[64] Ordenanzas de Granada, p. 191.
[65] Those of my readers who have visited Spain will probably have seen the inlaid iron-work of Eibar and Toledo. The objects chiefly manufactured in this style are brooches, bracelets, scarf and hat pins, photograph frames, jewel and trinket boxes, watches, and cigarette cases. The workmanship is often elaborate and costly, nor can it be denied that the red or greenish gold has an effective look against the jet-black surface of the polished or unpolished iron. Upon the other hand, the taste displayed in the design is seldom good; while in a climate with the slightest tendency to damp, the iron is apt to rust and tarnish, and the fine inlay to loosen.
[66] Serrano Fatigati, in the Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones.
[67] For a detailed account of these pulpits see Villa-amil y Castro's article in the Museo Español de Antigüedades.
[68] Payments made to “Master Juan Francés” are recorded by Zarco del Valle, Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de las Bellas Artes en España, pp. 320, 321.
[69] History of Architecture, p. 303. They possess, too, the advantage, from their ponderous solidity and fixedness, that most of them are still extant and in the best of preservation, although Napoleon's Vandals rooted up the chapel rejas of the Church of Santo Domingo at Granada, and turned them into bullets; just as their general, Sebastiani, threw down the tower of San Jerónimo to make a trumpery bridge across the trickling stream of the Genil. Scores of thousands of such crimes, not to forget the blowing up of the gate and tower of the Siete Suelos, were perpetrated by the French all over Spain; yet Washington Irving, in a strangely infelicitous passage of his Tales of the Alhambra, congratulates the invaders for their reverential treatment of the noblest monuments of Spanish art!
[70] So, in Spain, does war appear to have been connected even with the peaceful reja. Similarly, in 1518, the contractors for the grille of the Chapel Royal of Granada were Juan Zagala and Juan de Cubillana, “master-artillerymen to their highnesses.” Valladar, Guía de Granada, 1st ed., p. 302, note.
[71] A quaint but somewhat tautological and prosy letter concerning matters of his craft, addressed by Francés to the cardinal-archbishop of Toledo, is published in the Museo Español de Antigüedades, article Los Púlpitos de la Catedral de Avila, by Villa-amil y Castro. The reja of the presbytery at Burgo de Osma is thus inscribed: “Izo esta obra maestre Joan Francés maestre mayor.” The top consists of repetitions of a shield containing five stars and supported by angels, lions, and gryphons. Two iron pulpits project from the lower part of the grille, and a swan of the same metal, with extended wings, rests upon either pulpit.
[72] A Dominican friar, summoned to Seville in 1518, to make her cathedral rejas. He also made the pulpits of the high altar in 1531, and was working in this city as late as 1547. Account-sheets penned by his hand were still extant a century ago, and Cean conveys to us some knowledge of Fray Francisco, receiving as the wages of his labour, now a score or so of ducats, now a bushel or two of corn. The friar, whom the canons spoke of with affection for his many virtues, seems to have been a handy man, seeing that between his spells of reja-making he put the clock of the Giralda into trim, and built an alarum apparatus to rouse the cathedral bell-ringer at early morning.
For the sums paid to Fray Francisco and to Sancho Muñoz for their work, see Gestoso, Diccionario de Artífices Sevillanos, vol. ii. pp. 365 et seq.