Magnificent Spanish-Moorish, Spanish, and Mudejar ceilings still exist in Spain. Such are the marvellous domed ceiling in the Hall of Comares (or of Ambassadors) in the Alhambra, those of the Castle of the Aljafería at Zaragoza and of the archbishop's palace at Alcalá de Henares, the Arab alfarge ceilings in the churches of San Francisco and Santiago of Guadix, that of the Hall of Cortes in the Audiencia of Valencia, that of the Sala Capitular of Toledo Cathedral, that of the Chapel of the Holy Spirit of the Cathedral of Cuenca (considered by many to be the finest artesonado ceiling in all Spain), or those of the churches of Jesus Crucificado, El Carmen, and San Pablo at Cordova. The ceiling of the Sala de la Barca, in the Moorish palace of the Alhambra, was almost totally destroyed by fire in 1890, but a good photograph had previously been taken, and I reproduce it here (Plate viii.). One of the later artesonado ceilings is at Cordova, in the parish church of Santiago. Covered with a bóveda or vault of cane, it is in excellent preservation, and was made in 1635 by the master-carpenter Alonso Muñoz de los Ríos, who received for his labour fourteen thousand reales.[38] The artesonado ceilings which Diego Lopez de Arenas tells us in his treatise that he made for the church, the choir, and the sobreescalera of the monastery of Santa Paula at Seville, as well as a ceiling which he made for the church of Mairena, are all extant to-day. Other remarkable examples of this craft are the ceilings of the rooms constructed to the order of, and which were actually occupied by, Charles the Fifth, within the precincts of the old Alhambra. Upon these half-Italian, half-Morisco ceilings and their frieze we read the words, “Plus Oultre”; and the inscription, “Imperator Cæsar Karolus V. Hispaniarum rex semper augustus pius fœlix invictissimus.” In one of the same apartments, known as the “chamber of the fruits,” the ceiling has octagonal artesones of superb effect, though even richer is that of what is called the Second Sala de las Frutas, conspicuously influenced by Italian art, and believed by Gómez Moreno to have been designed by Pedro Machuca and executed by Juan de Plasencia.

Marvellous in conjunction with the thousand lighted lamps which served to manifest its beauties, must have been the primitive ceiling (as-sicafes) of the mosque of Cordova, of which an Arab poet sang; “Look at the gold on it, like the kindled flame, or like the lightning-stroke that darts across the heavens.”[39] Our notices of this ceiling, barbarously hacked to pieces by Christian architects, are neither numerous nor clear. We are told, however, that it was nearly finished in the reign of Abd-er-Rhaman the First, and terminated altogether by his son Hixem. New ceilings were added on the enlarging of the mosque by Abd-er-Rhaman the Second, while fresh additions were made by Al-Hakem the Second and Al-Manzor. Ambrosio de Morales gives a quaint description of the earliest, or an early, ceiling of this temple. “The roof of the whole church, made of wood painted and adorned in divers ways, is of incredible richness, as will be seen from what I am about to say. It is of larch throughout, odorous, resembling pine, which is not found in any part but Barbary,[40] whence it is brought by sea. And every time that a part of this temple was thrown down for new constructions to be added, the wood removed was sold for many thousand ducats for making guitars and other delicate objects. The ceiling was built across the church upon the nineteen naves thereof, and over it, covered likewise with wood, the roofs, nineteen in number also, each with its ridge atop, drooping to one and other side.”[41]

Three pieces made of common pine, and which are thought to have belonged to the original ceiling of this mosque or to an early replica, are now in the National Museum at Madrid, but the carving of these fragments is so simple that in the opinion of Rodrigo Amador de los Ríos the decoration of the wood itself was purposely subordinated in this instance to the richness and variety of the painting.

Three types of decorative doors were made in older Spain. In the earliest and simplest (lacería en talla), the lacería or lazo-work is carved directly on and from the solid plank which forms the body of the door. In the second type, the carver's art is delicately blended with the joiner's—lazo-work with ensamblaje. In the third type the lazo-work is sobrepuesta—that is, attached to, not elaborated from, the planking.[42]

As in the case of ceilings, many and excellent examples of these doors exist to-day in Spain. Among the most remarkable are several in the Moorish palace of the Alhambra, such as the two (dating from the end of the fourteenth century or early in the fifteenth) belonging, respectively, to the famous Hall of the Abencerrajes (Pl. ix.), and to the Hall of the Two Sisters (Pl. x.). Apparently it was the former of these doors which Bertaut de Rouen wrote of in the seventeenth century as “une porte aussi grande et aussi épaisse comme celles de nos plus grandes églises. Elle s'ouvre des deux costez, et est toute de pieces rapportées, et d'un bois de differentes couleurs, comme les beaux cabinets et les belles tables qui coustent si cher.”[43]

An early Mudejar door proceeding from the church of San Pedro at Daroca in Aragon is now in the National Museum. This door, which is of larch, and measures nearly fourteen feet in height by nine in breadth, is of a simple design and represents a horse-shoe door described within the door itself. It was originally painted vermilion, with other decorative painting of a simple character in black, white, and red, and is fortified with massive iron braces. It is believed to date from earlier than the fourteenth century.

The mighty doors of the “Hall of Ambassadors,” in the mediæval royal residence of Seville (Plates xi. and xii.), are quite the finest to be seen in Spain. Although a widespread superstition assigns their manufacture to a period close upon the Moorish conquest, it has been proved conclusively that they were made by Mudejar craftsmen of Toledo at the time when the whole Alcázar was erected more or less upon the ruins of the old, by Pedro the First of Castile, denominated, according to the prejudice with which we view his character, “the Cruel,” or “the Just.”[44]

These doors, which under a pretence of restoration have been mutilated more than once, are made of larch, and measure sixteen feet in height by thirteen feet (including both the leaves) in width. The upper part of either leaf consists of geometrical and floral ornament in exquisitely tasteful combination, executed in the scheme known technically, from the angles at the central polygon, as lazo de á doce—“lazo-work of twelve.” The decoration of the lower part is more minute, and in the scheme of lazo de á diez—“lazo-work of ten.” Inscriptions in Arabic and Latin, many of which are quoted from the Psalms, are distributed on both sides of the woodwork, and confirm our other evidence that the doors were made during the reign and in obedience to the orders, of Don Pedro.

The Plateresco sixteenth-century doors of the Capilla de los Vargas at Madrid (Plate xiv.) are attributed by Cean Bermudez and by Ponz to an artist named Giralte, who carved them in walnut with various military and other scenes from Scripture, alternating with shields and floral ornament; the whole surrounded by an exquisitely delicate and tasteful border. Lampérez remarks that the errors of perspective recall the similar productions of Ghiberti.

The celosía or decorative wooden window-grating, imported by the Mussulman conqueror from Egypt and the East, extended to all parts of Christian Spain, and was particularly used in convents. These gratings, identical in form and workmanship with those of Cairo,[45] were attached to projecting windows, so that the women of a household could look into the street without themselves being seen, a custom which the Spanish woman still recalls to us by peering, for hours at a time, between the lowered persiana of her balcony.[46] By the seventeenth century, which may truthfully be called the age of Spanish jealousy, and when the “Othello-like revenge of the Moor” had eaten into the very entrails of society, the celosía had become as indispensable to houses as the door or window. “La,” wrote Bertaut de Rouen of a residence on the outskirts of Madrid, and obviously alluding to these gratings, “il y avoit bien des Dames dans l'appartement d'enhaut qui y demeurerent cachées, se contentant de nous voir promener dans le jardin par les fenêtres.”

We know from the stone coat of arms which is carved above the doorway of the “House of Castril at Granada” that in the olden time the balconies of the Hall of Comares in the Alhambra were fitted with projecting wooden celosías; and Contreras says that in the Torre de los Puñales of the same palace there used to be “a kind of wooden mirador or menacir, covered with celosías like those of Cairo, and many of which were still to be seen in Granada early in the nineteenth century.”

I am not aware of any Moorish celosía remaining to this day outside a Spanish building. In such exposed positions weather and the natural delicacy of the woodwork seem to have destroyed them all. As an interior ornament, a single one (Pl. xvi.) exists in the Alhambra. Nevertheless, I hesitate to call this celosía purely Moorish. Perhaps it is the work of a Morisco, or even of a Christian-Spaniard, for we know that decorative wooden fittings for the Alhambra were made in the sixteenth century by Antonio Navarro and other craftsmen. The grating, which is well preserved, covers a window over the archway leading from the Hall of the Two Sisters into the Sala de los Ajimeces and the Mirador de Daraxa, and consists of minute prisms and turned pieces in the typical Egyptian style.

Other fittings for a building, wrought in wood by Moorish artists and by these communicated to the Christian-Spaniards, were balustrades and cornices, aleros (decorative bands beneath the eaves of a roof, Plate xvii.) and zapatas (gargoyle-looking figures, often in human form, used to support a roof or gallery). In the so-called “Patio de las Asas” of the convent of Santa Catalina de Zafra, at Granada, exists an interesting Moorish balustrade[47] that seems almost untouched by time. I reproduce an outline of it as the tailpiece to the present chapter, and am glad to append the little sketch in question, copied from a photograph I took upon the spot three years ago, because it is almost impossible to obtain admission to this convent. Beautiful or uncouth and quaint zapatas may be seen in the Casa de los Tiros at Granada, and in many other places (Plates xviii. and xix.). Much of the Moorish woodwork of the palace of the Alhambra was destroyed by the fire of 1590, but there yet remain the ample cornice and carved alero of the façade of the Cuarto de Comares (Plate xx.), which is often called in error the Court of the Mezquita. This alero bears the following inscription, allusive to the Sultan Mohammed the Fifth:—“I am the place where the crown is guarded, and on my doors being opened the regions of the west believe the east to be contained within me. Algami Billah charged me to keep guard upon the doorway.”

The genius of the wood-carvers of older Spain is manifested chiefly in three groups of objects—sacred statuary, choir-stalls, and retablos. Among this people, and probably by reason of its cheapness, plain, or gilt, or polychrome painted wood has always been a favourite material for the statues of their temples, whether such statues were employed alone, or as an accessory to a larger article of sacred furniture, such as a pulpit, or a sillería, or an altar-screen. So powerful, in fact, has been the vogue of this material here,[48] that even to-day the Spanish people, making, in Symonds' happy phrase, “representation an object in itself, independently of its spiritual significance,” attempt to elevate the most remarkable of their wooden, and by preference their coloured wooden, statuary (typically defended by Pacheco's indigested tome), to rank beside the noblest and the purest monuments of bronze and marble; denoting, by this reckless and uneducated partiality, a positively national misconception of the true domain of art.

It is outside the scope of such a work as this to deal at any length with Spanish figure-sculpture. However, it is only fair to recognize that Spain produced a couple of score or so of admirable carvers of wood-statuary. Among the greatest of these craftsmen or imagineros were Becerra, Berruguete, Juan de Juni, author of the Mater Dolorosa (“Our Lady of the Knives”), of Valladolid; Gregorio Hernández the Galician, author of “Simon the Cyrenian,” “Santa Veronica,” and “the Baptism of our Lord”; Martínez Montañes, author of “San Jerónimo” and of the “Cristo del Gran Poder”;[49] Solis, Gaspar de Ribas, Juan Gómez, author of the “Jesus” of Puerto de Santa Maria; Pedro Roldan, with whom, according to Tubino, “the art of Seville closed its eyes”; and Alonso Cano, master of Pedro and Alonso de Mena, Ruiz del Peral, José de Mora, and Diego de Mora, and who carved the exquisite “Elijah Sleeping” (Pl. xxi.) now at Toledo, and also (as it is believed) the famous statuette (Frontispiece to the present volume) of Saint Francis of Assisi.

The earliest centre of this branch of wood-carving was Valladolid, where lived and laboured Juni and Hernández. Nevertheless, although so popular in every part of Spain, it had a short-lived prime, originating in the two Castiles towards the reign of Philip the Second, declining steadily (with Seville for its centre now) all through the seventeenth century, and flickering out, despite the perseverance and the genius of the Murcian Susillo, in the century succeeding.

In decorative sillerías or sets of choir-stalls, Spain has produced examples worthy to be set beside the masterpiece of Vitry in the abbey of Sainte-Claude, the best productions of Dürer and his followers in Germany, or those of Donatello, Brunelleschi, Valdambrino, Vechietta, and Verrochio in Italy. Nevertheless, her most distinguished sillería-makers were at almost every moment inspired and directed by the foreigner. Germans or Flemings were her first preceptors in this craft. These artists had been sent for, or proceeded of their own accord, to Spain, and settling in this country rapidly spread the technics of their art among the Spaniards. In the Peninsula the origin of this school or movement may be traced to Burgos. Here, just as the fifteenth century was drawing to its close, and just before the breath of the Renaissance crossed the Spanish frontier at its eastern side, was gathered a small though influential group of eminent workers in more crafts than one; painters and sculptors, architects, embroiderers, carvers of wood, reja-makers, and painters of cathedral glass. Prominent among them all was a foreigner named Philip Vigarny,[50] who is described by Diego de Sagrado as “singular above all others in the art of making statuary and sculpture; a man of vast experience, general in his mastery of the liberal and mechanic arts, and no less resolute in all that is related with the sciences of architecture.”

Burgundy is said to have been the birthplace of Felipe de Borgoña, but of his early history we have no tidings. In documents which bear his signature he styles himself “imaginario, resident at Burgos.” Three such documents exist. On August 1st, 1505, he agrees, for 130,000 maravedis, to make “such images as may be necessary” for the altar of the high chapel of Palencia cathedral, “he with his own hand to carve the hands and faces, out of good smooth walnut, without painting.” This document is dated from Palencia. The other two are dated severally, Burgos, December 6th, 1506, and Corcos, September 6th, without the addition of the year.[51] We also know this craftsman to have made the great retablo of Burgos cathedral. Such, from the fragmentary semblance we can trace of him, was Philip Vigarny, the pioneer of the wood-carvers of older Spain, and who, aided by other craftsmen from abroad, communicated all the secrets of his art to Spaniards such as Gil de Siloe, Ruy Sanchez, Diego de la Cruz, Alonso de Lima, and Berruguete.

The typical sillería consists of two tiers; the sellia or upper seats, with high backs and a canopy, intended for the canons, and the lower seats or subsellia, of simpler pattern and with lower backs, intended for the beneficiados. At the head of all is placed the presidential throne, larger than the other stalls, and covered, in many cases, by a canopy surmounted by a tall spire. When the sillería belongs to a monastery, the higher stalls are for the profesos, and the lower for the novices and legos. Commonly the part that forms the actual seat is hinged and rises to a vertical position, being so contrived that when the occupant rises to his feet, there remains a narrow ledge projecting from the under surface. This ledge is called the “seat of pity” or “of patience,” because the worshipper is able to incline himself on it and give his limbs some measure of repose without appearing to be seated. There also is commonly another piece, intended for him to rest his hands upon in rising, which projects from the sides of the stall and forms a part of the decorative carving, as well as, somewhat higher still, the carved support to rest his arms while he is on his feet.

The earliest Spanish sillerías date from the fourteenth century; but it is not until the century succeeding that we find them at their very best. Gothic or Plateresco sillerías of marvellous design and workmanship are those of the Seo of Zaragoza (begun in 1412), the Cartuja de Miraflores of Burgos (1489), the monastery of Oña, Santa María de Nájera (1495), the church of Santa María del Campo, in the province of Burgos, Santo Tomás of Avila (finished in 1493), and the cathedrals of Oviedo, Segovia (1461–1497), Ciudad Rodrigo, Tarragona (1478), Tarazona, Toledo (begun in 1494), Zamora, Astorga, Barcelona (1453–1483), and Seville (finished in 1478).

The Gothic choir-stalls of the Seo of Zaragoza have lofty backs with arabesque Mudejar ornamentation, small Gothic columns, and medallions containing figures upon the arms of every stall. The material is Flemish oak. The carving was begun in 1412 by the Moors Alí Arrondi, Muza, and Chamar, who earned a daily wage of four sueldos. In 1446 Juan Navarro and the brothers Antonio and Francisco Gomar were working at the same stalls, and also, in 1449, Francoy.

The stalls of the Cartuja de Miraflores at Burgos were carved by Martin Sánchez, who received in 1486, and for the mano de obra alone, the sum of 125,000 maravedis. The material, which was presented by Luis de Velasco, Señor of Belorado, is dark walnut.

The sillería of Santa María de Nájera, the work of Maestro Andrés and Maestro Nicolás, is Gothic merging into the Renaissance. That of Santo Tomás of Avila (late Gothic) consists of sixty oaken stalls, besides two larger ones resembling thrones (Plate xxiv.), intended to be occupied by Ferdinand and Isabella, founders of this monastery, and whose arms they bear in lace-like carving. The rest of the decoration is composed of thistles, vines, trefoils, and pomegranates. Owing to the fact that not a single cross appears on any part of the sillería (although this circumstance is not unusual in sacred Gothic woodwork), there is a superstition that these stalls were wrought anonymously by some Jew, condemned to execute them by the Inquisition as a form of punishment. This fable has no value. Although the author's name is not upon the stalls, they are identical in nearly every detail with those of the Cartuja de Miraflores at Burgos, known to have been carved by Martin Sánchez in 1486. Hence it is extremely probable that this craftsman was the author of both sillerías.

On many Spanish sillerías we find most spirited reproductions of the life and manners of their time; satirical allusions to contemporary vices, allegories and caprices as fantastic, in the phrase of Vargas Ponce, as “one of Bosch's nightmares,” hunting-scenes or love-scenes, banquets, tournaments, dances, battles, sieges, and even bull-fights. Thus, on the stalls of the cathedrals of Zamora, Oviedo, Plasencia, Astorga, and León are carved such subjects as the following. A fox dressed as a friar, preaching to a group of hens but slyly abstracting their chicks (Zamora), men fighting with their fists (Zamora), a hog playing the bagpipes (León), the Devil in the garb of a confessor, tempting a penitent (León), a woman suckling an ass (León), a man armed with a lance, fighting a woman (Astorga), a bird of prey struggling with a crocodile (Astorga), card-players (Astorga), a warrior on all-fours, whipped by a woman (Plasencia), an auto-de-fé (Plasencia), swine praying and spinning (Ciudad Rodrigo), a fight between a tiger and a bull (Ciudad Rodrigo), a monkey beating a drum (Ciudad Rodrigo), and a monkey wearing a mitre (Ciudad Rodrigo).

The style of the lower stalls of Toledo cathedral is good Plateresque. They were begun in 1494 by Maese Rodrigo, one of the very best of Spain's entalladores, and portray, in each successive stall, the phases of the last campaign against Granada (Plate xxv.); the sieges or battles of Altora, Melis, Xornas, Erefran, Alminia, Baza, Málaga (two stalls), Salobreña, Almuñecar, Comares, Beles, Montefrío, Moclín, Illora, Loja, Cazarabonela, Coyn, Cartama, Marbella, Ronda, Setenil, Alora, Alhama, Nixar, Padux, Vera, Huéscar, Guadix, Purchena, Almería, Rión, Castil de Ferro, Cambril, Zagani, Castul, Gor, Canzoria, Moxacar, Vélez el Blanco, Gurarca, Vélez el Rubio, Soreo, and Cabrera.

The upper tier of the same stalls belongs to a later period, and will, in consequence, be noticed subsequently.

The sillería of Barcelona cathedral was begun in the middle of the fifteenth century by Matias Bonafé, at the same time that the German Michael Locher and his pupil John Frederic worked at the canopies. It was finished thirty years later. Upon the back (which otherwise is plain) of every stall is a coat of arms distinct from all its neighbours, marking the seat of one of the princes or nobles summoned by Charles the Fifth to the Chapter of the Order of the Golden Fleece, March 5th, 1519.[52]

The splendid sillería of Seville cathedral is a mingling of the Gothic with the Mudejar and Plateresque. The material is oak and fir, and the number of the seats one hundred and seventeen. The sellia are surmounted by a graceful running guardapolvo. Each seat is carved distinctly from the rest, and further decorated in the Mudejar style with inlaid woods of various kinds and colours, imitating stone mosaic. Among this labyrinth of design are groups of people, angels, animals, and scenes from Scripture, as well as, on the lower stalls, the Giralda tower, which forms the arms of the cathedral. The sillería is further embellished with two hundred and sixteen statuettes, seventy-two of which are ranged along the canopy or dosel, the remainder being distributed between the seats.

The authors of this splendid work of art (judiciously restored some years ago by Boutelou, Fernandez, and Mattoni) were Nufio Sanchez, Dancart, and several other craftsmen, concerning whom we know but very little. Sánchez' name is carved upon the second stall of the upper row, and on the side of the Evangelist, as follows:—

The above inscription states that “this choir was made by Nufio Sanchez, entallador (God guard him[53]), and finished in the year one thousand four hundred and seventy-eight.”

With the dawn of the sixteenth century, the Gothic style runs rapidly into that of the Renaissance. At about this time, and as Baron Davillier pointed out, we sometimes find a triple influence, namely, the Burgundian, the Italian, and the native Spanish. Vigarny may be called the champion of the first of these, Berruguete (who studied in Italy) of the second, and Guillermo Doncel of the third. After this the purer Renaissance gives place to the decadent, as in the stalls of Santiago, Málaga, Cordova, and Salamanca.

Sixteenth-century sillerías of note are those of Burgos cathedral (Plate xxvi.), carved by Vigarny, Avila cathedral, the Pilar of Zaragoza, the Minor Friars of the Cartuja of Burgos, Pamplona cathedral, San Marcos of León, Huesca, the alta sillería of Toledo, and the walnut stalls—carved in 1526 by Bartolomé Fernandez de Segovia, and now in the Madrid Museum—of the Parral of Segovia.

The sillería of Avila cathedral is believed to have been begun in 1527 by Juan Rodrigo, although the greater part of it was probably executed between 1536 and 1547 by Cornelis de Holanda, who took for his model the stalls of San Benito of Valladolid. The cost of the walnut wood and of its workmanship amounted to 33,669 reales.

The upper stalls of Toledo cathedral were carved by Vigarny and Alonso Berruguete in collaboration, so that we find in them the northern and Italian styles effectively and interestingly united. The Plateresque-Renaissance sillería, described as “genuinely Spanish,” of the old convent of San Marcos of León, containing statuettes of biblical personages and of fathers of the Church—Saint Isidore among them,—was finished in 1542 by Guillermo Doncel, who added the inscription “Magister Guillermus Doncel me fecit MDXLII” (Plate xxvii.). We know, however, nothing more about this excellent Spanish artist, except that (on the unsupported testimony of Cean) he worked at the façade of this convent between the years 1537 and 1544.

The intricate sillería of the Pilar of Zaragoza, containing almost every kind of subject—beasts, birds and fishes, allegories, incidents of the chase, or scenes of popular life—was designed by Esteban de Obray, a Navarrese, and executed by him and his assistants, Juan Moreto Florentino and Nicolas de Lobato, between 1542 and 1548. That of the Minor Friars of the Cartuja of Burgos was carved at a cost of eight hundred and ten ducats by Simón de Bueras, in 1558. That of Pamplona cathedral dates from about the middle of the century, and is the work of one Ancheta, who had visited Italy and gathered inspiration from the masterpieces of Siena. The material is English oak. The stalls of Huesca, carved from oak proceeding from an older sillería which had been removed, were begun in 1587 and finished in 1594. The craftsmen were Nicolás de Verástegui and Juan Verrueta de Sangüesa.

Seventeenth-century sillerías are those of Santiago, carved by Juan de Vila in 1603; Salamanca, in 1651, by Alfonso Balbás; Orihuela, in 1692, by Juan Bautista Borja; and Segorbe, carved in the same year by Nicolás Camarón; while dating from the eighteenth century—a period of manifest decadence in this beautiful but short-lived craft—are the stalls of Lerida, by Luis Bonifar y Masó (born in 1730), and Cordova, executed between 1748 and 1757, at a cost of 913,889 reales, by Pedro Ciriaco Duque y Cornejo, a son of Seville and a pupil of the Sevillano Roldan.

The least imperfect of these later and decadent sillerías is that of Málaga, whose author, Pedro de Mena, was, like his master, Alonso Cano, a native of Granada.

Mena's contract with two canons of the cathedral, nominated by the bishop to prepare and sign the stipulations, will be found in No. 134 of the Boletín de la Sociedad de Excursiones.

The stalls of Málaga number a hundred and one, carved in walnut, larch, cedar, and the heavy Indian wood called granadillo. As happens with many of the sillerías of this country, the costumes of the figures are of great historical value. Among the saints is San Roque, in pilgrim's garb, attended by the dog who brought him day by day a loaf of bread while men refused to succour him.

No less magnificent than these sets of choir-stalls are the carved retablos or altar-screens,[54] a gradual excrescence from the primitive and unpretentious altar of the early days of Christianity. Several kinds of craftsmen worked upon these altar-screens, such as tallistas, entalladores, imagineros, and even architects.

The Golden Age of the retablo embraces the end of the fifteenth century and the whole of the sixteenth. Notable examples belonging to this period are the screens of the monastery of Santo Tomás at Avila, San Martin of Segovia, the Cartuja de Miraflores, the Colegiata of Covarrubias in the province of Burgos, the cathedrals of Avila, Toledo, Tudela, and Tarazona; several in the churches of Toledo, two in the church of San Lesmes (Burgos), two in Burgos Cathedral (Plate xxxvi.), and three, including those of Reyes and of Buena Mariana, in the church of San Gil in the same city. Not one of these, however, has the grandeur or variety of the altar-screen of Seville (Plates xxxiii. and xxxiv.), which is carefully described in Cean's monograph. “The style is Gothic; the material, undecaying larch; and the screen, which reaches nearly to the vaulting, is the largest in the country, although at first it spanned the presbytery only, not including either side. It was designed in 1482 by Dancat or Danchart, who began work upon it as soon as his sketches were approved, and worked at it till 1492, in which year he seems to have died.

“Dancat was succeeded by Master Marco and Bernardo de Ortega, whose carving reached, by 1505, the canopy or viga, and who were followed in their turn by Francisco, Bernardo's son, father and teacher of Bernardino and Nufrio de Ortega, his assistants. Some of the statues were carved by Micer Domingo. The rest of the imaginería was finished in 1526; and the gilding and painting were done by Alejo Fernández, his brother, and Andrés de Covarrubias.

“So the screen remained till 1550, when the Chapter decided to extend it, without altering the style of decoration, to the sides of the presbytery. By this time Spanish sculpture had improved, and many of our best-known sculptors lent their aid, of whom the earliest were Roque Balduc, Pedro Becerril, el Castellano, Juan de Villalva, Diego Vazquez, and Pedro Bernal. In 1553 the Chapter appointed, to inspect the work of these artists, Juan Reclid and Luis de Aguilar, both of whom lived at Jaen. Henceforth the master-craftsmen working at the screen were Pedro de Heredia, Gomez de Orozco, Diego Vazquez the younger, Juan Lopez, Andrés Lopez del Castillo, and his sons, Juan de Palencia, and Juan Bautista Vazquez. By 1564 the screen was quite concluded.

“The Gothic work is of incomparable richness. Ten groups of tall and narrow columns, resting upon two pedestals or socles, divide the retablo into nine spaces, crossed by horizontal bands of complicated carving, forming a series of thirty-six niches, in four rows. Statues a little less than life-size represent, in the first row, the creation and fall of our first parents, and the mysteries of the infancy of Christ; in the second, His preaching and miracles; in the third, His passion and death; and in the fourth, His resurrection, appearance to the disciples, and ascension; also the coming of the Holy Ghost. Upon the altar-table, and resting in its niche, is the statue, covered with silver plates, of Nuestra Señora de la Sede, presented to this temple by Saint Ferdinand. Above the viga, which has an artesonado ceiling, rises a frontispiece containing thirteen canopied niches with statues of the apostles, and in the centre niche that of the Virgin Mary. Crowning the whole retablo are statues larger than life-size, and a Calvary standing in free space.”[55]

Throughout these Spanish altar-screens the influence which predominates is that of Germany. They are essentially distinguished by a Northern art (Plates xxxv., xxxvi.), not sentimental but material, not tender but robust, not (like the art of the Italians) retrospective or prospective, but prosaic, realistic, actual. Curiously enough, their presence seems incongruous in Spain, and yet they made themselves at home here; for Spanish art was ever realistic, so probably on this account two widely different nations found, at least in this particular craft, a common bond of sympathy. Certainly the Renaissance, while it seemed to cherish and encourage, really undermined and killed this branch of Spanish wood-carving. A similar phenomenon attends the art of the Alhambra. In either case the plenitude of power and of beauty is even more ephemeral than the term of human life; and thus, deluded by so brilliant and majestic a decay, we fail to apprehend, or seek to grow oblivious of, the imminence of their ruin.