3-008-748 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"The Last of the Abencerages", by H. Tidey, from the exhibition of the New Society of Painters in Water Colours, 1862. Engraving of a painting. 'Aben-Hamet, "the last of the Abencerages"...has returned to Spain as a travelling médecin to visit the palaces and tombs of his fathers, and to avenge them as far as circumstances may admit. After wandering a whole night about Granada he loses himself among the magnificent buildings of his ancestors...a young Spanish lady sallies forth, accompanied by her duenna, bound for the matin [church] service. The lady on seeing a handsome stranger evidently perdu [ie lost] takes compassion on him and shows him the way to the khan of his countrymen in the city. The kindness, but far more the extreme beauty, of the lady makes an ineffaceable impression on the susceptible Moor; and the lady herself is very far from insensible to the innate nobility and manly grace of the stranger'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.