An Architect's Note-Book in Spain Part 5

RENAISSANCE HOUSE OPPOSITE SAN BENITO.

IN every ancient city the largest and most costly building ever erected in it is usually the most enduring. The causes of this are various--for instance--the construction in itself may have been the most solid, the citizens may have taken such pride in it as to bestow unusual pains upon its conservation, they may have retained it for uses for which it may have become more or less unfit (as is the case with the majority of ancient Ecclesiastical buildings in Protestant countries), rather than face the expense of re-erecting appropriate buildings, or it may still be well suited for present purposes. Hence cathedrals, churches, palaces, (rarely castles, owing to the combative propensities of their owners), hospitals, great residences of ancient families, and in Catholic countries, convents and monasteries, of almost all periods, may remain to attest the changes of architectural style, &c.; but the ordinary residences of the middle cla.s.ses, and of the numerous secondary n.o.bility, get swept away by the tides of history, or are so altered by them as to leave scarcely any satisfactory land-marks to indicate what once gave its predominant character to the streets of many an ancient city. Such changes are effected almost equally by progress and by decay. By the former, all minor monuments become obliterated or transformed,--they represent in fact old age, pushed aside to make way for youth--while by the latter they descend in the social scale until beggars break up what n.o.bles once built up. How constantly the traveller meets with some splendid old cathedral still "hale and hearty," with the weight of half-a-dozen or more centuries upon its head, around which he knows were once grouped teeming populations full of strength, life, and wealth, of which not a habitation may be left extending backwards for more than a hundred years from the present date? Any exceptions to such ill.u.s.trations of the way in which fortune turns her wheel become the especially cherished haunts of the antiquary, who knows that from day to day they become rarer, and consequently more precious. Hence the enthusiasm with which the neglected quarters of every old town are visited in the hope of meeting with some relics of what may therein at least appear, "remains of an extinct civilization." Some such reward I met with in encountering, amidst much dirt and apparent poverty in the quarter of San Benito, in Salamanca, the pretty facades of old Renaissance houses which form the subjects of this sketch and of the one which succeeds it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 22

SALAMANCA

MDW 1869

CALLE DEL AGUILA]

PLATE XXII.

_SALAMANCA_.

RENAISSANCE HOUSE IN THE CALLE DEL AGUILA.

THE Renaissance house now presented to the reader, although richer in its ornaments, is not as complete as the one given in the preceding sketch, having apparently lost its original roof. Instead of the overhanging eaves casting a constantly cool shade over the open bal.u.s.trading, through which light and air still pa.s.s to "a chamber that's next to the sky;" in this case nothing is probably left over the princ.i.p.al apartment, the window of which richly decorated with heraldry and arabesque is shown over the strong doorway with its deep flat arch, excepting a dark and scarcely habitable attic. I think it very likely that the wreath, coat of arms, and boys, which still occupy their original position over the princ.i.p.al window, once supported the sill of a superior window, and that the house which now appears to have two stories only, had once at least as many as three.

Such houses as these of the ancient n.o.bility, of which I could find only two or three, must once have been common enough in the fas.h.i.+onable city of Gil Blas, when the university numbered seven thousand students, and eighty professors, with salaries of one thousand crowns each--a bountiful payment in those days for the exercise of the n.o.blest talents--and swarms of a.s.sistants and "Pretendientes" on half-pay and unattached.[12]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 23

AVILA

ENTRANCE TO THE CASA POLENTINA

MDW 1869]

PLATE XXIII.

_AVILA_.

ENTRANCE GATEWAY OF THE CASA POLENTINA.

THE Portal which forms the subject of my twenty-third sketch serves as the entrance to the dilapidated old mansion of the Condes de Polentinos at Avila, a view of the remains of the Patio of which will be found on turning over this page. The architectural characteristics of this striking gateway are certainly very singular. On catching a glimpse of it from a distance, and seizing the aspect only of its ponderous masonry and deep machicolations, I fully believed I was coming upon an old bit of castellated construction of the fourteenth or fifteenth century at latest. On nearer inspection, however, I found out my mistake, and arrived at the conclusion that the Senor Conde, late in the sixteenth century, who had caused the whole structure to be built, had probably charged his architect, either to preserve the general form of some much earlier portal of the old house, which he may have caused to be pulled down, or to imitate the general aspect of some other aristocratic portal of early date, which the Count may have admired elsewhere. Different as the corbelling, &c., looks to the gateway, and the window over it, I found that ornamental detail of a similar nature to, but somewhat coa.r.s.er style than that of the door and window dressings was worked over most of the corbelling, and part of the upper gallery carried by the corbels, but apparently by a provincial hand. The stone work of the door and window had probably been left in the rough for awhile, possibly for some fifty years, and then its carving entrusted to some superior artist, working according to the latest lights of the fas.h.i.+on of the close of the sixteenth century. Although the style of all this carving is plateresque, there are many indications about it of an inclination to Greco-Roman work. For instance, the griffins, the lions' heads of antique type, and the arms and armour arranged as trophies, all indicate acquaintance with the prevalent materials of Italian arabesque design of late cinque-cento style. Indeed, the very form and fluting of the corselets, bra.s.ses, vambra.s.ses, and cuisses, would indicate that armour of a date posterior to the middle of the sixteenth century had been adopted as types for the making up of the trophies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 24

AVILA

CASA POLENTINA

MDW 1869]

PLATE XXIV.

_AVILA_.

THE PATIO OF THE CASA POLENTINA.

NEXT to the general feeling of interest excited by the picturesque aspect of decayed architectural grandeur, which is presented by the remains of this dilapidated Patio, rises a feeling of curiosity as to the mode and manner of life of those whose wants such costly building subserved. Privacy and coolness appear to have been the chief desiderata, and those architectural ornaments seem to have been preferred, which recall, at almost every step, the hereditary dignities of the family tree. Madame d'Aulnois, whose Letters from Spain, written in 1679,[13] give the liveliest possible picture of life in those days in the Peninsula, gratifies our curiosity in the most agreeable manner, and with that quickness of perception, as to domestic habits, by means of which, none but a woman can seize at a glance, the telling details essential to give completeness and reality to a sketch. Speaking of the Spaniards of the upper and middle cla.s.ses of the seventeenth century she says:--"All their houses have a great many rooms on a floor; you go through a dozen or fifteen parlours, or chambers, one after another.

Those which are the worst lodged have six or seven. The rooms are generally longer than they are broad. The floors and ceilings are neither painted nor gilt; they are made of plaister quite plain, but so white that they dazzle one's eyes; for every year they are sc.r.a.ped, and whited as the walls, which look like marble, they are so well polished.

The Court to their summer apartments is made of certain matter, which, after it has ten pails of water thrown upon it, yet is dry in half-an-hour, and leaves a pleasant coolness; so that in the morning they water all, and a little while after they spread mats or carpets made of fine rushes, which cover all the pavement. The whole apartments are hung with the same small mat about the depth of an ell, to hinder the coolness of the walls from hurting those which lean against them. On the top of these mats there are hung pictures and looking-gla.s.ses. The cus.h.i.+ons, which are of gold and silver brocade, are placed upon the carpet; and the tables and cabinets are very fine; and at little distances there are set silver cases or boxes, filled with orange and jessamine trees. In their windows they set things made of straw, to keep the sun out; and in the evenings they work in their gardens. There are several houses which have very fine ones, where you see grottoes and fountains in abundance."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 25

AVILA THE CATHEDRAL. IRON PULPIT.

MDW 1869]

PLATE XXV.

_AVILA_.

IRON PULPIT IN THE CATHEDRAL.

MR. STREET'S ill.u.s.trations and description of all that is left of the old glories of Avila, previous to the epoch of the Renaissance, are so complete, that I can feel no compunction in having gleaned only from this delightful old city two specimens of the ability of the Spanish smiths of the period he repudiates, and two others showing remains of the domestic architecture of the same style.

Let it not be supposed, however, that it was only the school of the Renaissance which produced masterly iron-work, and even masterly iron pulpits, in Spain. Mr. Street has himself given us a beautiful woodcut of the pulpit in the church of St. Gil, at Burgos. This exhibits no other than Gothic details, while in the pulpit which forms the subject of my twenty-fifth sketch, as will no doubt be observed, Renaissance details are freely intermixed with Gothic ones. The whole, however different in style in different parts, appeared to me to be contemporaneous; and I, therefore, regard this pulpit as an interesting example of a transitional style, later of course, than that followed in the pulpit of Saint Gil, which Mr. Street describes as the earliest he saw. In both, the primitive mode of working through thin plates superposed to form tracery has been adhered to, and the whole of the ironwork has been applied to a wooden framework. I regard the pulpit at Burgos as likely to have been executed early in the fifteenth century, and the one now under consideration as of the close of the same century; and both may, I think, have been produced under the influence of the masters from Cologne, who did such wonders, and set so many fas.h.i.+ons, in Burgos and its vicinity, especially at Miraflores.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 26

AVILA

THE CATHEDRAL

MDW 1869]