The Picturesque Antiquities of Spain / Described in a series of letters, with illustrations representing Moorish palaces, cathedrals, and other monuments of art, contained in the cities of Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville.

by Nathaniel Armstrong Wells

The good pictures in Toledo are not very plentiful. It is said some of the convents possessed good collections, which were seized, together with all their other property. Many of these are to be seen in the gallery called the Museo Nacional, at Madrid. Others have been sold. Those of the cathedral have not been removed; but they are not numerous: among them is a St. Francisco, by Zurbaran; and a still more beautiful work of Alonzo del Arco, a St. Joseph bearing the Infant. It is in a marble frame fixed in the wall, and too high to be properly viewed: but the superiority of the colouring can be appreciated, and the excellence of the head of the saint. In the smaller sacristy are two pictures in Bassano's style, and some copies from Raphael, Rubens, and others. At the head of the great sacristy, there is a large work of Domenico Theotocopuli, commonly called El Greco, (the head of the school of Toledo) which I prefer much to the famous Funeral of the Count Orgaz, in the church of Santo Tonie, which, according to some, passes for his masterpiece. In the first are traits of drawing, which forcibly call to mind the style of the best masters of the Roman school, and prove the obligation he was under to the instructions of his master Michel Angelo. The subject is the Calvary. The soldiery fill the back ground. On the right hand the foreground is occupied by an executioner preparing the cross, and on the left, by the group of females. The erect figure of the Christ is the principal object, and occupies the centre, somewhat removed from the front. This is certainly a fine picture; the composition is good, and the drawing admirable, but the colouring of the Greco is always unpleasing.

In the Funeral of Count Orgaz it is insufferably false; nor, in fact, is it easy to conjecture to what sort of merit this picture owes its celebrity. It possesses neither that of conception, nor that of composition, nor of expression: least of all that of colouring. All that can be said in its favour is, that the row of heads extending from one end of the canvass to the other, across the centre, are correct portraits of personages of note, who figured in the history of the epoch. The worst part of all is, the Heaven of the upper plan of the picture, into which the soul of the Count has the bad taste to apply for admission. This was, in fact, one of the works which gave occasion to the saying of a critic of a contemporary school, who declared that the Glorias (heavenly visions) of the Greco looked like Infernos, and his Infernos like Glorias.

In the Transito there is an Adoration, a charming picture, apparently by Rembrandt. There are here and there good pictures among the other churches, but none very remarkable. In general, the most attractive objects are the old picture-frames, and other gilded ornaments and wood carvings. All these, in the taste of the commencement of the last century and earlier, which is at present so much in request, are in such profusion, as would draw tears of admiration from the eyes of a Parisian upholsterer, and showers of bank notes from the purses of furniture collectors.

You will not, I am sure, by this time, object to our quitting Toledo, and making a short excursion in its environs. I shall therefore request you to accompany me to the ruins of a Moorish palace, on the banks of the Tagus, a mile distant from the town, called the Palacio de Galiana. The Princess Galiana was the daughter of Galafre, one of the earlier Arab Kings of Toledo. The widely extended fame of her beauty, is said to have fired the imagination of Charles, son of Pepin, King of France, who resolved to throw himself at her feet as a suitor, and forthwith repaired to Toledo. However glowing the terms in which report had represented her charms, he found them surpassed by the reality; but a prince of a neighbouring state had forestalled him in his suit. This obstacle did not, however, deter him from persisting in his resolution. He forthwith challenged his rival to mortal combat; and, clearing his road to the hand of the princess with the point of his lance, married her, and carried her back with him to Paris.

The attachment of her father to this princess is said to have been such from her earliest childhood, that he gave himself up entirely to this affection—devoting all his wealth to the gratification of her caprices. The Arab palace, now no longer in existence, took its name from hers, in consequence of a new one having been erected for her by her father, adjoining his own, at a period at which she had scarcely grown out of childhood. The two residences being occupied by succeeding princes as one, received the appellation of los Palacios, (the Palaces) of Galiana.

In addition to her town residence, she soon after had the other palace constructed about a mile from Toledo. To arrive at the ruins, we pass the bridge of Alcantara, and follow the rose-tree promenade. From this a path on the left-hand leads to the spot across a field in garden-like cultivation. The selection made by the Arab princess of this situation, proves her to have possessed, in addition to her beauty, a consummate taste and intelligence of rural life.

The Tagus—a name, by the way, more deserving of poetic fame than many a more widely echoed stream—in this spot, as if conscious of the pains he must shortly undergo, while dashing through the deep and narrow chasm through which he must force a passage around Toledo, seems to linger, desirous of putting off the fated storm. His course becomes more circuitous as he approaches; and indulging in a hundred irregularities of form, he plays round several small thickly wooded islands, penetrating with innumerable eddies and back currents, into flowery nooks and recesses; while here and there he spreads out in a wide sheet his apparently motionless waters, as if seeking to sleep away the remainder of his days on these green and luxurious banks.

In the midst of this delicious region, which recalls to the recollection some of the more favoured spots in England, but which, with the addition of the Spanish climate in early summer, is superior to them all, was placed the palace. The valley for a considerable distance still bears the name of the Garden of the King,—Huerta del Rey. The site of part of the pleasure grounds immediately adjoining the river, is left wild, and covered with woods; and the remainder is converted into a farm in the highest state of cultivation. The ruin consists of three sides of a not very large quadrangle; the massive walls of which are pierced with two stories of arched windows. The remainder of the edifice was doubtless less solid, and has entirely disappeared.

Many a tale of romance would be gathered—many a stirring scene recorded, could so precious a document be brought to light as a chronicle drawn up by some St. Simon of the Court of Toledo, who had recorded the daily events of which this retreat was the theatre, during the time it served as a residence for several successive sovereigns. But in this land words have always been fewer than deeds, and records are the rarest sort of subsisting monuments. One anecdote, however, is transmitted, of which this spot was the scene, in the time of the last but one of the Moorish princes who reigned at Toledo, before its surrender to Alonzo the Sixth.

Alonzo was himself one of the actors on the occasion. In early life he had been deprived by his brother Sancho, King of Castile, of the portion of the kingdoms which fell to his share by the will of his father, Ferdinand the First. On his expulsion from his inheritance he took refuge at the court of the Arab king of Toledo, by whom he was received with every mark of favour which could have been lavished on a friend. The Moor (for the family then reigning was not Arab, although the two races are constantly confounded in Spanish histories) gave him a palace, and settled on him splendid revenues, to be continued during the time he should think fit to accept his hospitality. He even sent invitations to all the friends and followers of his guest, in order that he might be surrounded with his own court.