Seville: an historical and descriptive account of "the pearl of Andalusia"Calvert, Albert Frederick
History
Seville: an historical and descriptive account of "the pearl of Andalusia"
Calvert, Albert Frederick
Art -- Spain -- Seville; Painters -- Spain; Seville (Spain) -- Description and travel
This hall was once known as the Salón de la Media Naranja (Hall of the
Half Orange) from the elegant shaping of its carved wooden ceiling.
This rests upon a frieze decorated with the Tower and Lion, and
supporting this again are beautiful carved and gilded stalactites or
pendants. On the intervening wall spaces are Cufic inscriptions on a
blue ground, and female heads painted by sixteenth-century vandals.
Then follows another frieze with the devices of Castile and Leon, below
which is a row of fifty-six niches, containing the portraits of the
kings of Spain from Receswinto the Goth to Philip III. The earliest of
these seem to have been painted in the sixteenth century, while the
little columns and trefoil windows that separate them may be ascribed
to the end of the fourteenth. The series is interrupted by four
rectangular spaces, formerly occupied by windows, but now taken up by
elegant balconies in wrought iron, the work of Francisco López (1592).
The decoration of this magnificent chamber is completed by a high dado
of white, blue, and green glazed tiles. It was probably in this hall
that Abu Saïd, “the Red King,” was received by Don Pedro prior to his
murder.
In an apartment to the right of the Ambassadors’ Hall, a plaster frieze
of Arabic origin, showing figures in silhouette, may be noticed; and
in a room to the left, other silhouettes, apparently referring to the
qualities attributed by his admirers to Pedro I.
On the north side of the Patio de las Doncellas lies the so-called
Dormitorio de los Reyes Moros (Bed-chamber of the Moorish Kings). The
entrance arch is semicircular, and includes three graceful lattice
windows, richly ornamented. On either side of the door is a beautiful
double-window with columns dating from the Khalifate. The doors
themselves are richly inlaid, and painted with geometrical patterns.
The interior of the chamber is adorned, like all other apartments
in the Alcazar, with plaster friezes, and is so richly decorated
that scarcely a hand’s-breadth (remarks Herr Schmidt) is without
ornamentation. To the right of the entrance lies a small apartment
known as the Sultan’s Alcove. Opposite the entrance from the _patio_
are three horse-shoe arches belonging to the earliest period of
Spanish-Arabic art, leading to an _Al-Hami_ or alcove.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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