3 JANUARY 1846, Page 22

FINE ARTS.

WELLS'S ANTIQUITIES OF SPAIN.*

No country in Europe, Italy alone excepted, offers such an abundance and variety of attraction to the student of art and the lover of the picturesque as Spain. Its scenery and architecture—the costumes, character, and modes of life of the people—striking and peculiar in themselves, are ;nade more remarkable by the startling contrasts presented by a strange inter- mingling of the extremes of civilization and barbarism, luxury and poverty splendour and squalor, levity and gloom. The Arab conquerors of Spain have left monuments of their greatness and magnificence, in the Alhambra of Granada and the Alcazar of Seville, that rank among the most re- nowned relics of ancient art; and they infused into the nation an Oriental taste for sumptuous ornament, that is even now a conspicuous charac- teristic of the Spanish people. The gorgeous rites and stately architecture of the Romish Church, when the Crescent paled before the Cross, have engrafted new forms of beauty that assimilate well with the Moorish style, though essentially different from it; and the Moresque-Gothic edi- fices of Spain, notwithstanding their alloy of Italian architecture and an excess of carved decorations, are superb and imposing. The cathedrals of Seville and Toledo rival each other in richness of embellishment, if not in size; and that of Seville may vie with the noblest structures of the pointed style in Christendom, in grandeur though not in purity of design. Mosques and chapels, tombs and towers, gateways and fountains, of beautiful archi- tecture, adorn the principal cities and towns; and convents and museums abound in fine pictures by great painters of the Italian as well as the Spanish school. The Museum of Madrid can boast of forty fine works of Titian and ten by Raffaelle,—including the " Spasimo," which is perhaps the most pathetic picture by the Prince of Painters; while the powers of Murillo and Velasquez are only to be fully appreciated by visiting Seville and Madrid. The Spanish school can alone be thoroughly studied in its native. country; the Spanish gallery in the Louvre is a mere collection of odds and ends, and contains no great work and but a few good pictures.

* " The Picturesque Antiquities of Spain; described in it series of Letters. With Il- lustrations representing Moorish Palaces, Cathedrals, and other Monuments of Art, contained in the cities of Barges, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville. By Nathaniel Arm- strong Wells."—Bentley. A desire to study the picturesque characteristics of Spain—where only they can be studied satisfactorily, -in the country itself—led Mr. Nathaniel Wells to make two visits to the Peninsula, one very recently, the other three years-earlier; and, being an accomplished draughtsman, he has not only described but delineated the buildings and other objects that struck him most forcibly. He recorded the impressions he received from time to time, in letters to his friends; which are published in this handsome volume, and illustrated by engravings on wood and steel from the very elaborate drawings of the writer. The purpose of the author gives character and unity to the work; while, by eschewing technical terms and critical disqui- sition, and interspersing descriptions of places, with incidents of travel, anecdotes of persons and traits of national character, he has produced an amusing book for the general reader. Mr. Wells's style, however, is some- what slipshod; and he spoils his stories by laboured attempts to be face- tious, in which a verbose form of periphrasis is unsuccessfully attempted. His views and opinions, even on matters of art, are neither original nor profound, though in the main just; his descriptions are too much in detail, and suggest fragmentary images to the reader rather than a complete and animated whole. His mind seems fitted for the perception of minute as dis- tinguished from- grand characteristics; patient accuracy and elaboration, both in delineation and description, are his forte; and his style of draw- ing is essentially petite, though by no means deficient in effect. The views in the volume are all of an architectural character, and almost rival Daguerreotypes in minuteness of detail; while in point of per- spective and local light and shade the drawings—where they have not been marred by the engraver— are also admirable. The "long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults " of the Cathedrals of Burgos, Seville, and To- ledo—the filagree tracery that covers the florid Gothic facade of the Col- lege of San Gregorio at Valladolid—the sumptuous magnificence of the Moorish Alcazar at Seville—the long vista of the Gallery at Madrid— castles and gateways crested by little turrets fit to figure in a pantomime,— and some exuberant specimens of stone carving on tombs and altars—are the leading features of the illustrations. The bad drawing of the details, and the cutting opposition of black and white in the steel plates, would have led to the inference that Mr. Wells sacrificed form, light, and atmo- sphere, to false and vulgar notions of pictorial effect; but the breadth, and simplicity of styleand accuracy of detail in the wood-cuts, which are well executed, show that the defects of the plates are owing to the engraver, W. F. Starling; who has executed them in a coarse, flimsy, unartistlike manner, as though cheapness rather than excellence had been aimed at. They are a combination of etching, aquatint, and machine-work—the commonest means at the engraver's disposal; and are very ill executed in the mechanical part. The extreme beauty of the original drawings (judging of them from the wood-cuts) merited a better treatment. The delicate outside of white and gold makes the coarse blackness of the plates within appear more repulsive by contrast.