A variation of this type of literature were the “Visionary Romances,” of which the Carcel de Amor or Prison of Love is perhaps the best example. This was the work of a fifteenth-century poet, Diego de San Pedro, who describes how in a vision he saw “savage Desire” lead an unhappy Knight in chains to torture him in the Castle of Love. This victim’s release brings allegory to an end, and introduces a wearisome round of adventures much in the style of the ordinary romance. The Carcel de Amor was printed in 1492, and delighted the Court of Ferdinand and Isabel; but Cervantes’s Priest and Barber, had they found it, would have undoubtedly pitched it through the library window to increase the bonfire in the courtyard below.
Very different was the Celestina, first printed in Burgos in 1499, and now generally believed to be the work of a lawyer, Fernando de Rojas. Here are no shadowy Knights condemned to struggle through endless pages with imaginary beasts; but men and women at war with sin and moved by passions that are as eternal as human life itself. The author describes it as a “Tragicomedia,” since it begins in comedy and ends in tragedy. It is the tale of a certain youth, Calisto, who, rejected by the heroine, Melibea, bribes an old woman, Celestina, to act as go-between; until at length through her evil persuasions virtue yields to his advances. The rest of the book works out the Nemesis; Calisto being surprised and slain at a secret meeting with his mistress, Celestina murdered for her ill-gotten money by her associates, while Melibea herself commits suicide. The whole is related in dialogue, often witty and even brilliant; but marred for the taste of a later age by gross and indecent passages.
The Celestina has been classed both as novel and play, and might indeed be claimed as the forerunner of both these more modern Spanish developments. It is cast in the form of acts; but their number (twenty-one) and the extreme length of many of the speeches make it improbable that it was ever acted. Nevertheless its popularity, besides raising a host of imitations more or less worthless, insured it a lasting influence on Castilian literature; and the seventeenth century witnessed its adaptation to the stage.
Other dialogues, with less plot but considerable dramatic spirit, are the Coplas de Mingo Revulgo, and the Dialogue between Love and an Old Man by Rodrigo Cota. The former of these represents a conversation between two shepherds, satirizing the reign of Henry IV.; the latter the disillusionment of an old man who, having allowed himself to be tricked by Love whom he believed he had cast out of his life for ever, finds that Love is mocking him and that he has lost the power to charm.
Whether these pieces were acted or no is not certain; but they bear enough resemblance to the Representaciones of Juan del Enzina, which certainly were produced, to make it probable that they were. Juan de Enzina was born about the year 1468, and under the patronage of the Duke of Alva appeared at Ferdinand and Isabel’s Court, where he became famous as poet and musician. Amongst his works are twelve “Églogas,” or pastoral poems, six secular in their tone and six religious, the latter being intended to celebrate the great church festivals.
The secular Representaciones deal with simple incidents and show no real sense of dramatic composition; but with the other six they may be looked on as a connecting link between the old religious “Mysteries” and “Miracle Plays” of the early Middle Ages and the coming Spanish drama. Their author indeed stands out as “Father” of his art in Spain, for a learned authority of the reign of Philip IV. has placed it on record that “in 1492, companies began to represent publicly in Castile plays by Juan del Enzina.”
If the literature of Spain during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries may be described by the general term “transitional,” marking its development from crudity of ideas and false technique towards a slow unfolding of its true genius, painting at the same date was still in its infancy; while architecture and the lesser arts of sculpture, metal-work, and pottery had already reached their period of greatest glory.
Schools of painting existed, it is true, at Toledo and in Andalusia; but the three chief artists of the Court of Isabel came from Flanders; and most of the pictures of the time exhibit a strong Flemish influence, which can be recognized in their rich and elaborate colouring, clearly defined outlines, and the tall gaunt figures so dear to northern taste. Of Spanish painters, the names of Fernando Gallegos “the Galician,” of Juan Sanchez de Castro a disciple of the “Escuela Flamenca,” and of Antonio Rincon and his son Fernando, stand out with some prominence; but it is doubtful if several of the pictures formerly attributed to Antonio, including a Madonna with Ferdinand and Isabel kneeling in the foreground, are really his work.
In architecture at this time the evidence of foreign influence is also strong. On the one hand are Gothic Churches like San Juan de Los Reyes at Toledo or amongst secular buildings, the massive castle of Medina del Campo; on the other, in contrast to these northern designs, Renaissance works with their classic-Italian stamp, such as the Hospital of Santa Cruz at Toledo or the College of the same name at Valladolid. Yet a third element is the Moresque, founded on Mahometan models, such as the horseshoe arch of the Puerta del Perdón of the old Mosque at Seville overlaid with the emblems of Christian worship. The characteristics of North, South, and East, are distinct; yet moulded, as during the previous centuries, by the race that borrowed them to express ideals peculiarly its own.
“Let us build such a vast and splendid temple,” said the founders of Seville Cathedral in 1401, “that succeeding generations of men will say that we were mad.”