The earliest objects of bronze discovered in this The province of Palencia is a fertile field for archÆological discovery. Here have been found some curious clasps, intended, it would seem, to represent the old Iberian mounted warrior, sometimes brandishing the typical Iberian lance. The Two parts—the figure of the horseman, and a four-wheeled stand on which the warrior's steed is resolutely set—compose this comical antiquity. The rider's only article of clothing is a helmet; while the horse, without a saddle or a bridle, is completely nude. This toy, or table ornament, or whatever it may be, was found not far from Badajoz, where other prehistoric bronzes are preserved in the museum of the province; see caption We know that the use of Roman lamps grew to be general in this land—a fact which justifies my noticing the specimens preserved in the museum of Madrid; and more particularly so because their shape and general character have been perpetuated through the Spanish Moors and Christians of the Middle Ages till this very moment. The Roman lamp, shaped somewhat like a boat by reason of the rostrum or beakish receptacle for the wick, consisted of an earthenware or metal vessel with a circular or oblong body and a handle, together with at least one hole for pouring in the oil. The commonest material was earthenware, and next to this, bronze. The lamp was either suspended by a chain or chains, or else was rested on a stand. Plato and Petronius tell us that the stand was borrowed from the rustic makeshift of a stick, or the stout stem of a plant, thrust into the ground. As time went on, the stem or stick in imitative metal-work was rendered more or less artistic and ornate. But there was more than a single kind of lampstand. The lychnuchus (?????????), invented by the Greeks, held various The Roman lampstands also varied in their height. When the stem was long they stood upon the ground—a fashion we have seen revived in recent years, and even where electricity replaces oil. When, on the contrary, the stem was short, the stand was known as a candelabrum humile, and rested on a table or a stool. see caption The Madrid Museum contains a remarkable bronze lamp in the form of an ass's head adorned with flowers and with ivy. The ass is holding in its mouth the rostrum for the wick. The hole for the oil is shaped like a flower with eleven petals, under one of which is the monogram M†R. The Other lamps of bronze, including several of an interesting character, are in the same collection. One of these represents a sea-deity; another has its handle shaped like a horse's head and neck; and in a third the orifice for the oil is heart-shaped, while the handle terminates in the head of a swan. There is also a series of three pensile lamps—two in the likeness of the head and neck of a griffin, and the third in that of a theatrical mask; as well as a candelabrum fourteen inches high, terminating beneath in three legs with lions' claws (foreshadowing or repeating oriental motives), and above in a two-handled vessel on which to place the lamp. This vessel supports at present a fine lucerna in the form of a peacock. Probably no people in the world have kept extant, or rather, kept alive, their oldest forms of pottery or instruments for giving light more steadfastly or more solicitously than the Spaniards. Their iron candil see caption More than the shape of these old objects seems to have passed to modern Spain—if any phase at all of Spanish life can ever justly be accounted modern. The ancients had an almost superstitious reverence for a lighted lamp, and were accustomed to declare that “lucerna, cum extinguitur, vocem emittit, quasi necata”; “a lamp, on being put out, utters a sound as though it were being murdered.” Now, it may be a coincidence—although I cannot but regard it as distinctly more than a coincidence—that even at this day In the Madrid Museum are several military bronze signa which were found in Spain and date from the Roman era, as well as a vexillum, or one of the T-shaped frames on which the warriors of that people used to hang their standards. One of these signa is in the form of a wild boar; another in that of a saddled and bridled horse. Beneath this latter is the word VIVA and a cross, which shows that the object dates from a period not earlier than the reign of Constantine. It is strange—or rather, would be strange in any “Though in reality these lions are at rest, they seem to move and, when provoked, to grow enraged. One would imagine that they remembered their carnage of past days, and bellowing turned once more to the attack. see caption “When the sun is reflected from their bronze “Nevertheless, when we observe them to be vomiting water, one would think this water to be swords which melt without the help of fire, and are confounded with the crystal of the fountain.” Figures in bronze, of eagles, peacocks, swans, stags, dragons, lions, and many other creatures were set about in garden and in hall, to decorate these splendid palaces of ancient Cordova. A specimen of this class of objects is a bronze lion of small dimensions (Plate xxx.) found not many years ago in the province of Palencia, and believed to date from the reign of Al-Hakem the Second of Cordova. It belonged for some time to the painter Fortuny—a diligent and lucky hunter of antiquities,—and was subsequently purchased in 1875 by M. Piot. The modelling and decoration of this beast, especially the mannered and symmetrical curls which are supposed to form its mane, are quite conventional and strongly reminiscent of Assyrian art, such as pervades the various lions rudely wrought in stone and still existing at Granada; whether the celebrated dozen that support and guard the fountain in This little bronze lion measures about twelve inches high by fourteen inches long. The legs and part of the body are covered with a pattern representing flowers. The mane is described by comma-shaped marks. The tail, bent not ungracefully along the animal's back, is decorated with a kind of plait through nearly all its length. The eyes are now two cavities, but seem in other days to have contained two coloured stones or gems. Upon the back and flanks is a Cufic inscription which says, “Perfect blessing. Complete happiness.” Mussulman historians have described, in terms of cloying praise, the “red gold animals contrived with subtle skill and spread with precious stones” which Abderrahman placed at Cordova upon the see caption Similar to the foregoing object, and dating from about the same period, is a small bronze stag (Pl. xxxi.) in the provincial museum of Cordova. It is believed to proceed originally from the famous palace (tenth century) of Az-zahra, and used to be kept, some centuries ago, in the convent of San JerÓnimo de Valparaiso. The museum of Granada contains some interesting Moorish bronzes, found on the site of the ancient city of Illiberis, abandoned by its occupants on their removal to Granada at the beginning see caption The most important object in this substance now extant in any part of Spain is probably the huge and finely decorated lamp of Mohammed the Third of Granada (Pl. xxxiv.), called sometimes The material of this lamp is bronze, possibly provided by the bells of Christian churches taken and pillaged by the Moors. It has four parts or tiers of varying shape, delicately wrought in open-work, and reaching a height of nearly seven feet in all. The third and largest tier, corresponding to the shade, is in the form of a truncated pyramid, and shows a different design on each of its four sides. The lamp bears several inscriptions, interrupted here and there through breakage of the metal. The longest of these legends is interpreted as follows:— “In the name of God the Merciful. (May) the blessing of God be on our lord Mohammed and his kin; health and peace. (This lamp) was ordered (to be made) by our Lord the egregious sultan, the favoured, the victorious, the just, the happy, the conqueror of cities, and the extreme boundary of just conduct among the servants (of God); the emir of the Mussulmans Abu-Abdillah, son of our lord the emir of the Mussulmans Abu-Abdillah, son of our lord Al-Galib-Billah, the conqueror The history of this lamp has been explored with scholarly care by Rodrigo Amador de los RÍos, whose monograph will be found in the Museo EspaÑol de AntigÜedades. He says that the lamp was formerly suspended from the ceiling of the chapel of San Ildefonso in the university of AlcalÁ de Henares. Here, too, he has discovered entries which relate to it in two separate inventories, dated 1526 and 1531, from which we gather that the lamp, excepting the lowest part or tier, which probably proceeded from Oran, was brought to AlcalÁ by Cardinal Cisneros from the mosque of the Alhambra of Granada. see caption All of the lamp (continues Amador) that properly belongs to it, is the open-work shade, together with the graduated set of spheres which It is probable, therefore, that the lamp of the third Mohammed of Granada is now composed of two lamps, and that the primitive arrangement lamp Other articles of Spanish-Moorish ornamented bronze are thimbles, buckets, and the spherical perfume-burners which were used to roll upon the stone or marble pavement of a dwelling. Moorish thimbles, conical and uncouthly large, are not uncommonly met with at Granada. I have one, of which the above is an outline sketched to size. Sometimes these Moorish thimbles are inscribed see caption The thimbles from which I quote these legends are in the National Museum. The same collection includes a very finely wrought bronze bucket or acetre (Latin situlus; Arabic as-setl, the utensil for drawing water for a bath). The outside is covered with delicate ornamentation, varied with inscriptions of no great interest, invoking Allah's blessing on the owner or employer of the bucket, which is thought by Amador to be of Granadino workmanship, and to date from about the middle of the fourteenth century. Not many specimens remain of early mediÆval Spanish bronzes wrought by Christian hands. RiaÑo, who admits that “we can hardly trace any bronze of this period other than cathedral bells,” mentions as probably proceeding from abroad the altar-fronts and statuettes, in gilt enamelled bronze, of Salamanca and elsewhere, It is curious that RiaÑo should make no mention of Spanish bronze processional crosses. In my chapter on gold, silver, and jewel work I mentioned those belonging to churches in the north of Spain. A bronze crucifix (Plate xxxvi.), believed to date from the beginning of the twelfth century, and proceeding from the monastery of ArbÓs, in the province of LeÓn, is now in the possession of Don Felix Granda Builla. It is undoubtedly of Spanish make, and probably was carried in processions. The style is pure Romanic, and the drawing of the ribs, extremities, and limbs is typically primitive. The sudarium is secured by the belt or parazonium. The feet, unpierced, rest on a supedaneum. see caption A bronze Renaissance parish cross of the sixteenth century, once hidden in a village of Asturias, was bought some thirty years ago by the museum of Madrid. The body of the cross is wood, covered on both sides with bronze plates wrought with figures of the Saviour as the holy infant and as full-grown man, and also with a A similar cross belongs to the parish church of San Julian de RecarÉ, in the province of Lugo, while San Pedro de Donas, near Santiago in Galicia, possesses a processional cross of bronze, pierced along the edges in a pattern of trefoils and fleurs-de-lis, but otherwise undecorated. Sometimes in Spanish bronze we find the handiwork of Moors and Christians picturesquely intermingled, as in the gates of Toledo cathedral (1337), and the Puertas del PerdÓn—forming the principal entrance to the Court of Orange Trees—of the mosque of Cordova, made of wood and covered with bronze plating decorated with irregular hexagons and Gothic and Arabic inscriptions. The knockers contain a scroll and flowers, and on the scroll the words, Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel. The gate of the same name of Seville cathedral (Pl. xxxvii.) is similar in workmanship, and is considered by RiaÑo to be a good example of Moresque bronze-work. While speaking of these doors, we should see caption In the latter half of the sixteenth century, BartolomÉ Morel, a Sevillano, produced some notable work in bronze. The least important of these objects is the choir lectern, for which Morel was paid six hundred ducats. The decoration is of statuettes and rilievi, well designed and better executed. The tenebrarium, aptly defined by Amador as “an article of church furniture intended to make a show of light,” see caption This description of the Seville tenebrarium is Morel, like Brunelleschi, was an architect as well as a craftsman in bronze. The title of the object which surmounts the famed Giralda tower of Seville is properly “the Statue of Faith, the triumph of the Church” (Pl. xxxviii.); but it is known in common language as the Giraldillo (weathercock), which name has passed into the word Giralda, now applied to all the tower. The populace of Seville also call it, in the argot of their cheerful town, the muÑeco or “doll,” the “Victory,” and the “Santa Juana.” see caption This statue, made of hollow bronze, rotates The Spanish Moors were also well acquainted Not many other objects in this substance can be instanced as the work of Spanish craftsmen of the sixteenth and succeeding centuries, or of the later-Gothic age immediately preceding. Among them are the pulpits of Santiago cathedral, made by Celma, an Aragonese, in 1563; the choir-screen (1574–1579) in the cathedral of Zaragoza, made by Juan TomÁs Cela, also a native of Aragon; the gilt lecterns of Toledo cathedral, which are the work of NicolÁs Vergara and his son; the Gothic lectern of the mosque of Cordova; the choir-lectern (1557) of Cuenca, made by Hernando de Arenas, who will also be remembered These last-named pulpits are associated with a legend. Within this temple, once upon a time, rested the metal sepulchre of the great Don Alvaro de Luna, so constructed by his orders that upon the touching of a secret spring the statue of the Constable himself would rise into a kneeling posture throughout the celebration of the mass. His lifelong and relentless foe, the Infante Enrique of Aragon, tore up the tomb in 1449; and from its fragments, superstition says, were made these pulpits. Spanish Renaissance door-knockers in bronze are often curious. Fifteen large bronze rings adorned with garlands, heads of lions and of eagles, or with the pair of columns and the motto PLUS OULTRE of Charles the Fifth, were formerly upon the pilasters of the roofless, semi-ruined palace of that emperor at Granada. Removed elsewhere for greater safety, Herewith I end my sketch of Spanish bronzes, without delaying to describe the tasteless transparente behind the altar of Toledo cathedral, or the neo-classic, Frenchified productions of the reign of Charles the Third, such as the table-mountings of the Buen Retiro, or trifles from the silver factory of Antonio Martinez. At the Escorial, the shrine of the Sagrario de la Santa Forma and the altar-front of the pantheon of the kings of Spain, wrought by Fray Eugenio de la Cruz, Fray Juan de la ConcepciÓn, and Fray Marcos de Perpignan, are meritorious objects of their time. But the history of Spanish bronzes properly ends with the Renaissance. This material, possibly from its cost, has not at any time been greatly popular in Spain. Wood, plain or painted, was preferred to bronze in nearly all her statuary. Her mediÆval and Renaissance reja and custodia makers can challenge all the world. So can her Footnotes: |