A Year in Spain Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1829 edition. Excerpt: ...at her pregnancy. The last is called the Pearl--a famous painting, formerly owned by the kings of England, but which was sold either by Cromwell or by Charles II., for two thousand pounds sterling. It is now esteemed above all price. The subject is the Holy Family, and the whole piece is allowed by painters to possess in an unusual degree that perfection of design, beauty of expression, and that inimitable grace for which Raphael is said to be unequalled. It is to be regretted that natural coloring cannot be numbered among the attributes of Raphael; all his paintings which I have seen, have a bronzed tinge, which prevents the most momentary deception. It does not, however, require that a man should be a connoisseur, and ready to bow down to received and long established opinions, to admit the merits of the Pearl. Indeed I have never seen anything so beautiful as the face of the Virgin, whether on canvass or in nature. The Escorial likewise possesses a fine library of thirty thousand volumes; four thousand of which are manuscripts, and half of these Arabian. A very valuable collection of Arabian manuscripts, arranged in a room of the convent, were destroyed by fire in 1671. The convent of the Escorial was formerly tenanted by one hundred and sixty monks of the order of Saint Jerome, and then its revenue amounted to one hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year, proceeding from estates and from a flock of thirtysix thousand merino sheep, which lived upon the neighbouring mountains in summer, and were driven in winter to the plains below in quest of a warmer clime.t They had beside a small flock of a thousand, which they kept in the neighbourhood to supply their table; for the Jeromites are good livers, and are not accused either of abstinence or...