Part 9

At a height of about forty feet, occurs a beautiful stalactite cornice from which starts a noble dome, or "Artesonado" ceiling, most ingeniously made in inlaid wood, and gorgeously decorated. This ceiling, splendid as it is, occupies the place only of one yet more marvellous, which fell down. The original ceiling, or rather hollow cone, was of the same description as the existing stalactite, or pendentive, ceilings of the Hall of "the Abencerrages," of "Justice," and of "the two Sisters;" but larger and finer. Mr. Owen Jones has given us, in Plate VII of his magnificent work, a long section, to a large scale, passing from the window in which the throne of the Sultan was placed, through the Hall of the Ambassadors with its arch of entrance, through the Sala de la Barca, the splendid anteroom, as it were, to the Throne room, through the Loggia, or Arcade, of the Patio of the Alberca, through the Patio itself, and through the end Loggia of the Court with its exquisite Pavilion on the first floor. From this section can be admirably realised, what must have been the view, or "colpo d'occhio," of the Sultan, as he sat upon his throne to receive foreign Ambassadors.[38] It seems impossible to conceive of any position more imposing, or better calculated to impress the imagination particularly of Eastern magnates. Even now, bereft of so much that must once have added to its charm, the view is one of exquisite and most romantic beauty. It is, indeed, a sight to stir a poet's heart, although

"Lonely and still are now thy marble halls, Thou fair Alhambra! there the feast is o'er; And with the murmur of thy fountain falls,[39] Blend the wild tones of minstrelsy no more. Hushed are the voices, that in years gone by, Have mourn'd, exulted, menaced, through thy towers, Within thy pillar'd courts the grass waves high, And all uncultured bloom thy fairy bowers. Unheeded there the flowering myrtle blows, Through tall arcades unmark'd the sunbeam smiles, And many a tint of soften'd brilliance throws O'er fretted walls and shining peristyles."[40]

PLATE LXX.

_GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._

STUCCO DETAIL FROM THE HALL OF THE AMBASSADORS.

IN describing the subject of the last sketch, our theme was the general aspect of the "Sala de los Embajadores." I have chosen to let this minute specimen of its detail follow the statement of its large dimensions, in order the more forcibly to convey an idea of its wonderful elaboration. The elegant morsel of stucco-work now presented to the student has been actually traced from a portion of the stucco-work of one of the window recesses immediately above the dado. It affords an admirable illustration of two principles constantly followed by the Moors in their treatment of decoration--viz., to preserve the continuity of all scroll work from root to fully developed foliation--a principle entirely disregarded in all previous ornamentation based upon classical practice--and to care first for larger surfaces to satisfy the eye with harmonious relations of those surfaces to one another, and to the spaces they have to enrich, from a distance; and then to provide minor fillings and intersections so as to supply adequate elaboration for close inspection. In addition to the decorative effect produced by variations in relief, still greater refinement was obtained by patterns in colour, painted upon the surfaces of the modelled ornaments. Although almost everywhere the colour has either been rubbed off, or rubbed into confusion, the abrasion has affected for the most part only the pigment and its albuminous vehicle, leaving the surface of the stucco bare, and showing the outline of the delicate ornament which has been drawn in by the pencil of the artist.

It is on the nature of the stucco itself I think it may be well to offer here a few remarks. It certainly appears to be harder, closer in texture, tougher, and much less absorbent, than gypsum or plaster of Paris, when set in the usual manner. Lime alone, as ordinarily slacked, would not I believe give any such texture, even if it could be manipulated into similar ornamental forms. I believe the Moorish Stucco to be almost if not quite identical with the Indian "Chunam," and that in its turn to be a substance produced much in the same way that the fine Stucco of the Romans was ordinarily wrought by that people. In the native treatment of all of these substances, I believe four peculiarities to have been generally used. Firstly--to employ the finest lime only. Secondly--to mix it with pounded earthen-ware. Thirdly--to beat it thoroughly. Fourthly--to use saccharine substances to retard the setting and keep the mass plastic under the tool.

The present is scarcely a fitting occasion upon which to state in any detail the grounds upon which I have been led to this conclusion, but I have little doubt that any student will be struck by the identity of practice of Roman, Indian, and Moor, who will refer to the practical descriptions of the various modes of the formation of terraces given by Vitruvius, by Captain Phipps, in "The Barrackmaster's Assistant,"[41] and by John Windus, in his "Journey to Mequinez."[42]

I have elsewhere noticed the command the descendants of the Moors seemed to retain over all operations of plaster and lime work throughout Spain, as evidenced by the beauty and elaboration of the Mudejar style in those materials, long after they ceased to be the dominant race in the localities in which they continued to practice their old technical arts.

PLATE LXXI.

_GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._

DETAIL OF GLASS INLAY FROM THE HALL OF THE AMBASSADORS.

THIS little pattern which forms the centre, or eye--the point of departure in fact--of an elaborate geometrical mosaic has been most carefully traced and copied from the original, which yet remains in the centre of the dado on the side of the window on the right of the Sultan's throne in the Hall of the Ambassadors. It may thus be said to occupy an especial post of honour and so to challenge, as it were, curiosity and admiration. Both these a close inspection thoroughly justifies, since in all the history of the manufacture of vitrified substances I know nothing more curious and puzzling. The pattern is in bluish-black on a white ground; and both ground and inlay are made apparently in two separate pieces of glass, and in two only. The most minute inspection shows no joint whatever on the surface of either coloured material; at the same time it establishes the fact that the ground has been made with the whole pattern sunk "en creux," and that the inlay has been made in one piece--practically a specimen of glass lace--and fixed into the cavity of the ground with a very fine calcareous cement, made probably of lime and white of egg. To inlay glass in glass involves little difficulty, if ground and inlay are as it were fused together; but to produce a ground apparently in glass, and to inlay it with so fine a pattern, both "au froid," is a perfect marvel in vitreous manufacture.

The only way in which I can imagine that such an effect could be produced is as follows, but in offering any such explanation I desire to do so with all due deference to practical glass-workers. I believe that two metal-moulds were made, one with the ornament in relief, and the other with the same ornament sunk in intaglio. From each mould, glass reproductions having been made of about equal substances (so as to contract equally in cooling), and, with the exception of a black film in one case, of the same glass, the two reproductions were stuck together firmly by the calcareous cement. The black glass in "cameo" would then be encased within the white glass in "intaglio;" and the pattern would of course be invisible, the two reproductions being firmly stuck together face to face, making apparently one white glass tessera of double the requisite thickness. The back of the cameo side would then have to be ground away, probably at a lapidary's wheel, until the back of the black pattern in cameo should be reached. At the same moment the face of the white intaglio would be exposed; and the tessera, being reduced to its proper thickness for insertion with the rest of the adjoining glass mosaic, would be fit to permanently combine with it; showing an elaborate black pattern held in by calcareous cement, on a white face, exactly as it now appears.

Any such resolution of a difficult technical problem exhibits the Moors to us as excelling in two of their favourite Arts, viz., inlaying and glass manufacture.

For much of their knowledge of both of these arts there is no doubt that the Moors were indebted to the Arabians. The Arabians were in their turn inheritors from the Byzantine Greeks of many of the traditions of manufacturing excellence once practised by the Romans. Amongst these were, no doubt, almost every process of glass-working and mosaic.[43] Considerable doubts exist as to the inheritance by the Greek of the lower empire of the process of inlaying from the Romans, and to their originality in adapting the process to their architecture. The first building in which it appears to have been freely used by the Greeks was the Mosque of Santa Sofia, built by Justinian. For that building he is known to have invoked the assistance of Persian designers and artificers; and from the divergence in the patterns of those inlays from any patterns usual in Roman contemporary work, I am inclined to believe that they represent the foreign element to which I have alluded. A most interesting comparison may be made, by the student, of the patterns from the Aya Sofia given in Salzenburg's great work, with those of the principal of the Cairene Mosques drawn by Mr. James Wild and given in the "Grammar of Ornament."

PLATE LXXII.

_GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._

MOSAIC FROM THE HALL OF THE AMBASSADORS.

IN the description of the last sketch I alluded to the sources whence the Moors derived much of their knowledge of glass-making and mosaic-working. In the specimen now given, the full size of the original, on the opposite page, a considerable advance is shown upon what was usual in the contemporary, "Opus Grecanicum," as executed, either in Italy or in Greece itself. The advance is principally to be seen in this particular, that whereas in the last mentioned work, every complicated pattern is made up out of tesseræ, or glass strips cut into squares, oblongs, triangles, or other simple figures; in the Moorish work, arbitrary shapes of considerable geometrical complexity are given to each separate piece of mosaic. When these tesseræ, so shaped, are brought together, their combination immediately results in the formation of perfect patterns, such as the one now illustrated. Tesseræ of this description were no doubt formed by squeezing plastic clay into metal moulds, and almost perfect identity was obtained between the tesseræ obtained from the same mould. These, after firing, were then apparently covered with coloured vitreous glazes by a subsequent operation.

In illustration of the advantages possessed by the Moors over the Greeks, in working such mosaics as the one I have sketched, it may be noted, that while a Greek would have required one hundred and nineteen separate pieces to make up what is shown, the Moor wanted only forty-nine. Moreover, instead of having to chip every one of the one hundred and nineteen pieces to a definite size and shape, and then to place them slowly so as to ensure the truth of his angles of forty-five and twenty-two and a half degrees, as the Greek or Italian had, the Moor had only to place one of his forty-nine pieces with precision; and, provided he never took any of the eleven patterns, of which his repeats are composed, out of their right turn, his mosaic would work itself with scarcely any other attention on his part. Another source of anxiety was saved to him; viz., constant heedfulness as to the working of the interlacement of his lines--_i. e._, their running, as it were, under and over one another. The result, in this particular, is far clearer and more effective in the Moorish, than according to the Greco-Italian method; since, while in the former there are no joints which do not help to define an interlacement, according to the latter, the joints occurring on the line of mitre of every angle become confused with the joints which express interlacement. A comparison of the Sicilian, with the Alhambrese, geometrical mosaics, would show in a moment the superiority of the last mentioned method.

No people, except perhaps the Chinese, have ever equalled the Moors in devising patterns of most complicated appearance, in which colours were, as it were, counterchanged by combining tiles, or tesseræ, of similar geometrical forms, but made in different tints or tones.

Beautiful examples are given in profusion in the works of Mr. Owen Jones, M. Girault de Prangey, Herr Hessemer, M. Coste and many others.

PLATE LXXIII.

_GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._

NICHE IN LA SALA DE LAS DOS HERMANAS.

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

"I am the garden, and every morning do I appear decked out in beauty. Look attentively at my elegance, and thou wilt reap the benefit of a commentary on decoration."

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

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

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

"Praise to God! With my ornaments and tiara[44] I surpass beauty itself, nay the luminaries in the Zodiac out of envy descend to me.

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

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

PLATE LXXIV.

_GRANADA.--THE ALHAMBRA._

STUCCO DETAIL FROM THE SALA DEL TRIBUNAL.

THE correctness of this sketch, as to dimension at least, has been ensured by the mode in which it was obtained, viz., by gently pressing a piece of paper against the surface of the piece of ornament (so as to obtain a slight impression of its outline,) then marking it faintly with pencil, pressing it out again quite flat, and finishing it in ink on the spot. It may be looked upon, therefore, as giving, as nearly as is possible on a plane surface, an accurate transcript of the elegant ornament from the Sala del Tribunal selected for illustration. My reason for this selection was, chiefly because I desired to show the minute scale and extreme delicacy of much of the decoration in relief with which the walls of the principal apartments of the Alhambra are covered. It was partly also because this particular specimen retained faint tracing lines drawn, most likely with a silver or lead point, and a free hand, upon the flat surfaces of certain parts of the ornament in relief. These served as guide lines for the yet more delicate labour of the painter, who carried the subdivision of parts, by means of the application of contrasting colours and gilding, into yet more microscopic superficial enrichment.

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

First, to decorate construction, never to construct decoration.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PLATE LXXV.

_GRANADA._

VIEW OF THE CATHEDRAL FROM THE BACK OF THE HIGH ALTAR

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

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

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

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

The Latin text was translated into Spanish by Miguel de Urrea and printed after his death at Alcala de Heñares in 1587. Its publication had however been long preceded in Spain by the digest of the views of Vitruvius under the tide of "las Medidas del Romano o Vitruvio," published by Diego de Sagredo in 1526. Sagredo had no doubt been stimulated to such studies, (as Alberti had previously been) by his admiration of the vestiges of Roman architectural greatness, still abounding on the soil of his native land.

What oral tradition could teach previous to the publication of these texts in Spain, no doubt the architect of the Cathedral of Granada, Diego de Siloe, had learnt from his father, Gil, the even more celebrated Sculptor of Burgos; whose monuments to Don Juan II., his Queen, Donna Isabel, and the Infante Don Alonso, and whose "Retablo" in the Cartuja of Miraflores in the outskirts of that city, have never been surpassed in tasteful elaboration.[46] From whatever source Diego de Siloe may have obtained his knowledge, certain it is that he must share with Alonso Covarrubbias, the honour of having been the earliest revivers of classical architecture in Spain: not in its details only as had been attempted by the early Plateresque architects, but in its structural proportions and in its symmetrical arrangements of great leading features. The following is the account of the construction of this Cathedral given by Amirola.[47]

"It was begun," he says, "on the 15th of March, 1529, and consists of three naves, the principal of which terminates in the choir after the Gothic manner. It is four hundred and twenty-five feet (Spanish) long, and two hundred and forty-nine wide. The order is Corinthian, but defective in its true proportions, since the principal nave is only forty-five feet wide, its height is one hundred and twenty." It would profit us but little to follow Amirola through his straight-laced criticisms on a design the beauty of which he was unable to apprehend; and it may be well to take a larger and juster view of its merits. The following which, I heartily endorse, is the verdict of a far better judge.[48] "Looking at its plan only, this is certainly one of the finest churches in Europe. It would be difficult to point out any other in which the central aisle leads up to the dome, so well proportioned to its dimensions, and to the dignity of the high altar which stands under it, or one where the side aisles have a purpose and a meaning so perfectly appropriate to the situation, and where the centre aisle has also its functions as perfectly marked out and so well understood. All this being so, it is puzzling to know how it has been so neglected."