[67] Among these ruins, at five miles' distance from the city, pieces of common brick have come to light; but no glazed pottery of any kind, whether as foseifesa, azulejos, or mosaic.
[68] Dozy's version of The History of Almagreb, by Ibn-Adzarí the Moor; p. 253.
[69] According to Gestoso, the colours in use among the Almohades consisted of green, black, caramel or honey, and deep purple. These colours underwent no change until the sixteenth century.
[70] Gestoso says that florid Gothic and Renaissance motives are found occasionally in the older cuenca tiles. This was, however, quite exceptional.
[71] A plaque belongs to Señor Gestoso which proceeds from the demolished Mudejar church of San Miguel at Seville. It measures fifteen inches high by ten wide, and is decorated with a representation, in bas-relief, of the Coronation of the Virgin. The eyebrows, eyelids, and lips of the figures are executed in cobalt upon a thick layer of white glaze, and strongly recall the method of Lucca della Robbia. Gestoso considers that this plaque was made in the latter part of the fourteenth century. If so, it is antecedent to the work of della Robbia (whose Resurrection upon one of the doors of the Duomo of Florence dates from 1438) by a good many years. A similar example, also by an unknown hand and representing the Coronation, is in the chapel of the Sagrario of Seville Cathedral.
[72] Certain azulejos, signed by Niculoso and dated 1500, were formerly existing in the palace of the Counts of El Real de Valencia in the city of this name. These tiles were executed in relief, and proved that Niculoso did not work exclusively in the Italian style.
[73] In Portugal, tiles which Gestoso believes to have been made at Seville, exist in Coimbra cathedral, the church of San Roque at Lisbon, and the two palaces of Cintra. In our own country, Seville tiles are stated by Marryat and Demmin to line the walls of the Mayor's Chapel at Bristol, whither they were doubtless conveyed by one of the numerous English merchants who traded between Spain and England, and who are known to have made their home at Seville in the sixteenth century. Another tile of Seville workmanship, proceeding from Haccombe Church, Devonshire, is in the British Museum.
[74] The pisano process is believed by Gestoso to have succumbed before the cuenca. He says he is aware of no pisano tiling which can be dated from as late as the second half of the seventeenth century.
[75] Guía de Granada; pp. 35, 36.
[76] Pure red is the rarest of the colours employed in Moorish tile-work. It is, however, found in a single part of the Alhambra; namely, among the superb tile-decoration of the Torre de la Cautiva.