82 GRANADA 



in the plateresque style. The doors of the choir 

 are richly and tastefully inlaid with ebony and 

 mother of pearl, cedar and tortoise-shell, and 

 were the work of a friar, Manuel Vazquez, who 

 died in 1765. The sanctuary, in the baroque 

 style, is enriched with precious marbles, some 

 richly veined with agates. On some of the slabs 

 the hand of Nature has traced the semblances of 

 human and animal forms. In the adjoining 

 sacristy, various marbles have been combined so 

 as to produce an effect dazzling and gorgeous in 

 the extreme. The hall is certainly one of the 

 most remarkable in Spain. Scarcely less marvel- 

 lous are the exquisitely inlaid doors and presses. 

 The generally bad style of the church is also 

 redeemed by a statue of St. Bruno, the founder 

 of the Carthusian Order, ascribed to Alonso Cano, 

 and some pictures by Bocanegra, Giaquinto, and 

 Cotan. The last named, a friar, was responsible 

 for the pictures in the cloister, representing the 

 martyrdom of Carthusian monks in London by 

 the tyrant Henry VIII. and the brigands who 

 acted as his officers. 



The Cartuja was formerly much richer in 

 works of art, but, like San Jeronimo, it was 

 ransacked by the French under Sebastiani, who 

 exhibited, as on all occasions, the discrimination 

 of a dilettante coupled with the rapacity of a 

 bandit. 



