The Story of Seville

by Walter M. Gallichan

We will first visit the Casa de los Taveras, in the Calle Bustos Tavera. The house is principally celebrated as the scene of the tribunal of the Inquisition from 1626 to 1639. In the corridors is a collection of family portraits.

Finer, from the point of view of architecture and adornment, is the Casa de los Marqueses de Torre Blanca, in the Calle de Santiago, number thirty-seven. It has a very beautiful patio, and a splendid marble staircase. These two houses are mentioned as well worth seeing in the little book Sevilla Histórica.

Roaming in the Calle O'Donnell, I peeped into the court of number twenty-four. The fine patio is surrounded with the heads of bulls killed in the arena. Number seventeen in the Calle Alfonso XII. is another handsome casa, with a typical court. Visitors may discover many sumptuous houses in this quarter of the city. The Casa Alba once had eleven courts and nine fountains. It is decidedly Moorish in build, with Renaissance details in the stucco-work. This beautiful palace, in the Calle de Dueñas, was at one time owned by the Ribera family (the Dukes of Acalá). It was begun about 1483. The Casa Alba is larger than the Casa Pilatos, described in the literary chapter of this book.

Mr. Digby Wyatt says of the Casa Alba, in his Architect's Note Book in Spain, that this is one of the rare instances of Renaissance ornamentations executed by Moorish workmen. 'For these, no doubt, they were furnished with drawings or models, since in no other parts of the same building, and especially in many beautiful rooms in the interior, where they have apparently been left to themselves, they have reverted partly to Mudéjar work, and partly to the old types of geometrical enrichment, which may be regarded as specifically their own. Much of this is almost reduced to a flat surface by repeated coats of whitewash.'

The Casa de los Abades is 'more Italian in its plateresque than is usual in other houses in Seville,' says Mr. Digby Wyatt. The mansion was built early in the fifteenth century, and was modified and embellished by the Pinedos, a Genoese family, in 1533. Mr. Wyatt tells us that: 'If it were not for the peculiar engrailed double edging to the arches, the thinness of the marble central window shaft, and a few Oriental turns here and there given to the foliage and enrichments of the mouldings, one could almost believe that this architecture was regular Genoese cinque-cento.' After the Pinedo family, the casa came into the hands of the Abades, members of the Cathedral staff.

A Mudéjar window in the Fonda de Madrid has been sketched by Mr. Digby Wyatt in the afore-mentioned book. This is an ajimez window, 'through which the sun shines.' It is of brickwork and was 'once covered apparently in Moorish fashion with thin plaster, excepting the column which is of white marble.'

We may now visit the Palacio Arzobiscopal, the Archbishop's Palace, in the Plaza de la Giralda. The doors are in the plateresque style. You may enter the courtyard, and ascend the marble staircase, which is one of the most beautiful in the city. The Salón contains some pictures that were formerly in the Cathedral. Among them are three paintings by Alejo Fernandez, an artist of the early Sevillian school, representing the Conception, Birth, and Purification of the Virgin. There are also pictures by J. Herrera and Juan Zamora.

It is a few steps across the plaza to the Casa Lonja. This Renaissance edifice was erected in 1583. The Academy of Painters formerly held their councils in the Lonja. It is now a library, and a repository of archives relating to the Indies. The patio is fine, paved with marble, and surrounded by a double arcade. On the fountain is a statue of Columbus. A marble staircase, constructed in the time of Charles III., conducts the visitor to Achivo General de Indias.

From the Casa Lonja pass down the Calle Santa Tomás to the Hospital de la Caridad. This institution has a church, built by Miguel de Mañara. In the Annales de Sevilla, the author, Ortiz de Zuñiga, says that the record of the Brotherhood of the Holy Charity dates back to 1578, and that the institution had probably existed then for a century. The object of La Santa Caridad was to provide Christian burial for evildoers and offenders against the law of Spain. La Caridad is, however, associated with Don Miguel de Mañara Vicentelo de Leca, Knight of Calatrava, a Don Juan of Seville, who abandoned his profligate life, and became a devout pietist. In his youth, Mañara was a renowned duellist, a boon companion, and a gambler. He was generous to his friends in a spendthrift fashion, and he was cultured enough to expend large sums of his wealth upon the fine arts. Murillo was under his patronage and enjoyed his friendship.