George Borrow loved Spain well, but he loved not the solitude in which
Philip V. found respite from the cares of State and from the dominating
personality of Elizabeth Farnese. ‘So great is the solitude of La
Granja,’ he writes, ‘that wild boars from the neighbouring forests, and
especially from the beautiful pine-covered mountain which rises like a
cone directly behind the palace, frequently find their way into the
streets and squares, and whet their tusks against the pillars of the
porticos.’ But at the time this was written the country was overrun with
Carlists. Candido lurked in the undergrowth, Garcia and his
fellow-conspirators had driven Queen Cristina from the palace, and
nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the town had fled. Even in the season
La Granja may be described as solitary, but it is not desolate, to quote
another word that Borrow employed to describe it. Situated at an
altitude of nearly four thousand feet above the sea, it has been styled,
with much truth, a ‘castle in the air.’ Surrounded as it is by lovely
woods, which extend for leagues in every direction, by gardens, lakes,
and streams, the Palace of San Ildefonso, in the month of flowers, is a
paradise and a miracle combined. For the site, although not exactly hit
upon at random, was selected with a royal inconsequence of the
difficulty and expense involved in the labour of transforming a monkish
farmhouse into a palace rivalling the glittering creations of
Versailles.
The Bourbon Philip V., like his Austrian predecessor Philip II.,
conceived a craving for solitude, and while hunting at Valsain in 1720
he observed La Granja (the Grange, or farmhouse) of the Segovian monks
of El Parral, and coveted it for a place of retirement. Philip’s nature
had undergone a great change since he entered Spain, a handsome,
resolute soldier, in 1701. His first wife, Marie Louise of Savoy, had
been at his side during the troublous, early days of his reign, and in
1714, when Spain was at peace for the first time since he assumed the
crown, his wife died. Under the stress of warlike excitement and the
gentle, sustaining sympathy and influence of Marie Louise, Philip had
proved himself a prince of high spirit, determination, and resource, but
under the domination of the ambitious, intriguing, masterful Elizabeth
he lost all initiative and sunk into a moody inaction, which
subsequently developed into lethargic insanity. It has been said that,
personally, Philip did little good for Spain, and it must be admitted
that, when it was most incumbent on him to play the man, he weakly
involved the country in prolonged wars at the bidding of his wife. If
the national revenue increased enormously during his reign, the
expenditure was more than proportionately increased in the construction
of the three palaces he left to Spain and in the extravagant collection
of works of art with which he furnished them. From Versailles he had
brought the love of letters which prompted him to found the Royal
Spanish Academy, the National Library, the Royal Academy of History, and
the School of Nobles. His training at the Court of Louis XIV. was also
evident in the change in the social customs of the country. The nobles
adopted French fashions in costumes and cookery, they affected French
furniture and French books. The king, who had thus stamped his personal
tastes upon the Court, saw his opportunity of further gratifying his
French sympathies by creating a ‘Spanish Versailles’ and a ‘Spanish
Fontainebleau.’
It was on the rocky eminence of La Granja, overlooking Segovia’s brown
towers and the distant Roman aqueduct, that Philip V. gave orders for an
estate to be laid out that should be reminiscent of his beloved
Versailles. The fact that no suitable level existed on the sharp
mountain slope for the erection of a palace mattered nothing. The level
must be made. Tens of thousands of tons of rock were blasted away; tens
of thousands of tons of soil were brought up from the sunny plain below;
and on the astonishing ledge thus torn out of the sides of the mountain,
the Royal Palace arose in a garden of the most beautiful flowers and
adorned with the choicest fountains in all Spain.
The building itself, which cannot compare with the Palace of Versailles,
is a severe-looking structure of two stories, and is the antithesis of
the proud, gloomy Escorial on which it turns its back. The façade facing
the gardens is white and cheerful, but the multitude of windows gives it
the air of a monster conservatory. The place, which is so essentially
French, appears incongruous amid surroundings which are so
characteristically Spanish; but the Castilian people find no fault with
it on that account. It is, they say, a worthy château of the King of
Spain. As he is the first and loftiest of all earthly sovereigns, so his
abode soars nearest to Heaven. The argument is Spanish and unanswerable!
The cost of building the palace and laying out the gardens, and of
acquiring the pictures and sculptures to adorn the saloons, reached the
enormous total of forty-five million pesetas, the precise sum in which
Philip V. died indebted. In this luxurious retreat in the mountains of
Segovia he surrendered himself to the morbid mysticism of that form of
devotion which exaggerates the vanity of all earthly things. Sunk at
length into a condition of religious melancholy, in January 1724, at La
Granja, he swore to renounce his crown for ever and abdicate in favour
of his son Louis. Seven months later the boy-king died at the age of
seventeen, and Philip, reluctantly acceding to the urgent requests of
his wife, who had already tired of the domestic retirement of La Granja,
resumed the burden of sovereignty.
Many strange historical events have taken place in the Palace of San
Ildefonso since Philip V. declared before the Baño de Diana that it had
cost him three million pesetas and had amused him for three minutes. It
was here, in 1783, that the great king, Charles III., received the
Count d’Artois when he started upon his fruitless mission to wrest
Gibraltar from the English. Here, in 1796, Godoy, the notorious
favourite of Charles IV. and the paramour of his wife—who in the
previous year had earned the title of Prince of the Peace by negotiating
the shameful surrender by which the war between Spain and France was
concluded—signed the famous and fatal treaty by which Spain was dragged
at the tail of France until such time as the French Emperor chose to
annex it.
In 1830, when Ferdinand VII. lay ill at La Granja, and his heir and
brother, Don Carlos, was holding himself in readiness to assume the
responsibility of sovereignty, Queen Cristina, anxious for her
three-year-old daughter’s interest, induced the king to abolish the
Salic law and declare his daughter Isabel to be his successor. Three
years afterwards, Ferdinand died, and three years later the king’s
abrogation of the constitution was revoked by a mob of common soldiers,
led by Sergeant Garcia, who compelled the queen to renounce her royal
rights and proclaim the Cadiz constitution of 1812. George Borrow, who
was in Madrid at the time these events were taking place, had the story
of the revolution of La Granja from eye-witnesses, and it is related
here in his words. ‘Early one morning,’ he writes—‘it was the morning
of 12th August 1836—a party of these soldiers, headed by a certain
Sergeant Garcia, entered her apartment, and proposed that she should
subscribe her hand to this constitution, and swear solemnly to abide by
it. Cristina, however, who was a woman of considerable spirit, refused
to comply with this proposal, and ordered them to withdraw. A scene of
violence and tumult ensued, but the Regent still continuing firm, the
soldiers at length led her down to one of the courts of the palace,
where stood her well-known paramour, Muñoz, bound and blindfolded.
“Swear to the constitution, you she-rogue,” shouted the swarthy
sergeant. “Never!” said the spirited daughter of the Neapolitan
Bourbons. “Then your cortejo (lover)—he was in reality her
husband—shall die!” replied the sergeant. “Ho! ho! my lads; get ready
your arms and send four bullets through the fellow’s brain.” Muñoz was
forthwith led to the wall and compelled to kneel down, the soldiers
levelled their muskets, and another moment would have consigned the
unfortunate wight to eternity, when Cristina, forgetting everything but
the feelings of her woman’s heart, suddenly started forward with a
shriek, exclaiming, “Hold! hold! I sign! I sign!”’
Still more recently, it will be remembered, Alfonso XIII. carried his
English bride from the wedding festivities of Madrid to spend their
honeymoon amid the natural beauties of the scenery of Segovia. The Royal
Palace consists of a large rectangular building, in the centre of which
is preserved the ancient cloister of the friars’ hospitium, now called
the Patio de la Fuente. The idea for the central façade of the palace
originated with the Abbé Juvara, the Italian architect who was summoned
to Spain to assist Philip V. in his palace-building operations, but it
was his pupil, Sachetti, who prepared the finished designs. It was
carried out in 1739 at a cost of 3,360,000 reals. The general façade of
the edifice at the back, overlooking the Palace Square, recalls the
Roman-Spanish style created at the Escorial by Herrera. One of the best
views of the palace is from the back, where the building with its
slate-covered towers at the sides, and the Collegiate Church in the
centre, surmounted by its elevated cupola and the simple towers
accompanying it, compose an agreeable picture. The principal entrance to
the edifice is in this façade facing the Palace Square, and leads to
the vestibule of the principal staircase. This is of simple
construction, and is composed of two flights of stairs which meet at the
top landing-place. The steps are of granite, as well as the pillars of
the balustrade which support a small iron banister painted white and
gold. The whole well of the staircase is surmounted by a semicircular
vault finished by a lantern, in which are the windows. This staircase
did not exist in the time of Charles IV., as may be ascertained by
examining the plans of the palace made at that time, and its
construction should be attributed to Ferdinand VII.
The palace is a structure of two stories. On the ground floor are the
‘Galeria baja de estatuas’ (lower gallery of statues), one of the rooms
in which is the dining-room, the High Court of Halberdiers, the offices
of the Lord High Steward, and other dependencies; while the upper floor
consists of the ‘Galeria oficial’ (Official Gallery), used for
receptions, audiences, and councils of ministers, and the private
apartments of their Majesties and Royal Highnesses. The ‘Galeria de
estatuas’ is open to any one provided with a permit supplied by the
Administration Patrimonial when the Court is absent. The apartments are
generally decorated in good style. Most of the furniture is in the
Empire style, especially that in the Official Gallery; but there is also
some in Louis XIV., Regency, and Louis XV. style.
The collection of pictures, especially of the Flemish and Dutch schools,
was very fine, for Queen Isabella Farnese acquired in Rome for this
palace in 1735, through the Venetian painter G. B. Pittoni, and on the
recommendation of the Abbé Juvara, a considerable number of very notable
pictures of these schools. On the creation of the Royal Prado Museum in
1829, the best were taken there by order of Ferdinand VII., and there
are at present in its catalogue three hundred and fifty-one pictures
which came from this palace, among them three by Correggio, two by Luca
Giordano, four by Il Guido, one by Paul Veronese, six by Tintoretto, one
by Claudio Coello, sixteen by Murillo, two by Ribera, four by Velazquez,
four by Van Dyck, fourteen by Rubens, and twenty-four by Teniers.
Among the pictures of the original collection which exist at the present
time, there are none of great merit; but the large number painted by
Michel Ange Houasse, of the French school, who was born in Paris in
1675, and died in Spain in 1730, being the chief painter of Philip V.,
are of no little merit. The marble statues that enrich the Lower
Gallery, some of them Greek ones of great merit, like the Castor and
Pollux group, form the greater part of the sculptures of the Madrid
Museum. They were acquired in Rome through the celebrated Venetian
sculptor Camillo Rusconi, and came from the collection made by Queen
Christina of Sweden. Their cost, 12,000 doubloons, or 36,000 dollars,
was defrayed by Philip V. and Isabella Farnese equally.
The lower gallery of statues were painted al fresco by Bartolomé
Ruscha, and with them were placed, under the direction of Don Domingo
Sanni, and by order of the royal founders, the statues of the collection
formed by Queen Christina of Sweden and acquired by them in Rome. The
sculptors Fremin and Thierri, who at the time were doing work for the
gardens, restored many of them and added some others by themselves, but
the majority of the best statues were removed in 1829 to the sculpture
room in the Madrid Museum, where they are still preserved and constitute
almost its only statuary wealth. At present there are in these rooms
very few marble statues, and nearly all those forming their decoration
are copies in plaster of the original ones, and they have therefore
lost the great artistic value which the pure Greek sculpture in the
collection of Queen Christina of Sweden conferred on them. Among them
the most valuable pieces to be seen here are the group of Castor and
Pollux; two colossal statues of Julius Cæsar and Augustus in alabaster,
with heads, arms, and legs of gilded bronze; a fine urn which it is
believed contained the ashes of Caius Caligula; the representations of
Day and Night; a very handsome Apollo; a Daphne; a Venus coming out of
the bath; a Faun leaning on the trunk of a tree; another Venus with her
knee on a tortoise; many handsome busts of deities and Roman emperors;
the nine Muses; two superb heads of Antinous and Alexander; the
recumbent statue of Ariadne, a replica of the one in the Museum of the
Vatican; a copy of the Venus de Medici; an excellent small statue
representing Seneca; Leda with the swan; a head of Homer; a colossal
head, in bronze, of Queen Christina of Sweden; and Ganymede attacked by
the eagle. With this array of sculpture and antiquities, the Palace of
Ildefonso may be said to be more like a museum than a home; and in
truth, apart from the Royal Chapel which contains the tomb of Philip V.
and his queen, Elizabeth Farnese, and boasts some superbly embroidered
vestments and mantles of the Virgin, the visitor must seek the beauties
of the palace in its church and in its gardens and fountains.
In order to enhance the splendour of the worship that should be
conducted in the Palace Chapel, Philip V. obtained from Pope Benedict
XIII. a bull, Dum Infatigabilem, dated 20th December 1724, making it a
collegiate church. Among other provisions in this bull it conceded that
the new collegiate church should be the mother-church of all the
churches and chapels of the town and its abbey; that it should have a
chapter composed of an abbot, four officiating prebendaries, eight
canons, six prebendaries, and four chaplain-acolytes; that the abbots
should be a royal appointment with exclusive ecclesiastical jurisdiction
throughout the district to be marked out by the Pope’s Nuncio, and at
liberty to use the pontifical insignia and dress; that the abbot and
canons should devote half the masses celebrated to the royal founders
during their lifetime, and for their souls after their death, and that
the canons should wear the choral dress of those of St. Peter’s in Rome.
The same bull contained the king’s promise to endow the new collegiate
church with the sum of 8625 gold ducats (276,000 reals of present
Spanish money), to be distributed as follows: 5764 ducats for the fabric
and its dependents, and the remainder, 2861, for the abbot and
prebendaries.
In the reign of Charles III. the collegiate church was renovated at the
expense of the royal treasury and under the direction of Marshal
Sabatini, the vaults were painted with frescoes by Bayeu and Maella, and
the mouldings and reliefs were decorated by Vega. By the decree of
Joseph Bonaparte, given in Madrid on May 30, 1810, the collegiate church
was suppressed, and it was reduced to a simple private chapel of the
Royal Palace, uniting its parish with that of the Cristo Church, and
adding the territory of the abbey to the bishopric of Segovia. The
church was only closed four years, and on June 24, 1814, Ferdinand VII.
restored things to their original condition, this event being celebrated
by four days of public rejoicing and fêtes.
The church is in the shape of a Latin cross, the ends of the four arms
being occupied by the high altar, choir, and two principal doors.
The ‘platillos’ of the four vaults, surrounded by a moulding, were
painted al fresco by Maella, and all the paintings on the cupola are
by Bayeu, brother-in-law of Goya. Some of the studies for these
paintings were purchased by Queen Isabel II., and are now in the Madrid
Museum.
The gardens with which Philip V. surrounded his palace cover an area of
three hundred and sixty acres, and are the finest in the kingdom, while
even the admirers of Versailles admit that La Granja has the more
amazing fountains. From the grand walk one looks out across a panorama
of the rocks and forests of New Castile, or gazes down upon the
beautiful extravagancies of these literally hand-made gardens. The
formal design of the ground-plan, the regularity of its well-ordered box
avenues and mazes, the artificiality of its numerous fountains, its
marble vases and statuary, and the baths and summer-houses that rise out
of the dwarf-like vegetation, are all in striking contrast with the wild
grandeur of the distant scenery. Yet, artificial as the aspect
undoubtedly is, the gardens are a sheer delight, for beyond the
flower-beds are masses of yellow broom and springing ferns, and the
grass is a blaze of wild hyacinths, forget-me-nots, cowslips, and
periwinkle. Higher up the mountain, to where the sky-line shows, 3000
feet above the palace, are woods of chestnut trees, oaks, elms, and
innumerable pines, in which myriad butterflies of every hue disport
themselves, and scores of streams trickle down to feed the royal
fountains in the gardens below. The statues representing Lucretia,
Bacchus, Apollo, Daphne, America, Ceres, and Milo, and many others, are
of no great artistic value; while the fountains, to the number of
twenty-six, are unique. The Fama, which throws up its waters to a height
of 130 feet, is the most renowned; and from another fountain, compact of
sculptured flowers and fruits, forty spouts send out their two-score
jets 80 feet high. The Cenador is a single vast cascade of gleaming
water from the mountain snows. Then there are the Ranas (Frogs), Ocho
Calles, Canastillo, Tres Gracias, and the Neptuno, at which, says M.
Bourgoin, the Egotist read Virgil and quoted ‘quos ego.’ Last of all,
there is the wonderful Baño de Diana, to which reference has already
been made.
Here, where Art is truly French, and Nature is truly Spanish, where even
Nature conceives in bleak discomfort for eight months in each year to
bring forth four months of flowers and faërie, the King of Spain and his
English bride retired to surroundings amid which a honeymoon will not
be forgotten. Madrid has its magnificent royal palaces; El Pardo boasts
its wondrous tapestries; Aranjuez its gardens, and Rio Frio its
orchards; El Escorial is the eighth wonder of the world, and Miramar
looks over the yellowest of golden sands into the bluest of blue waters;
but La Granja, in the Guadarrama Mountains, is that place apart where
lovers may find a bower
‘Of coolest foliage, musical with birds’;
and here one may listen to
‘The murmurs of low fountains that gush forth
I’ the midst of roses!’
The auxiliary residence to the palace of San Ildefonso, located some
fourteen miles from it beyond the city of Segovia, is the royal house of
Rio Frio, situated in a picturesque park which is full of game of every
description. The small elegant building which stands in the centre of
the park was begun by Isabel, the widow of Philip V., and was completed
internally by Alfonso XII. It is a two-storied square building, the four
sides of which are all exactly alike, and a large square court, paved
with granite flags, occupies the centre of the building. A large portico
of Tuscan pilasters surrounds the court and supports a covered gallery
on the level of the first floor. From this court a noble staircase,
consisting of two independent flights, which start from the vestibule in
opposite directions, each subdividing into two other parallel ones, on
the level of the first landing. The two independent flights end at the
first floor at the opposite ends of the room which is used as a
guardroom for the halberdiers. The steps are of granite, and the
balustrades, which are supported by figures of children in various
attitudes, are of a pretty yellow limestone. The sculpturing is also in
stone, but it was unfortunately painted white, thus depriving it of its
artistic merit, and giving the appearance of plaster. The whole of this
work is from the chisel of Bartolomé Seximini. The entire weight of the
staircase rests on four large Tuscan columns (monoliths), constructed of
granite, and eight semi-columns of the same kind.
The apartments on the first floor, which with the exception of the
sacristy and chapel on the ground floor are the only rooms that call for
description, are decorated and furnished with a simplicity that would
seem to betoken actual poverty. This is accounted for by the fact that
the royal family very seldom resides in this palace; and at such times
whatever is required is conveyed there from the palace of San Ildefonso.
On the other hand, the collection of pictures is superior in number and
merit to that of San Ildefonso, for among its six hundred and
fifty-eight pictures there are many originals of the great masters of
the different schools. There is one each of Van Dyck, Titian, Albert
Dürer, and Goya; two by Zurbaran, Navarrete, Guido de Reni, Pantoja de
la Cruz, and Correggio; eight by Jordán, three by Teniers, four by
Domenichino, and six by Poussin.
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