Granada and the Alhambra: A brief description of the ancient city of Granada, with a particular account of the Moorish palace — John Shaqi
Granada and the Alhambra: A brief description of the ancient city of Granada, with a particular account of the Moorish palaceCalvert, Albert Frederick
History
Granada and the Alhambra: A brief description of the ancient city of Granada, with a particular account of the Moorish palace
Calvert, Albert Frederick
Alhambra (Granada, Spain); Art -- Spain -- Granada; Granada (Spain) -- Description and travel
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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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