation of his mind--a mind diseased with that virus of morbidity
which turned from the contemplation of mercy, charity, and love to
ponder on the awful and retributive side of religion. The man explains
the edifice, and the edifice is the picture of the man. The granite
towers, resting on deep massive foundations, rise boldly into the
heavens--lofty, aspiring, severe, like the prayers his stern heart sent
up to God. The spacious halls and lofty corridors, all leading finally
to the church and the altar, have been likened to the avenues of his
mind.
In 1557, two years before Philip first showed himself to his people as
champion of the purity of the faith, the meeting between the Spanish and
the French arms at St. Quentin credited Spain with a decisive and sorely
needed victory. The battle involved the destruction of a church
dedicated to St. Lawrence, and Philip, who had spent the day invoking
the aid of the martyred saint, bound himself by an oath to found a
monastery to his name. He had also been bound under the will of Charles
V. to provide a royal burial-place for the reception of his father’s
remains, and Philip was probably actuated by a desire to fulfil both
these obligations in building the monastery of the Escorial. In the
‘Carta de Dotacion,’ which appears in Cabrera’s _Vida de Felipe II._,
the king explains his reasons as follows:--
‘In acknowledgment of the many and great blessings which it has
pleased God to heap on us, and continue to us daily, and, inasmuch
as He has been pleased to direct and guide our deeds and acts to
His holy service, and in maintenance and defence of His holy faith
and religion, and of justice and peace within our realms;
considering likewise what the emperor and king, my lord and father,
in a codicil which he lately made, committed to our care, and
charged us with, respecting his tomb, the spot and place where his
body and that of the empress and queen, my lady and mother, should
be placed; it being just and meet that their bodies should be most
duly honoured with a befitting burial-ground, and that for their
souls be said continually masses, prayers, anniversaries, and other
holy records, and because we have, besides, determined that
whenever it may please God to take us away to Him, our body should
rest in the same place and spot near theirs ... for all these
reasons we found and erect the Monastery of San Lorenzo el Real,
near the town of El Escorial, in the diocese and archbishopric of
Toledo, the which we dedicate in the name of the Blessed St.
Lawrence, on account of the special devotion which, as we have
said, we pray to this glorious saint, and in memory of the favour
and victories which on this day we received from God....
Although located in a desolate waste of rugged mountains and treeless
plains, amid surroundings which most men would shun, the site of the
Escorial was selected as the result of much careful thought and personal
investigation by ‘the holy founder,’ as Philip is called by the monks.
His sentimental attachment to the spot is explained by its air of
unrelieved melancholy, but he was also influenced in his choice by the
fact that the district contained the abundance and quality of stone
suitable for his purpose. Already he had conceived the form and
dimensions of his hermitage and sanctuary, the austerity and magnitude
of which were to be in harmony with its natural surroundings. Before the
work of clearing the land was begun he had erected upon the newly
acquired site a rude temporary lodging for his own accommodation. He
entrusted his ideas for the construction of the building to Juan
Bautista de Toledo, whose plans, ambitious and eccentric in the first
place, were severely revised by Philip. On April 23, 1563, the first
stone was laid, and from that time until September 13, 1584, when the
pile was completed, the king, assailed by the fear that he might die
before his scheme was brought to completion, devoted every moment he
could seize from affairs of State to superintending the work, and
urging architects, artists, and decorators to greater efforts in the
accomplishment of their several tasks.
In 1567 Toledo died and was succeeded by Juan de Herrera, who enlarged
the convent and added a bell-tower to the building. In 1574 the
temporary _Panteon_, or royal burying-place, situated under the high
altar of the church, was completed, and to this vault the remains of
Charles V. were transferred in 1574. The solemn service with which they
were received was terminated by a terrific storm which broke over the
monastery and made a wreck of the gorgeous dais that had been erected
for the ceremony. During another storm which visited the district, when
the construction of the edifice was almost finished, a lightning stroke
set fire to the fabric, destroying the fine belfry and its costly peal
of bells and doing much other damage. In 1582 an epidemic, which carried
off the queen, attacked the king, and for a while his life was despaired
of. But Philip survived to see the completion of his initial plans, and
two years later he took formal possession of his royal home which had
cost the then enormous sum of £660,000. Here for fourteen years he
lived, half monarch and half monk, exercising alternately the powers of
a tyrant and the self-sacrificing humiliations of a saint, and boasting
that, from the foot of a mountain, he governed both the old and new
world with two inches of paper.
In the first stages of his fatal illness in 1598, Philip desired to be
removed from Madrid to his beloved Escorial. The distance is only eight
leagues, but the king was so weak that six days were consumed by the
journey. It was his wish to inspect every part of the huge building
before he died, and during the fifty days in which his tortured body
held death at bay his last desire was gratified. He died on the same day
of the same month on which the Escorial was completed. Proudest among
monarchs and the most devout among monks, his gift to posterity is a
convent having the proportions of a palace, and a palace revealing the
austerity of a convent--a structure which is at once the first and
largest Spanish edifice into which the Græco-Roman element was cast. But
although Philip had gratified his ambition, had built monastery, church,
and palace, and had established a court and a college in this Castilian
highland, had laid out gardens and planted elms brought from England,
the royal burying-place at his death was nothing more than a plain
vault. Philip III., in accordance with his father’s wishes, commenced to
enrich the chamber, and the present gorgeous sepulchre was finished in
1654 by Philip IV. ‘No monarchs of the earth,’ it has been written,
‘have a mausoleum comparable to this of the Escorial, which, to the
glory of Spain, was conceived by Charles V., undertaken by Philip II.,
carried on by Philip III., and completed by Philip IV.’ Thus it was more
than a century after the death of the emperor that his remains were laid
to rest in the sepulchre which he had commanded to be built for the
princes of his house.
To-day the Eighth Wonder of the World, the _Octava Maravilla_, which it
is calculated cost from first to last some ten millions, is but a shadow
of its past glory. It is no longer a royal residence, the number of its
monks has become few, its revenues have been wrested from them, and the
spirit of the palace-monastery has departed. A fire which broke out here
in 1671 was not quenched for fifteen days, and the damage then sustained
was repaired in 1676 by the queen-regent, Anne of Austria. Charles III.
effected some further restorations, and his son proposed to make the
place more habitable by the construction of a bull-ring. Later, this
prince, when Charles IV. and fast approaching the close of his ignoble
reign, discovered at the Escorial the plot of the Queen Maria Luisa,
Prince Fernando, and Godoy to betray Spain to France, and the royal
monastery became a royal prison.
The French troops pillaged the monastery in 1807, and during the Carlist
war its treasures were depleted by the removal of about a hundred of the
choicest paintings to the greater security of Madrid. Other pictures
were transferred from the Escorial to the capital after the death of
Ferdinand VII., who had done what he could to repair the ravages of La
Houssaye’s troopers. But the days of the Escorial’s importance as a
centre of political or courtly life were already numbered, and by the
summer of 1861, when the first train arrived at the Escorial station
from Madrid, the palace had ceased to be a royal residence.
It must be admitted that, at first sight, the Escorial produces a
feeling of disappointment; the first impression of the clean granite,
the blue slates, and the leaden roofs is not wholly pleasing. But as one
approaches this ‘grandest and gloomiest failure of modern times,’ the
size and simplicity of the ashy-coloured pile takes possession of the
imagination, its sombreness and its austere magnificence stands out more
and more clearly from its sombre and magnificent surroundings, and one
begins to realise something of the spirit of the place and of the
character of the man that called it into being. The edifice is a
rectangular parallelogram, having a length of 744 feet from north to
south, and a depth of 580 feet. It has been said that the architecture
exhibits a series of solecisms which would have shocked the disciples of
Vignola and Palladio, but Mr. Fergusson in his _History of the Modern
Styles of Architecture_ declares that the whole design shows more of
Gothic character than the masterpieces of Wren and Michael Angelo.
One building, which turns its back on Madrid, faces the Sierra on its
west or principal side and on the north side, while on the east and
south the terraces overlook the hanging gardens and fish ponds. The
building covers an area of 500,000 feet and is 3000 feet in
circumference. It is not proposed to enter here into a detailed
description of the huge structure or its contents. Indeed, a building
which boasts 16 courtyards, 15 cloisters, 40 altars, 88 fountains, 86
staircases, 1200 doors, 2673 windows, 3000 feet of painted fresco, and
120 miles of corridor cannot be dealt with in the space at our
disposal, and an enumeration of the literary and artistic treasures that
are still left to it would occupy some hundreds of pages of print. But
only a tithe remains of the myriad treasures which once adorned its
walls and altars. Before the French invasion its pictures were
priceless, for Philip II. drained Europe of paintings and painters for
the adornment of his palace, and the church teemed with priceless
articles--sacred vessels of gold, a multitude of shrines and
reliquaries, and a tabernacle of such exquisite workmanship that it was
declared to be worthy to be one of the ornaments of the celestial altar.
The grand central portal in the western façade, which was formerly
opened only to admit royalty either alive or dead, leads into the Court
of the Kings, named from the statues of the Kings of Judah connected
with the Temple of Jerusalem. The figures possess little artistic merit,
but they share with the Court and everything connected with the Escorial
the distinction of immensity. They are 17 feet high, and were each cut
by Juan Bautista Monegro out of one block of granite. On the right of
the Court is the Library, with its twenty thousand books and three
thousand Arabic manuscripts, and on the right are the Halls of
Philosophy, the Seminary and the Refectories. The Relicario, from which
one descends to the _Panteon_, is at the extreme right-hand corner of
the church. Philip II. was a relicomaniac, and here in five hundred and
fifteen costly shrines he kept his innumerable precious relics. La
Houssaye scattered the relics to strip the precious metals from the
shrines that contained them. He also stole upwards of a hundred sacred
vessels of gold and silver, the gold and jewelled _custodia_, and the
life-size silver statue of St. Lawrence, which weighed four and a half
hundredweight. A procession of fourteen carts was engaged to convey the
treasure to Madrid. The Court of Evangelists and the Palace Court,
facing the south, are on the right and left of the church, and beyond it
is the palace.
The secret of the grandeur of the Escorial Church is in the conception
and proportion, but also from the point of view of architectural beauty
it is the finest of the several buildings within the walls. The vaulted
roof is ornamented with the frescoes of Luca Giordano, and the screen,
which is 93 feet high by 43 wide, monopolised the energies of Giacomo
Trezzo of Milan for seven years. The high altar and its superb _retablo_
are flanked on either side by the oratories of marble for the royal
family, above which are placed bronze-gilt effigies of Charles V. and
his wife, Philip II. and his fourth wife and their children, inlaid with
marbles and precious stones. Here, in his epitaph, is Philip of Spain’s
challenge to future kings to surpass him in greatness and power. In the
Library are his devotional books, and high up on a pinnacle above the
chapel is a plate of gold, placed there to show that the building of the
Escorial had not left ‘the holy founder’ penniless.
Just beyond the precincts of the church, as one enters the palace, is
the ‘Room of the Founder,’--the name given to the apartment occupied by
Philip II. whenever he visited the monastery--a simple cell rather than
a chamber befitting a king. It was in this room that he died on
September 13, 1598. On the wall is a slab with the following
inscription:--
‘En este estrecho recinto
murió Felipe segundo,
cuando era pequeño el mundo
al hijo de Carlos quinto.’
There still remain the bedroom he had built next to the royal oratory;
the study, some of the chairs he used, and two chairs without arms on
which he used to repose the leg in which he had gout. The ceiling is
smooth and without ornaments; the walls are whitewashed, and the floor
is of brick. From this bedroom the high altar can be seen through two
doors that lead to the galleries.
The palace contains a series of small rooms, the most remarkable of
which are a set of four. The other apartments are covered with beautiful
tapestry made from designs by Rubens, Teniers, and Goya, but the walls
of these particular rooms are covered with the finest inlaid woodwork.
The hinges, locks, and handles of the doors are in gilt-bronze and
steel, and the ceilings are painted by Maella. The entire work is said
to have cost £280,000.
The Battle Room derives its name from the battle-scenes painted on the
walls; these frescoes are by the celebrated Italian artists Granelio and
Fabricio. This gallery is 198 feet long by 28 wide, and 25 high to the
keystone of the vault. The principal fresco, which is very large,
represents the battle of Higueruela and the victory obtained over the
Arabs by John II. on the Vega at Granada. The other frescoes refer to
the battle gained on the day of St. Lawrence, 1557, by Duke Filiberto,
commander of the Spanish army; the capture of the French general, the
Constable de Montmorency, and the siege and capture of San Quentin.
There are also representations of two expeditions to the Azores in the
time of Philip II. The vault contains a variety of figures and caprices
all designed fantastically and ingeniously, with taste and consummate
skill.
Of the three hundred and thirty-eight rich tapestries in the palace, one
hundred and fifty-two of them were manufactured in the old Royal Factory
of Madrid; one hundred and sixty-three in Flanders, from designs for the
most part by David Teniers; twenty in France and five in Italy. Nearly
all represent country scenes, landscapes, Spanish customs, views of
Madrid, and hunting scenes.
The Casa del Principe was built in 1772 by order of Charles IV., when
Prince of the Asturias. When the War of Independence broke out the
treasures that adorned it were taken to Madrid and many of them
disappeared. It was redecorated and embellished in 1824, and carefully
restored some years later. It is entirely built of stone and is called
‘Casita de Abajo,’ to distinguish it from another called ‘Casita de
Arriba,’ built by the Infante Gabriel. The curiosities and works of art
in this pleasant edifice are innumerable. Of the ceilings twenty are of
great merit, painted by Duque, Gómez, Gerroni, Maella, Briles, Pérez,
Japeti, and López. In the nineteen rooms, of which the two floors of the
edifice consist, there are over two hundred oil-paintings and prints,
the subjects for the most part religious, some of them of real merit.
There is also a fine collection of ivory reliefs consisting of
thirty-seven pictures, representing mythological and sacred and profane
scenes, and a beautiful collection of two hundred and twenty-six pieces
of porcelain made at the Buen Retiro factory. In the time of Ferdinand
VII. the house was valued at thirty-seven million pesetas, and it is at
present a veritable museum of curiosities.
The Royal School of Alfonso XII., which occupies the north-east end of
the edifice, is entered from the principal façade. Among its many and
notable apartments is the spacious and magnificent _paraninfo_, the
ceiling of which is formed by a painting of extraordinary size, which is
believed to have been painted by the pupils of Jordán. Two smaller
paintings represent symbolical figures of different sciences, and are
signed by Llamas. Near the _paraninfo_ are the fine Physics and Natural
History rooms, the _lucerna_ or light court, and the children’s
dining-rooms, adorned with a collection of pictures representing
incidents in the life of Alexander. These were painted for the palace of
San Ildefonso by order of Philip V., and they are all signed by eminent
Italian artists. Over the _paraninfo_ is another fine room, the centre
of which is occupied by a beautiful statue of St. Augustine, carved in
wood, conceived and executed by the lay-friar S. Cuñado to commemorate
the fifteenth centenary of the conversion of St. Augustine.
In 1878, by the direction of Alfonso XII., the studies at this Royal
College were reorganised with great success. Later (in 1885) the
teaching being entrusted to the Augustinians, its credit was so enhanced
that now, owing to the unsurpassed position of the place, the
installation of electric light, the perfection and abundance of teaching
material, and still more the competence and zeal with which the learned
corporation carries out its delicate task of the moral, physical, and
scientific education of a large number of youths, the Royal College at
the Escorial well fulfils the high aims of its royal restorer, and is
one of the most important centres of instruction in Spain.
II
LA GRANJA
(SAN ILDEFONSO)
George Borrow loved Spain well, but he loved not the solitude in which
Philip V. found respite from the cares of State and from the dominating
personality of Elizabeth Farnese. ‘So great is the solitude of La
Granja,’ he writes, ‘that wild boars from the neighbouring forests, and
especially from the beautiful pine-covered mountain which rises like a
cone directly behind the palace, frequently find their way into the
streets and squares, and whet their tusks against the pillars of the
porticos.’ But at the time this was written the country was overrun with
Carlists. Candido lurked in the undergrowth, Garcia and his
fellow-conspirators had driven Queen Cristina from the palace, and
nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the town had fled. Even in the season
La Granja may be described as solitary, but it is not desolate, to quote
another word that Borrow employed to describe it. Situated at an
altitude of nearly four thousand feet above the sea, it has been styled,
with much truth, a ‘castle in the air.’ Surrounded as it is by lovely
woods, which extend for leagues in every direction, by gardens, lakes,
and streams, the Palace of San Ildefonso, in the month of flowers, is a
paradise and a miracle combined. For the site, although not exactly hit
upon at random, was selected with a royal inconsequence of the
difficulty and expense involved in the labour of transforming a monkish
farmhouse into a palace rivalling the glittering creations of
Versailles.
The Bourbon Philip V., like his Austrian predecessor Philip II.,
conceived a craving for solitude, and while hunting at Valsain in 1720
he observed La Granja (the Grange, or farmhouse) of the Segovian monks
of El Parral, and coveted it for a place of retirement. Philip’s nature
had undergone a great change since he entered Spain, a handsome,
resolute soldier, in 1701. His first wife, Marie Louise of Savoy, had
been at his side during the troublous, early days of his reign, and in
1714, when Spain was at peace for the first time since he assumed the
crown, his wife died. Under the stress of warlike excitement and the
gentle, sustaining sympathy and influence of Marie Louise, Philip had
proved himself a prince of high spirit, determination, and resource, but
under the domination of the ambitious, intriguing, masterful Elizabeth
he lost all initiative and sunk into a moody inaction, which
subsequently developed into lethargic insanity. It has been said that,
personally, Philip did little good for Spain, and it must be admitted
that, when it was most incumbent on him to play the man, he weakly
involved the country in prolonged wars at the bidding of his wife. If
the national revenue increased enormously during his reign, the
expenditure was more than proportionately increased in the construction
of the three palaces he left to Spain and in the extravagant collection
of works of art with which he furnished them. From Versailles he had
brought the love of letters which prompted him to found the Royal
Spanish Academy, the National Library, the Royal Academy of History, and
the School of Nobles. His training at the Court of Louis XIV. was also
evident in the change in the social customs of the country. The nobles
adopted French fashions in costumes and cookery, they affected French
furniture and French books. The king, who had thus stamped his personal
tastes upon the Court, saw his opportunity of further gratifying his
French sympathies by creating a ‘Spanish Versailles’ and a ‘Spanish
Fontainebleau.’
It was on the rocky eminence of La Granja, overlooking Segovia’s brown
towers and the distant Roman aqueduct, that Philip V. gave orders for an
estate to be laid out that should be reminiscent of his beloved
Versailles. The fact that no suitable level existed on the sharp
mountain slope for the erection of a palace mattered nothing. The level
must be made. Tens of thousands of tons of rock were blasted away; tens
of thousands of tons of soil were brought up from the sunny plain below;
and on the astonishing ledge thus torn out of the sides of the mountain,
the Royal Palace arose in a garden of the most beautiful flowers and
adorned with the choicest fountains in all Spain.
The building itself, which cannot compare with the Palace of Versailles,
is a severe-looking structure of two stories, and is the antithesis of
the proud, gloomy Escorial on which it turns its back. The façade facing
the gardens is white and cheerful, but the multitude of windows gives it
the air of a monster conservatory. The place, which is so essentially
French, appears incongruous amid surroundings which are so
characteristically Spanish; but the Castilian people find no fault with
it on that account. It is, they say, a worthy château of the King of
Spain. As he is the first and loftiest of all earthly sovereigns, so his
abode soars nearest to Heaven. The argument is Spanish and unanswerable!
The cost of building the palace and laying out the gardens, and of
acquiring the pictures and sculptures to adorn the saloons, reached the
enormous total of forty-five million pesetas, the precise sum in which
Philip V. died indebted. In this luxurious retreat in the mountains of
Segovia he surrendered himself to the morbid mysticism of that form of
devotion which exaggerates the vanity of all earthly things. Sunk at
length into a condition of religious melancholy, in January 1724, at La
Granja, he swore to renounce his crown for ever and abdicate in favour
of his son Louis. Seven months later the boy-king died at the age of
seventeen, and Philip, reluctantly acceding to the urgent requests of
his wife, who had already tired of the domestic retirement of La Granja,
resumed the burden of sovereignty.
Many strange historical events have taken place in the Palace of San
Ildefonso since Philip V. declared before the Baño de Diana that it had
cost him three million pesetas and had amused him for three minutes. It
was here, in 1783, that the great king, Charles III., received the
Count d’Artois when he started upon his fruitless mission to wrest
Gibraltar from the English. Here, in 1796, Godoy, the notorious
favourite of Charles IV. and the paramour of his wife--who in the
previous year had earned the title of Prince of the Peace by negotiating
the shameful surrender by which the war between Spain and France was
concluded--signed the famous and fatal treaty by which Spain was dragged
at the tail of France until such time as the French Emperor chose to
annex it.
In 1830, when Ferdinand VII. lay ill at La Granja, and his heir and
brother, Don Carlos, was holding himself in readiness to assume the
responsibility of sovereignty, Queen Cristina, anxious for her
three-year-old daughter’s interest, induced the king to abolish the
Salic law and declare his daughter Isabel to be his successor. Three
years afterwards, Ferdinand died, and three years later the king’s
abrogation of the constitution was revoked by a mob of common soldiers,
led by Sergeant Garcia, who compelled the queen to renounce her royal
rights and proclaim the Cadiz constitution of 1812. George Borrow, who
was in Madrid at the time these events were taking place, had the story
of the revolution of La Granja from eye-witnesses, and it is related
here in his words. ‘Early one morning,’ he writes--‘it was the morning
of 12th August 1836--a party of these soldiers, headed by a certain
Sergeant Garcia, entered her apartment, and proposed that she should
subscribe her hand to this constitution, and swear solemnly to abide by
it. Cristina, however, who was a woman of considerable spirit, refused
to comply with this proposal, and ordered them to withdraw. A scene of
violence and tumult ensued, but the Regent still continuing firm, the
soldiers at length led her down to one of the courts of the palace,
where stood her well-known paramour, Muñoz, bound and blindfolded.
“Swear to the constitution, you she-rogue,” shouted the swarthy
sergeant. “Never!” said the spirited daughter of the Neapolitan
Bourbons. “Then your _cortejo_ (lover)--he was in reality her
husband--shall die!” replied the sergeant. “Ho! ho! my lads; get ready
your arms and send four bullets through the fellow’s brain.” Muñoz was
forthwith led to the wall and compelled to kneel down, the soldiers
levelled their muskets, and another moment would have consigned the
unfortunate wight to eternity, when Cristina, forgetting everything but
the feelings of her woman’s heart, suddenly started forward with a
shriek, exclaiming, “Hold! hold! I sign! I sign!”’
Still more recently, it will be remembered, Alfonso XIII. carried his
English bride from the wedding festivities of Madrid to spend their
honeymoon amid the natural beauties of the scenery of Segovia. The Royal
Palace consists of a large rectangular building, in the centre of which
is preserved the ancient cloister of the friars’ _hospitium_, now called
the Patio de la Fuente. The idea for the central façade of the palace
originated with the Abbé Juvara, the Italian architect who was summoned
to Spain to assist Philip V. in his palace-building operations, but it
was his pupil, Sachetti, who prepared the finished designs. It was
carried out in 1739 at a cost of 3,360,000 reals. The general façade of
the edifice at the back, overlooking the Palace Square, recalls the
Roman-Spanish style created at the Escorial by Herrera. One of the best
views of the palace is from the back, where the building with its
slate-covered towers at the sides, and the Collegiate Church in the
centre, surmounted by its elevated cupola and the simple towers
accompanying it, compose an agreeable picture. The principal entrance to
the edifice is in this façade facing the Palace Square, and leads to
the vestibule of the principal staircase. This is of simple
construction, and is composed of two flights of stairs which meet at the
top landing-place. The steps are of granite, as well as the pillars of
the balustrade which support a small iron banister painted white and
gold. The whole well of the staircase is surmounted by a semicircular
vault finished by a lantern, in which are the windows. This staircase
did not exist in the time of Charles IV., as may be ascertained by
examining the plans of the palace made at that time, and its
construction should be attributed to Ferdinand VII.
The palace is a structure of two stories. On the ground floor are the
‘Galeria baja de estatuas’ (lower gallery of statues), one of the rooms
in which is the dining-room, the High Court of Halberdiers, the offices
of the Lord High Steward, and other dependencies; while the upper floor
consists of the ‘Galeria oficial’ (Official Gallery), used for
receptions, audiences, and councils of ministers, and the private
apartments of their Majesties and Royal Highnesses. The ‘Galeria de
estatuas’ is open to any one provided with a permit supplied by the
Administration Patrimonial when the Court is absent. The apartments are
generally decorated in good style. Most of the furniture is in the
Empire style, especially that in the Official Gallery; but there is also
some in Louis XIV., Regency, and Louis XV. style.
The collection of pictures, especially of the Flemish and Dutch schools,
was very fine, for Queen Isabella Farnese acquired in Rome for this
palace in 1735, through the Venetian painter G. B. Pittoni, and on the
recommendation of the Abbé Juvara, a considerable number of very notable
pictures of these schools. On the creation of the Royal Prado Museum in
1829, the best were taken there by order of Ferdinand VII., and there
are at present in its catalogue three hundred and fifty-one pictures
which came from this palace, among them three by Correggio, two by Luca
Giordano, four by Il Guido, one by Paul Veronese, six by Tintoretto, one
by Claudio Coello, sixteen by Murillo, two by Ribera, four by Velazquez,
four by Van Dyck, fourteen by Rubens, and twenty-four by Teniers.
Among the pictures of the original collection which exist at the present
time, there are none of great merit; but the large number painted by
Michel Ange Houasse, of the French school, who was born in Paris in
1675, and died in Spain in 1730, being the chief painter of Philip V.,
are of no little merit. The marble statues that enrich the Lower
Gallery, some of them Greek ones of great merit, like the Castor and
Pollux group, form the greater part of the sculptures of the Madrid
Museum. They were acquired in Rome through the celebrated Venetian
sculptor Camillo Rusconi, and came from the collection made by Queen
Christina of Sweden. Their cost, 12,000 doubloons, or 36,000 dollars,
was defrayed by Philip V. and Isabella Farnese equally.
The lower gallery of statues were painted _al fresco_ by Bartolomé
Ruscha, and with them were placed, under the direction of Don Domingo
Sanni, and by order of the royal founders, the statues of the collection
formed by Queen Christina of Sweden and acquired by them in Rome. The
sculptors Fremin and Thierri, who at the time were doing work for the
gardens, restored many of them and added some others by themselves, but
the majority of the best statues were removed in 1829 to the sculpture
room in the Madrid Museum, where they are still preserved and constitute
almost its only statuary wealth. At present there are in these rooms
very few marble statues, and nearly all those forming their decoration
are copies in plaster of the original ones, and they have therefore
lost the great artistic value which the pure Greek sculpture in the
collection of Queen Christina of Sweden conferred on them. Among them
the most valuable pieces to be seen here are the group of Castor and
Pollux; two colossal statues of Julius Cæsar and Augustus in alabaster,
with heads, arms, and legs of gilded bronze; a fine urn which it is
believed contained the ashes of Caius Caligula; the representations of
Day and Night; a very handsome Apollo; a Daphne; a Venus coming out of
the bath; a Faun leaning on the trunk of a tree; another Venus with her
knee on a tortoise; many handsome busts of deities and Roman emperors;
the nine Muses; two superb heads of Antinous and Alexander; the
recumbent statue of Ariadne, a replica of the one in the Museum of the
Vatican; a copy of the Venus de Medici; an excellent small statue
representing Seneca; Leda with the swan; a head of Homer; a colossal
head, in bronze, of Queen Christina of Sweden; and Ganymede attacked by
the eagle. With this array of sculpture and antiquities, the Palace of
Ildefonso may be said to be more like a museum than a home; and in
truth, apart from the Royal Chapel which contains the tomb of Philip V.
and his queen, Elizabeth Farnese, and boasts some superbly embroidered
vestments and mantles of the Virgin, the visitor must seek the beauties
of the palace in its church and in its gardens and fountains.
In order to enhance the splendour of the worship that should be
conducted in the Palace Chapel, Philip V. obtained from Pope Benedict
XIII. a bull, _Dum Infatigabilem_, dated 20th December 1724, making it a
collegiate church. Among other provisions in this bull it conceded that
the new collegiate church should be the mother-church of all the
churches and chapels of the town and its abbey; that it should have a
chapter composed of an abbot, four officiating prebendaries, eight
canons, six prebendaries, and four chaplain-acolytes; that the abbots
should be a royal appointment with exclusive ecclesiastical jurisdiction
throughout the district to be marked out by the Pope’s Nuncio, and at
liberty to use the pontifical insignia and dress; that the abbot and
canons should devote half the masses celebrated to the royal founders
during their lifetime, and for their souls after their death, and that
the canons should wear the choral dress of those of St. Peter’s in Rome.
The same bull contained the king’s promise to endow the new collegiate
church with the sum of 8625 gold ducats (276,000 reals of present
Spanish money), to be distributed as follows: 5764 ducats for the fabric
and its dependents, and the remainder, 2861, for the abbot and
prebendaries.
In the reign of Charles III. the collegiate church was renovated at the
expense of the royal treasury and under the direction of Marshal
Sabatini, the vaults were painted with frescoes by Bayeu and Maella, and
the mouldings and reliefs were decorated by Vega. By the decree of
Joseph Bonaparte, given in Madrid on May 30, 1810, the collegiate church
was suppressed, and it was reduced to a simple private chapel of the
Royal Palace, uniting its parish with that of the Cristo Church, and
adding the territory of the abbey to the bishopric of Segovia. The
church was only closed four years, and on June 24, 1814, Ferdinand VII.
restored things to their original condition, this event being celebrated
by four days of public rejoicing and fêtes.
The church is in the shape of a Latin cross, the ends of the four arms
being occupied by the high altar, choir, and two principal doors.
The ‘platillos’ of the four vaults, surrounded by a moulding, were
painted _al fresco_ by Maella, and all the paintings on the cupola are
by Bayeu, brother-in-law of Goya. Some of the studies for these
paintings were purchased by Queen Isabel II., and are now in the Madrid
Museum.
The gardens with which Philip V. surrounded his palace cover an area of
three hundred and sixty acres, and are the finest in the kingdom, while
even the admirers of Versailles admit that La Granja has the more
amazing fountains. From the grand walk one looks out across a panorama
of the rocks and forests of New Castile, or gazes down upon the
beautiful extravagancies of these literally hand-made gardens. The
formal design of the ground-plan, the regularity of its well-ordered box
avenues and mazes, the artificiality of its numerous fountains, its
marble vases and statuary, and the baths and summer-houses that rise out
of the dwarf-like vegetation, are all in striking contrast with the wild
grandeur of the distant scenery. Yet, artificial as the aspect
undoubtedly is, the gardens are a sheer delight, for beyond the
flower-beds are masses of yellow broom and springing ferns, and the
grass is a blaze of wild hyacinths, forget-me-nots, cowslips, and
periwinkle. Higher up the mountain, to where the sky-line shows, 3000
feet above the palace, are woods of chestnut trees, oaks, elms, and
innumerable pines, in which myriad butterflies of every hue disport
themselves, and scores of streams trickle down to feed the royal
fountains in the gardens below. The statues representing Lucretia,
Bacchus, Apollo, Daphne, America, Ceres, and Milo, and many others, are
of no great artistic value; while the fountains, to the number of
twenty-six, are unique. The Fama, which throws up its waters to a height
of 130 feet, is the most renowned; and from another fountain, compact of
sculptured flowers and fruits, forty spouts send out their two-score
jets 80 feet high. The Cenador is a single vast cascade of gleaming
water from the mountain snows. Then there are the Ranas (Frogs), Ocho
Calles, Canastillo, Tres Gracias, and the Neptuno, at which, says M.
Bourgoin, the Egotist read Virgil and quoted ‘quos ego.’ Last of all,
there is the wonderful Baño de Diana, to which reference has already
been made.
Here, where Art is truly French, and Nature is truly Spanish, where even
Nature conceives in bleak discomfort for eight months in each year to
bring forth four months of flowers and faërie, the King of Spain and his
English bride retired to surroundings amid which a honeymoon will not
be forgotten. Madrid has its magnificent royal palaces; El Pardo boasts
its wondrous tapestries; Aranjuez its gardens, and Rio Frio its
orchards; El Escorial is the eighth wonder of the world, and Miramar
looks over the yellowest of golden sands into the bluest of blue waters;
but La Granja, in the Guadarrama Mountains, is that place apart where
lovers may find a bower
‘Of coolest foliage, musical with birds’;
and here one may listen to
‘The murmurs of low fountains that gush forth
I’ the midst of roses!’
The auxiliary residence to the palace of San Ildefonso, located some
fourteen miles from it beyond the city of Segovia, is the royal house of
Rio Frio, situated in a picturesque park which is full of game of every
description. The small elegant building which stands in the centre of
the park was begun by Isabel, the widow of Philip V., and was completed
internally by Alfonso XII. It is a two-storied square building, the four
sides of which are all exactly alike, and a large square court, paved
with granite flags, occupies the centre of the building. A large portico
of Tuscan pilasters surrounds the court and supports a covered gallery
on the level of the first floor. From this court a noble staircase,
consisting of two independent flights, which start from the vestibule in
opposite directions, each subdividing into two other parallel ones, on
the level of the first landing. The two independent flights end at the
first floor at the opposite ends of the room which is used as a
guardroom for the halberdiers. The steps are of granite, and the
balustrades, which are supported by figures of children in various
attitudes, are of a pretty yellow limestone. The sculpturing is also in
stone, but it was unfortunately painted white, thus depriving it of its
artistic merit, and giving the appearance of plaster. The whole of this
work is from the chisel of Bartolomé Seximini. The entire weight of the
staircase rests on four large Tuscan columns (monoliths), constructed of
granite, and eight semi-columns of the same kind.
The apartments on the first floor, which with the exception of the
sacristy and chapel on the ground floor are the only rooms that call for
description, are decorated and furnished with a simplicity that would
seem to betoken actual poverty. This is accounted for by the fact that
the royal family very seldom resides in this palace; and at such times
whatever is required is conveyed there from the palace of San Ildefonso.
On the other hand, the collection of pictures is superior in number and
merit to that of San Ildefonso, for among its six hundred and
fifty-eight pictures there are many originals of the great masters of
the different schools. There is one each of Van Dyck, Titian, Albert
Dürer, and Goya; two by Zurbaran, Navarrete, Guido de Reni, Pantoja de
la Cruz, and Correggio; eight by Jordán, three by Teniers, four by
Domenichino, and six by Poussin.
III
EL PARDO
At the royal residence of El Pardo Maria Cristina was lodged on the eve
of her marriage with Alfonso XII. in 1879. Seven years later in the same
palace she wept beside the deathbed of her husband, the father of the
unborn king, Alfonso XIII. For a score of years El Pardo was avoided by
the queen-mother, until, in 1906, Don Alfonso brought to the suburban
palace the English princess who, on the 31st of May of that year, went
in state to the church of San Jeronimo to be married to the King of
Spain.
From the earliest days of Madrid’s claim to royal favour, over a hundred
years before Charles V. transferred the Court from Valladolid to the
present capital, the Kings of Spain have had a residence at El Pardo.
Henry III., _El Doliente_, when making some additions to the old town of
Madrid about 1461, built a pleasure-house on this site. The attraction
of the district was undoubtedly the abundance of boar and bear which
found ample cover in the forests which surrounded the capital.
Generations of improvident inhabitants have destroyed these woods, but
the preserves within the stone wall which surrounds the royal residence
are well timbered, and the plantations are full of deer and boar and all
kinds of small game. Charles V. transformed the building into a winter
palace and left the task of completing it to Philip II., who, one
imagines, spared but scant leisure from his colossal building operations
at the Escorial to superintend the furnishing of a mere shooting-box. At
the beginning of the seventeenth century the original structure was
destroyed by fire and the present château was built by Philip III.
Charles III. altered and added to the palace in which he found refuge
after the famous riots against Squillaci, and here in the reign of
Charles IV. were hatched the plot and counterplot of Ferdinand and Godoy
which culminated in the revolution of Aranjuez, the fall of the
much-abused favourite, and the deposition of Charles and his crafty
sons.
Philip II. by the prosecution of his religious policy, which was
fruitful of ruinous wars, had beggared Spain in money and credit. Philip
III. succeeded in 1621 to the crown of a country that the Cortes
officially described as ‘completely desolated.’ Agriculture and every
form of manufacture was fallen into decay, the land was left desert for
want of cultivators, the looms were idle, and the wealth of the
Spanish-American possessions was swallowed up by the crowd of avaricious
and unscrupulous office-holders and their underlings. But if Philip II.
had reduced the nation to these straits by his bigoted zeal and arrogant
vainglory, his son aggravated the conditions by his reckless
extravagance and riotous splendour. When the country’s resources had
been taxed to an extent that made further taxation an impossibility, the
king, through the agency of his all-powerful favourite, the luxurious
Duke of Lerma, raised funds to gratify his prodigal expenditure by the
sale of knighthoods and patents of nobility. When that source failed
him, he attempted to wrest from the church its silver plate and
ornaments, and being terrified out of this resolve by the threats of the
bishops, he made a personal appeal to the people. The king’s officers
went from door to door begging in the name of the sovereign for the
money required for carrying on the business of the Government.
But Philip III. still claimed to be the richest potentate in
Christendom; his subjects still believed themselves the richest people
in the world. The king could afford to expel 500,000 of his Moslem
subjects to Barbary, after robbing them of all they possessed; he could
afford to plunge his country into a foolish war to gratify Spanish
pride; and he could still afford to indulge his wildest and most
extravagant personal whims, of which the rebuilding of El Pardo was one
of the least expensive.
The palace, located in contiguity to the village, which consists of
about two hundred houses whose inhabitants are employed on the Royal
Patrimony, has a length of 432 feet and a depth of 192 feet. A tower
commands each corner, and the entire building is surrounded by a moat,
30 feet wide, which once served the double purpose of irrigation and
defence. The principal entrance to the estate is through the ancient and
beautiful Puerta de Hierro (Iron Doorway), built about the year 1753 by
Ferdinand VI. and distant about five miles from the town of El Pardo.
From the doorway a wall of stout masonry, six feet high, runs right and
left round the demesne for a distance of sixty-two miles. The property
is intersected from north to south by the River Manzanares. The stream
enters on the Sierra side beneath a high stone bridge, the piers of
which rest on the tall rocks that enclose the narrow pass of Marmota.
From this bridge may be obtained a magnificent view of the country
bounded and framed by the distant snow-clad Guadarrama Mountains. The
rugged and broken ground is prolific in evergreen oaks, cork trees, and
extensive areas of the cistus shrub. For purposes of defence the estate
is divided into twenty departments, and the fifty warders who guard the
royal residence are accommodated in twenty-six spacious and well-built
houses.
The impression conveyed by the sombre, granite-built palace is
distinctly imposing. Several stone staircases lead to the royal
apartments, consisting of sixty commodious rooms, nearly all of which
are covered with rich and brilliantly coloured tapestries, manufactured
at Madrid from designs of Goya, Bayeu, Castillo, and Teniers. The
subjects portrayed are landscapes, hunting and country scenes, and
passages in the history of _Don Quixote_. The stucco of the ceilings of
most of the saloons is the exquisite work of Roberto Michel, while the
many fresco paintings were executed by Patricio Carcéo, Carducho,
Bayeu, Maella, Galvez, Ribera, and Zacarias Velazquez. The fine
collection of pictures that once adorned the walls was destroyed by the
fire of 1604, and of the forty-seven portraits by such famous masters as
Titian, A. Moro, and Coello, only a few remain. The magnificent glass
chandeliers are a feature of the royal apartments, and in the Retablo of
the Oratory there is a copy of Christ bearing the Cross, by Ribalta, the
original of which is in Magdalen Chapel, Oxford. The Court officials are
lodged in a commodious building having a complement of a hundred rooms.
To the north of the town is the Prince’s Cottage, another creation of
that villa-building monarch, Charles IV. It is a delightful example of
the three noble arts that vie with one another to give beauty to the
villa--the old silks that cover the walls, the carvings that adorn them,
and the magnificent chandeliers and rich, varied furniture, which make a
valuable museum of this so-styled cottage. There are also other two
palaces called _La Zarzuela_ and the _Quinta_. Both are surrounded by
fine gardens, and contain sumptuous oratories where Mass is celebrated
on special occasions. These two buildings are surviving portions of the
old edifice. In _La Zarzuela_ Don Fernando, the brother of Philip IV.,
was wont to organise those little vaudeville entertainments which were
christened _Zarzuelas_. It is no longer used for that purpose, the
theatrical performances at El Pardo now taking place in the small but
elegant theatre in the palace which Alfonso XIII. had restored when the
residence was prepared for the accommodation of Princess Victoria Ena.
To the Royal Patrimony also belongs the parish church and the Capuchin
convent of Santo Cristo, situated on the left bank of the river, and
hither, on St. Eugene’s day, the people of Madrid journey in crowds. On
other feast days, also, the beautifully wooded slopes and shady avenues
of El Pardo attract thousands of visitors from the city. It would be
difficult to find anywhere in Europe, at the very doors of the capital,
such beautiful rustic scenery as that enclosed in this royal estate.
We have said that Charles III. retired to El Pardo after the Squillaci
riots, and it is curious to reflect that this best of Spanish kings was
sadly out of touch with the character of his own people. He was a man of
extraordinary ability, sound experience, and commanding personality. He
had the will and the power to carry the government of the State on his
own broad shoulders, and to manage the domestic affairs of his subjects
into the bargain. He realised the crying need for domestic reforms in
his capital, but the Madrileños failed to recognise the necessity, and
resented his interference. The king found the city ugly, filthy, and
insanitary, and he decreed that it should be made clean and kept so. He
was the apostle of order and decency, and not understanding the pride of
the Spaniards, he could not comprehend that they were affronted by this
imperious resolve to bring them into line with more advanced European
nations. Moreover, the decree was published by Squillaci, the king’s
Italian minister. Squillaci was a marked man from that day, and the
clergy who had been made to recognise that the King would tolerate no
clerical interference with his policy, fanned the spirit of revolt which
manifested itself among the people. In 1766 Charles, having commenced
his crusade by cleansing the city, now turned his attention to the
national costume. As a dress-reformer he objected to the long cloaks and
wide-brimmed hats affected by the citizens, and in March 1766 he issued
another decree forbidding their use. Immediately Madrid was in revolt.
The king’s Walloon guards were massacred, the detested Italian,
Squillaci, sought safety in flight, and for two days the city was in the
hands of the murdering, destroying mob. On the third day the king
abolished the Walloon guards and promised to rule without foreign
ministers. The revolution was at an end, and Charles retreated to El
Pardo to reflect upon the situation. The king was convinced that the
priests, and particularly the clever, intriguing members of the Society
of Jesus, were at the bottom of all the agitation against his policy of
reform, and the result of his reflections was made known in the
following year when he decreed that every Jesuit should be forthwith
expelled from his dominions. The people could not believe their ears,
but Charles was firm as a rock. He cleared Spain of the power which was
behind the priesthood, and twelve months later he wrung from Rome the
papal decree by which the Society of Jesus was temporarily suppressed.
Charles III. was engrossed in business more serious than hunting when he
retired from the riot of the capital to take counsel with himself in the
woods of El Pardo.
Still nearer to the city of Madrid, from which it is only divided by the
River Manzanares, is the royal shooting-box, called _Casa de Campo_,
the grounds of which, abounding in beautiful scenery and stocked with
well-preserved game, are twelve miles in circumference. A network of
channels irrigate the estate, many fountains adorn the gardens, and the
great pond is full of carp and other fish. The residence was
built in the middle of the sixteenth century by Philip II., who
characteristically gave orders that the house was to be surrounded by a
forest. To this end a royal decree was issued on January 17, 1562,
authorising the acquisition of some adjoining lands, and this tract was
augmented by the king’s private purchase of the ancient and noble estate
of the heirs of Fadrique de Vargas. Philip, in a fine moment, declined
to have their coats-of-arms removed, saying that in a king’s palace the
blazonry of the families that had rendered signal service to the State
were well placed. In 1582, by order of the same monarch, additional land
was purchased; and though his successors have made little alterations in
the original demesne, Ferdinand VI., when Prince of the Asturias,
increased it by the purchase of a tract of country valued at 1,250,211
reals, and still later a smaller area was purchased by the order of
Charles III. The documents relating to the acquisition of these
properties have been carefully preserved, and are now in the archives of
the royal house. The wall around the estate was commenced in 1736 and
finished twenty-two years later; it is twelve feet high and about two
feet thick, and is composed entirely of brick and solid masonry.
IV
ARANJUEZ
The Palace of Aranjuez became a patrimony of the Crown of Spain by
virtue partly of the wise and able economic reforms instituted by
Ferdinand the Catholic, and partly as a result of his characteristic
greed. The husband of Isabel of Castile safeguarded his country by
stripping the nobles of many of their privileges and powers, and
readjusting their sources of income. He prohibited them from erecting
new castles and coining money, and as the masterships of the vast
estates of the military orders fell vacant, he retained the masterships
and the estates in the royal family and paid the knights by fixed
pensions. Aranjuez sprang into existence in the fourteenth century as
the summer residence of Lorenzo Suarez de Figueroa, the master of the
illustrious and wealthy Order of Santiago, who planted the land with
trees and vines and olives, and erected a building that answered the
double purpose of castle and convent. When Ferdinand incorporated the
mastership of the Order of Santiago with the Crown, Aranjuez became the
summer palace of the Catholic king and his consort. In 1536 Charles V.
made it a shooting villa, and Philip II. introduced English elms into
the grounds, and employed Herrera, of Escorial fame, to construct
additional buildings to better accommodate his growing family. The
palace was partially destroyed by fire in 1650, and five years later a
second fire reduced it to a ruin. In this condition it remained until
1727, when Philip V., who had tasted the pleasures of palace-building at
La Granja, rebuilt the present edifice, which was successively improved
by Charles III. and Ferdinand VII.
Philip V. was better advised when he decided to erect a palace on the
site of the master of the Order of Santiago’s summer residence than when
he wrested a foothold for La Granja from the side of the mountains of
Segovia. The royal home at Aranjuez is charmingly situated in the midst
of avenues of stately elms and sycamores at the confluence of the Tagus
and Jarama--a verdurous oasis in the midst of treeless, waterless
Castile. He constructed the palace and the public chapel from stone
taken from a quarry in the district of Colmenar, which he bought for
the purpose. The timber he procured from the mountains of Cuenca, and
the lead for the roofing from some mines that existed near Consuegra.
Philip III. enriched the gardens with many of the fine bronzes and
marbles that are to be seen there, and some of the splendid fountains
were also added by his orders; but the Parterre department which Philip
II. laid out was completed by the art-loving Philip IV., who furnished
the busts of the Roman emperors, the statues, and the beautiful
medallions. In 1748 the palace was again on fire, and the principal
façade was restored by Ferdinand VI. in its present more elegant form.
That weak and fatuous monarch Charles IV., who added the Casas del
Principe to the Escorial, and El Pardo, and the auxiliary Casa del
Labrador to the palace of Aranjuez, had a particular affection for the
‘Spanish Fontainebleau.’ Here the king and queen and their favourite,
Godoy, passed much of their time in the anxious days that preceded the
fall of the monarchy; and here, in March 1808, the determination was
arrived at by which the detested Prince of the Peace was torn from
office and power, literally by the hands of the incensed mob. What a
curious spectacle of a family group they present to our eyes! Charles
IV. and Maria Luisa, Ferdinand and Godoy, with mutual hatred in their
hearts and the sound of the tumult of Madrid ringing in their ears.
King, prince, and minister each believed the advancing French to be his
friends; each felt confident that Spain was being trampled under foot by
foreign soldiers to advance their several conflicting interests. But
suddenly from the rapidly approaching host came messengers with an
ultimatum from Napoleon, containing impossible conditions that would
have dismembered Spain and deprived her of her independence. It was
evident now that Napoleon was coming not as a saviour but as a
conqueror, and now it was too late to resist him by force of arms. In
the palace of Aranjuez it was resolved that the Court should retire to
Seville, and from there, if the worst happened, sail for America.
Although this secret resolution was carefully guarded, a rumour of the
projected flight got about, and the mob vented their anger upon Godoy,
whom they believed was prepared to sell the country to the Corsican. In
vain Charles addressed proclamations to ‘my dear vassals,’ and assured
them that his dear ally, the Emperor of the French, was only making use
of Spanish soil to reach points threatened by the English enemy; in vain
he denied the story of his intended flight. The greater part of the
garrison in Madrid was ordered to Aranjuez, but with the soldiers went
an army of country people who surrounded the king’s palace and the
palace of the favourite, and closely guarded every avenue of escape. At
midnight of the 17th March a bugle-call rang out, a shot responded to
the summons, and in a moment the revolution was in full swing. Around
the royal residence, in which Charles was lying ill with gout, the mob
contented itself by howling threats and imprecations, but Godoy’s palace
was carried by assault. The work of destruction was stayed for a few
moments while the Princess of the Peace, a member of the royal family,
and her daughter were respectfully conveyed to the royal palace. Then
the ruffians got to work in terrible earnest. With murderous
thoroughness they searched every room and corridor for the despised
author of the national trouble, wrecking everything in their path. But
Godoy had slipped from his bed, and found a refuge under a roll of
matting in a neighbouring lumber-room. For thirty-six hours he remained
in hiding until hunger and thirst drove him from his retreat, and he
was led from his ruined house to the barrack guardroom through a
populace that thirsted for his life. The wretched fugitive, ill with
fear and fatigue, was placed between two mounted guards, and the journey
was made at a sharp trot, but he could not out-distance the vengeance of
the crowd, and his guards could not protect him. Fierce blows were
rained upon him by the infuriated multitude, and the man who had been
master of Spain, bleeding from a score of wounds and gasping for breath,
was only rescued from instant death by a miracle.
The mob still overran the streets of Aranjuez, and swarmed around the
royal palace in which Charles IV. signed the decree handing the crown of
Spain to Ferdinand. A few days later he withdrew his abdication
privately at the instigation of General Monthion, Murat’s chief of the
staff, and shortly afterwards left Aranjuez for the Escorial, from
whence, on the 25th April following, he set out for Bayonne, to lay the
crown at the feet of the Emperor of the French. The king died at Rome in
1819; Ferdinand, having spent six years at Valençay, where he was
virtually a prisoner of the French, was restored to the throne of Spain.
During the nineteen years of his reign Ferdinand VII. and the coarse,
ignorant vulgarians who composed the camarilla by which he surrounded
himself, spent much of their time at Aranjuez. Here the vast conspiracy
was hatched against the Constitution, which led to the battle between
the militia and the citizens in 1822; and here the worthless monarch
intrigued until his death to re-establish absolutism, and restore the
old rotten order of things which the nation had shed its best blood to
wipe out.
The nearness of Aranjuez to Madrid and the beauty of its situation has
always made it a favourite residence of the Spanish royal family. The
town itself, which has a population of some ten thousand inhabitants, is
composed of wide streets and large squares, and many noble families
possess villas in the neighbourhood. The interior of the palace, which
reveals an incongruous jumble of modern innovations adapted to the
architecture and decoration of bygone generations, is filled with a
large assortment of works of art, some possessing a very high order of
merit, and others very little. The celebrated staircase which faces the
principal entrance is magnificent. It leads to the _Saleta_, a room
embellished with a granite chimney-piece and chandeliers of rock
crystal and bronze, and containing several paintings by the famous
Italian artist Luca Giordano, who is known in Spain by the name of Juan
Jordán. Other pictures by Giordano, painted on white silk damask, are to
be seen in an adjoining apartment. In the Oratory is a superb altar,
with an agate inlaid table, and Titian’s ‘Annunciation of the Virgin.’
Next to the Oratory is the Hall of Ambassadors, a modern apartment, with
a ceiling painted in 1850 by Vicente and Maximino Camarón. The walls of
the queen’s study in the same suite are covered with white damask, and
the room is furnished with twelve chairs and a carved mahogany table of
the time of Charles IV.
The ball-room and the dining-room, even the Moorish room, in which
Rafael Contreras has revived the beauties of the Alhambra, are surpassed
by the music-room, which is the finest saloon in the palace. Here all
the decorations are Chinese in character, worked out and enamelled with
great skill; and the chandelier, which is in one piece, is an exquisite
specimen of workmanship. The walls of this room are entirely covered
with large porcelain plaques, representing in high relief groups of
beautifully modelled Oriental figures. The looking-glasses, made at La
Granja, with their frames composed of fruits and flowers, enhance the
effect. Joseph Gricci, who modelled and painted the music-saloon, was
one of the artists brought over from Naples by Charles III. in 1759,
when he established in Madrid the factory of Buen Retiro. In addition to
this superb porcelain, the palace boasts a bedstead of splendidly carved
lignum-vitae, and some pictures by Bosch (Jerome van Aeken), a painter
of the sixteenth century, who is almost unknown outside Spain. These
canvases represent fantastic subjects and allegories in the style of
Breughel, and were highly praised by the critics of his time.
The Convent of San Pascual was founded by Charles III., and the theatre
in the town owed its inception to the same monarch. The convent church
contains only a few valuable pictures, but it is rich in marble and
beautifully carved wood. The convent library possesses many ancient
manuscripts, and the convent grounds are famous for their beauty, but
the gardens of the royal palace are the crowning glory of Aranjuez.
That most entertaining author and indefatigable dispenser of Testaments,
George Borrow, travelled in Spain at a time when royalty was battling
for its very existence. He found the country dangerous and desolated,
and the country homes of its kings fallen into a state of neglect. When
he was in La Granja, the palace of San Ildefonso was shut up, and the
town which surrounds the patrimony of the Crown of Spain was practically
deserted. He had no better luck in Aranjuez. He admits the beauty of the
district, but he describes the place as in a state of desolation; he
recalls the fact that Ferdinand VII. spent his latter days in its palace
surrounded by lovely señoras and Andalusian bull-fighters, and
quotes--perhaps with more sentiment than sympathy--the words of
Schiller:
‘The happy days in fair Aranjuez
Are past and gone.’
‘Intriguing courtiers no longer crowd its halls,’ he reflects; ‘its
spacious circus, where Manchegan bulls once roared in rage and agony, is
now closed, and the light tinkling of guitars is no longer heard amidst
its groves and gardens.’ One feels as one reads these passages that
Borrow was not at his best as a moralist. One prefers him when he is
describing in his lively, absorbing manner his personal experiences, and
is glad to learn that he disposed of eighty Testaments in desolate
Aranjuez, and that he ‘might have sold many more of these Divine books’
if he had remained there a longer period.
But we are sorry that Borrow did not see the Palace Gardens in April or
May, when the view from the Parterre is one of almost unsurpassed
loveliness. The Reina, Isla, and Principe Gardens are furnished with a
multitude of bridges, grottoes, fountains, and cascades, bordered and
surrounded by an exuberance of plants and flowers from England, France,
and the East, all bathed by the waters of the Tagus, and made musical
with the notes of myriad birds. ‘The Nightingale that in the Branches
sang’ returns in his thousands every spring, and we hear ‘The melodious
noise of birds among the spreading branches, and the pleasing fall of
water running violently.’ Here are Oriental trees, palms, and the cedars
of Lebanon, and interspersed with them are the first elms introduced by
Philip II. into Spain from England, which grow magnificently under the
combined influence of heat and moisture. The impressionable and
responsive Edmondo de Amicis writes of Aranjuez:
‘The interior of the royal building is superb, but all the riches
of the palace do not compare with the view of the gardens, which
seem to have been laid out for the family of a Titanic king, to
whom the parks and gardens of our kings must appear like terrace
flower-beds or stable-yards. There are avenues as far as the eye
can reach, flanked by immensely high trees, whose branches
interlace as if bent by two contrary winds, which traverse in every
direction a forest whose boundaries one cannot see; and through
this forest the broad and rapid Tagus describes a majestic curve,
forming here and there cascades and basins. A luxurious and
flourishing vegetation abounds between a labyrinth of small
avenues, cross roads, and openings; and on every side gleam
statues, fountains, columns, and sprays of water, which fall in
splashes, bows, and drops, in the midst of every kind of flower of
Europe and America. To the majestic roar of the cascade of the
Tagus is joined the song of innumerable nightingales, who utter
their plaintive vibratory notes in the mysterious shade of the
solitary paths. Beyond the palace, and all around the shrubberies,
extend vineyards, olive-groves, plantations of fruit trees, and
smiling meadows. It is a genuine oasis, surrounded by a desert,
which Philip II. chose in a day of good humour, almost as if to
temper with the gay picture the gloomy melancholy of the Escorial,
and in which one still breathes the atmosphere, so to speak, of the
private life of the kings of Spain.’
The Jardines de la Reina are of minor importance, but the Jardines de la
Isla, comprising the four divisions which are known as Parterre, La
Estatuas, Isla, and Emparrado, are filled with natural and created
beauties. In the Isabel II. Garden is a bronze statue of the queen,
erected to commemorate the political events of 1834. It is surrounded by
a handsome iron railing, and completed by eight stone seats and as many
marble vases mounted on pedestals. The Jardines de Principe, a much more
modern preserve, are divided into four departments, and bisected by
avenues that lead to the various small squares and to the Princesa,
Apollo, Blanco, and Embajadores Avenues, the last of which terminates in
the little Pabellones Garden of the time of Ferdinand VI. In addition to
these princely gardens there are the English Garden, remarkable for its
carved rock supporting a well-modelled swan; the Chinese Garden with its
banana plantations; and the Garden of the Princess, acquired in 1535,
and adorned in 1616 with a mechanical clock, decorated with twelve
bronze figures that play on bronze trumpets. On the banks of the swiftly
flowing river are the paddocks of the Crown, where camels and llamas
roam, and a stud farm, where are bred English and Spanish blood horses
and the beautiful cream-coloured animals of the Aranjuez stock.
The auxiliary palace called the Casa del Labrador, or Labourer’s
Cottage, built by Charles IV., is a remarkable structure, being a
series of boudoirs, _à petit Trianon_, worthy of a Pompadour. The
ceilings are painted by Zacarias Velazquez, Lopez, Maella, and other
artists, and the walls of the back staircase are decorated with scenes
and figures of the time of Charles I. At the top of the staircase is
figured a balcony, on which are leaning the handsome wife and children
of the painter, Z. Velazquez. The gilded bronze balustrade of the main
staircase contains gold to the value of £3000, and the marbles over the
doors are very fine. On the ground-floor of the building, which is
composed of three stories, are thirteen statues by Spanish sculptors. In
the centre of the hall is a marble figure representing Envy, and around
the apartment are twenty busts of Carrara marble. Among the treasures of
the palace are many Japanese vases and bronzes of great artistic value,
marble busts of Minerva and Mars, a group representing a sacrifice in
honour of Venus, and an enormous, beautifully carved mahogany fountain.
The decorations consist of platinum, artistically worked pavements of
Buen Retiro porcelain, and the most gorgeous silk embroideries and
tapestries bordered with gold; while the furniture includes priceless
chandeliers, Sèvres vases, candelabra, and clocks. A chair and table in
malachite, a present from Prince Demidoff to the ex-Queen Isabella of
Spain, is valued at about £1500. The apartment known as _Retrete_ is
adorned with a composition resembling marble in the Moorish style and
Etruscan low relief, and furnished with crimson coverings bordered with
gold, while all the appointments of the hall, the capricious clocks and
floral stands of bronze and glass, the table of rock crystal, and the
wealth of marbles, all contribute to the magnificence of this so-called
_Casa del Labrador_.
V
MIRAMAR
The most modern of the many royal residences in Spain is the palace
which the queen-mother built for herself and her young family in the
most easterly province on the northern coast of the Peninsula. Queen
Maria Cristina had been Regent for three years when in 1889 she
determined to make a home between the mountains and the sea in a spot
far removed from the etiquette and stress of the capital and from the
sad memories which were associated with the ancient palaces of Castile.
Her Majesty spent her first summer holiday at Miramar, the capital of
Guipuzcoa in 1894, and here, overlooking the Bay of Biscay, Alfonso
XIII. was brought up among and in the heart of his own people. Here he
was prepared by a rigorous course of study to assume the duties of the
high destiny to which he was born, and here also he learnt to ride and
shoot, to swim and handle a boat, and to excel in every form of manly
sport. At San Sebastian the dignity and restraint of royalty is largely
relaxed, and the English visitor realises more clearly than in any other
part of the country how intensely democratic is the Spaniard at heart.
The King of Spain is more in touch with the masses of his people than
the ruler of any other European nation. He is an anointed sovereign and
the most august personage in the land; but he is a Spaniard, he belongs
to his people, he is one of themselves. In Madrid court etiquette keeps
the sovereign at a different altitude from his subjects, but here he
rides and drives abroad, generally unattended, and sets an example of
princely amiability and unaffected kindliness which distinguishes all
ranks of the Spanish nobility. The line of demarkation between the
nobles and the people is so clearly defined that it never has to be
emphasised. In their relations there is no unbending on the one side,
there is no servility on the other. A grandee of Spain does not imperil
his dignity by joining the cotillon at the Casino; a duchess can drink
tea at the crowded tables of a public café without taking thought of
appearances.
In San Sebastian the sovereign is not the High and Mighty Señor Don
Alfonso XIII. of Bourbon and Austria, Catholic King of Spain, but
rather is he ‘_le chevalier Printemps_,’ and the respect with which he
is everywhere greeted is based as much in affection for his person as in
deference to his exalted station. In all the festivities and social
functions of the fashionable watering-place, His Majesty takes a
prominent part; and although roulette is forbidden at the Casino while
Royalty is at Miramar, no other restriction is imposed upon the gaiety
of the town by the king’s presence. Don Alfonso is president of the
Yacht Club and of the Horse Show; he distributes the athletic
championship prizes, and is among the guns at every important shoot; the
homely, merry festival of the Urumea would be incomplete without him;
his attendance in the Avenida de la Libertad is as necessary as the
sunshine to the Carnival of Flowers. The queen-mother’s handsome team of
four Spanish mules is to be met with every day in the neighbouring
country, and the king’s motor car is a familiar object of the landscape
between San Sebastian and Biarritz. It was from San Sebastian that he
motored to the bright little French town to make his formal request for
the hand of Victoria Eugénie of Battenberg, and it was to Miramar that
he brought his affianced bride to present her to the queen-mother and
the Spanish people.
If the Spanish coast had been searched from one end to the other, it
would have been impossible to have found a more picturesque spot than
the bay of San Sebastian, where the blue billows from the North Atlantic
bring their long journey to an end on a stretch of the most golden sands
in Europe. During the summer months the crested rollers, following one
another with the regularity and precision of Highland regiments at the
quickstep, sweep through the narrow channel between Santa Clara and
Mount Orgullo, and, making the semicircle of the Concha, break their
formation at the private landing-stage beneath the royal palace of
Miramar, and fall out about the rocky base of Mount Igueldo. Seen from
the royal yacht, the _Giralda_, which always lies in the bay when the
royal family are in residence at Miramar, the town of San Sebastian lies
in the base of a crescent, the horns of which are tipped with the old
light tower at one extremity and the castle of La Mota at the other.
Behind the town Mount Ulia raises its wooded height in the middle
distance, and beyond it, as far as the eye can see, the white-capped
sentinels of the Pyrenees complete the view. One can sip one’s
chocolate on the terrace of the restaurant which crowns Mount Ulia, and
gaze on San Sebastian spread out like a panorama in the valley, or watch
the sunlight reflected from the white cliffs of France, or try to make
out the sword-cut in the coast-line by which the tide flows, as through
the neck of a bottle, into the inland sea, which laps the very
door-steps of Pasajes and divides it into the two sections of San Juan
and San Pedro. There are seasons when the Bay of Biscay is the
incarnation of elemental fury, when the inviting natural harbour of San
Sebastian is a death trap for any vessel that flies to it for shelter.
When the south and south-west winds are blowing at the end of September,
and the hurricane is driving the raging billows of the Atlantic before
it; when even whales are caught by the stampeding waters and tossed like
weeds on the sandy bosom of the Concha; when the roof of the Royal
Nautical Club is swept by the waves, and the breakwater at the mouth of
the Urumea crumbles before the ferocity of the gale; then is this
north-east coast of Spain _anathema maranatha_ to those that go down to
the sea in ships. But by the end of September, the holiday season in San
Sebastian is over, and the holiday-makers are distributed over every
country in Europe. The Court is removed to Madrid, the Palace of Miramar
and the Casino are closed, the _Giralda_ seeks a surer anchorage, and
the fishing-fleet is safely berthed in the land-locked harbours of
Pasajes.
The construction of the Royal Palaces of Madrid absorbed over a quarter
of a century, and a whole army of labourers were twenty years on the
Escorial before it was ready for occupation by Philip II. Five hundred
men built the royal residence of Miramar in four years. Two architects
collaborated in its construction--Mr. Selden Wornum, who laid down the
general plan, and Señor Goicoa, who was in charge of the building
operations and revised the plans as the work proceeded. The materials
used, with the exception of some special tiles, which had to be brought
from England, are Spanish, the marble and stone having been brought from
the provinces of Guipuzcoa, Valladolid, and Burgos; the iron for the
different stages from the ‘Altos Hornos’ and ‘Vizcaya’ factories of
Bilbao, and the metal work from Eibar.
The real Casa de Campo de Miramar is composed of three departments: the
palace, the offices, and the stables and coach-houses. The palace is a
three-storied building, in the style of an English country house. On
the ground-floor, at the entrance, is a spacious central gallery, which
extends nearly the whole length of the palace, dividing it into two
parts. On the right are the king’s study, the library, the oratory, the
reading-room and the dining-room, which is rectangular, and boasts a
magnificent balcony. On the left are the hall, the official reception
rooms, and the billiard-room. Between the study and the library is a
large drawing-room. On the first floor are the apartments of the king
and queen and the old playroom of his Majesty, all communicating with
each other by a terrace which overlooks the sea and the garden. From the
king’s room a tower is reached, which is surmounted by a flag-staff. The
rooms occupied by the royal servants are on the upper floor. A long
gallery connects the main building with the house in which are lodged
the chief officials of the palace, and the stables, which are fashioned
on the most modern English pattern, form a separate building.
Over the principal entrance are three beautifully carved shields: one
with the arms of Spain, another with those of the king, and the third
with those of the queen. In the construction of the palace, the chief
considerations have been comfort and convenience. Every most modern
improvements, both scientific and æsthetic, have been employed to attain
this end. The furniture is elegant, and harmonises perfectly with the
decoration of the rooms; the tapestries, paintings, porcelains, all the
objects of art, in fact, which are found there in great profusion, are
in the most exquisite taste; while the park by which Miramar is
surrounded is probably the best cultivated domain in the possession of
the Crown. The telegraph links up the palace with the whole world; and
the telephone connects it with the royal palace and the Government
Offices at Madrid. At the extremity of the grounds of the Royal
residence, which have been built over the road, and continued to the
water’s edge, is the private landing-stage which his Majesty always uses
in going to and from the _Giralda_. On most days during the San
Sebastian season, the king is to be seen in the Bay, and he is always
one of the most interested spectators of the races during the regatta
week.
In a little volume of this kind, which is intended as an album and
pictorial souvenir of the palaces of which it treats rather than an
illustrated handbook, little attention has been given to the cities in
which these royal residences are situated, or the country by which they
are surrounded. But a few lines may be added here about San Sebastian,
which in most respects is different from other Spanish cities, even from
the capitals of the other Basque provinces. San Sebastian is kept
spotlessly clean, its municipal management is perfect, and its beggars
are conspicuous by their absence. The modernity of the town is due to
the firing of the place after the siege of 1813, when the only part that
escaped was the bit of old town, situated near the little _Port des
Pêcheurs_, under the shadow of Mount Urgull. The broad, even, regular
streets of the new town, which is bisected by the handsome Avenida de la
Libertad, are flanked by splendid shops and hotels that would do credit
to any European city. The whole place wears an aspect of smiling
prosperity, and its life during the holiday season is one continuous
round of hearty, innocent gaiety. Cricket, it must be admitted, has not
yet been naturalised in Spain, and the golfer must cross the border to
Biarritz to indulge in his favourite game, but every other sport that
the average Englishman affects can be enjoyed here. The bathing from the
beach is the best and safest in the world, and the lover of picturesque
scenery has a paradise of varied landscapes and sea pieces within
walking distance of the town. There is lawn tennis in the new recreation
grounds, and pelota matches, at one or other of the courts, are played
daily; while, for those who care for bull fighting, there is a _corrida_
every Sunday afternoon during the season.
VI
EL ALCAZAR
SEVILLE
The beautiful Moorish palace of the Alcazar at Seville, unlike the more
famous Alhambra of Granada, is still a royal palace, though only
occasionally the residence of their Catholic Majesties. The upper floor,
containing the royal apartments, is always kept ready for these
illustrious tenants, and in consequence is rarely accessible by the
tourist and sight-seer. The palace proper is one of a group of buildings
known as the Alcazares, which is surrounded by an embattled wall, and
includes several open spaces and numerous private dwellings. Immediately
inside the wall are two squares called the Patio de las Banderas and
Patio de la Monteria. At the far end of the former is the office of the
governor of the palace, and to the right of this is an entrance whence a
colonnaded passage called the Apeadero leads straight through to the
gardens, or, by turning to the right, to the Patio del Leon. On one side
this latter square communicates with the Patio de la Monteria; on the
other side is the palace of the Alcazar itself. I hope this will make
the rather puzzling topography of the place a little more intelligible.
Whether or not the Roman ‘Arx’ stood on this spot, as tradition avers, I
cannot pretend to say. But there is no room for doubt that a palace
stood here in the days of the Abbadite amirs, and that this building was
restored and remodelled by the Almohades. To outward seeming the Alcazar
is as Moorish a monument as the Alhambra. In reality, few traces remain
of the palace raised by the Moslem rulers of either dynasty, and the
present building was mainly the work of the Castilian kings--especially
of Pedro the Cruel. But though built under and for a Christian monarch,
it is practically certain that the architects were Moors and good
Moslems, and that their instructions and intentions were to build a
Moorish palace. Historically, you may say, the Alcazar is a Christian
work; artistically, Mohammedan.
The actual palace occupies only a small part of the site of the older
structures, and incorporates but a few fragments of their fabrics.
Since Pedro the Cruel’s day, so many sovereigns have restored,
remodelled, and added to the building, that it is far from being
homogeneous, though we can hardly agree with Contreras that it is ‘far
from being a monument of Oriental art.’
Pedro built more than one palace, or, more correctly, two or three wings
of the same palace, in this enclosure. Traces of his Stucco Palace
(Palacio del Yeso) remain. Pedro looms very large in the history of
Seville. He plays the same part here as Harûn-al-Rashid in the story of
Bagdad. He was fond of the Moors, and affected their costumes and
customs. He also favoured the Jews, and was alleged by his enemies to be
the changeling child of a Jewess. His treasurer and trusted adviser was
an Israelite named Simuel Ben Levi. He served the king long and
faithfully, till one day it was whispered that half the wealth that
should fill the royal coffers had been diverted into his own. Ben Levi
was seized without warning and placed on the rack, whereupon he expired,
not of pain, but of sheer indignation. Under his house--so the story
goes--was found a cavern in which were three piles of gold and silver,
twice as high as a man. Pedro on beholding these was much affected.
‘Had Simuel surrendered a third of the least of these piles,’ he
exclaimed, ‘he should have gone free. Why would he rather die than
speak?’
Stories innumerable are told of this king, a good many, no doubt, being
pure inventions. There is no reason to question the account of his
treatment of Abu Saïd, the Moorish Sultan of Granada. This prince had
usurped his throne, and being solicitous of Pedro’s alliance, came to
visit him at the Alcazar with a magnificent retinue. The costliest
presents were offered to the Castilian king, whose heart, however, was
bent on possessing the superb ruby in the regalia of his guest. Before
many hours had passed, the Moors were seized in their apartments and
stripped of their raiment and valuables. Abu Saïd, ridiculously tricked
out, was mounted on a donkey, and with thirty-six of his courtiers,
hurried to a field outside the town, where they were bound to posts. A
train of horsemen appeared, Don Pedro at their head, and transfixed the
helpless men with darts, the king shouting, as he hurled his missiles at
his luckless guest: ‘This for the treaty you made me conclude with
Aragon! This for the castle you took from me!’ The ruby which had been
the cause of the Moor’s death was presented by his murderer to the
Black Prince, and now adorns the crown of England.
Nor did Pedro confine his fury to the sterner sex. Doña Urraca Osorio,
because her son was concerned in Don Enrique’s uprising, was burned at
the stake on the Alameda. Her faithful servant, Leonor Dávalos, seeing
that the flames had consumed her mistress’s clothing, threw herself into
the pyre to cover her nakedness, and was likewise burnt to ashes. Having
conceived a passion for Doña Maria Coronel, the king caused the husband
to be executed in the Torre del Oro. The widow, far from yielding to his
entreaties and threats, took the veil and destroyed her beauty by means
of vitriol. Pedro at once transferred his attentions to her sister, Doña
Aldonza, and met with more success. If a chronicler is to be believed,
he threw his brother Enrique’s young daughter naked to the lions, like
some Christian virgin martyr. The generous (or possibly overfed) brutes
refused the proffered prey, and the whimsical tyrant ever afterwards
treated the maiden kindly. In memory of her experience, she was known as
‘Leonor de los Leones.’
Crossing the Plaza del Triunfo, which lies between the Cathedral and
the old Moorish walls, we enter the Patio de las Banderas, so called
either because a flag was hoisted here when the royal family was in
residence, or on account of the trophy, composed of the arms of Spain
with crossed flags, displayed over one of the arches. Pedro was
accustomed to administer justice, tempered with ferocity, after the
Oriental fashion, seated on a stone bench in a corner of this square.
The surrounding private houses occupy the site of the old Palace of the
Almohades, and one of the halls--the Sala de Justicia--is still visible.
It is entered from the Patio de la Monteria. Contreras assigns an
earlier date to this room even than the advent of Almohades. It is
square, and measures nine metres across. The stucco ceiling is adorned
with stars and wreaths, and bordered by a painted frieze. The
decorations consist chiefly of inscriptions in Cufic characters. The
right-angled apertures in the walls were closed either by screens of
translucent stucco or by tapestries, ‘which must,’ says Gestoso y Perez,
‘have made the hall appear a miracle of wealth and splendour.’ It was in
this hall, often overlooked by visitors, that Don Pedro overheard four
judges discussing the division of a bribe they had received. The
question was abruptly solved by the division of the disputants’ heads
and bodies. Thanks to its isolation, the Sala de Justicia escaped the
dreadful ‘restoration’ effected in the middle of the nineteenth century
by the Duc de Montpensier. The house No. 3, Patio de las Banderas,
formed part, in the opinion of Gestoso y Perez, of the Palacio del Yeso,
or Stucco Palace, of Don Pedro.
Passing through the colonnaded Apeadero, built by Philip III. in 1607,
and once used as an armoury, we reach the Patio del Leon, where
tournaments used to be held, and stand in front of the Palace of the
Alcazar. The façade is gorgeous yet elegant, of a gaudiness that in this
brilliant city of golden sunshine and white walls is not obtrusive. Yet,
despite the Moorish character of the decoration, the Arabic capitals and
pilasters, and the square entrance ‘in the Persian style,’ the front is
not that of an eastern palace; and it is without surprise that we read
over the portal, in quaint Gothic characters, the legend: ‘The most
high, the most noble, the most powerful, and the most victorious Don
Pedro, commanded these Palaces, these Alcazares, and these entrances to
be made in the year (of Cæsar) 1402’ (1364). Elsewhere on the façade are
the oft-repeated Cufic inscriptions: ‘There is no conqueror but Allah,’
‘Glory to our lord the Sultan’ (Don Pedro), ‘Eternal glory to Allah,’
etc., etc.
This is a very different entrance from that of the Alhambra, the
building on the model of which the Alcazar was undoubtedly planned. From
the entrance a passage leads from your left to one extremity of the
Patio de las Doncellas, the central and principal court of the palace.
How this patio came to be so named I have never been able to ascertain.
There is an absurd story to the effect that here were collected the
girls fabled to have been sent by way of annual tribute by Mauregato to
the Khalifa. Had such a transaction taken place, the tribute would have
been payable, of course, at Cordova, not at Seville. Moreover this court
was among the works executed in the fourteenth century.
The Alcazar strikes us (if we have come from Granada) as being on a much
smaller scale than the Alhambra. It is very much better preserved, as it
should be, seeing that it is a century younger; and if it vaguely
strikes one as being fitter for the abode of a court favourite than of a
monarch, it impresses one as being fresher, more elegant--in a word,
more artistic--than the older building.
The Patio de las Doncellas is an oblong, and surrounded by an arcade of
pointed and dentated arches which spring from the capitals of white
marble columns placed in pairs. The middle arch on each side is higher
than the others, and springs from oblong imposts resting on the twin
columns and flanked by the miniature pillars characteristic of the
Grenadine architecture. The spandrels are beautifully adorned with
stucco work of the trellis pattern. On the frieze above runs a flowing
scroll with Arabic inscriptions, among them being ‘Glory to our lord,
the Sultan Don Pedro,’ and this very remarkable text: ‘There is but one
God; He is eternal; He was not begotten and has never begotten, and He
has no equal.’ This inscription, opposed to the tenets of Christianity,
was evidently designed by a Moslem artificer, who relied (and safely
relied) on the ignorance of his employers. The frieze is decorated also,
at intervals, by the escutcheons of Don Pedro and of Ferdinand and
Isabella, and by the well-known devices of Charles V., the Pillars of
Hercules with the motto ‘Plus Oultre.’ The inside of the arcade is
ornamented with a high dado of glazed tile mosaic (_azulejo_),
brilliantly coloured, and with the highly prized metallic glint. The
combinations and variations of the designs are very ingenious and
interesting. This decoration probably dates from Don Pedro’s time.
Behind each central arch is a round-arched doorway, flanked by twin
windows. These are framed in rich conventional ornamental work. Through
little oblong windows above the doors light falls and illumines the
ceilings of the apartments opening into the court. The ceiling of the
arcade dates from the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, but was restored
in 1856. A deep cornice marks the division of the lower part of the
court from the upper story, the front of which, with its white marble
arches, columns and balustrades, was the work of Don Luis de Vega, a
sixteenth-century architect.
Three recesses in the wall to the left of the entrance are pointed out
as the audience closets of King Pedro; but they are much more likely to
be walled-up entrances to formerly existing corridors and chambers
behind.
The door facing this wall gives access to the Hall of the Ambassadors
(Salon de los Embajadores), the finest apartment in this fairy palace.
The doors are magnificent examples of inlay work, and were, according to
the inscription on them, made by Moorish carpenters from Toledo in the
year 1364. The hall is about thirty-three feet square, and exhibits a
splendid combination of the various styles with the Gothic and
Renaissance. The ornamentation is rich and elaborate almost beyond the
possibility of description. The magnificent ‘half-orange’ ceiling of
carved wood rests on a frieze decorated with the Tower and Lion. Then
come Cufic inscriptions on a blue ground and ugly female heads of the
sixteenth century. Then, below another band of decoration, is a row of
fifty-six busts of the Kings of Spain, from Receswinto the Goth to
Philip III. These date, at earliest, from the sixteenth century. The
wrought-iron balconies were made by Francisco Lopez in 1592. The
decoration of this splendid chamber is completed by a high dado of blue,
white, and green ‘azulejos.’ It was in this hall that Abu Saïd is said
to have been received by his treacherous host.
The Hall of the Ambassadors communicates on each side with the patio and
adjoining halls by entrances composed of three horseshoe arches,
supported by graceful pillars and enclosed in a circular arch.
Through the arch facing the entrance from the patio we pass into a long
narrow apartment, known as the Comedor, where the late Comtesse de Paris
was born in 1848. To the north of the salon is a small square chamber,
called the ‘Cuarto del Techo de Felipe Segundo,’ with a coffered ceiling
dating from the time of that king. North of this room is the exquisite
little Patio de las Muñecas (Court of the Dolls) purely Grenadine in
treatment. The rounded arches are separated by cylindrical pillars--I
call them so for want of a better word--which rest on slender columns of
different colours, reminding one of the early or Cordovan style. The
capitals are rich, the pillars they uphold decorated with vertical lines
of Cufic inscriptions, many of which, says Contreras, are placed upside
down. The walls and spandrels are tastefully adorned with stucco work of
the trellis pattern, tiling and mosaic. This court, though still
harmonious and beautiful, suffered rather than benefited by its
restoration in 1843; but the architecture has been not unsuccessfully
reproduced in the upper story.
This charming spot is by no means suggestive of deeds of blood and
violence; yet, just as they point out the Salon de los Embajadores as
the scene of the arrest of the Red Sultan by Don Pedro, so here do the
guides place the scene of the murder of Don Fadrique by the truculent
monarch--a fratricide to be avenged by another fratricide at Montiel.
The Master of Santiago, to give the Don his usual title, after a
successful campaign in Murcia, had been graciously received by his
brother the king, and presently went to pay his respects in another part
of the palace to the royal favourite, Maria de Padilla. It is said that
she warned him of his impending fate; perhaps by her manner, if not by
words, she tried to arouse in him a sense of danger, but the soldier
prince returned to the king’s presence. With a shout, Pedro gave the
fatal signal. ‘Kill the Master of Santiago!’ he cried. Guards fell upon
the prince. His sword was entangled in his scarf, and he was butchered
without mercy. His retainers fled in all directions, pursued by Pedro’s
guards. One took refuge in Maria de Padilla’s own apartment, and tried
to screen himself by holding her little daughter, Doña Beatriz, before
him. Pedro tore the child away, and dispatched the unfortunate man with
his own hand. The murder took place on May 19, 1358.
To the west of the court is a little room, elegantly decorated, and
named after the Catholic Sovereigns, by whom it was restored. Their
well-known devices appear, together with the Towers and Lions, among
the decorations, which reveal the influence of the plateresque style.
The north side of the patio is occupied by the Cuarto de los Principes,
not to be confounded with a similarly named apartment on the floor
above. At either end of this room is an arch, adorned with stucco work,
admitting to a cabinet or alcove. That to the right has a fine
artesonado ceiling, and that to the left is decorated in a species of
Moorish plateresque style. An inscription states that the frieze was
made in the year 1543 by Juan de Simancas, master carpenter.
East of the Patio de las Muñecas, and occupying the north side of the
Patio de las Doncellas, is the long room called the Dormitorio de los
Reyes Moros. All the apartments in the Alcazar are fancifully named, but
the designation of none is quite so stupid and misleading as this. The
columns of the twin windows on either side of the door appear to date
from the time of the Khalifate. The doors themselves are richly inlaid
and painted with geometrical patterns. The three horseshoe arches
leading to the _al hami_, or alcove, also seem to belong to the early
period of Spanish-Arabic art. The room is so richly decorated that
scarce a handbreadth of the surface is free from ornament.
On the opposite side of the central court is the sumptuous Salon de
Carlos V., the ceiling of which was constructed by order of the emperor,
and is adorned with classical heads. The tile and stucco work is the
finest in the palace. There is a legend to the effect that St. Ferdinand
died in this room--on his knees, with a cord round his neck and a taper
in his hand--but it is unlikely that this part of the palace existed in
his time. The guide pointed out the room to the west of this salon as
the chamber of Maria de Padilla, but this again is, to put it mildly,
doubtful.
The upper chambers of the Alcazar, which are not accessible to the
general public, are very handsome. The floor overlooking the Patio del
Leon is occupied by the Sala del Principe, with its beautiful spring
windows, polychrome tiling, and columns brought from the old Moorish
Palace at Valencia. Adjacent is the Oratory, built by order of Ferdinand
and Isabella in 1504. The tile work is of extraordinary beauty, and
shows that the Moors had not a monopoly of talent in this kind of
decoration. The fine Visitation over the altar is signed by Francesco
Nicoloso the Italian. On the same floor is the reputed bed-chamber of
Don Pedro. Over the door may be seen four death’s-heads, and over
another entrance the curious figure of a man who looks back over his
shoulder at a grinning skull. These gruesome designs commemorate the
summary execution by the king of four judges whom he overheard
discussing the division of a bribe. The royal apartments on this floor
contain some precious works of art; but I abstain from mentioning the
most remarkable of these, as pictures are so often transferred in Spain
from one royal residence to another that such indications are often out
of date before they are printed.
The gardens are really the most pleasing spot within the Alcazares. They
form a delicious pleasaunce, where the orange and citron diffuse their
fragrance, and magic fountains spring up suddenly beneath the
passenger’s feet, sprinkling him with a cooling dew. I noticed some
flower beds shaped like curiously formed crosses, which the gardener
told me were the crosses of the orders of Calatrava, Santiago,
Alcantara, and Montesa. You are also shown the baths of Maria de
Padilla, which are approached through a gloomy arched entrance. In the
favourite’s time they had no other roof than the sky, and no further
protection from prying eyes than that afforded by a screen of orange
and lemon trees. In Mohammedan times the baths were probably used by the
ladies of the harem.
The Alcazar, I think, disappoints most foreigners. The architectural and
decorative work of the Spanish Moors and their descendants pleases
people quite inexperienced in the arts by its mere prettiness, its
brilliance, its originality, and its colour; and it delights still more
those who are able to appreciate its marvellous combinations of
geometrical forms, its exquisite epigraphy, and all its subtle details.
But the average traveller stands between these two classes of observers.
He looks for grandeur where he should expect only beauty, and his eye is
wearied by the wealth of conventional ornamentation. What I think is
conspicuously lacking in the Alcazar, and to a much less extent in the
Alhambra, is atmosphere. Memories do not haunt you in these gilded
halls. There is nothing about them to suggest that anything ever
happened here. The legends tell us the contrary; but assuredly no one
was ever less successful in impressing his personality on his abode than
were the founders and inhabitants of the Alcazar.
VII
ROYAL PALACE
MADRID
The Palacio Real, which towers high above the ‘most noble, loyal,
imperial, crowned and heroic city’ of Madrid, dominating the bleak
table-land, and reflecting in the rays of southern sunshine the gleaming
whiteness of the distant, snow-capped Guadarramas, occupies a site which
has been royal since the eleventh century. In 1466 an earthquake
partially destroyed the Moorish Alcazar, and on the ruins Henry IV.
constructed a palace of mediæval splendour, which was enlarged by
Charles V., embellished by Philip II. and completed by Philip III., who
added a façade--the joint work of Toledos, Herrera, Moras, Luis and
Gaspar de Vega--which was acclaimed as a masterpiece of architecture. In
the time of Philip II., the palace is described as having five hundred
rooms. On the ground-floor was the grand reception-room, an apartment
170 feet long, in which the ten state councillors held their meetings.
Behind the tapestry hangings the walls were lined with marble, and
guards were stationed at the outer and inner portals. There was a
theatre in the building, in which some of the great comedies of Philip’s
reign were first produced, and in an adjoining saloon was held, in 1622,
the famous Poetic Tournament of which Lope de Vega has left us such a
sprightly account. The rooms were hung with the richest Flemish
tapestries, the picture gallery was filled with priceless works of art,
and the treasury of the king’s, the _Guarda Joyas_--that store of untold
gold and silver, of jewels and precious stones--was contained in a
carefully guarded suite of apartments. Gil Gonzalez Davila in his
_Teatro de las Grandezas de Madrid_ tells us that included in the royal
treasure were a diamond valued at 200,000 ducats, a pearl as large as a
nut--which is impressive but indefinite--called _La Huerfana_ (the
Orphan), because of its unique size, and a golden lily, which was
recovered from the French by Charles V., who made its return a condition
in the agreement by which they obtained the deliverance of Francis I. A
maze of subterranean passages was constructed beneath the old palace,
some of which exist beneath the present building.
On Christmas night, 1734, the Royal Palace of the Alcazar was on fire,
and the building and all its treasures were utterly destroyed. This
disaster afforded Philip V. the opportunity to display his powers as a
master builder. He had already created the Palace of San Ildefonso at La
Granja, he had rebuilt the palace at Aranjuez, he had tinkered at the
Alcazar at Seville. Now he would create a marble monument that should
surpass the magnitude and magnificence of Philip the Second’s Escorial
and outstrip in splendour the Versailles palace of Louis XIV. Such a
work was beyond the art of the followers of Churriguera: he sent to the
Court of Turin for the Abbé Felipe de Juvara, the Sicilian, and confided
to him the scheme of the palace that he would raise on the heights of
San Bernardino. It was to be a square edifice of the composite order,
having four façades, each 1700 feet long, it was to contain twenty-three
courts, approached by thirty-four entrances from the exterior, and be
completed with gardens, churches, public offices, and a theatre. It was
to be a collection of palaces under one roof, and the colossal model of
the building, which is preserved in the Galeria Topografica of the
Madrid Museum, conveys some idea of the marvel of architecture which the
king and his designer had conceived between them. But the palace on the
San Bernardino hill was never begun. The ruling ambition of the
masterful Elizabeth Farnese was to advance the interests of her
children, and she begrudged the expense which the colossal building
would entail. She raised so many difficulties and delayed so long the
adoption of the plans that Juvara died of hope deferred, and Giovanoni
Battista Saccheti came from Turin to carry on the work. The queen by
this time had exhausted Philip’s resistance to her will, and Sacchetti’s
less pretentious design, traced among the still smouldering ruins of the
ancient Alcazar, was adopted on 7th April 1737.
A year later the first stone of the present palace was laid. The
foundation-stone bore a commemorative description and enclosed a leaden
casket, containing gold, silver, and copper coins from the mints of
Madrid, Seville, Mexico, and Peru. The work of ensuring the solidity of
the foundations by moulding them into the western slope of the hill cost
an enormous sum of money, entailed an immense amount of labour, and
occupied a proportionately extensive period of time. In 1808 the palace
had cost 75,000,000 pesetas, and the subsequent alterations, which
included the enclosing of the Campo del Moro with a wall and gilded
railing, brought up the sum total to the enormous sum of over
100,000,000 pesetas. Philip died in 1746, long before the palace he had
projected was near completion. The work went on through the thirteen
years’ reign of Philip VI., and when Charles III. came to Madrid in 1759
he recognised that unless the rate of progress was accelerated he would
have to occupy the building at the Buen Retiro for the rest of his life.
Under his resolute authority the work was pushed on with more vigour,
and it was ready for his occupation on 1st December 1764. It had taken
over a quarter of a century to build, it had cost Spain three millions
sterling, but it gained the place that Philip V. anticipated for it
among the palaces of the world.
It has been said, and the statement is but slightly exaggerated, that
our own Buckingham Palace looks shabby and insignificant beside this
vast pile of shimmering, white masonry, this truly royal residence, this
unique museum, which contains every variety of art treasures. The
architecture selected is the unpoetical but imposing style of the late
Renaissance, and the regularity of the exterior is redeemed from
monotony by Ionic columns, pilasters, and balconies. The massive
building, 500 feet square and 100 feet in height, forms a huge
quadrangle, enclosing a court, while two projecting wings form the Plaza
de Armas. The base of the building, which is composed of three stories
above the ground-floor, is of granite, and the upper portion is of the
beautiful white stone of Colmenar, which gleams like marble. The lower
portion is plain, massive, and severe, and the appearance of the third
story is marred by the square port-holes of the entre-súelos. A wide
cornice runs round the top, and above it a stone balustrade, on the
pedestals of which stand rococo vases. In accordance with the first
plans of the palace, the whole of this balustrade was surmounted by
statues, but these were removed on account of their great weight, and
are now scattered all over Madrid.
The principal entrance is in the south façade, but the palace is
approached by five other grand entrances. The east side, which faces on
to the Plaza de Oriente, is called ‘del Principe,’ from the fact that at
one time it was always used by the royal family. On the eastern and
southern sides the height of the edifice is more than doubled by reason
of the uneven ground where it falls away to the river. The northern side
faces the Guadarrama mountains, from which the icy winter blasts have
frozen to death many unfortunate sentries on guard at the Puerta del
Diamante. The main southern entrance leads into a huge patio, some 240
feet square, surrounded by an open portico, composed of thirty-six
arches, surmounted by another row of arches, forming a gallery with
glass windows. In this court are four large statues of Trajan, Hadrian,
Honorius, and Theodosius, the four Roman emperors who were natives of
Spain. The upper vaulting is decorated with allegorical frescoes, the
work of Corrado Giaquinto, representing the Spanish monarchy offering
homage to religion. The famous Grand Staircase, with its three flights
of black and white marble steps,--each step a single slab of marble--and
its celebrated lions, lead out of this court. Napoleon Bonaparte is
reported to have said to his brother Joseph as the intrusive king made
his first ascent of this superb staircase, ‘Vous serez mieux logé que
moi.’ During the same historic tour of the palace the emperor laid his
hand on one of the silver lions in the throne-room, and remarked to his
brother, ‘Je la tiens enfin, cette Espagne si désirée.’
The ground area of the palace is divided into thirty salons,
magnificently furnished and adorned with a profusion of precious marbles
and fresco paintings by Ribera, Gonzalez, Velazquez, Maella, Mengs,
Bayeu, and Lopez. It would be going outside the province of this sketch
to describe each apartment in detail, but special reference must be made
to the Hall of Ambassadors. This magnificent apartment, the largest and
richest in the Palace, occupies the centre of the principal façade, in
which it has five balconies. The whole apartment glows with rich
colouring, and scintillates with a lavish display of precious metals.
The rock-crystal chandeliers, colossal looking-glasses cast at San
Ildefonso, the marble tables, the crimson, and the gilding compose a
spectacle of royal magnificence. Here is the splendid throne of silver,
made for the husband of Mary of England, and mounting guard on either
side are the huge lions of the same metal. The ceiling, painted by Juan
Bautista Tiépolo, represents the Spanish Monarchy, exalted by poetic
beings, accompanied by the Virtues, and surrounded by its dominions in
both hemispheres. On a throne, at the sides of which are Apollo and
Minerva, the Monarchy is majestically seated, supported by the
allegorical figures representing the science of Government, Peace and
Justice and Virtue. Another group, on clouds, is formed by Abundance,
Mercy, and other figures. A rainbow crosses the whole ceiling, and
between this and the great circle of clouds circled by angels covering
is the Monarchy. In the same salon is an allegory in praise of Charles
III., which is formed by Magnanimity and Glory, Affability and Counsel.
Faith, enthroned on clouds, has an altar of fire, and is accompanied by
Hope, Charity, Prudence, Strength, and Victory; and an angel carries a
chain with a medal to reward the Noble Arts. Between the cornice Tiépolo
displayed his masterly hand by delineating the provinces of the Spanish
Monarchy. Roberto Michel executed in the angles four gilded medallions,
representing Water and Spring, Air and Summer, Fire and Autumn, and
Earth and Winter. Over the doors are two ovals, one representing
Abundance, and the other Merit and Virtue. All the walls of this regal
hall are covered with crimson velvet bordered with gold. On the right is
the statue of Prudence, on the left that of Justice, and in the two
angles traced by the steps are four gilded bronze lions. Before the
superb mirrors in this apartment are costly tables, and on these marble
busts and other no less beautiful objects, the whole constituting the
most beautiful room in the palace, and one of the first in Europe.
In these salons is the wonderful collection of French clocks which
amused the unproductive leisure of Ferdinand VII., who spent his time in
a profitless endeavour to make them chime simultaneously. The glorious
pictures, now in the Prado, that once adorned these walls were removed
by Ferdinand VII. to make room for his beloved silk hangings. At his
death vaults and store-rooms were emptied of a forgotten accumulation of
fine old furniture, and much portable treasure was removed from the
palace. Much of this has vanished beyond recovery, but during the
redecoration of the building for the reception of the king’s bride,
Alfonso XIII. was successful in recovering a number of splendid bronzes,
clocks, and porcelain vases, which now adorn the principal apartments.
The Guard Room, occupied by the Royal Halberdiers, is at the head of the
Royal Staircase, and opens into the enormous Hall of Columns. The
columns which support the corner medallions are similar to those on the
staircase, and the ceiling is painted by Conrado Giaquinto. The paving
is of variegated marbles; the only decorations of the apartments are its
medallions, its cornices of trophies, and its four great allegorical
figures. For its impressiveness the room depends solely on its
architectural merits and its simplicity, and forms a striking contrast
to the other salons of the palace with their superb tapestries,
upholstered furniture, brocades, and ornaments. The Banqueting Hall is
of magnificent proportions, and the Ball Room, to the splendour of which
all the arts and manufactures appear to have contributed, is the largest
in Europe. The Chinese Room, the Charles III. Room, hung with blue
brocade starred with silver, and the Giardini Room, which is upholstered
in ivory satin, embroidered in gold and coloured flowers, and roofed
with porcelain from the Buen Retiro factory, are among the many marvels
of this marvellous palace.
The Royal Chapel, which was depleted in 1808 by General Belliard, who
carried off the pictures painted for Philip II. by Michael Coxis, is
still splendid in its profusion of rich marbles, gilt, and stucco, and
its beautiful ceiling painted by Giaquinto. Many of the exquisite
altar-cloths and vestments were embroidered by Queen Cristina. Here also
is an immensely valuable collection of fine ecclesiastical objects; and
here at Epiphany, Easter, and Corpus Christi the galleries leading from
the royal chapel are hung with the magnificent and unique tapestries
which belong to the crown of Spain.
The private library of his Majesty is on the ground-floor of the
palace. It was formed by Philip V. about 1714, and has since been
increased by the acquisition of several notable collections, including
those of the dean of Teruel, Counts Mansilla and Gondomar, and Judge
Bruna of Seville. The manuscripts are for the most part from the extinct
colleges. The king’s library, which occupies ten rooms and two passages,
is composed of eighty thousand volumes in magnificent mahogany cases
with beautiful glass from La Granja. Books issued prior to the sixteenth
century, beautiful copies on vellum, very rare editions by Spanish
printers, and rich bindings, make this library one of the most important
in Europe. Among the illustrated missals is a prayer-book said to have
belonged to Ferdinand and Isabella or their daughter, Juana la Loca,
whose portrait it contains. The building is adorned with exquisite
ornaments and the arms of Leon and Castile in enamel. The correspondence
of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador in London during the reign of James
I., is also to be seen here.
The general Archive of the crown of Spain was created in virtue of a
royal decree of Ferdinand VII., dated May 22, 1814. The organisation and
classification of all the documents since the reign of Charles I. until
that of Isabella II. were based on chronology; but Alfonso XII. thought
the classification of subjects more scientific, and the Keeper of the
Archives has, since 1876, had the whole of the documents divided into
four large sections, namely, administrative, juridical, historical, and
according to their sources. This Archive also has a reference library
composed of seven hundred volumes. At present the Archive of the Crown
consists of thirty rooms, containing nearly ten thousand bundles of
papers and two thousand volumes. The administrative documents date from
1479; the juridical ones from 1598; the historical from 1558; there
being also some property deeds dating from the eleventh century relating
to the celebrated monastery of El Escorial, founded by Philip II., which
from the paleographic point of view, and even from the historical, are
of great interest.
The Royal Pharmacy, situated in the part of the palace known as Los
Arcos Nuevos (the New Arches), has an origin which is closely bound up
with the history of national pharmacy. In the beginning of the
pharmaceutical profession, when it became a faculty, the Royal Pharmacy
was the centre of the profession in all its phases. It contains a rich
collection of utensils of all periods, curious examples of
pharmaceutical materials used in olden times, and a well-filled library,
consisting of more than two thousand five hundred volumes.
The stables of the ancient Alcazar were situated in the space now
occupied by the large Armoury Court; those of the present palace were
built in the reign of Charles III., in accordance with the plans and
under the direction of the notable architect, Francisco Sabatini. The
plan of the edifice is an irregular polygon, the longest side of which,
at the Cuesta de San Vicente, is nearly 700 feet in length. The
principal façade is in the Calle Bailen, and is adorned by a simple
granite portal, over which are the royal arms. This door leads to a fine
court surrounded by arches, and on the west side is a small chapel,
dedicated to St. Anthony, Abbot.
The principal part of these buildings consists in the large and
magnificent galleries, sustained by double rows of pillars, which
constitute the stables. These consist of a spacious stable for the
horses used by royalty. There is another stable for Spanish horses,
another for foreign horses and mares, and yet another for mules. More
than three hundred animals can be accommodated in the stables. There are
at present one hundred saddle-horses, all of which, with the exception
of sixty foreign animals, come from the royal stud at Aranjuez.
The general harness-room is a large nave, consisting of three halls.
Preserved in many cases are the magnificent sets of harness and saddles,
the liveries of footmen and coachmen, crests, fly-traps, whips and
ancient horse-cloths, bridles, and other curiosities. The Royal Riding
School is built on one of the esplanades facing the Campo del Moro.
In order to form some idea of the size of the edifice, it may be
mentioned that, besides the coach-houses, stables, harness-rooms, etc.,
there are apartments for the accommodation of the six hundred and
thirty-seven people and their families who are employed in this
department of the palace.
The Royal Coach-house is situated in the Campo del Moro. Its plan is a
rectangular parallelogram, the longest sides of which are 278 feet in
length, and the shortest 101 feet. This great coach-house was built in
the time of Ferdinand VII., after the design and under the direction of
the architect Custodio Moreno, who gave to the exterior a simple and
severe appearance. In this department are twenty splendid State
carriages, which are only used on special occasions, among them being
that of Juana _the Mad_, restored a few years since, and one hundred and
twenty-one carriages of all kinds and shapes for daily use.
Kings of three dynasties have made their homes in the Royal Palace of
Madrid since the nineteenth century brought in with it so much havoc and
disruption to Spain. The Bourbons, Joseph Buonaparte, and Amadeo of
Savoy, each ‘abode his hour or two and went his way,’ and in 1873 and
1874 the palace windows looked out upon a city which for the first time
since its foundation was the capital of a republic. Nearly all the
culminating incidents in the stormy history which has been enacted in
Spain since the abdication of Charles IV. occurred in the Royal Palace.
From this not too secure eminence Ferdinand the Desired saw his guards
slaughtered by the frenzied mob. ‘Serve the fools right,’ he exclaimed;
‘at all events I am inviolable.’ But the king had a fit of terror when
he found his palace was left without guards to protect it from the
crowd, and Riego, the man he hated, was taken into favour, in order that
he might appease the populace.
Through the terrible night of 7th October 1841, when Generals Concha
and Leon made their determined attempt to kidnap Queen Isabella and her
little sister, the Infanta Maria Luisa, the valiant eighteen halberdiers
of the guard, commanded by Colonel Dalee, held the grand staircase of
the palace against an army of revolutionists until the National Militia
arrived to relieve them. Truly that night the halberdiers wrote a
magnificent page of fidelity in the records of the guards.
After a hopeless struggle to reduce Spanish affairs into something like
order, Amadeo of Savoy issued from the Royal Palace his valedictory
address to his people, and on the following day, 12th February 1873, he
left Madrid, as he had entered it, a chevalier _sans peur et sans
reproche_. In the same palace Alfonso XIII. was born and baptized, from
the palace he set out to the church of San Jeronimo to be married to
Victoria Eugénie of Battenberg, and here was born and baptized the
Prince of the Asturias, the heir to the throne of Spain.
[Illustration: PLATE 1
ESCORIAL. VIEW OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 2
ESCORIAL. VIEW OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 3
ESCORIAL. VIEW OF THE PALACE (EAST SIDE)]
[Illustration: PLATE 4
ESCORIAL. NORTH-WEST ANGLE OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 5
ESCORIAL. PRINCIPAL FAÇADE AND ANGLE OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 6
ESCORIAL. VIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL STAIRCASE OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 7
ESCORIAL. HALL OF AMBASSADORS]
[Illustration: PLATE 8
ESCORIAL. RECEPTION HALL]
[Illustration: PLATE 9
ESCORIAL. VIEW OF THE DINING HALL]
[Illustration: PLATE 10
ESCORIAL. POMPEIAN HALL]
[Illustration: PLATE 11
ESCORIAL. LIBRARY]
[Illustration: PLATE 12
ESCORIAL. CHAPTER ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 13
ESCORIAL. “THE HOLY FAMILY,” BY RAPHAEL]
[Illustration: PLATE 14
ESCORIAL. “THE LAST SUPPER,” BY TITIAN]
[Illustration: PLATE 15
ESCORIAL. “A SMOKER,” BY TENIERS]
[Illustration: PLATE 16
ESCORIAL. “COUNTRY DANCE,” BY GOYA]
[Illustration: PLATE 17
ESCORIAL. “CHILDREN PICKING FRUIT,” BY GOYA. TAPESTRY]
[Illustration: PLATE 18
ESCORIAL. “THE GRAPE-SELLERS,” BY GOYA. TAPESTRY]
[Illustration: PLATE 19
ESCORIAL. “THE CHINA MERCHANT,” BY GOYA. TAPESTRY]
[Illustration: PLATE 20
“THE STORY OF THE PASSION.” DIPTYCH, IN IVORY, OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
(FROM THE CAMARIN OF ST. THERESA, ESCORIAL)]
[Illustration: PLATE 21
SAN ILDEFONSO, LA GRANJA. VIEW OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 22
SAN ILDEFONSO, LA GRANJA. VIEW OF THE PALACE AND THE CASCADE]
[Illustration: PLATE 23
SAN ILDEFONSO, LA GRANJA. GENERAL VIEW OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 24
SAN ILDEFONSO, LA GRANJA. VIEW OF THE PALACE AND FOUNTAIN OF FAMA]
[Illustration: PLATE 25
LA GRANJA. VIEW OF THE PALACE FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF FAMA]
[Illustration: PLATE 26
SAN ILDEFONSO, LA GRANJA. VIEW OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 27
SAN ILDEFONSO. THE PALACE IN PERSPECTIVE]
[Illustration: PLATE 28
SAN ILDEFONSO, LA GRANJA. ENTRANCE TO THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 29
SAN ILDEFONSO, LA GRANJA. GENERAL VIEW OF THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH AND THE
PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 30
ENVIRONS OF LA GRANJA. PALACE OF RIO FRIO]
[Illustration: PLATE 31
SAN ILDEFONSO, LA GRANJA. THE CASCADE]
[Illustration: PLATE 32
LA GRANJA. THE PALACE, AND FOUNTAIN OF FAMA]
[Illustration: PLATE 33
LA GRANJA. THE FOUNTAIN OF FAMA]
[Illustration: PLATE 34
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF FAMA]
[Illustration: PLATE 35
SAN ILDEFONSO, LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF THE HORSE-RACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 36
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF THE THREE GRACES]
[Illustration: PLATE 37
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF THE THREE GRACES]
[Illustration: PLATE 38
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF NEPTUNE]
[Illustration: PLATE 39
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF NEPTUNE]
[Illustration: PLATE 40
LA GRANJA. PART OF THE FOUNTAIN OF NEPTUNE]
[Illustration: PLATE 41
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF NEPTUNE]
[Illustration: PLATE 42
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF THE BATHS OF DIANA]
[Illustration: PLATE 43
LA GRANJA. THE FOUNTAIN OF DRAGONS]
[Illustration: PLATE 44
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF LATONA]
[Illustration: PLATE 45
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF ESLO, OR OF THE WINDS]
[Illustration: PLATE 46
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF ANDROMEDA]
[Illustration: PLATE 47
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF THE CANASTILLO]
[Illustration: PLATE 48
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF THE CUP]
[Illustration: PLATE 49
LA GRANJA. FOUNTAIN OF THE CUP]
[Illustration: PLATE 50
LA GRANJA. MOUTH OF THE ASNO, UNDERGROUND RIVER]
[Illustration: PLATE 51
SAN ILDEFONSO. THE RIVER]
[Illustration: PLATE 52
LA GRANJA. THE RESERVOIR]
[Illustration: PLATE 53
LA GRANJA. THE RESERVOIR]
[Illustration: PLATE 54
LA GRANJA. CASCADE OF THE RESERVOIR]
[Illustration: PLATE 55
SAN ILDEFONSO. THE LAKE]
[Illustration: PLATE 56
SAN ILDEFONSO. GROUP OF VASES IN THE PARTERRE OF ANDROMEDA]
[Illustration: PLATE 57
SAN ILDEFONSO. THREE VASES IN THE PARTERRE OF ANDROMEDA]
[Illustration: PLATE 58
SAN ILDEFONSO. VASE IN THE PARTERRE DE LA FAMA]
[Illustration: PLATE 59
SAN ILDEFONSO. VASE IN THE PARTERRE DE LA FAMA]
[Illustration: PLATE 60
SAN ILDEFONSO. VASE IN THE PARTERRE DE LA FAMA]
[Illustration: PLATE 61
SAN ILDEFONSO. VASE OF THE BATHS OF DIANA]
[Illustration: PLATE 62
SAN ILDEFONSO. VASE IN THE PARTERRE OF ANDROMEDA]
[Illustration: PLATE 63
SAN ILDEFONSO. VASE IN THE PARTERRE OF ANDROMEDA]
[Illustration: PLATE 64
SAN ILDEFONSO. VASE IN THE PARTERRE OF ANDROMEDA]
[Illustration: PLATE 65
EL PARDO. VIEW OF THE PALACE FROM THE GROUNDS]
[Illustration: PLATE 66
EL PARDO. THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 67
EL PARDO. THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 68
EL PARDO. THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 69
EL PARDO. THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 70
EL PARDO. HALL OF AMBASSADORS]
[Illustration: PLATE 71
EL PARDO. HALL OF AMBASSADORS]
[Illustration: PLATE 72
EL PARDO. DINING-ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 73
EL PARDO. AN ANTE-ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 74
EL PARDO. ANTE-ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 75
EL PARDO. PRIVATE ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 76
EL PARDO. PRIVATE ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 77
EL PARDO. PROSCENIUM AND SET-SCENE OF THE ROYAL THEATRE]
[Illustration: PLATE 78
EL PARDO. ROYAL BOX IN THE THEATRE]
[Illustration: PLATE 79
EL PARDO. “CASETA DEL PRINCIPE”]
[Illustration: PLATE 80
ARANJUEZ. PRINCIPAL FAÇADE OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 81
ARANJUEZ. SOUTHERN FAÇADE OF THE ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 82
ARANJUEZ. THE ROYAL PALACE FROM THE PARTERRE]
[Illustration: PLATE 83
ARANJUEZ. THE ROYAL PALACE FROM THE GARDENS]
[Illustration: PLATE 84
ARANJUEZ. THE ROYAL PALACE AND THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE OVER THE TAJO]
[Illustration: PLATE 85
ARANJUEZ. THE GRAND STAIRCASE]
[Illustration: PLATE 86
ARANJUEZ. PORCELAIN ROOM, JAPANESE STYLE]
[Illustration: PLATE 87
ARANJUEZ. DETAIL OF THE PORCELAIN ROOM, JAPANESE STYLE]
[Illustration: PLATE 88
ARANJUEZ. DETAIL OF THE PORCELAIN ROOM, JAPANESE STYLE]
[Illustration: PLATE 89
ARANJUEZ. DETAIL OF THE PORCELAIN ROOM, JAPANESE STYLE]
[Illustration: PLATE 90
ARANJUEZ. DETAIL OF THE PORCELAIN ROOM, JAPANESE STYLE]
[Illustration: PLATE 91
ARANJUEZ. LA CASA DEL LABRADOR]
[Illustration: PLATE 92
ARANJUEZ. CONVENT OF SAN ANTONIO]
[Illustration: PLATE 93
ARANJUEZ. ENTRANCE TO THE GARDENS OF THE ISLAND]
[Illustration: PLATE 94
ARANJUEZ. FOUNTAIN IN THE PLAZA DE SAN ANTONIO]
[Illustration: PLATE 95
ARANJUEZ. AVENUE OF THE CATHOLIC SOVEREIGNS, IN THE GARDENS OF THE
ISLAND]
[Illustration: PLATE 96
ARANJUEZ. JUPITER, BRONZE GROUP IN THE GARDENS OF THE ISLAND]
[Illustration: PLATE 97
ARANJUEZ. THE GODDESS CERES, BRONZE GROUP IN THE GARDENS OF THE ISLAND]
[Illustration: PLATE 98
ARANJUEZ. THE GODDESS JUNO, BRONZE GROUP IN THE GARDENS OF THE ISLAND]
[Illustration: PLATE 99
ARANJUEZ. PAVILIONS OF THE RIVER, IN THE GARDEN OF THE PRINCE]
[Illustration: PLATE 100
ARANJUEZ. FOUNTAIN OF APOLLO, IN THE GARDEN OF THE PRINCE]
[Illustration: PLATE 101
ARANJUEZ. FOUNTAIN OF CERES, IN THE GARDEN OF THE PRINCE]
[Illustration: PLATE 102
ARANJUEZ. FOUNTAIN OF NARCISSUS, IN THE GARDEN OF THE PRINCE]
[Illustration: PLATE 103
ARANJUEZ. FOUNTAIN OF THE SWAN, IN THE GARDEN OF THE PRINCE]
[Illustration: PLATE 104
ARANJUEZ. GENERAL VIEW OF THE TAGO AND THE PARTERRE]
[Illustration: PLATE 105
ARANJUEZ. FOUNTAIN OF HERCULES, IN THE GARDENS OF THE ISLAND]
[Illustration: PLATE 106
ARANJUEZ. FOUNTAIN OF HERCULES, IN THE GARDENS OF THE ISLAND]
[Illustration: PLATE 107
ARANJUEZ. FOUNTAIN OF APOLLO, IN THE GARDENS OF THE ISLAND]
[Illustration: PLATE 108
MIRAMAR. SIDE VIEW OF PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 109
MIRAMAR. RECEPTION ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 110
MIRAMAR. BILLIARD ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 111
SEVILLE. FAÇADE OF THE ALCAZAR]
[Illustration: PLATE 112
SEVILLE. ALCAZAR--GATES OF THE PRINCIPAL ENTRANCE]
[Illustration: PLATE 113
SEVILLE. INTERIOR OF THE HALL OF AMBASSADORS]
[Illustration: PLATE 114
SEVILLE. INTERIOR OF THE HALL OF AMBASSADORS]
[Illustration: PLATE 115
SEVILLE. INTERIOR OF THE HALL OF AMBASSADORS]
[Illustration: PLATE 116
SEVILLE. HALL OF AMBASSADORS]
[Illustration: PLATE 117
SEVILLE. HALL OF AMBASSADORS]
[Illustration: PLATE 118
SEVILLE. COURT OF THE HUNDRED VIRGINS]
[Illustration: PLATE 119
SEVILLE. COURT OF THE DOLLS]
[Illustration: PLATE 120
SEVILLE. COURT OF THE DOLLS, FROM THE ROOM OF THE PRINCE]
[Illustration: PLATE 121
SEVILLE. COURT OF THE DOLLS]
[Illustration: PLATE 122
SEVILLE. COURT OF THE DOLLS]
[Illustration: PLATE 123
SEVILLE. COURT OF THE DOLLS]
[Illustration: PLATE 124
SEVILLE. UPPER PART OF THE COURT OF THE DOLLS]
[Illustration: PLATE 125
SEVILLE. DORMITORY OF THE MOORISH KINGS]
[Illustration: PLATE 126
SEVILLE. SLEEPING SALOON OF THE MOORISH KINGS]
[Illustration: PLATE 127
SEVILLE. ENTRANCE TO THE DORMITORY OF THE MOORISH KINGS]
[Illustration: PLATE 128
SEVILLE. ALCAZAR--VIEW OF THE GALLERY FROM THE SECOND FLOOR]
[Illustration: PLATE 129
SEVILLE. ALCAZAR--HALL IN WHICH KING ST. FERDINAND DIED]
[Illustration: PLATE 130
SEVILLE. INTERIOR OF THE HALL OF ST. FERDINAND]
[Illustration: PLATE 131
SEVILLE. FRONT OF THE HALL OF ST. FERDINAND]
[Illustration: PLATE 132
MADRID. THE ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 133
MADRID. THE ROYAL PALACE FROM THE PLAZA DE ORIENTE]
[Illustration: PLATE 134
MADRID. ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 135
MADRID. PRINCIPAL FAÇADE OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 136
MADRID. THE ROYAL PALACE FROM THE PLAZA DE ORIENTE]
[Illustration: PLATE 137
MADRID. THE ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 138
MADRID. THE ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 139
MADRID. PALACE FROM THE PLAZA DE LA ARMERIA]
[Illustration: PLATE 140
MADRID. THE GRAND STAIRCASE OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 141
MADRID. PRINCIPAL STAIRCASE OF THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 142
MADRID. GRAND STAIRCASE IN THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 143
MADRID. THE GRAND STAIRCASE]
[Illustration: PLATE 144
MADRID. HALL OF COLUMNS]
[Illustration: PLATE 145
MADRID. GENERAL VIEW OF THE THRONE ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 146
MADRID. THE THRONE, ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 147
MADRID. THE THRONE, ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 148
MADRID. DETAIL OF THRONE ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 149
MADRID. CEILING OF THE THRONE ROOM, BY TIEPOLO]
[Illustration: PLATE 150
MADRID. CEILING IN THE THRONE ROOM, BY TIEPOLO]
[Illustration: PLATE 151
MADRID. CEILING OF THE THRONE ROOM, BY TIEPOLO]
[Illustration: PLATE 152
MADRID. ROYAL PALACE. THE KING’S PRIVY COUNCIL CHAMBER]
[Illustration: PLATE 153
MADRID. ROYAL PALACE. THE QUEEN’S ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 154
MADRID. THE MUSIC ROOM, ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 155
MADRID. THE ROOM OF MIRRORS, ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 156
MADRID. RECEPTION ROOM, ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 157
MADRID. BRONZE URN IN THE RECEPTION ROOM, ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 158
MADRID. ROOM OF CHARLES III.]
[Illustration: PLATE 159
MADRID. CHINESE ROOM BY GASPARINI, ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 160
MADRID. CHINESE ROOM BY GASPARINI, ROYAL PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 161
MADRID. PORCELAIN ROOM IN THE PALACE]
[Illustration: PLATE 162
MADRID. CORNER OF THE PORCELAIN ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 163
MADRID. THE PORCELAIN ROOM]
[Illustration: PLATE 164
MADRID, PORCELAIN GROUP IN THE BUEN RETIRO]
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Royal Palaces of Spain" ***
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