Landscape with the Puente de Diablo, Martorell (Barcelona)
Richard Ford, October 1831
Watercolour
Ford depicts a dramatic view, looking down to the Llobregat River ravine, near Martorell, with the Puente de Diablo in the centre and a majestic mountain rising in the background. This drawing is one of several created by Ford on the spot during his first riding tour through Spain in the autumn of 1831. The journey took him from Granada to the eastern coast, reaching Barcelona, and then inland to Zaragoza and Madrid, before returning to Andalucía.
Ford’s drawings served as private records of his travels and were shared primarily with family and friends. Undoubtedly, they aided Ford’s memory while he was writing his Handbook for Travellers in Spain and Readers at Home in the 1840s, nearly a decade after his sojourn in Spain. In his Handbook, Ford included the Puente de Diablo as an attraction on ‘Route 46 from Barcelona to Urgell’, explaining that the stone bridge was constructed under the Roman general Hannibal and that it had been restored in the eighteenth century under King Carlos III. He specified that ‘the pointed centre arch, steep and narrow to pass, is 133 feet wide in the span and the work of the Moors; the triumphal arch at the further extremity is Roman. The foundations are perfect, and are wrought with bossage masonry’. Ford drew comparisons with the Roman heritage in other parts of Spain, notably the bridges in Mérida and Toledo.
This stone bridge was destroyed in the Spanish Civil War and reconstructed in the 1960s.
Title: Landscape and the Devil’s Bridge at Martorell.
Author/Artist: Richard Ford (1796-1858).
Technique and Material: Watercolour on paper.
Size: 175 x 255 mm.
Published: n/a.
Date: Autumn 1831.
Marks and Inscriptions: lower right ‘At Martorell is the singular bridge over the turbid Llobregat, which is attributed to Hannibal by the learned, and to the devil, as usual by the vulgar’.
Institution: Ford Family Collection.
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Details
Title
Landscape with the Puente de Diablo, Martorell (Barcelona).
Artist
Richard Ford (1796-1858).
Date
Autumn 1831.
Medium and Support
Watercolour on paper.
Dimensions
175 x 255 mm.
Marks and Inscriptions
lower right ‘At Martorell is the singular bridge over the turbid Llobregat, which is attributed to Hannibal by the learned, and to the devil, as usual by the vulgar.’.
Institution
Ford Family Collection