To Charles V. Toledo also owes the grand New Gate of Visagra, built in 1550, and restored in 1575. It consists of two separate structures, or gateways, enclosing a patio. On the exterior of the north gate is shown the double eagle with the Spanish arms and a Latin inscription—all in sculptured granite. On the inside is a fine statue of St. Eugenio, variously attributed to Berruguete and Monegro. The statues of Gothic kings, a life-sized angel with unsheathed sword, elegant capitals and balconies, combine to make this gateway one of the finest approaches possessed by any city in the world.
The Ayuntamiento, or town hall, of Toledo was erected in the time of Ferdinand and Isabel by the corregidor Gomez Manrique, and enlarged and restored between 1576 and 1618 by the corregidor Juan Tello, under the supervision of El Greco. The façade is composed of two storeys, the first consisting of nine arches with Doric columns which spring from massive pillars, the second of as many arches with Ionic columns. The edifice is surmounted by two towers, crowned with steeples and weather-vanes. On the fine staircase may be read in letters of gold on a blue ground this admonition to the civic dignitaries of Toledo:
Nobles, discretes varones,
Que gobernais á Toledo,
En aquellas escalones,
Desechad las aficiones,
Codicio temor, y miedo,
For los comunes provechos,
Dejad los particulares;
Pues vos fizo Dios pilares
De tan riquisimos techos,
Estad firmes y derechos.
The Summer Council Chamber is handsomely decorated with azulejos, and contains some battle pictures. The portraits of Carlos II. and his wife are the work of Carreño.
The celebrated Bridge of Alcantara, of which mention has so often been made in these pages, belongs indifferently to all the epochs of Toledo’s history, so no apology is needed for mentioning it here. “It constitutes to-day as in the past,” writes Amador de los Rios, “the principal entrance to the city, and, constructed very wisely on one of the narrowest parts of the river, it is formed of a great central arch of more than twenty-eight metres in breadth, resting on the right on a solid pile, often demolished, behind which is a smaller semicircular arch, which is, in turn, sustained by the bridge head, founded on the rock and pierced by a still smaller arch or passage, where several Visigothic remains have been discovered.” At the outer or country end of the historic bridge formerly stood a fortified tower, which was in 1787 replaced by the existing structure. This is in a pretentious style, and is decorated with various inscriptions, among them one commemorating the building by order of Philip V. The majestic hexagonal tower on the town side, with its picturesque turrets, dates probably from 1259. Above it is a statue of St. Ildefonso, by Berruguete. Over the archway are sculptured the badges of Ferdinand and Isabel (the yoke and bundle of arrows), commemorating the restoration of the tower, in 1489, by Gomez Manrique. A noble bridge is this of Alcantara; old—old as the city—the work of all Toledo’s rulers, and like Toledo, grim, stern, rude, destined, it would seem, to endure for ever. Romans, Visigoths, Moors and Castilians have lingered on it, triumphed on it, fled across it, fought upon it, and across it to-day must walk every traveller entering with reverence this great temple of the mediæval and bygone.
EL GRECO
BY
Albert F. Calvert and C. Gasquoine Hartley
Domeniko Theotokopuli,[A] known to us to-day as El Greco, was the first great painter of Spain, and in his strange and fascinating art, the Spanish School compels for the first time the attention of the world. And El Greco was not Spanish. He was born in Crete, it would seem about the year 1548, and died at Toledo in 1614. Learning his art in Venice, in his early manner he is a pure Venetian, owing much to the work of the Bassani, and more to the inspiration of Tintoretto, but in Toledo he became Spanish and himself, developing there a manner in which the special temper of the race finds an expression passionate enough, not equalled again, indeed, until the advent of Goya.
There will always be some men imaginative, entirely personal, who, like El Greco, seek to express themselves, and in so doing, quite unwittingly probably, express the life of their age. Having the interpretative—creative would perhaps be the truer word—genius, their work becomes, as it were, a mirror, which reflects not the man alone, but the circumstances that have formed his life. For, after all, what the artist does is to use up what he has seen.