XIV
DOOR OF THE CAPILLA DE LOS VARGAS
(Madrid)
In the Peninsula, the principal centres of this work were Cordova, Seville, Lerida, Barcelona, Ciudad Real, and Valladolid. Cordova, however, was so far ahead of all the rest that leathers decorated in this style were known throughout the world as cueros de Córdoba, or “Cordova leathers.” Another name for them is said to have been cordobanes; but possibly the application of this latter word was less restricted. Bertaut de Rouen wrote in the seventeenth century of Ciudad Real:—“C'est une ville située dans une grande plaine, et dont l'enceinte est assez grande, qui estoit mesme fort peuplée autrefois, mais elle est quasi deserte à present. Il ne luy reste plus rien sinon que c'est là où l'on appreste le mieux les peaux de Cordouan, dont on fait les gans d'Espagne. C'est delà aussi d'où elles viennent pour la pluspart à Madrid. J'en achetay quelques-unes.”
In 1197 Alfonso the Ninth presented the town of Castro de los Judíos to León Cathedral and its bishop, confirming at the same time the tribute which the Jews who occupied that town were bound to render upon Saint Martin's day in every year, and which consisted of two hundred sueldos, a fine skin, and two guadamecís. This tribute had existed since the reign of Ferdinand the First: that is, towards the middle of the preceding century.[25]
None of these primitive leathers now exist, and consequently the details of their workmanship have perished with them. Ramírez de Arellano mentions two small coffers in the Cluny Museum, which date from about the fourteenth century and are decorated with the forms of animals cut from leather and overlaid on velvet. Other guadamecís, though not of the oldest, are in the South Kensington Museum. “The earliest guadamecileros,” says Ramírez de Arellano, speaking particularly of this art at Cordova, “were accustomed to imitate brocade upon their leathers, employing beaten silver together with the colours red, green, blue, black, white, and carmine, applied in oils, or sometimes (although the law prohibited this) in tempera. Gold was not used till 1529, when Charles the Fifth confirmed the Ordinances of this industry. The leather-workers tanned the hides themselves, stamping the pattern from a wooden mould, and then (if we may call it so) engraving on them. The hides were those of rams. The spaces between the decoration were either coloured red or blue, or simply left the colour of the skin; or else the pattern would be wrought in colours on the natural hide. Gold, which at a later epoch almost totally replaces silver, was introduced between 1529 and 1543, and was applied as follows. The artists smeared with oil the parts they wished to figure in raised or sunk relief, and laid the beaten gold upon the oil. They then applied a heated iron or copper mould; the pattern in relief was stamped; and the gold, superfluous shreds of which were wiped away with lint, adhered upon the leather. The irons required to be moderately hot, because if overheated they would burn the hide, or, if not hot enough, the fixing of the gold would not be permanent.”
XV
MUDEJAR DOOR
(Palacio de las Dueñas, Seville)
The importance of this industry in Spain may be judged of from the fact that towards the close of the Middle Ages the guadamacileros of Seville occupied nearly the whole of an important street—the Calle Placentines. Similarly, at Cordova they filled the quarter of the city known as the Ajerquía. “So many guadamecíes are made here,” wrote Ambrosio de Morales, “that in this craft no other capital can compare with her; and in such quantities that they supply all Europe and the Indies. This industry enriches Cordova and also beautifies her; for since the gilded, wrought, and painted leathers are fixed upon large boards and placed in the sun in order to be dried, by reason of their splendour and variety they make her principal streets right fair to look upon.”