Palace of the Escurial [sic]

Palace of the Escurial [sic] 

Alfred Robert Freebairn after David Roberts, 1837 

Steel engraving 

This architectural view of Philip II’s grand palace, monastery and royal pantheon has been drawn from a high, imaginary viewpoint and may well have been based on an earlier published illustration yet to be identified. The plate shows much more detail than can have been captured from sketches made on the spot but it enables the viewer to appreciate the overall layout of the site. The traditional explanation is that the design is in effect a grid iron, intended to commemorate the martyrdom of St Lawrence, whose feast day, 10 August, fell on the date of Philip II’s victory over the French at the Battle of St Quentin in 1557. More recently, scholars have seen stronger allusions to descriptions of the layout of the Temple of Solomon by the Judeo-Roman historian Flavius Josephus. 

Built of local grey granite, and on a massive scale, El Escorial inevitably strikes the visitor as austere in appearance; but in reality it is not nearly so forbidding as it appears in this plate, densely engraved by Alfred Freebairn, printed in monochrome and with the building largely in shade. The contrast with Roberts’s distant view, lithographed by Thomas Sydney Cooper (3.7) could not be greater. 

The print was reproduced in Thomas Roscoe’s last volume of The Tourist in Spain (1838), which includes a lengthy commentary on ‘the famous monastery’ of El Escorial. Roscoe thought that ‘everything had been exaggerated, except the beauty of the site, which, though striking at first, is not properly appreciated till one has strolled leisurely through the grounds, and studied, from every point of view, the character of the encircling landscapes. Above all things that Spain has to show, the scenes round the Escurial [sic]…are perhaps the most truly poetical, and the best calculated to leave a lasting impression on the heart’ (p. 148).   

Title: Palace of the Escurial [sic] 

Author/Artist: Alfred Robert Freebairn (1794-1846, engraver) after David Roberts (1796-1864, artist). 

Technique and Material: Steel engraving on paper. 

Dimensions: 94 x 122 mm. 

Published: Plate [14] from Thomas Roscoe, The Tourist in Spain: Biscay and the Castiles. Illustrated from drawings by David Roberts. London: Robert Jennings & Co, 1837, facing page 137. 

Date: 1837. 

Marks and Inscriptions: lower edge, left: ‘Drawn by David Roberts’; centre: title as above / (referring to prior publication as separate sheet?) ‘London. Published Oct. 28. 1836, by Robert Jennings & Co 62, Cheapside’; right: ‘Engraved by Freebairn’. 

Institution: Barry Ife Collection.