Casa de Frascito Sanchez

Casa de Frascito Sanchez   

John Frederick Lewis, 1834 

Tinted lithograph 

The image illustrates the state of neglect of the buildings in the monumental complex of the Alhambra in the early nineteenth century. Lewis depicts the fourteenth-century Partal Palace with the Torre de las Damas, as it appeared in the 1833: a privately owned building that had been modified for residential use. The distinctive open arches of the palace had been filled with masonry. As indicated by the title of the lithograph, the house was named after its owner, Francisco Sánchez. Richard and Harriet Ford rented the building from Sánchez in the summer of 1833, when John Frederick Lewis joined them in Granada. Lewis has included animals and figures to give a flavour of local life.  

Later in the century, the building was sold to the German banker Arthur von Gwinner. After dismantling the wooden ceiling inside the tower and installing it in his mansion in Berlin, Gwinner transferred ownership of the house to the Spanish state in 1891. In the early twentieth century the Partal Palace was restored to its original appearance, featuring its distinctive portico of five open arches and a pond in front of the building. The wooden ceiling from its tower, however, remains in Berlin as part of the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art.  

Title: Casa de Frascito Sanchez.   

Author/Artist: John Frederick Lewis. 

Technique and Material: Tinted lithograph. 

Size: 260 x 360 mm (image), 550 x 370 mm (page).  

Published: Plate 6 from Lewis’s sketches and drawings of the Alhambra, made during a residence in Granada, in the years 1833-4. London: Hodgson Boys & Graves. [1835].  

Date: 1834. 

Marks and Inscriptions: on the plate, bottom centre: ‘Casa de Frascito Sanchez’; right: ‘J.F.L. 1834’; lower edge, left: ‘I.F.L 1835 del et lith’. 

Institution: Barry Ife Collection.