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AN
ARCHITECT'S NOTE-BOOK
IN
SPAIN

_PRINCIPALLY ILLUSTRATING THE_
DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF THAT COUNTRY.

BY

M. DIGBY WYATT, M.A.

SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, &C.

WITH ONE HUNDRED OF THE AUTHOR'S SKETCHES,
REPRODUCED BY THE AUTOTYPE MECHANICAL PROCESS.

LONDON:
AUTOTYPE FINE ART COMPANY (LIMITED),
_36, RATHBONE PLACE._

TO

OWEN JONES, ESQ.

KNIGHT OF THE ORDERS OF SAINTS MAURICE AND LAZARUS OF ITALY, AND OF
LEOPOLD OF BELGIUM, MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SAINT FERDINAND OF
SPAIN, &C., &C., &C.


       _My dear Owen,

     _The last book I wrote I dedicated to my brother by blood; the
     present I dedicate to you--my brother in Art. Let it be a record of
     the value I set upon all you have taught me, and upon your true
     friendship._

       _Ever yours,_

        M. DIGBY WYATT.

     37, Tavistock Place, W.C.

        October, 1872.




PREFACE.


Before quitting England for a first visit to Spain in the Autumn of
1869, I made up my mind both to see and draw as much of the
Architectural remains of that country as the time and means at my
disposal would permit; and further determined so to draw as to admit of
the publication of my sketches and portions of my notes on the objects
represented, in the precise form in which they might be made. I was
influenced in that determination by the consciousness that almost from
day to day the glorious past was being trampled out in Spain; and that
whatever issue, prosperous or otherwise, the fortunes of that much
distracted country might take in the future, the minor monuments of Art
at least which adorned its soil, would rapidly disappear. Their
disappearance would result naturally from what is called "progress" if
Spain should revive; while their perishing through neglect and wilful
damage, or peculation, would inevitably follow, if the ever smouldering
embers of domestic revolution should burst afresh into flame. Such has
been the invariable action of those fires which in all history have
melted away the most refined evidences of man's intelligence, leaving
behind only scanty, and often all but shapeless, relics of the richest
and ripest genius.

It is difficult to realise the rapidity with which, almost under one's
eyes, the Spain of history and romance "is casting its skin." Travelling
even with so recent and so excellent a handbook as O'Shea's of 1869, I
noted the following wanton acts of Vandalism and destruction, committed
upon monuments of the greatest archaeological and artistic interest since
he wrote. At Seville, the Church of San Miguel, one of the oldest and
finest in the city, was senselessly demolished by the populace as a sort
of auto-da-fe, and by way of commemoration of the revolution of
September, 1867. In exactly the same way the fine Byzantine churches of
San Juan at Lerida, and of San Miguel at Barcelona, have been "improved
off the face of the earth." Church plate, Custodias and Virils of the
D'Arfes, Becerrias, and other Art workmen, have vanished from the
treasuries of all the great ecclesiastical structures; whether sold,
melted down, or only hidden, "quien sabe?" The beautiful Moorish
decorations of the Alcazar at Segovia had been all but entirely
destroyed by fire, attributed to the careless cigar-lighting of the
Cadets to whom the structure had been abandoned. The finest old mansion
in Barcelona, the Casa de Gralla, probably the masterpiece of Damian
Forment, and dating from the commencement of the fourteenth century, has
been pulled down by the Duke of Medina Celi to form a new street. The
beautiful wooden ceiling of the Casa del Infantado at Guadalaxara, the
finest of its kind in Spain, in the absence of its owner, who I was told
lives in Russia, is coming down in large pieces, and once fallen, I
scarcely think it will be in the power of living workmen to make it good
again. The exquisite Moorish Palace of the Generalife at Granada, second
only to the Alhambra and the Alcazar at Seville, is never visited by its
proprietor, and is now one mass of white-wash, a victim of the zeal for
cleanliness of a Sanitary "Administrador." In short to visit a Spanish
city now, by the light shed upon its ancient glories by the industrious
Ponz, is simply to have forced upon one's attention the most striking
evidence of the "vanity of human things," and man's inherent tendency to
destroy.

One of the most painful sensations the lover of the Art of the Past
cannot but experience in Spain, is the feeling of its dissonance from,
and irreconcileability with, the wants and economical necessities of
to-day. The truth is that at the present moment, amongst the many
difficult problems which surround and beset the ruling powers, one of
the most puzzling is to find fitting uses for the many vast structures
which have fallen into the hands of the Government. Churches in number
and size out of all proportion to the wants of the population,
monasteries entirely without monks, convents with scarcely any nuns,
Jesuit seminaries without Jesuits, exchanges without merchants, colleges
without students, tribunals of the Holy Inquisition with, thank God! no
Inquisitors, and palaces without princes, are really "drugs in the
market;" too beautiful to destroy, too costly to properly maintain, and
for the original purposes for which they were planned and constructed at
incredible outlay they stand now almost useless. For the most part, the
grand architectural monuments of the country are now like Dickens'
"used-up giants" kept only "to wait upon the dwarfs." Among a few
instances of such, may be noticed the magnificent foundation of the
noblest Spanish ecclesiastic, Ximenez. His College at Alcala de Henares
(see etext transcriber note) is turned into a young ladies'
boarding-school; the splendid Convent of the Knights of Santiago at
Leon, the masterpiece of Juan de Badajoz, dedicated to Saint Mark, and
one of the finest buildings in Spain, is now in charge of a solitary
policeman and his wife, awaiting its possible conversion into an
agricultural college; the grand Palace of the Dukes of Alva at Seville
is let out in numerous small tenements and enriched with unlimited
whitewash; the Colegiata of San Gregorio at Valladolid, another of the
magnificent foundations of Cardinal Ximenez, and the old cathedral at
Lerida, the richest Byzantine monument in Spain, are now both
barracks;--the vast exchanges of Seville and Saragossa are tenantless
and generally shut up; the beautiful "Casa de los Abades" at Seville is
converted into a boy's school and lodging-house for numerous poor
tenants, the Casa del Infante at Saragossa, containing the most richly
sculptured Renaissance Patio in Spain, is chiefly occupied as a l