Palacio de las Dueñas is a palace in Seville

Seville

Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...

, Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, currently belonging to the House of Alba

House of Alba

The House of Alba is an important Spanish aristocratic family who derive from the 12th century Mozarab nobility of post-conquest Toledo. Their claim to Alba traces to 1429, when the first Álvarez de Toledo was made Lord of the City of Alba de Tormes...

. It was built in the late 14th century in the Renaissance style with Gothic and Moorish influences. The palace is one of the major historic homes in the city of great architectural and artistic heritage. The poet Antonio Machado

Antonio Machado

Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, known as Antonio Machado was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98....

 was born here, as were Carlos Falcó, Marqués de Griñón and Marqués de Castelmoncayo. On October 5, 2011 Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, 18th Duchess of Alba

Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, 18th Duchess of Alba

Doña María del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva, 18th Duchess of Alba de Tormes, Grandee of Spain is the current head of the House of Alba and the third woman to carry the title in her own right...

 married here. It became a national monument, now a "Bien de Interés Cultural

Bien de Interés Cultural

A Bien de Interés Cultural is a category of the Spanish heritage register. This category dates from 1985 when it replaced the former heritage category of Monumento nacional in order to extend protection to a wider range of cultural property...

", on June 3, 1931. It is open to the public by appointment.

History

The palace was constructed in the late 14th century, a time associated with a robust economy in the area, which included the construction of the Alcazar Real

Alcázar of Seville

thumb|right|250px|Baths of Lady María de PadillaThe Alcázar of Seville is a royal palace in Seville, Spain, originally a Moorish fort....

 and the Casa de Pilatos

Casa de Pilatos

La Casa de Pilatos is an Andalusian palace in Seville, Spain, which serves as the permanent residence of the Dukes of Medinaceli. The building is a mixture of Renaissance Italian and Mudéjar Spanish styles...

.
It was built by the Pineda family, Lords of Casabermeja

Casabermeja

Casabermeja is a town and municipality in the province of Málaga, part of the autonomous community of Andalusia in southern Spain. The municipality is situated approximately 20 kilometres from the provincial capital....

. In 1496, Pedro Pineda, Mayor of the city council and his wife, Doña Maria de Monsalve, sold their home to Doña Catalina de Ribera, widow of Governor Don Pedro Enriquez, to raise ransom money to retrieve Don Juan de Pineda, taken prisoner by the Moors

Moors

The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...

. Thereafter, a series of expansions occurred, later forming a Renaissance palace under the auspices of Fernando Enrique de Ribera y Quinones and especially his widow Doña Inés Portocarrero y Cardenas (great-great-grandmother of Ana de Velasco y Girón

Ana de Velasco y Girón

Ana de Velasco y Téllez-Girón was a Spanish noblewoman and mother of John IV of Portugal, the first Portuguese King of the Braganza Dynasty....

).

The building became the property of the House of Alba after the marriage of the 5th Marchioness of Villanueva del Río with the 4th Duke of Alba. For a time, it was the residence of Lord Holland

Henry Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland

Henry Richard Vassall-Fox, 3rd Baron Holland PC was an English politician and a major figure in Whig politics in the early 19th century...

, an ardent admirer of Spanish literature

Spanish literature

Spanish literature generally refers to literature written in the Spanish language within the territory that presently constitutes the state of Spain...

, and the author (1805) of a memoir on Lope de Vega

Lope de Vega

Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...

 and Guillen de Castro

Guillén de Castro y Bellvis

Guillén de Castro y Bellvis was a Spanish dramatist of the Spanish Golden Age.A Valencian by birth, he soon achieved a literary reputation. In 1591 he joined a local literary academy called the Nocturnos...

. Machado lived in the palace during his early childhood, his father serving as the Duke of Alba's caretaker. The palace name derives from the monastery of Santa María de las Dueñas, which in 1248 was known to house nuns and servants of Saint Ferdinand and Alfonso X the Wise. The monastery was in the palace's periphery and was destroyed in 1868. The palace underwent significant renovation in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Architecture

The palace consists of a series of courtyards and buildings. The style

Style

Style may refer to:* Style , an aspect of literary composition* Style , in art and painting, either the aesthetic values followed in choosing what to paint or to the physical techniques employed* Architectural style...

 ranges from Gothic art

Gothic art

Gothic art was a Medieval art movement that developed in France out of Romanesque art in the mid-12th century, led by the concurrent development of Gothic architecture. It spread to all of Western Europe, but took over art more completely north of the Alps, never quite effacing more classical...

- Moorish to the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, with local influences in the bricks, shingles, tiles, whitewashed walls and pottery

Pottery

Pottery is the material from which the potteryware is made, of which major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made is also called a pottery . Pottery also refers to the art or craft of the potter or the manufacture of pottery...

. Its mixed style resembles that of Casa de Pilatos and Casa de los Pinelos.

Interior
The palace is fitted with long passageways. As in the Casa de Pilatos, the staircase of this palace was built beneath a vaulted

Vault (architecture)

A Vault is an architectural term for an arched form used to provide a space with a ceiling or roof. The parts of a vault exert lateral thrust that require a counter resistance. When vaults are built underground, the ground gives all the resistance required...

 roof. At the top floor of the palace, there is a room whose ceiling is of an octagonal shape and is decorated with alfarje

Alfarje

Alfarje is a type of horizontal wooden ceiling and intertwined in many cases and further styled and painted found in Spanish Moorish architecture. The ceiling structure is made through a series of beams called girders....

 gold.
Exterior
The entry door is of Mudéjar

Mudéjar

Mudéjar is the name given to individual Moors or Muslims of Al-Andalus who remained in Iberia after the Christian Reconquista but were not converted to Christianity...

 style. The palace was fitted with eleven patios, nine fountains, and over 100 marble columns. Of these, one patio remains, and it is surrounded by a gallery with columns. The Andalusian patio

Andalusian Patio

The typical Andalusian patio is originated from Persia or Arabia, where it has long been customary to decorate houses and palaces with large areas full of life, places full of gardens and plants dominated by fragrant flowers, fountains, canals, wells, ponds and some other decorative figure, ,...

, like a similar one at Casa de Pilatos, dominates the exterior of the property. At the entrance to the palace, in the main archway, there is the shield of the Duchy of Alba in tiles, made by Triana of Seville in the 17th or 18th century.

Grounds and chapel

The courtyard garden, divided into four parts in keeping with its traditional Islamic style, includes tiled paths and a centralized raised fountain. The palace garden's lemon trees and fountain are recurring symbols in Machado's poetry. Behind the garden is a courtyard surrounded by arches with columns of white marble. The arch situated west of the courtyard in the lower galleries gives access to the building that was used as the chapel palace. The 15th-century chapel has fared badly during restorations. The chapel's altar contains several tiles with metallic reflections, typical of 16th-century Seville ceramics.

Collections

One of its main attractions is a large, decorative art collection which contains 1,425 artefacts. According to the newspaper El País these items are protected under Andalusian law, prohibiting their sale and safeguarding their place in the palace. There is a large collection of Spanish paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries including Jacopo Bassano

Jacopo Bassano

Jacopo Bassano , known also as Jacopo dal Ponte, was an Italian painter who was born and died in Bassano del Grappa near Venice, from which he adopted the name.- Life :...

 (Los cacharreros), Sofonisba Anguissola

Sofonisba Anguissola

Sofonisba Anguissola was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.-The Anguissola family:...

, Annibale Carracci

Annibale Carracci

Annibale Carracci was an Italian Baroque painter.-Early career:Annibale Carracci was born in Bologna, and in all likelihood first apprenticed within his family...

, Francesco Furini

Francesco Furini

Francesco Furini was an Italian Baroque painter of Florence.His early training was by Matteo Rosselli , though Furini is also described as influenced by Domenico Passignano and Giovanni Biliverti . He befriended Giovanni da San Giovanni...

 (La creación de Eva), Luca Giordano

Luca Giordano

Luca Giordano was an Italian late Baroque painter and printmaker in etching. Fluent and decorative, he worked successfully in Naples and Rome, Florence and Venice, before spending a decade in Spain....

, Giovanni Paolo Pannini

Giovanni Paolo Pannini

Giovanni Paolo Panini or Pannini was a painter and architect, who worked in Rome and is mainly known as one of the vedutisti ....

, José de Ribera (Cristo coronado de espinas), Francisco Antolínez

Francisco Antolínez

Francisco Antolínez de Sarabia, who was born at Seville in 1644, was nephew of Joseph Antolinez. He was an historical and landscape painter, and studied in the school of Murillo, whose style and manner of colouring he followed...

, Joaquín Inza and Neri di Bicci

Neri di Bicci

Neri di Bicci was an Italian painter of the Renaissance. A prolific painter of mainly religious themes, he was active mainly in Florence and in the medium of tempera. His father was Bicci di Lorenzo. His grandfather, Lorenzo di Bicci was also a painter in Florence, a pupil of Spinello...

. There is also a watercolor by Jackie Kennedy, painted during her visit in 1960 when she stayed in the bedroom once used by France's Empress Eugénie de Montijo

Eugénie de Montijo

Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick, 16th Countess of Teba and 15th Marquise of Ardales; 5 May 1826 – 11 July 1920), known as Eugénie de Montijo , was the last Empress consort of the French from 1853 to 1871 as the wife of Napoleon III, Emperor of...

. The paintings represent only a small part of the family's artworks, most of which are in Madrid's Palace of Liria

Liria Palace

The Liria Palace or Palacio de Liria is a Neoclassical palace in Madrid, Spain. Built around 1770 by the Duke of Berwick on designs of Ventura Rodríguez, in the early 19th century it passed to the inheritance of the House of Alba. All but the facades were destroyed during the Spanish Civil War...

. The Palacio de las Dueñas also has a significant collection of antique furniture, ceramics, tapestries and other artefacts.