Spain

The influence and the impress of Arabian art was not confined in Spain to mosques or to buildings consecrated to the use of Mohammedans alone. Some of the most beautiful specimens of this architecture were erected for Christians or for Jews. Arabic inscriptions used as ornaments are still to be seen on the altar of the Cathedral of Gerona, in the Shrine of San Isidore at Leon; Arabic architecture is seen in the palace of the archbishops of Toledo, in a chapel in Alcala de Henares, and in more than one synagogue of the Jews. Christian bishops used as episcopal seals rings on which were engraved the praises of Allah. Long after the conquest of the great cities of the centre and of the south, Moorish and Mudejar architects were retained in the pay of Christian monarchs to keep in repair the cathedrals and palaces, the beauty of whose architecture the Christians could appreciate but could not imitate, much less surpass. It is this fact, and the mingling of style and ideas consequent thereon, which gives its sole peculiar characteristic to Spanish art.

Meanwhile, contemporaneously with the flourishing period of Arabian art in the south, a Christian architecture, strikingly in contrast from its poverty of style and of invention, was slowly being reconstructed in the north. Of the eighth century we have the crypt of the Church of Santa Cruz, at Cangas in the Asturias, and some remains in parts of the churches of Oviedo. To the tenth century belong parts of the Church of San Pablo at Barcelona, and other Catalan churches, with here and there a chapel in the Western Pyrenees. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the more important churches of Northern Spain were almost reproductions of those of Southern France; the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella is almost a copy of the Church of St. Sernin at Toulouse; but the Romanesque (semi-Byzantine) style lingered somewhat longer in Spain than in the neighbouring country, and especially in North-eastern Spain. In the twelfth century edifices of real beauty are beginning to be built; such are the cloisters of Tarragona and the cathedrals of Lerida and of Tudela. The cathedrals of Avila and Siguenza are of more native Spanish character; while those of Toledo, Burgos, and Leon show the influence of French artists in their general plan, but with an added ornamentation derived from the richer and more florid fancy of the south. Of these perhaps Leon is the noblest and Burgos the richest example in Spain. Segovia, Salamanca, and Seville, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, are the latest of the great Gothic churches of Spain, before the rise of the Renaissance.

Nowhere had the classical revival in architecture more influence than in Spain. The almost exclusive type of church which, both in Spain and in her vast colonies, is pointed out as the Spanish church, is that either of the Renaissance or of the styles which have sprung from it. This soon became fashionable, but its semi-pagan additions frequently harmonize but ill with the deeper religious feeling of the preceding styles. Still it has many fine examples; the works of Berruguete and Herrera are well worthy of study. The Escorial, the work of the latter, is redeemed from ugliness or meanness by the noble proportions of its central chapel and pantheon. But to this semi-classical style succeeded, in the eighteenth century, the Churrigueresque, the most debased of all styles, wherein plaster took the place of sculpture, sham that of reality, and masses of gilding and an incongruous medley of meaningless ornament concealed the blunders in proportion and poverty of idea. The adoption of this style by the Jesuits procured its prevalence in many districts of Spain and of her colonies; occasionally the size of the buildings constructed gives a certain grandeur and hides the debasement of the methods.

The domestic, palatial, and castellated architecture of Spain has little peculiar beyond what has been already indicated. The royal palace at Madrid, however, is one of the most successful architectural efforts of the eighteenth century. The sculptured coats of arms on mean dwellings are perhaps the most notable distinction of Spanish houses. Traces of the influence of Moorish traditions may not unfrequently be observed. In the north, the cottages and farms of the Basques, with overhanging roofs and wooden galleries, recall in some degree those of Switzerland; in the south the iron bars or rails (rejas) before the lower windows, and the lattices (celosias) in the upper stories tell of insecurity and of habits of almost Oriental seclusion of women.

Finer even than the architecture and the exterior of the buildings is the church furniture in Spain. It is unsurpassed for beauty and interest. The carved and sculptured wood-work in some of the cathedrals is finer than even that of the Netherlands and of Germany. The storied screens and choir stalls at Toledo; the retablos of Gerona and Salamanca, of Avila and Seville; the choir fittings of Santiago, Zamora, and of Burgos; the lecterns and pulpits both of brass and wood; and the rails and gates and screens of noblest metal-work are often of simply grand proportion; nay, even the polychrome wooden statues in the churches will often be found to be of rarest beauty. The monuments erected to the memory of the dead are equal to anything which affection and piety have raised elsewhere, from that of Archbishop Maurice at Burgos, in the thirteenth century—of the tombs of the constable and of those of Juan II. and Isabel of Portugal, in the Cartuja de Miraflores, of the fifteenth century; and that of Prince Juan, the only son of Ferdinand and Isabella, at Avila, erected in 1497—down to the noble mausoleum of inlaid metal-work by Zuloaga, lately placed in the Church of the Atocha to the memory of Prim. In these and many more, Spain can show a sequence able to vie with that of any other land. Hardly less beautiful are the minor accessories of Catholic worship; the gold and silver smiths' work of the chandeliers, the jewelled work of crosses, custodias or shrines, and sacred vessels is often worthy of admiration. In all such works of art, before the pillage of the French in the war of liberation, and the destruction of the convents, Spain was probably one of the richest of Christian lands. If we seem to insist too much on ecclesiastical art in Spain, it is because, as we shall see still more clearly in the case of painting, art has here concentrated its choicest effort on religious subjects, and in them has won its greatest triumphs. Except, perhaps, in arms and in porcelain, in portrait-painting and in furniture, all the masterpieces of Spanish art are in some sense ecclesiastical. Take away religion from her art, how poor would be the residue, for even Arabian and Moslem art in Spain were essentially religious.

Painting

Though Spain cannot rival some other countries, Italy for example, in the number of her great painters; though she has founded no great technical school; yet is she worthy of greatest admiration; in one or two of her artists she has attained the very highest rank. As a religious painter, especially in expressing in form and colour the heights of mystic ecstasy, Murillo stands unrivalled. As a portrait-painter of courtly grace and distinction, Velazquez has few equals. It is not in landscape, or as interpreters of the ever-varying beauty of external nature, that Spanish painters excel, but in the delineation of the human form, and especially in the rendering of those religious emotions which lead through asceticism to ecstasy. Not the glorification of merely sensuous beauty, but the triumphs of the spirit over the flesh are the conquests which they prefer to delineate.

Spanish painters may be divided among three great provinces: the Valencian, Andalusian, and Castilian schools. Of these the Andalusian, and especially the school of Seville, has produced by far the greatest artists.

The earliest specimens of Spanish painting are of the decorative kind, and are employed in subordination to architecture, to add colour to form, and to heighten and make more evident the details of sculpture in churches or convents. Much of this phase of art, in which they stand very high, they probably learned from the Moors. From these labours in churches and convents art in Spain received a religious imprint and direction which it has never lost, and from which it is only now turning in the present generation. Goya and Fortuny are perhaps the only considerable painters of Spain in whose works religious subjects do not preponderate. Spanish art reflects in a peculiar degree the characteristic of Spanish theology. The mystic grace, the transport of love which seems almost too human and tender when fixed on the Divine, which moves us in the writings of St. Teresa, St. Juan de la Cruz, Xavier, and others, touches us no less in the pictures of Murillo. Stern and sombre, as these are lovely, are the paintings which remind us that we are in the land of the inquisition. Figures of martyrs serene in tortures, whose horrors are laid bare as by no other artists, figures of saints of primitive, mediæval, or of later times, who have carried asceticism to excess, portraits of men who were as severe to themselves as they were pitiless to others; such are the subjects which are faithfully rendered by the pencils of Ribalta, Ribera, Zurbaran, and many others. Later on, when the old constitutional liberties of Spain had almost utterly fallen, and when the worship of the king had begun almost to rival that of the Blessed Virgin, Velazquez and others give us portraits of the royal family of Spain. The fun and wit which really existed in Spanish life, and which her novelists have depicted with such relish in innumerable novels, is but poorly represented in Spanish art by any of her great masters. Murillo's beggar-boys are almost the only pictures which answer to the "picaresque" side of Spanish literature till the advent of Goya and of Fortuny.

The expressions of the plastic arts of Spain are neither so idealized as the Italian, nor so intellectual as the German, nor so sensuous as the Flemish, nor so realistic as those of the Dutch school; but they are far more powerful in colouring and truer and deeper in feeling than are those of the French school. The Spaniard painted the types and characters of his native land, but he delighted to throw around them the magic lights that never were on sea or land; through the intense darkness of his asceticism ever peers a ray of heavenly light; but the type of the figure is ever Spanish; never, in the best days of art, was inspiration sought from a reproduction of the forms of pagan classical ism, or from a mere eclecticism of beauty. Though the drawing is correct, we feel that it has not been learned from a mere study of ancient statuary or from anatomical preparations, but from the living type and figure. Here and there we find painters like Juande Joannes (Vicente Macip) and Domenico Theotocopuli (El Greco), who might have lived on Italian soil; but generally the tone of Spanish painters is local and unmistakable. Through all his styles—the frio (cold), calido (warm), and the vaporoso (mystic)—Murillo remained faithful to Spanish, nay, to Andalusian models; none can mistake his saints and virgins, his boys and beggars, as belonging to any other race. He does not tell the wondrous story of the Incarnation with so grand an appeal to the intellect as do the Italian painters. The "woman blessed throughout all generations" does not look out to us from his canvas from the serene heights of perfect woman-hood which has found its crown in the mystery of the Motherhood of the Son of God, but in younger and more girlish forms he paints for us the maiden rapt in adoring ecstasy as she experiences the wonders of love divine, bathed in the golden light of a rapture which none but the very purest can ever feel, and which the very angels are represented as reverencing.

Space forbids our giving even an approximate catalogue of Spanish painters; we can merely single out for mention the two or three of highest rank in their respective provinces. In Valencia we have Ribalta (1551-1628), Juan de Joames (Vicente Macip) (1523-79), and the great but gloomy Ribera (1588-1609). To this school also belong the artists of Catalonia and of the Balearic Isles. In Castile are Navarette (El Mudo) (1526-79), Morales (1509-86), Theotocopuli (El Greco) (died 1578), and the younger Herrera (died 1686). But the greatest painters are from Andalusia and from Seville. The well-known names of Herrera the Elder (1576-1656), Zurbaran (1598-1662), Murillo (1618-82), Velazquez (1623-60), suffice to show its pre-eminence. The eighteenth century, in art as well as in literature, was a time of utter decadence; Goya (1746-1820), the caricaturist, is the only artist we need mention; but, like its literature, Spanish art is now at length rising from its long sleep. Fortuny (1838-74), has made himself a European reputation; though, through his early death, the pictures he has left give promise only of what his future might have been. Rosales (1840-73), though less known by foreigners, is of equal, if not of greater merit; like Fortuny, he died in his early prime. Madrazo, Jimenez, Fradilla, and others, though not of more than national reputation, yet prove that art is not extinct in Spain.

In what have been called the industrial arts Spain was formerly very rich, and, but for the wretched economical policy and administration of the Government since the seventeenth century, would probably have held her own against other countries. The gold and silver ornaments still worn by the peasantry in a few districts perpetuate designs and methods of workmanship originally derived from the Moors, and much of the church work is still of great excellence. No less beautiful is the iron-work, in which a grand effect is often produced by simply noble proportions in the gates, rejas, and screens of her cathedrals and churches; and in another sphere, in the manufacture of arms, and of inlaying steel or iron with arabesque patterns of gold and silver, an art which has been lately revived with great success in Biscay and the Basque Provinces. In porcelain and pottery the majolica ware, made at Valencia, was renowned throughout Europe; and the Moorish glazed and lustred ware, the manufacture of which remained a secret till the present century, is greatly sought after by amateurs. The wine-jars (tinajas and alpujarras), the porous pottery (bucaros), the azulejos or decorated tiles, continue traditions originally derived through the Arabs from the East, but which had almost expired when the manufacture was faintly revived under royal patronage in the times of Charles III., to start again on a stronger life with the aid of English capital in our own times. Spanish glass is sometimes curious, and much of the stained and painted windows in the cathedrals is excellent, especially that of Toledo and of Leon; but this art was undoubtedly learned from foreign workmen, and only became naturalized in Spain. Of carvings in wood and marble and ivory we have already sufficiently spoken. In textile fabrics and embroidery, especially in lace, Spain was formerly very rich. The mantillas of the ladies, the dresses of the sacred images, the copes of the clergy, gave full opportunity for the production of this fabric; but the chief effort is now directed to the manufacture of the best foreign laces, all of which are most successfully imitated by hand-workers in Valencia and Murcia, where they can be produced at a lower cost than is possible in colder and more northern climes. Everything in Spain, even the common use of colour and of flowers by the Andalusian peasants, shows a natural feeling for art; and its production is hindered more by indolence, and by the mischievous economical conditions of almost all Spanish industry, than by any want of talent in the native workman or artisan.

Though, perhaps, there is no country in Europe in which music is more appreciated or practised than in Spain, it is singular that she has produced no really great master. She has many composers of "zarzuelas," a species of lighter opera; her traditional dance and ballad tunes are some of the most inspiriting possible; and her guitar playing is renowned, but more for the romantic sentiment of the words and the occasion on which it is used than for the music itself. Well-nigh the only name for which even Spaniards claim equality with the great European masters in serious music is that of Don Manuel Doyague, of Salamanca (1755-1842). His Miserere, Te Deum, and various Masses are said to equal those of any master of his time.

Literature

It is not necessary to repeat here what has been said above on the Spanish authors who wrote during the silver age of Latin literature, or to trace again the origin of the Spanish language. It is evident that all we can do is to give a very brief sketch of Spanish literature. This literature is, perhaps, the richest in Europe in ballads and romances, and these, which make one of its chief glories, are among its earliest monuments. While the "Chanson de Roland" and other "Chansons de Gestes" were being written in Northern France in the form of continuous epic poems, Spain was celebrating her hero—the Cid—in a series of ballads. These, if united, would tell almost the whole story of his life; but each could be sung or recited alone as a separate and complete poem. This form of verse continued for many ages to be the favourite literature of the common people, and attained a development in Spain beyond that which it did in any other land. For spontaneity, for movement, for grace of expression, for sudden turns from martial ardour to the most pathetic tenderness, the Spanish ballad is unrivalled. It embraces and handles with almost equal success the most varied subjects: war and chivalry and love, patriotism, wit, amusement, and religion, have all been treated of in these romances, and the collections of each kind would fill many volumes.

The first prose works in the Spanish language seem to have been a translation of the Bible, under Alphonse X., and of two codes of law, the "Fuero Juzgo" and "Las Siete Partidas," in the middle of the thirteenth century. It seems to have been almost by accident that Alfonzo wrote in the dialect of Leon and Castile in preference to that of Galicia and Portugal. Had he chosen the latter, probably Portuguese would have become the language of the whole Peninsula. Under his reign, too, may have been commenced the first history written in Spanish, "La Gran Conquista de Ultramar," telling the story of the Crusades, with many romantic episodes. The next production that calls for remark is the epic of Alexander the Great, by J. L. Segura, of the latter part of the same century. This poem gives the name "Alexandrine" to all European verse written in the same metre. In the early part of the fourteenth century we have a collection of tales, with morals attached, called "El Conde Lucanor," by Don Juan Manuel, nephew of Alphonse X. (1282-1347); and Alfonso XI. continues the list of royal authors with a "Libro de la Monteria,", or treatise on hunting. The arch-priest of Hita, Juan Ruiz (1330-43), about the same time took up the strain of love and war in a romance of mingled prose and verse, entitled "Guerras Civiles de Granada." In the latter half of the fifteenth century we meet with a remarkable production, the tragi-comedy of Celestina, which, in its two-fold character of novel and of drama, has been the parent of a double offspring, both of the comedy and of the picaresque novel of Spain. The Spanish rogue, at least in fiction, has been said to be the only amusing rogue in Europe. The chief representations of him in literature are in the novel of "Lazarillo de Tormes" (1554), by Hurtado de Mendoza; "Guzman de Alfarache" (1599), by Mateo Aleman; and "La Picara Justina" (1605), by the Dominican monk, Andreas Perez. The whole series of these works culminated in a masterpiece, "Gil Blas," written, not by a Spaniard, but by the Frenchman Lesage, in 1668; perhaps the most graphic description of the manners of another nation ever written by a foreigner.

The serious drama in Spain arose, probably, like that of other European nations, from the mysteries and moralities of the Middle Ages, such as are still continued to be performed occasionally at Elche and in other districts. In the "Autos" of Calderon and others it bore clear marks of this origin to a later date than any other contemporary drama. The first plays of any consequence we hear of are those of Lope de Rueda (1544-67), who, both as actor and as author, was greatly admired by Cervantes. From him the Spanish drama, like the almost contemporary Elizabethan drama in England, sprang at once to its full height. Cervantes, in his tragedies "Los Baños de Argel," and in "El trato de Argel" in which he described incidents in his own captivity, and in the "Numancia," telling the story of the siege by the Romans, imitated and surpassed his friend. In lighter pieces, comedies and entremeses, he was less successful. Almost coeval with Cervantes is Lope de Vega (1562-1635), perhaps the most prolific dramatic writer of any value that ever lived. His pieces are numbered at from 1500 to 2000, and the best of these are equal, if not superior, to those of Calderon in delineation of character and in plot, and are inferior only in poetical merit. We can only mention Tirso de Molina (1588-1648), Montahran (1602-38), and Ruiz de Alarcon (died 1639) as dramatists of merit, whose best pieces, especially those of the latter, approach very nearly to those of Lope and of Calderon. Calderon de la Barca (1600-81), with the German, Göthe, is the only dramatist of modern Europe who has been seriously put forward as a rival, or even superior, to Shakspere. This we think to be a mistake; in rich poetical imagery, in gorgeousness of fancy, in harmony of verse, in stately dignity, in depth of religions feeling, in knowledge of stage effect—in all these things he may be compared to our English master; but he is very far inferior to him in width of sympathy, in wit and rollicking fun, or in thoughtful humour; his comedy will not bear comparison with that of Shakspere; but he falls most short in his delineation of individual character. In comparison with Shakspere's, his figures are but well-dressed puppets compared to living men and women; not one of them lingers in the memory like a person whom we have known. We remember Calderon's verses, we revel in his splendid poetry, but we utterly forget who it is that utters these dazzling strains. Calderon's dramas and comedies are reckoned at 120, and his Autos, religious or sacramental pieces, generally performed by religious or civil corporations in the open air, are numbered at about seventy. In these plays abstract qualities take the place of living personages, and it is perhaps the greatest proof of Calderon's genius that he has by his brilliant poetry and serene religious feeling made some of even these acceptable to a modern reader.

But while the drama and comedy and the picaresque novel had been thus developing themselves, a whole literature of quite a different kind had sprung up into favour, flourished, and died away. This consisted of the prose books of chivalry, and of the pastoral romances both in prose and verse. They are remembered now chiefly through mention of them in the pages of the immortal work, the "Don Quixote," of Cervantes, which crushed them for ever. The most celebrated of them was the "Amadis de Gaul," written probably at the end of the fourteenth century. The imitations of it were innumerable, each more wild, extravagant, more insipid, and in worse taste than the last. Of the pastoral romances the only one we need to note is the "Diana Enamorada," of Montemayor (1520-61), and perhaps the most successful after this is the "Galatea," of Cervantes himself, who could never entirely shake off the influence of the writings he delighted to satirize, and of which he was the literary executioner. The one Spanish book which has become really European, in a degree which has been attained by no other purely secular work, is the "Don Quixote" of this author (1547-1616). Into this extraordinary production, under the guise of the adventures of his hero, the last of the knights-errant, with his squire, Sancho Panza—a story full of mirth, incident, and humour—Cervantes has put all the wisdom which, by his observation on mankind and literature, he had collected during a singularly varied life as writer, soldier, seaman, Algerine slave, poet, and man of business. Though hardly belonging to the school of the classical Renaissance, yet we see in Cervantes a specimen of the marked and distinguishing excellence of the men at that time—the width of their sympathies; so that each more eminent man seemed to contain in himself an epitome of the experience of mankind. It is, perhaps, to this many-sidedness of his experience, and of his culture, that is owing the genial character, the pathetic humour, and the total absence of bitterness in this masterly satire. Thus Cervantes, while laughing down and extinguishing for ever the absurdities of the chivalrous and pastoral romances, yet retains his sympathy for all that was really noble, though exaggerated, in them. His "Don Quixote," though moving irrepressible laughter, will for ever remain one of the choicest representations of a brave, pure-minded, honourable gentleman, and tears of pity for him are not far distant from our smiles at his quaint insanities. Since the days of Cervantes one kind only of the chivalrous romances has really survived in literature, and that is the historical romance, of which the "Guerras Civiles de Granada" of the arch-priest Hita, mentioned above, is so good an example. Another satirist, less known than Cervantes, to whom his life bears some resemblance, Quevedo y Villegas (1580-1645), is even a more versatile writer. In prose and verse his writings are very numerous, but his style, learned and obscure, often laboured in the extreme, though pregnant with thought and wit, contrasts unfavourably with the clearness of Cervantes; he holds now in Spanish literature a place nearly analogous to that of Swift among British writers.