The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, Volume 1 (of 3)Williams, Leonard
History
The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, Volume 1 (of 3)
Williams, Leonard
Decorative arts -- Spain -- History
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 as having made
the _reja_ of the same cathedral; and the octagonal gilt-bronze pulpits
of Toledo, wrought by Francisco de Villalpando, as are the bas-reliefs
(1564) upon the door of Lions, executed by the same craftsman from
designs by Berruguete.
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,[101] they will now be found among the couple of dozen
curiosities preserved in a chamber of the Moorish royal residence of the
Alhambra.
[101] Spaniards have a very scanty confidence in one another's honesty,
as well as in the competence of their police. Often, at Madrid,
and at this day, the porter of a house, as soon as it is dark,
unscrews the knockers from the downstairs door, and guards them
in his _conciergerie_ until the morning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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