Part 2

“St Thomas of Villanueva, giving alms at the door of his Cathedral,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 206

“The Annunciation of Our Lady,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 207

“St Felix of Cantalisi, restoring to Our Lady the Infant Saviour, whom she had placed in his arms,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 208

“Adoration of the Shepherds of Bethlehem,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 209

“St Peter Nolasco kneeling before Our Lady of Mercy,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 210

“The Deposition,--St Francis of Assisi supporting the body of Our Lord nailed by the left hand to the Cross,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 211

“St Joseph and the Infant Saviour,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 212

“St John the Baptist in the Desert leaning against a rock,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 213

“St Augustine and the Flaming Heart,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 214

“St Felix of Cantalisi and the Infant Jesus,” known as “San Felix de las Arrugas,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 215

“St Anthony with the Infant Saviour,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 216

“Deposition from the Cross,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 217

“Our Lady with the Infant Saviour in her Arms,” by Murillo. (An early picture.) Seville Museum 218

“Our Lady and the Infant Saviour,” known as “La Virgen de la Servilleta,” by Murillo. Seville Museum 219

“Our Lady seated, with the Infant Saviour in her lap,” by Murillo. (An early picture.) Seville Museum 220

“St Thomas of Aquin,” by Zurbarán. Seville Museum 221

“The Virgin of the Grotto,” by Zurbarán. Seville Museum 222

“St Bruno talking to the Pope,” by Zurbarán. Seville Museum 223

“The Day of Judgment,” by Martin de Vos. Seville Museum 224

“Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception,” by J. Valdes Leal. Seville Museum 225

“Jesus crowning St Joseph,” by Zurbarán. Seville Museum 226

“The Devout Punyon,” by Zurbarán. Seville Museum 227

“Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception,” the Virgin surrounded by Cherubim, by Fr. Pacheco. Seville Museum 228

“Our Lord’s Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes,” by Murillo. Seville Hospital 229

“Moses striking the Rock in Horeb,” by Murillo. La Caridad, Seville 230

“St John of God, sinking under the weight of a sick man, assisted by an Angel,” by Murillo. La Caridad, Seville 231

“The Death of St Hermenigild” by J. de las Roelas. Hospital de la Sangre, Seville 232

“The Apostleship,” by Juan de las Roelas. Hospital de la Sangre, Seville 233

“The End of this World’s Glories,” by Valdes Leal. La Caridad, Seville 234

“Pietà, or the Virgin supporting the dead body of her Divine Son,” altar-screen, by Luis de Vargas. Santa Maria la Blanca, Seville 235

“St Joseph, holding the Infant Saviour in his arms,” by Murillo. San Telmo, Seville 236

“Our Lady of the Girdle,” by Murillo, San Telmo, Seville 237

“Portrait of Ferdinand VII.,” by Goya. San Telmo, Seville 238

“Portrait of Charles IV.,” by Goya. San Telmo, Seville 239

“The Annunciation,” by F. Zurbarán. San Telmo, Seville 240

“The Death of Laocoon and his Sons at the Siege of Troy,” by El Greco. San Telmo, Seville 241

“Caton of Utique tearing open his wounds,” by Josef Ribera. San Telmo, Seville 242

“Pietà. The Virgin holding the dead Saviour in her arms,” by Morales. San Telmo, Seville 243

“Portrait of El Greco,” by himself. Gallery of San Telmo, Seville 244

“The Miracle of St Vœu. St Hugo in the refectory with several Chartreux,” by Zurbarán. Seville Museum 245

“The Martyrdom of St Andrew,” by J. de las Roelas. Seville Museum 246

“The Last Supper,” by P. de Cespedes. Seville Museum 247

“Christ on the Cross,” by Zurbarán. Seville Museum 248

Portrait of the figure in Pacheco’s picture at Seville, supposed to represent Cervantes 249

“The Virgin and the Child Jesus,” by Alonso Cano. Seville Cathedral 250

“The Descent from the Cross,” by Alego Fernandez. Seville Cathedral 251

The Cathedral 252

The Giralda 253

The Giralda 254

Cathedral. The Gate of Pardon 255

Cathedral. Puerta de los Palos 256

Plan of the Cathedral 257

Cathedral. View of an organ 258

Cathedral. Monument to Columbus 259

Cathedral. Silver Tabernacle (weighing forty-five arrobas) 260

Alcazar Gardens 261

Alcazar Gardens 262

Alcazar Gardens 263

House of Pilate. The Goddess Ceres 264

House of Pilate. The Goddess Pallas Pacifer 265

Italica 266

Roman Walls 267

Patio de Banderas and the Giralda 268

Plaza de San Francisco 269

St Mark’s Church 270

Plaza de San Fernando 271

The Town Hall. Details of the old part 272

Façade of the Palace of San Telmo 273

Statue of Velazquez 274

Plaza de la Constitución 275

Plaza de la Constitución 276

Calle de Sierpes 277

Calle de Sierpes 278

A street in Seville 279

Hercules Avenue 280

The Pasadera 281

Courtyard of La Caridad 282

Plaza de San Fernando 283

Plaza de Gavidia 284

View from the Pasadera 285

The Drive 286

Paseo de las Delicias 287

The Quay 288

Partial view of Seville 289

Plaza de Toros 290

Fields of San Sebastian 291

Park of Maria Luisa 292

Railway Station of M.Z.A. Principal Façade 293

Railway Station of M.Z.A. General View 294

Triana Bridge 295

View from Triana Bridge 296

View from Triana 297

San Telmo from Triana 298

The Cathedral. Our Lord Crucified. Sculpture in the Sacristy 299

Plan of Seville 300

SEVILLE

Seville is the most Spanish of the cities of Spain. On her white walls the sunlight plays perpetually, the air is laden with the scent of the orange, the sound of the guitar and castanets is heard continually in the narrow streets. This is the South of romance, the South of which northerners dream and towards which so many of them are drawn by an irresistible fascination. The cities of Leon and Castile are grim and Gothic. Cordova is Moorish; but Seville is not essentially one nor the other, but presents that blending of both styles which makes her typical, which stands for all that Spain means to the average foreigner.

Seville lives. Cordova is dead, and Granada broods over her past. These are cemeteries of a vanished civilisation. Alone among the ancient seats of Moorish dominion, Seville has maintained her prosperity. Her wharves, as in the days of Al Mansûr, are still the resort of sailors from many lands. There is still wealth in her palaces and genius in her schools. To-day she holds the first place in native art, and Garcia y Ramos, Sanchez Perrier, Jimenez Aranda, and Bilbao not unworthily continue the traditions of Murillo and Zurbarán.

The city is Moorish, but informed throughout with the spirit of Spain. In Cordova the Spaniard seems a stranger; in Seville he has assimilated and adapted all that was bequeathed by his onetime rulers till you might think the place had always been his. It is as though the glowing metal of Andalusian life and temper had been poured into a mould made expressly by other hands to receive it. Thus Seville has not died nor decayed like her rivals. Her vitality intoxicates the northerner. Valdés says, “Seville has ever been for me the symbol of light, the city of love and joy.”

In my book, “Moorish Remains in Spain,” I have sketched the history of the city and briefly referred to its importance under the Roman sway. With the few monuments remaining from that time I do not purpose dealing separately--incorporated as they have been, for the most part, with works of more recent construction. Nor has Roman influence left very profound traces in Seville, any more than in the rest of Spain. Señor Rafael Contreras justly remarks that Roman civilisation made no deep impression on the country or the people. “We have in Spain,” he continues, “aqueducts, bridges, circuses, baths, roads, vases, urns, milliaria, statues, and jewellery. Specimens are still found, but, strictly speaking, art with us has never been either Roman or Greek.” And Seville, in particular, even during the Roman occupation, was rather a Punic than a Latin town. As to the successors of the Cæsars--the Visigoths--to them can only be ascribed a few capitals and stone ornaments, roughly executed in the Byzantine style. These, like the Roman remains, were used by the Moors in the construction of those buildings that have determined the physiognomy of Seville.

MOORISH SEVILLE

Seville was not among the spoils of Tarik, conqueror at the Guadalete. That general having directed his march upon Toledo, it was reserved to his superior officer, Musa Ben Nosseyr, to subdue the proudest city of Bætica. The citizens held out for a month and then retired upon Beja in Alemtejo. The Arabian commander left a garrison in the city, henceforward to be known for five hundred and thirty-six years as Ishbiliyah, and pushed forward to Merida. The Sevillians took advantage of his absence to shake off his yoke, assisted by the people of Beja and Niebla. Their triumph was short lived. Abdelasis, son of Musa, fell upon them like a thunderbolt, extinguished the rising in blood, and made the city the seat of government of the newly acquired provinces.

The interesting personality and tragic fate of Seville’s first Viceroy have made the site of his residence a question of some importance. It was formerly believed that he occupied the Acropolis or Citadel, supposed then to be covered by the Alcazar. The researches of Señores Gayangos and Madrazo have made it plain, however, that he established his headquarters in a church which had been dedicated by the sister of St Isidore to the martyrs Rufina and Justa, now amalgamated with the convent of La Trinidad. Adjacent to this building Abdelasis erected a mosque; and it was within its walls, while reciting the first surah of the Koran, that he was assassinated by the emissaries of the Khalif of Damascus--death being a not uncommon reward in the Middle Ages for too brilliant military services rendered to one’s sovereign.

The seat of government was transferred, soon after the murder of the son of Musa, to Cordova, and Seville sank for a time to a subsidiary rank. The various cities of Andalusia were allotted by the governor Abdelmelic among the different Syrian peoples who had flocked over on the news of the conquest; and Ishbiliyah, according to Señor de Madrazo, was assigned to the citizens of Horns, the classic Emesa. Owing to intermarriage between the conquerors and the natives, the distinction between the Moslems according to the places of origin of these early settlers was soon lost in that drawn between the pure-blooded Arabs and the Muwallads or half-breeds. In the meantime the germs of Arabian culture had fallen upon a kindly soil, and a new school of art and letters was in process of formation in Spain. The imposing monuments of Roman, Greek, and Byzantine civilisation, which the victorious hosts of Islam found ever in their path, were not without influence upon their conceptions of the beautiful in form. The fusion of the Hispano-Goths and Arabs likewise tended to produce a commingling of spirit, and ultimately to give birth to an art and a culture racy of the soil. “According to all contemporary writers,” says Señor Rafael Contreras, “it is beyond all doubt that the style which the artists of the Renaissance called Moorish (in the sense of originating in Northern Africa) was never anything of the sort. The details so much admired on account of their richness, the vaultings and the arched hollows practised in the walls, the festoons of the arches, the _commarajias_ and _alicates_, were Spanish works finer and more delicate than those of the East. The root was originally in Arabia, but it was happily transplanted to Spain, where blossomed that beautiful flower which diffuses its perfume after a lapse of seven centuries.”

Under the Western Khalifate, Seville flourished in spite of the assaults and internecine warfare of which it was frequently the theatre. When in 888 Andalusia became temporarily split up into several nominally independent states, the city acknowledged the sway of Ibrahim Ibn Hajjaj. The chronicler Ben Hayán, often quoted by Señor de Madrazo, describes this prince as keeping up imperial state and riding forth attended by five hundred horsemen. He ventured to assume the _tiraz_, the official garb of the Amirs of Cordova. To his court flocked the poets, the singers, and the wise men of Islam. Of him it was written, “In all the West I find no right noble man save Ibrahim, but he is nobility itself. When one has known the delight of living with him, to dwell in any other land is misery.” Flattery did not blind the sagacious Ibn Hajjaj to the insecurity of his position, and he bowed before the rising star of the new Khalifa, Abd-er-Rahman III. In 913 Ishbiliyah opened her gates to that powerful ruler and again became subject to Cordova. The city lost nothing by its timely submission. The generous and beneficent Khalifa narrowed and deepened the channel of the Guadalquivir, thus rendering it navigable. He introduced the palm tree from Africa, planted gardens, and adorned the city with splendid edifices. Much of the splendour of the Court of Cordova was reflected on Seville, which certainly rivalled the capital as a seat of learning. Among its citizens was Abu Omar Ahmed Ben Abdallah, surnamed _El Begi_ or “the Sage,” the author of an encyclopædia of sciences, which was long esteemed as a work of marvellous erudition. According to Condé, Abdallah was frequently consulted by the magistrates, even in his early youth, in affairs of the gravest import.

The public edifices of the Pearl of Andalusia were no doubt worthy of its fame as a home of wisdom and culture. In addition to the mosque built by Abdelasis, near or on the spot where the convent of La Trinidad now stands, a notable ornament of the city was the mosque raised on the site of the basilica of St Vincent--immortalised by several memorable Councils. “But who,” asks Señor de Madrazo, “would be capable to-day of describing this edifice? Nothing of it remains except the memory of the place where it stood. Other structures, ampler and more majestic, replaced it when, under the Almoravides and Almohades, Seville recovered its rank as an independent kingdom. Let us content ourselves with recording that the principal mosque, built at the same time as and on the model of that of Cordova, although on a smaller and less sumptuous scale, was situated on the site of the existing Cathedral, and that in the ninth century it was burnt by the Normans. In consequence it is impossible to say if the great horseshoe arches which occur in the cloister of the Cathedral are works earlier or later than that event. It does not appear probable that in the time of the Khalifs the mosque of Seville could have had the considerable dimensions suggested by the northern boundary of the _patio de los naranjos_. That line is 330 Castilian feet, which would give the mosque, extending from north to south, a length about double, the breadth of the atrium included--unlikely dimensions for a temple which, compared with the Jama of Cordova, was unquestionably of the second class. No one knows who ordered the construction of the primitive mosque of Seville.”

The irruption of the Normans, one of the results of which was the demolition of this edifice, took place in 859. The pirates were afterwards defeated off the coast of Murcia by the Moorish squadron, and made sail for Catalonia. A serious descent had taken place in 844. Lisbon was the first city to fall a victim to the Northmen, whom we next hear of at Cadiz and at Sidonia, where they defeated the Khalifa’s troops in a pitched battle. Fierce fighting took place before the walls of Ishbiliyah, the invaders being uniformly victorious. Laden with the richest booty, they at length retired overland to Lisbon, where they took to their ships. They not only destroyed the mosque of Seville, but threw down the city walls, which dated from Roman times. These were repaired by Abd-er-Rahman II., to be partially demolished again by Abd-er-Rahman III. on his triumphal entry into the amirate of Ibrahim Ibn Hajjaj.

The subjection of Seville to the yoke of the Khalifs of Cordova was, unhappily for the city and for Islam generally, not of long duration. The mighty Wizir, Al Mansûr, restored the waning power of the Crescent and drove back the Christians into the mountain fastnesses of the North. But the collapse of the Western Khalifate had been postponed, not averted. This Al Mansûr well knew. On his deathbed he reproached his son for yielding to unmanly tears, saying, “This is to me a signal of the approaching decay of this empire.” His prediction did not long await fulfilment. In 1009, seven years after his death, his second son, Abd-er-Rahman Sanjul, had the audacity to proclaim himself the Khalif Hisham’s heir. The empire became at once resolved into its component parts. On all sides the kadis and governors revolted. Independent amirates were set up in all the considerable towns. At Ishbiliyah the shrewd and powerful kadi, Mohammed Ben Abbad, perceived his opportunity, but contrived to excuse his ambition by a specious pretence of legality. An impostor, impersonating the legitimate Khalifa, Hisham, appeared on the troubled scene. Ben Abbad espoused his cause and pretended to govern the city in his name. His power firmly established, the kadi announced that the Khalifa was dead and had designated him as his lawful successor. For the second time, Seville rose to the dignity of an independent state.

The Abbadites were a splendour-loving race. Their Court was extolled by Arabian writers as rivalling that of the Abbasside sultans. Under their rule the city waxed every year more beautiful, more prosperous. Patrons of art and letters, the amirs were vigorous and capable sovereigns, and in all Musulman Spain no state was more powerful than theirs, except Toledo. The second monarch of the dynasty, Abu Amru Abbad, better known as Mo’temid, was a mighty warrior. He reduced Algarve and took Cordova. When not engaged in martial exploits he took delight in composing verses, in the society of talented men, and in the contemplation of the garden of his enemies’ heads, which he had laid out at the door of his palace. He was succeeded in 1069 by his son Abul-Kasim Mohammed, a native of Beja.

The Crescent was waning. All Al Mansûr’s conquests had been recovered by the Christians. Toledo fell before the arms of Alfonso III. The Castilians overran Portugal and penetrated into Andalusia. The Amir of Ishbiliyah took the only course open to him at the moment, and cultivated the friendship of the Castilian king. He consented to the removal of the body of St Isidore from Italica to Leon, and gave his daughter Zayda in a sort of left-handed marriage to Alfonso III. As the Christian king was already the husband of Queen Constancia, and Zayda’s dowry consisted of the most valuable conquests of the Amir Mut’adid, this transaction did not reflect much credit on either party. But it purchased for Seville a period of peace and security, during which its inhabitants became hopelessly enervated by luxury and ease.