Things seen in Spain

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

The carving and moulding of wood and stone and iron in the fifteenth century had reached a high level of accomplishment. And although none of the world’s famous sculptors have been Spaniards, the amount of strong and beautiful carvings to be found in every part of the Peninsula is amazing; in no country can they be surpassed. Every great church and cloister contains carvings in wood—a material chosen by the Spaniards for the freedom and facility it gave for expression—which are treasures of delight. The immense and amazing retablos and the carved walnut-wood choir-stalls which every great church contains cannot be matched elsewhere. It is a pity that these characteristic works are hardly known; they are the basis of all Spanish art. In no country in Europe can be seen more wonderful carvings than on the monumental tombs of such cathedrals as Toledo, Zamora, and Leon. Again, the ironwork church screens, notably those of the cathedrals of Seville, Granada, and Toledo, cannot be surpassed. In these works, with their dramatic conceptions, finding expression in a wealth of interesting details, never without the tendency to over-emphasis of statement which marks the art of this people, the Spanish character speaks. Æsthetic sensibility is almost always absent; the art here is vigorous and romantic, frankly expressive, with a kind of childlike, almost grotesque, naturalism that shows a realistic grasp of all things, even of spiritual things. I recall the polychrome sculpture of this people; the images of the anguished Virgin, in which sorrow is carried to its utmost limit of expression; the bleeding heads of martyred saints, such, for instance, as those terrible yet moving heads of the Baptist by Alonso Cano at Granada, or the poignantly lifelike polychrome carvings of the Crucified Christ by Montañes, Gregorio Hernandez, Juni Juanes, and other sculptors, which are seen in many churches, and which are carried in procession in the Easter pasos at Seville and elsewhere, images in which all the details of the Passion are emphasized with an emotional delight in the presentment of pain. And when I think of these images I understand the bull-fight.

Until the fifteenth century painting found no home in Spain. Placed as she is almost midway between the art centres of Flanders in the North and of Italy in the South, Spain has geographically a position of equipoise between these conflicting art influences. But this balance of influence was modified by the bent of the Spanish character, and the true affinity of Spain in art has always been with the Flemings. No one can doubt this who has a knowledge of the Spanish Primitives. The art of Spain is Northern in its literalness, in its dramatic force, and deep and singular gravity.

Jan van Eyck in 1428 visited Portugal and Spain, and, incited by the brilliant reception accorded to the great Flemish master, other enterprising Netherland painters flocked to the Peninsula. From this time the native artists gave their attention to painting, and on this Flemish foundation arose a really capable group of painters. The essential ideas in the pictures of these early masters are all borrowed; but, though Flemish in their inspiration, they yet retain an attractive Spanish personality of their own. The Spanish painters, more perhaps than the painters of any other school, have imitated and absorbed the art of other nations without degenerating into copyists.

But this development of a national art on the basis of Flemish influence was not of long duration, and before the fifteenth century closed the newly-born Spanish school was rudely disturbed by the introduction into Spain of the Italian influences of the Renaissance. The building of the Escorial brought a crowd of artists from Italy—not the great masters, for they were no longer alive, but pupils more or less mannered and decadent. Spain was overrun with third-rate imitators of the Italian grand styles, of Michael Angelo, of Raphael, and their followers. This is not the place to speak of the blight which fell upon the native painters. The distinctive Italian schools were an influence for evil, fatal to the expression of the true genius of the people; for the deep-feeling, individualistic temper of the Spaniards could not be reconciled with the spirit of Italy.

But the Spanish temper is strong. The native painters used Renaissance forms, but they never worked in the Renaissance spirit. And it was not long before Spanish artists were turning to Venice, where they found a new inspiration in an art suited to their temperament in its methods, and in its spirit. El Greco, who had received his first inspiration from Tintoretto, the mighty master of the counter-Reformation, came as a liberating force to Spain. The torch he had lighted at Tintoretto’s fire burnt in Toledo with splendid power. El Greco is the first great Spanish painter.

And the seventeenth century witnessed in the art of the Spanish school one of those surprising outbursts of successful life that meet us now and again, in every department of enterprise, in this land of fascinating contradictions, which give so strange a denial to the usual limit of her attainment. It was the century of Velazquez and Murillo, of Ribera and Zurbaran. In Velazquez, Spanish painting gained its crown of achievement.