span, which at a later period regulated the arches of the palaces of Fez, of Tunis, and of Cairo.
The second gallery of the Court of the Damsels, added to the ancient construction, is an addition of little importance; but it is a fine court, if one considers the modifications of its style, its socles showing beautiful panels of decorated porcelain of admirable delicacy. Different doors lead to the saloon of Charles V., to that of the Ambassadors, and to those of the “Caracol,” or of Don Maria de Padilla. They have scarfs cut into polygons, which cover them on both sides, but this fine work has been badly restored with stucco barbarously painted.
The Hall of Ambassadors is a square apartment of a solemn aspect, with four frontages composed of high arches, which enclose twin windows, placed on slender columns, whose little arches are more than semi-circular, without having the characteristic form of the horse-shoe,—a curve which marks the decadent transition. The capitals are degenerate Greco-Roman; but the great decorative arch with running knots, although it has an Arab curve, has not the two squares in height from the floor of the hall, and that deprives it of elegance in its ornamentation. The spaces, or triangles, are not original, the work is interrupted, as in the inner side of the wall of the frontage, by shutters which open, as though escaping from the tympan of the twin windows. A wide frieze of windows, or painted transparencies, stretches above, in an admirable manner, and higher still there is a geometrical band of ornaments in the form of knots, and then come architraves and supports on which the roof rests. The sub-basements of porcelain are adorned with arabesques, and the connecting doors are decorated with almost exaggerated profusion. The open balconies, with the eagles on their consols, are an eternal affront for him who had them made; and we may say the same thing of the portraits with Gothic frames, placed under the arch-like hollows of the walls, and also of the gilding, which has not the fine ornamentation of blue, red, and black, which renders these little vaults more graceful, when they are done by Arabs. The spherical cupola, with rafters with arabesques forming stars of symmetrical polygons, may have been constructed for stained glass windows at a higher light, but later it was ineffectively decorated with little mirrors. The mosaics have been restored with pieces larger than the originals, and the jasper columns seem to be Roman and not Arab, as do many others of the decadence; and the capitals too, without uniformity, and unsuited to the columns, appear to be Moz-Arabian work, which is seen in many of the Saracen mosques.
The type of the African inscriptions in the alcazar is not as fine or as pure as are those in the Hall of Comares at Granada; but on the other hand the classic character of the cufic inscriptions here is more uniform and more simple. The ornaments, in the shape of leaves, of pine cones, and of palms interlaced with ribbons, with geometrical outlines, is a style that is no longer seen after the beginning of the Thirteenth Century. The little windows, in parallelograms above the doors, the Roman imposts, the Gothic carvings, and the escutcheons with broken chiselings shown in this palace, are the work of several generations who were wanting in the consciousness of art.
Yet the Hall of Ambassadors is beyond dispute the most splendid and beautiful apartment of all the palaces of Moorish architecture belonging to the Crown in Spain. The painting and gilding of arabesques, the lovely carved wooden ceilings, now shaped like inverted bowls, now like sections of a sphere, and now like capricious many-sided
SEVILLE
ALCAZAR—INTERIOR OF THE HALL OF AMBASSADORS.