The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

Telegraphs are spreading over Spain, as they are over the world, civilized or not. Spain is one of the last countries where they could become popular; but the business of any kingdom that has relations with the outside world must be armed with the telegraph, or it cannot hold its own. In traversing wild and secluded parts of the Peninsula, I have been surprised by finding the telegraph poles set up, and the wire stretching on, over hill and dale. Spain is slow, and the telegraph is not demanded here by the energy and enterprise of the people as it is elsewhere. Despatches of more than a hundred words are not sent. To or from any part of the Peninsula ten words may be sent for about twenty-five cents, twenty words for fifty cents, thirty words for seventy-five cents; but the count includes each word written by the sender, date, address, signature, and if a word is underscored it counts two. Great precautions are taken to insure accuracy in transmission, and a small extra charge is made for delivery.

Before coming to Spain I had been told that the picture-gallery in Madrid is the richest in the world. It seemed to me an idle tale, the boast of boasting Spaniards, repeated until perhaps somebody believed, as I certainly did not. But having seen it, day after day, for a week, I cheerfully cast a vote in its favor. It is superior to any other in Europe; and, of course, in the world. It is not complete in the series of art studies. There are gaps of time which the student may desire to see filled. But there are few who visit these great European galleries as learners. The world comes to see them for the momentary pleasure to be found in the contemplation of the pictures. And they will be astonished to find that so many and so splendid pictures have been gathered and preserved in the Spanish capital.

The gallery is open to the public only on Sundays, but the director allows it to be shown every day to strangers, who are expected to give a fee to the attendants. On rainy days it is always shut; an obvious reason is, that visitors will soil the floors with their shoes, but a better reason is that the gallery is so badly lighted that in gloomy weather some of the pictures are quite invisible.

Who would suppose that sixty pictures by Reubens are to be seen in one gallery in Spain! and fifty-three by Teniers; and ten grand pictures by Raphael; and forty-six by Murillo; and sixty-four by Velasquez, some of them very large and magnificent; and twenty-two by Van Dyck; and forty-three of Titian, who spent three years in Madrid, by invitation of Charles V.; ten of Claude Lorraine; and twenty-five by Paul Veronese; and twenty-three by Snyder; and more than thirty by Tintoretto!!! There are more than two thousand here. Among so many, of course, some are good for nothing, as in every large collection. But one gallery in the world has masterpieces only,—that is in the Vatican. And there you have less than a hundred pictures, all told. But they are all great. Here, as in Florence and Dresden, good, bad, and indifferent have been hung together; and perhaps the contrast makes the good appear better, and the bad worse.

Murillo, the greatest of Spanish painters, is here in his glory. We have associated his name with his “Immaculate Conceptions” more than with any other of his works. One copy was brought to America a few years ago, and is now in the gallery of W. H. Aspinwall, Esq. A duplicate is in the Louvre, at Paris. And still another is in Madrid. These are three originals, undoubtedly, and they have been copied in every style of human art, especially in Paris, until they are as common as heads of the Saviour, all the world over. Yet this is not the Murillo,—not his “Conception.” It is a grand conception by the artist, but it is not the great picture of that subject on which, more than any other, his fame is founded. This is in another attitude, with another expression; the Virgin is looking downward, and not gazing, in an ecstasy, heavenward. The artist, in this picture, imagines the Virgin Mary at the moment she becomes conscious of the fact that by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost she is to be the mother of the Son of God! The accessories of the painting are of no account, but into the countenance of the Virgin he would throw the expression such as a spotless maiden might be supposed to have when first alive to such a wondrous, awful, yet transporting and delightful thought, “I,—I,—of all the daughters of Israel, am the highly favored among women. Of me is to be the Messiah! I am the mother of the promised Saviour!”

Not far from this is a picture of the Vision of St. Bernard, exhibiting marvellous skill. The head is one of those prodigies of the painter’s art, that is to haunt the memory in after years. Like the “Communion of St. Jerome,” in the Vatican, to see it is to have it photographed in the mysterious chamber of the brain. Raphael painted one of his most remarkable pictures, “The Christ sinking under His Cross,” for a convent in Sicily. It is said by some to be a greater work than the “Transfiguration,” which is held to be the finest picture existing. To me, this in Madrid is the most impressive, the most nearly perfect. It is taken at the moment when Simon, the Cyrenian, attempts to lift the crushing cross, while the patient sufferer, with a face radiant with love and holy resignation, says to the weeping women near, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and for your children.”

Titian’s equestrian portrait of Charles V. is sublime,—like a majestic mountain, or a mighty rock in a desert. The solemn grandeur of the picture is indescribable. The man and his times, a whole volume of biography and history, on one grand tableau, seen and remembered. Perhaps it would be as well to forget the women that Titian seems to have been fond of painting. Two of them here are not less perfect, many think they are more perfect, than the Venus of the Tribune. In other times the zealous priesthood condemned these nudities to the flames, with heretics, as corrupters of the people; but some have been saved.

The picture that I desired more than any other to carry away and cherish as a life-long treasure, is one by Correggio. After his resurrection the Saviour appeared to Mary, and she supposed it was the gardener; but Jesus, turning, said to her, “Mary,”—and the truth burst upon her, it was her Lord! That moment of transport is the time the artist has seized for the representation of the kneeling and rejoicing Mary and Jesus. The love and tenderness in his look, the joy and reverence in hers! What beauty, too: how the yellow hair falls in living lustre on her fair shoulders, and her eyes speak the full expression of her yearning soul. “Jesus said unto her, ‘Mary.’”

In another hall I found a picture of great merit, unmentioned by the guide-book, and by a painter unknown to me even by name before. It is a Virgin and Child, with four venerable saints kneeling before them. The artist is Bias del Prado. Few pictures in any gallery deserve more admiration than this. The heads of the old men are done with great power, and the thoughtful feeling in the face of the Virgin shows that the artist had both the genius to conceive, and the skill to create, an idea on the canvas, quite equal to the best of many others who have won a world-wide fame. And scattered through these long apartments, in narrow halls and basement rooms, in bad lights, and some almost in the dark, are many gems of rare value, “blushing unseen,” and worth a better place, and deserving wider renown. It would be tedious to read even a brief mention of the celebrated pictures of the famous old masters here, and that form so large a part of the attractions of Europe.

There are very few minor galleries in Madrid. Probably there has been a lack both of private wealth and taste to make collections. In one of these we found Murillo’s “Queen Isabel of Hungary healing the Lepers,” a picture that would be admired as one of his greatest and best, if it were not so true to life as to make one almost sick to look at it. But this is the height of the highest art. Birds have been deceived by painted fruit. Bees have sought honey in flowers on the walls. And perhaps this cheating of the senses, even to disgust, is the perfection of human skill. But the imitation of the material is easy. If portrait painting were merely the reproduction of the form and features, it is the lowest department of the art. But to conceive the expression that belongs to the character of a saint, a prophet, a hero, a sibyl, a Madonna, and thus to create an ideal that will demonstrate its reality and truthfulness to an unbelieving or indifferent world, challenging admiration and asserting its own immortality, this is the attribute of genius only, and such is not the birth of every day or age.