[45] “The windows, which are chiefly composed of curious wooden lattice-work, serving to screen the inhabitants from the view of persons without, as also to admit both light and air, commonly project outwards, and are furnished with mattresses and cushions.”—Lane's Arabian Nights, vol. i., p. 192.
[46] It is strange that Ford should have confounded the reja with the celosía (Handbook, vol. i., p. 153). However, he opportunely quotes the Spanish proverb, Muger ventanera tuercela el cuello si la quieres buena (“The remedy for a woman who is always thrusting her head from the casement is to twist her neck”).
[47] Almagro Cardenas calls it “part of a celosía” (Museo Granadino, p. 79); but as it can never have been a window-grating, this term is incorrect. Gómez Moreno calls it, not too lucidly, “a wooden balustrade forming squares and rectangular figures in the manner of a celosía” (Guía de Granada, p. 421). Valladar (Guía de Granada, edition of 1906, p. 117) calls it simply a balustrade, and this, it seems to me, is the only term which truthfully describes the object.
[48] My readers are no doubt aware that every Spanish hamlet has its wooden image of the Virgin, badly executed as a rule, and rendered doubly hideous by a gaudy gown. Most of these local images are believed to hold the power of working miracles, or at least to have been fashioned and conducted to their present shrine by supernatural agency—on which account the populace and their pastors call these latter imagenes aparecidas, as distinct from manufactured images. Such are the Virgins of Montserrat, Granada, and numerous other cities, towns, or villages of this illiterate and ill-starred Peninsula. The curious may refer for every kind of detail to Villafañe's Compendious History of the Wonder-working Images of Spain, which numbered in this author's day (his book was published in 1740) one hundred and eighty-nine. But the most extraordinary miracle of all was that which is recalled, with pious gravity, by Bertaut de Rouen. Speaking of the gilt-wood image of Nuestra Señora del Pilar at Zaragoza, he says:—“On y void quantité de lampes d'argent et on m'en raconta un miracle qu'il me fut impossible de ne pas croire. C'est d'un pauvre homme qui ayant eu la jambe coupée pour une blessure, et s'estant bien recommandé à Nostra Señora del Pilar, il se trouva un jour avec sa mesme jambe qu'il avoit déja fait enterrer. Y'ay sceu l'histoire du chirurgien mesme qui coupa cette jambe et de quantité de témoins de veuë. Il n'y a que quinze ans que cela est arrivé, mais l'homme est mort depuis peu.”—Journal du Voyage en Espagne, p. 203.
[49] It is due to Martínez Montañes to mention that in many of his contracts he stipulated that the painters of his statuary should be chosen by himself, “so as not to corrupt the outline and the sentiment of the figures.”
[50] In Spanish he is called Felipe de Borgoña, but Martí y Monsó says that the proper spelling of the surname is Biguerny.
[51] Zarco del Valle, Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de las Bellas Artes en España, pp. 161, 162.
[52] “The stalls of the choir are neatly carved, and hung with escutcheons of princes and noblemen, among which I remarked the arms of our Henry the Eighth.”—Swinburne.
[53] This kind of parenthetical remark or prayer is one of the many Muslim phrases that have passed into the regular service of the Spanish Christian.
[54] Wood is the usual material for these altar-screens, though sometimes marble was employed, or stone, or silver. Of Genoese marble is the retablo (end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century) of the Cartuja del Paular in the Lozoya valley; of stone, those of the parish church of San Nicolás at Burgos (end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century), and of the “chapel of the tailors” in Tarragona Cathedral; while a silver retablo, in the Renaissance style, was that of the church, now demolished, of Santa María at Madrid.