Mr. Lomas is perfectly correct in suggesting that the alcazar of Seville is, in great measure, a reproduction of the delights of the Alhambra, a reproduction due, without any doubt, to that school of architecture which embellished the sumptuous palace of Granada for the kings of the second Nazarite dynasty. In it we see the record of the ingenious almizates, of its gates and ceilings, of those stalactited domes, which dazzle and confuse, of those wall-facings encrusted with rich ornamentation, of those graceful Byzantine and Moorish geometrical designs, which even to-day are the despair of perspective painters, of those enchanting saloons where the genius of harmony seems to rest, and of those balmy gardens which invite repose, meditation, and melancholy.
While it is generally accepted that the city of Seville possessed no alcazar of striking importance until the declining power of the khalifate of Cordova made Seville the capital of an independent kingdom, there is substantial reason for believing that in the foundations of the present superb edifice there are unmistakable relics of an earlier work of truly Arab architecture. The Almohades so thoroughly effaced and distorted the magnificence of their predecessors’ work that it would be impossible to point with certainty to any of the original remains of this many-times-restored palace. The ultra-semi-circular arches which are seen in the Hall of the Ambassadors, those graceful arches which carry the mind from Seville to the graceful arcades of the mosque of Cordova, incline one to regard this apartment as a relic of Abbadite antiquity, while the rich columns with
PLATE XXIX.
Blank Window.
SEVILLE