“I agree with you entirely, my dear madam, as to the moral of the sports you speak of; only I think the New York amusements are the most corrupt and corrupting. And when I write on ‘Bull-Fights in Seville,’ I shall do my best to put it in your words.”
“If you do,” said she, “send me a copy of your book; I want my husband to read it. He can’t bear bullfights.”
CHAPTER X.
SEVILLE.
DON MIGUEL DE MANARA, a Spanish rake, one of many like the Don Juan who stands as type of his race, having spent his life in the way rakes love to live, undertook to be religious in his later years. He had sowed his wild oats, and never got much of a crop, and now that death was likely to call for him soon, he thought to get ready for his coming by making over to some pious uses what he had not spent upon his lusts. According to the theory of that church which takes care of all Spanish souls, he made a sure thing of it by founding a hospital, to which was given the name of “La Caridad.” A brotherhood, whose special vocation was to minister to persons sentenced to death, and to bury their bodies, took charge of it. It is famous far beyond Seville and Spain. Its patients are tended by young men of good families in the city, who minister by turns to the sick and dying brought to this Charity. Perhaps some of the young gentlemen nurses, like the founder, have an eye to a compromise of their own infirmities, by giving attention to these miserably sick poor.
But the fame of the hospital is so great because it has within its walls some of the noblest paintings in the world!
The building stands in an obscure part of the town, and we had a long search to find it, Antanazio, our guide, being quite unused to take his travellers to hospitals and out-of-the-way churches, as theatres and bull-fights and fandangoes among the gypsies are much more attractive. But we found it; an old woman janitor let us in, and led us to the chapel where the art-treasures are to be seen.
This church is the guardian of the masterpieces of Murillo. His manner is as distinctly marked as Raphael’s or Titian’s, and the power of none of the Italian masters, unless we except Leonardo da Vinci, is greater than his. It was difficult to believe this in Italy, where Murillos are comparatively rare, but here, where alone his greatest and best works are to be found, it is easy to believe that he is among the first. Several of his pictures in this church are of St. John, and in one of them an angel assists the saint in carrying a sick man, and in another the same saint washes the feet of a pauper. The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes is a wonderfully faithful presentation of that sublime scene. But the great picture, the one we specially came to see, is “Moses striking the Rock in the Desert.” Its eloquence tells and pleads its own story: a famished multitude pressing to the gushing stream and gathering the precious waters in their hands; mothers drinking, while their children, with parched lips, are pleading for the life-saving draught; even the beasts declare their joy at the sight of water, and gratitude lights up the faces of the thronging Israelites. But the central, majestic figure in the group, on which the painter’s high art is lavished with a wealth of skill, is Moses, with folded hands and upturned eyes, acknowledging the goodness and the power which this miracle, almost as wondrous to him as to his people, has so suddenly revealed. Near him is his brother Aaron, scarcely less than Moses in the scene, for he, priest-like, is still in the act of prayer. And in the people every form and feature of human life and feeling are portrayed, each after its own kind, with the hand of a master.
There are several pictures here by others, as well as other Murillos, that I have not space to mention. Marshal Soult carried off five of the great pictures by Murillo, and two of them, “Abraham entertaining the Angels,” and the “Prodigal Son,” were bought by the Duke of Sutherland. Wellington recovered, at Waterloo, some of Soult’s spoils of the galleries of Spain. The French are great thieves when they get among pictures or statuary. They once had the Venus de Medicis boxed and ready for Paris. War is pretty much the same game all the world over, and always.
The picture-gallery of Seville was saved from French spoliation by the forethought of a Spanish amateur, who sent all the paintings to Gibraltar before the French reached Seville. We found, to our disappointment, that the museum was closed for repairs, and a special order from the governor was necessary. Instead of sending the order, he promised to send us a guide to conduct us through the gallery the next day. An hour after the time he came, and the only service he came to perform was to lead us to the door of the museum, which was close to our lodgings, and then to receive his fees for this needless service. That was very Spanish. The porter then admitted us and received his fees. Another led us across the court into the hall where the pictures were standing along the walls, unhung, and he received his fees. When the convents in Spain were suppressed, the best pictures among them were gathered into this museum. Murillo painted some of his finest works for the Capuchin convent, which stood near the Cordova gate. One of the sweetest and most perfect of paintings is that of the two saints of Seville, the maidens Justa and Rufina, who held up the giralda, or tower of the cathedral, when it was likely to be blown down in a tempest. In the days of Pagan Spain a procession was passing through the streets bearing an image of Venus, to which the people made homage. Two young women, lately converted to the Christian religion, by name Justa and Rufina, refused to worship the idol, and the multitude in their madness made martyrs of them on the spot. When the Christians became masters of the city, the maidens became its tutelar saints, and are painted as holding the giralda in their hands, in honor of their kind interposition in a storm.