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THE SPANISH SERIES

GRANADA AND
THE ALHAMBRA

GRANADA  AND
THE ALHAMBRA

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMVII


Printed by Ballantyne & Co. Limited
Tavistock Street, London



TO
H.I.M. THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE
THIS SOUVENIR OF THAT FAIR GRANADAN HOME
FROM WHICH SHE CARRIED
THE CROWN OF SPANISH BEAUTY
TO GRACE THE THRONE OF FRANCE
IS DEDICATED
IN ACCORDANCE WITH HER MAJESTY’S
GRACIOUS PERMISSION

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

Although the admission may be construed by the censorious as betraying a lack of becoming diffidence, I am tempted to believe that no apology will be demanded for the publication of this volume by that section of the reading public for which it has been chiefly compiled. My temerity goes even further, and I anticipate with some confidence that visitors to the Alhambra, and pilgrims to that famous Mecca of Moorish workmanship, will recognise in this book an earnest attempt to supply a long-felt want. When I paid my first visit to Granada some years ago, I was surprised and disappointed to find that no such thing as an even fairly adequate illustrated souvenir of this “city of the dawn” was to be obtained. Many tomes, costly and valuable (not necessarily the same thing), have been written to place on record the wonders of “the glorious sanctuary of Spain,” but these are beyond the reach of the general public. Many beautiful pictures have caught odd ecstasies of this superb and perfectly harmonised palace of art, but these impressions are not available to the ordinary tourist.

What is wanted, as I imagine, is a concise history and description of the Alhambra, illustrated with a series of pictures constituting a tangible remembrancer of the delights of this Granadian paradise

The Alhambra may be likened to an exquisite opera which can only be appreciated to the full when one is under the spell of its magic influence. But as the witchery of an inspired score can be recalled by the sound of an air whistled in the street, so—it is my hope—the pale ghost of this Moorish fairy-land may live again in the memories of travellers through the medium of this pictorial epitome.

I desire, however, to submit an explanation—or excuse—for the unusual form in which this volume is issued. At the commencement of my work I experienced no little difficulty in collecting the requisite illustrations, for most of the obtainable photographs were ill-chosen and but carelessly developed, and I was compelled to press my own cameras into the service of my scheme. But when my designs became known, I was inundated with offers of pictures of every description, until the embarrassment of artistic treasures entirely upset the original purpose of my book. Artists placed their studies at my disposal; collectors begged me, with irresistible Spanish courtesy, to regard their galleries as my own; and students directed my attention to little-known publications on the subject.

Don Mariano Contreras, Conservator of the Alhambra, the son of the gifted Raphaël Contreras, who devoted thirty-seven years of his life to the restoration of the Palace—gave me the benefit of his knowledge of this unique treasure-house of art; and I have also laid under contribution the beautiful plates of Owen Jones, who disposed of a Welsh inheritance in order to produce his great work on the Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra. Jones’s Grammar of Ornament, which has been described as “beautiful enough to be the horn-book of the Angels,” also contains the result of his researches in the Alhambra, which occupied him for the greater part of eleven years. A selection of these illustrations is here rescued from the obscurity of public libraries and the inaccessible fastnesses of private collections. The inclusion of John F. Lewis’s drawings, and the reproduction of a series of pictures by James C. Murphy, who spent seven years in the study of the artistic marvels of the Alhambra, I do not feel called upon to defend. The photographs, several of which were placed at my disposal by Don Rafaël Garzón, represent the buildings as they appear to-day; the drawings were made before the Palace was damaged by the disastrous fire of September, 1890.

For the historical portions of the description contained in the letterpress I have levied tribute on a variety of authors. The History of the Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain, by the learned Spanish Orientalist, Don Pascual de Gayángos; Raphaël Contreras’ Étude Descriptive des Monuments Arabes; Richard Ford’s reverent appreciations; Dr. R. Dozy’s history; Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole’s The Moors in Spain; Washington Irving’s fascinating writings; and The Alhambra Album, presented by Prince Dolgorouki in 1829, containing the autographs, poems, and thoughts of succeeding generations of visitors to Granada, these and many others have been drawn upon in the following pages.

But the multiplicity of my illustrations convinced me that if I adhered to my idea of furnishing an amount of letterpress sufficient to “carry” the blocks, I should only end in producing a book that would tax the physical endurance of my readers by reason of its bulk, and exhaust their patience with a tedious super-abundance of minute descriptive pabulum. I resolved, therefore, to give pride of place to the pictorial side of the volume; to abandon the traditions regulating the proportions of prose to pictures; and make my appeal to the public by the beauty and variety of the illustrations I have collected, and the immensity of elaborate letterpress which I have not written.

A. F. C.

“Royston,”
Hampstead, N.W., 1904.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

It has been my ambition to acknowledge the favour with which this book has been received, by having the present edition produced with the greatest care on special paper, and by the addition of a number of new illustrations, including some half-tone and coloured plates reproduced from the Monumentos Arquitectónicos de España and other sources, which I have acquired since it was first produced. It will be seen that several of the coloured pictures in this book illustrate designs which are common to the Arabian ornamentation to be found in Cordova and Seville, and, as being representative of the Moresco work of the period, they also appear in the companion volume on Moorish Remains in Spain, but it may be stated that the whole of the plates reproduced here are from photographs and drawings secured or specially made to illustrate The Alhambra. In its pictorial appeal it has been my ambition to make this edition as worthy of its subject as means and ability permit, and I offer this assurance as an earnest of my sincere appreciation of the generous manner in which the Press and public rewarded my previous effort.

A. F. C.

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION

The generous appreciation with which my larger book on the Alhambra was received by both the Press and the public in Spain and America, as well as in this country, encourages me to hope that the present volume will prove a popular addition to this Spanish Series. Three years ago, when I published The Alhambra to supply what my own experience taught me to be a real want, the scale and quality of the illustrations made it impossible to issue the work at a popular price. I am now enabled to present an inexpensive and, I trust, adequate souvenir of the fascinating city of Granada and its Red Palace. The text is no mere reprint of the matter which appeared in my former work, but embodies the results of a more critical, though not less appreciative, survey of the last monuments of the Spanish Moor. Bearing in mind, too, that the illustrations, being on a reduced scale, called for fuller explanation, I have endeavoured to condense as much detail and descriptive matter into the letterpress as the limits I had laid down for myself admitted. Those limits were still further encroached upon by the additional wealth of illustration which resulted from the decision to include the city of Granada in a work which, in previous issues, had been devoted entirely to the palace of the Alhambra, and the new pictorial matter so acquired threatened to annex all the space allotted for the text. But little as I liked the idea of further condensing the letterpress, I was even less inclined to neglect the opportunity of enhancing the pictorial value of the volume. In dealing with the Moorish art of Spain, I have always recognised that the popular want is for pictures rather than the printed word, and I venture to hope that the present volume, which surpasses its costlier predecessors in the number of the plates reproduced, will constitute a serviceable if not exhaustive guide to the beautiful Moorish capital, and an artistic remembrancer of its fascinating monuments.

I have to acknowledge my obligations to Mr. E. B. d’Auvergne for his kind and valuable assistance in the compilation of the text, and for permission to reproduce many of the additional photographs I am indebted to the courtesy of Don Senan y Gonzalez, of Herr Ernst Wasmuth of Berlin, publisher of Uhde’s Baudenkmaeler in Spanien und Portugal, and of Herr Eugen Twietmeyer of Leipzig, publisher of Junghandel’s Die Baukunst Spaniens.

As I have remarked in the preface to the volume on Cordova, it may be thought that in the present work I have given an excess of detail of Arabian decoration and ornament, but it has been my aim to provide the last word on Moorish art—so far at least as the pictorial representation of it is concerned—wherever I have dealt with it in Spain. To the general reader these reproductions of tracery and elaborate detail may seem superfluous, but they will, I trust, lend to the book an additional interest in the eyes of students and artists, for whose delectation they are included here.

A. F. C.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS