“A silver lemon-squeezer, gilt and chiselled, with white scroll-work about the mesh thereof, through which the lemon-juice is strained.”

“A large round silver salt-cellar, in two halves, gilt all over, with scales about the body, and two thick twisted threads about the flat part. One side of it is perforated.”

Among the property of the duchess, Doña Mencía Enriquez, we find “a small gold padlock, which opens and closes by means of letters”; two gold bangles; a gold necklace consisting of forty-two pieces “enamelled with some B's”;[59] a gold signet ring with the duchess's arms; and “a gold and niello box with relics, for wearing round the neck.” Also, resting on a table covered with silver plates, “a box of combs; the said box wrought in gold upon blue leather, containing five combs, a looking-glass, a little brush, and other fittings; girt with a cord in gold and blue silk.”

The seventeenth century and a race of native Spanish kings declined and passed away together. A dynasty of France succeeded to the throne of Spain, and with the foreigner came a fresh reactionary movement towards the neo-classic art, coupled with the canons of French taste. Henceforth a century of slow political reform goes hand in hand with slow suppression of the salient parts of Spanish character. Madrid transforms or travesties herself into a miniature Versailles, and national arts and crafts belong henceforward to a Frenchified society which found its painter in Goya, just as the preceding and eminently Spanish society had found its painter in Velazquez.

Another of the causes of the falling-off in Spanish orfebrería at this time, is stated to have been the craftsmen's overwhelming tendency to substitute the slighter though venerable and beautiful gold or silver filigree (Plate [xviii].), for more artistic and ambitious, if less showy work in massive metal. Thus, in 1699, a supplementary chapter of the Ordinances of Seville complained in bitter phrases of this tendency, denouncing it as “a source of fraud and detriment to the republic,” and deploring that “of the last few years we have forsaken our goodly usages of older times, in the matter of the drawings entrusted to the candidates who come before us for examination.”

In the same year the goldsmiths' and the silversmiths' guild of Seville enacted that none of its members were to work in filigree, unless they were qualified to execute the other work as well. Such efforts to suppress this evil were not new. More than a century before, on April 15th, 1567, the inspectors of the guild had entered the shop of Luis de Alvarado, silversmith, and seized some filigree earrings “of the work that is forbidden,” breaking these objects on the spot, and imposing a fine of half-a-dozen ducats on the peccant of obvious Alvarado.[60]

The modern gold and silver work of Spain is thus exempted from a lengthy notice, seeing that its typical and national characteristics have succumbed, or very nearly so. I may, however, mention the giant silver candelabra in the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca, which were made at Barcelona, between 1704 and 1718, by Juan Matons and three of his assistants. They measure eight feet high by four feet and a quarter across, weigh more than eight thousand ounces, and cost 21,942 pounds, 15 sueldos, and 11 dineros of Majorcan money. The State seized them during the Napoleonic wars, in order to melt them down for money; but the chapter of the cathedral bought them back for eleven thousand dollars.

EARLY CHALICE AND CROSS IN FILIGREE GOLD-WORK
(Church of Saint Isidore, León)