“Mr. CALVERT has produced a beautiful book.... It is illustrated with so lavish a richness of colour that to turn its pages gives one at first almost the same impression of splendour as one receives in wandering from hall to hall of the Alcazar of Seville: and this is probably the highest compliment we could pay to the book or its author.”--_Academy._
“This is one of the books to which a simply literary review cannot pretend to do justice. Mr. CALVERT gives a brief record of the Moorish conquest of Spain, but the main purpose of his book is to bring before the English reader the art, architectural and decorative, of the people.... In this volume he deals with and presents, with great wealth of illustration, the relics of their achievement in Cordova, Seville, and Toledo.... The book seems worthy of the subject, and we would gladly give a more effective description of its many beauties.”--_Spectator._
“As a production it is, without doubt, one of the most beautiful we have seen, the illustrations and colour printing, being exquisite. The author evidently knows his subject well, as the description in detail of Cordova, Seville, and Toledo range far and above any other publication. It is certainly one of the most interesting books of the year.”--_Crown._
“This sumptuous volume.”--_Westminster Gazette._
“Scholarly and richly illustrated volume.... Although he himself deprecates the value of the essays accompanying the illustrations of his book, declaring his purpose to have been rather to present a picture than to chronicle the romances of Spanish-Morisco art, Mr. CALVERT has given a very complete and deeply-interesting account of the evolution of that art, which he has skilfully combined with a condensed history of the people who produced it.”--_Connoisseur._
“Just when the new Spanish marriage is attracting attention to a country of departed greatness, Mr. CALVERT’S volume appears with the courtliest of dedications to His Majesty Alfonso XIII. In many respects this handsome volume is a timely wedding present for his Spanish Majesty, as it is a gorgeous literary tribute to the beauty of the jewels in the Spanish Crown--Cordova, Seville, and Toledo. Mr. CALVERT is an enthusiast and an antiquary.... The author himself allows us to regard his volume in the main as a picture book, and we can imagine that many a designer who eschews the noble simplicity of fresh forms and the Christian aspiration of Gothic art will turn with profit to the wealth of plates here bestowed. The coloured plates are gorgeous rather than delicate; for that we must thank the Moors, and marvel at the inventiveness of their artist geometricians.”--_Antiquary._