Spain, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

One could cover many pages if he were to describe the fine suburbs of Madrid, the gates, the parks beyond the city, the squares, the historic streets; and, if nothing were willingly to be omitted, the splendid cafés, the “Imperial” in the square of the Puerto del Sol and the Fornos in Alcalá Street, two vast saloons, in which, if the tables were removed, a company of dragoons could be drilled, and the innumerable other cafés which one finds at every step, where two hundred dancers could be easily accommodated; the magnificent shops which occupy the entire ground-floor of vast buildings, and among them the great Havana tobacco warehouse (a meeting-place for gentlemen), filled with cigars, little and big, round, flat, pointed, and twisted, winding like snakes, bent like bows, hook-shaped, of every shape, for every taste, and at every price, enough to content the maddest fancy of a smoker and to stupefy the entire population of a city; spacious markets; the grand royal palace, in which the Quirinal and the Pitti Palace might hide without fear of discovery; the great street Atocha, which crosses the city; the immense garden of Buen Retiro, with its great lake, with its hills crowned with Moorish domes, and its thousands of rare birds.... But, worthy of attention above everything else, the museums of armor and painting, and the Naval Museum, to each of which one might easily dedicate a volume.

The armory of Madrid is one of the most beautiful in the world. As you enter the vast hall your heart gives a leap, your blood tingles, and you stand still on the threshold like one demented. A complete army of cavalry in full armor, with drawn swords and lances in rest, gleaming and terrible, rushes toward you like a legion of spectres. It is an army of emperors, kings, and dukes, clad in the most splendid armor that has ever left the hands of man, upon which pours a flood of light from eighteen enormous windows, producing a marvellous play and flashing of light, dancing sunbeams, and dazzling colors. The walls are covered with cuirasses, swords, halberds, jousting-spears, huge blunderbusses, and enormous lances which reach from the floor to the ceiling. Banners of all the armies of the world hang from the ceiling—trophies of Lepanto, of San Quintino, of the War of Independence, of the wars of Africa, Cuba, and Mexico. On every side there is a profusion of glorious standards, of illustrious arms, of marvellous works of art, of effigies, emblems, and immortal names.

One does not know what first to admire. One runs first here, then there, looking at everything and seeing nothing, and becomes tired before one has really begun. In the middle of the hall is the equestrian armor, the cavaliers and their horses, drawn up in line by threes and by twos, and all wheeling just like a squadron on the march. Among the arms one at first sight discovers those of Philip II., of Charles V., Philibert Emmanuel, and Christopher Columbus. Here and there, on pedestals, one sees helmets, casques, morions, gorgets, and shields which belonged to kings of Arragon, Castile, and Navarre, adorned with very fine reliefs in silver representing battles, mythological subjects, symbolic figures, trophies, grotesques, and garlands: some of these are works of the greatest power, the workmanship of the most famous artists of Europe; others are uncouth in form, with excessive ornament, with crests, visors, and colossal top-pieces. Then there are the little helmets and cuirasses of princes, swords and shields the gifts of popes and monarchs. In the midst of the knightly armor one sees statues dressed in the fantastic costumes of the American Indians, of Africans, and of Chinese, with feathers and bells, bows and quivers; then, too, horrible warmasks and the dresses of mandarins of gold woven with silk. Along the walls is other armor—the arms of the marquis de Pescara, of the poet Garcilasso de la Vega, of the marquis de Santa Cruz, the gigantic armor of John Frederick, the magnanimous duke of Saxony, and scattered here and there are Arabian, Persian, and Moorish banners falling to decay.

In the glass cases there is a collection of swords which make your blood run cold when you hear the names of those who wielded them—the sword of the prince de Conde, the sword of Isabella the Catholic, the sword of Philip II., the sword of Hernando Cortez, of the count-duke d’Olivares, of John of Austria, of Gonzalez of Cordova, of Pizarro; the sword of the Cid, and, a little farther along, the helmet of King Boabdil of Granada, the shield of Francis I., and the camp-chair of Charles V. In a corner of the hall are arranged the trophies of the Ottoman armies—helmets studded with gems, spurs, gilded stirrups, the collars of slaves, daggers, scimitars in velvet sheaths, with rings of gold, embroidered and inlaid with pearl; the spoils of Ali Pacha, who was slain on the flag-ship at the battle of Lepanto, his caftan brocaded with gold and silver, his girdle, sandals, and shields, the spoils of his sons, and the banners stripped from the galleys. On another side are votive crowns, crosses, and the necklaces of Gothic princes. In another room are articles taken from the Indians of Mariveles, the Moors of Cagyan and Mindanao, and the savages of the most remote islands of Oceanica; collars of snail-shells, stone pipes, wooden idols, reed flutes; ornaments made of the claws of insects; slaves’ garments made of palm-leaves with characters scribbled on them to serve as fetiches; poisoned arrows and axes of the executioners. And then, wherever one turns, there are royal saddles, coats of mail, culverins, historic drums, shoulder-belts, inscriptions, memorials and images of every time and every land, from the fall of the Goths to the battle of Tetuan, from Mexico to China—a storehouse of treasures and of masterpieces from which one goes out amazed and exhausted, to return to consciousness as if it were a dream, with one’s memory weary and confused.

If a great Italian poet shall one day wish to sing the discovery of the New World, nowhere will he be able to find so powerful an inspiration as in the Naval Museum of Madrid, because in no other place will he feel so profoundly the original air of the American wilderness and the subtle presence of Columbus. There is a room called the “Cabinet of Discoveries:” the poet on entering this room, if he really has the soul of a poet, will reverently uncover his head. Wherever one’s glance falls in the room one sees an image which stirs his blood. One is no longer in Europe nor in the century; one is in the America of the fifteenth century; one breathes that air, one sees those places, and lives that life. In the middle is a high trophy of the arms taken from the Indians of the newly-discovered land—shields covered with the skins of wild beasts, arrows of cane with feathered notches, wooden swords with sheaths woven of twigs, with hilts ornamented with horsehair, and scalp-locks falling in long streamers; clubs, spears, enormous axes, great swords with teeth like those of a saw, shapeless sceptres, gigantic quivers, garments of monkey-skin, dirks of kings and executioners, arms of the savages from Cuba, Mexico, New Caledonia, the Carolinas, and the most distant islands of the Pacific—black, uncouth, and horrible, suggesting to the imagination confused visions of terrible struggles in the mysterious shadows of the virgin forest, in an endless labyrinth of unknown trees. Among the spoils of the savage world are pictures and memorials of the Conquerors: here the portrait of Columbus, there that of Pizarro, farther on that of Hernando Cortez; on one of the walls the map of America by Juan de la Cosa, drawn during the second voyage of the Genoese upon an ample canvas dotted with figures, colors, and signs which were intended to direct expeditions into the interior of the country. Near the map is a bit of the tree under which the conqueror of Mexico lay on that famous “night of sorrow” after he had opened a passage through the immense army that awaited his coming in the valley of Otumba; also a vase turned from the trunk of the tree near which the celebrated Captain Cook died; models of the canoes, boats, and rafts used by the natives; a circle of portraits of illustrious navigators, in the middle of which is a large painting of the three ships of Christopher Columbus, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, at the moment when America was discovered, with all the sailors standing on the decks waving their arms and cheering lustily, greeting the new land and giving thanks to God. There is no word which expresses the emotion which one feels at the sight of that spectacle, no tear worth that which then trembles on the eyelash, no soul that does not at that moment feel itself ennobled.

The other rooms, of which there are ten, are also full of precious objects. In the room next to the Cabinet of Discoveries there are collected the relics of the battle of Trafalgar—the painting of the Holy Trinity which was in the cabin of the “Royal Trinidad,” and which was rescued by the English a few minutes before the ship went to the bottom; the hat and sword of Frederick de Gravina, the admiral of the Spanish fleet, who was killed that day; a large model of the Santa Anna, one of the few ships that escaped from the battle; banners and portraits of admirals, and paintings which depict episodes of that tremendous struggle. And besides the relics of Trafalgar there are many other things which affect the mind no less powerfully, as a chalice of wood from the tree called ceiba, in whose shade was celebrated the first mass at Havana, on the 19th of March, 1519; Captain Cook’s cane; idols of the savages; flint chisels with which the Indians of Porto Rico fashioned their idols before the discovery of the island. And beyond this there is another great room where, on entering, one finds one’s self in the midst of a fleet of galleys, caravels, feluccas, brigantines, sloops, and frigates—ships of all seas and of all ages, armed, gayly decked, and provisioned, so that they need only a wind to put to sea and scatter to all parts of the world. In the other rooms there is an exhibition of machinery, ordnance, and naval armor; paintings which represent all the maritime exploits of the Spanish people; more portraits of admirals, navigators, and mariners; trophies from Asia, America, Africa, and Oceanica, crowded and piled one above another, so that one must pass them on the run to see everything before nightfall. On coming out of the Naval Museum it seems as if you are just returning from a voyage around the world, so much have you lived in those few hours.

There is also at Madrid a large museum of artillery, an immense museum of the industrial arts, a fine archeological museum, a remarkable museum of natural history, as well as a thousand other things that are worth seeing; but it is necessary, however, to sacrifice the description of them for the marvellous Museum of the Fine Arts.

The day on which one enters for the first time a museum like that of Madrid forms a landmark in a man’s life. It is an important event, like marriage, the birth of a child, or the entrance upon an inheritance; for one feels the effect of it to the end of one’s life. And this is true because a museum like that of Madrid or that of Florence or that of Rome is a world: a day passed within its walls is a year of life: a year of life stirred by all the passions which are able to animate one in real life: love, religion, patriotism, glory; a year of life in the enjoyment it gives, in the instruction it imparts, in the thoughts it suggests, in the pleasure to be derived from its memory in the future; a year of life in which one reads a thousand volumes, feels a thousand sensations, and meets with a thousand adventures. These thoughts were in my mind as I approached with rapid steps the Museum of the Fine Arts, situated to the left of the Prado as one comes from the street Alcalá; and so great was my pleasure that on reaching the doorway I stopped and said to myself, “Let us see: what have you ever done in your life to deserve an entrance here? Nothing! Well, then, on that day when some misfortune comes upon you bow your head and consider that your account is balanced.”

As I entered I unconsciously raised my hat: my heart beat fast and a slight shiver ran through me from head to foot. In the first room there are only some large paintings of Luca Giordano. I passed them by. In the second I was no longer myself, and, instead of staying to look at paintings one by one, I postponed that examination and made the circuit of the gallery almost on the run. In the second room there are some paintings of Goya, the last great Spanish painter; in the third, which is as large as a square, are masterpieces of the great masters. On entering you see on one side the Madonnas of Murillo, on the other the saints of Ribera; a little farther on, the portraits of Velasquez; in the middle of the hall, paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, Andrea del Sarto, and at the end those of Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Correggio, Domenichino, and Guido Reni. You turn back and enter a great room to the right. There you see at the end other paintings of Raphael; on the right and left, more of Velasquez, Titian, and Ribera; opposite the entrance, Rubens, Van Dyck, Fra Angelico, and Murillo. Another is devoted to the French school—Poussin, Daguet, Lorraine. In two other rooms of vast size the walls are covered with paintings of Breughel, Teniers, Jordaens, Rubens, Durer, Schoen, Mongs, Rembrandt, and Bosch. In the other rooms, of equal size, there is a medley of the works of Joanes, Carbajal, Herrera, Luca Giordano, Carducci, Salvator Rosa, Menendez, Cano, and Ribera.

You walk for an hour and have seen nothing. For the first hour a war is waging: the masterpieces struggle for the possession of your soul. The Conception of Murillo blots out Ribera’s Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew with a flood of light; Ribera’s Saint James obliterates Joanes’ Saint Stephen; Titian’s Charles V. dooms the Count-Duke de Olivares of Velasquez; Raphael’s Pasmo de Sicilia casts all the paintings around it in the shade; the Drunkards of Velasquez, with their reflection of bacchanalian joy, somewhat disconcert the faces of the neighboring saints and princes; Rubens overthrows Van Dyck; Paolo Veronese triumphs over Tiepolo, and Goya kills Madrazo.