The main thing, I think, that struck me in the architecture of San Esteban, was the very early look of all its proportions and details compared to what seemed to be their real date, when examined more in detail and with the aid of mouldings, traceries, and the like; and its value consists mainly in the place it occupies among the buildings of Burgos, illustrating a period of which otherwise there would be very little indeed in the city.
From San Esteban I found my way first through the decayed-looking and uninteresting streets, and then among the ruined outskirts of the north-eastern part of the city, to the church of San Gil, situated very much in the same kind of locality as San Esteban, on the outskirts of the city. This church is just mentioned in ‘España Sagrada’[53]twice: first as being named, withten other churches in Burgos, in a Bull ofA.D.1163; and subsequently, as having been built by Pedro de Camargo and Garcia de Burgos, with the approbation of Bishop Villacraces inA.D.1399; and Don Diego de Soria, and his wife Doña Catalina, are said to have rebuilt the Capilla mayor inA.D.1586.
No. 6. SAN GIL, BURGOS p. 51. IRON PULPIT.No. 6.SAN GIL, BURGOSp. 51.IRON PULPIT.
I give the plan of this church onPlate II., and am inclined to doubt the exact truth of the statements I have just quoted. I believe the church to be a cruciform structure of the fourteenth century, whose chancel and chancel aisles reproduced the plan of Las Huelgas, but were probably rebuilt inA.D.1399. The so-called Capilla mayor is probably the chapel on the north side of the north aisle, a very elaborate semi-Renaissance erection, with an octagon vault, reproducing many of the peculiarities of Spanish groining, supported upon pendentives similar to those of which I have spoken in describing the later works in the cathedral; and it is no doubt the work of one of the descendants or pupils of Juan de Colonia. The late chapels on each side of the choir have enormous wooden bosses at the intersection of the groining ribs, carved with tracery, and with a painting of a saint in the centre. This mixture of painting and sculpture is very much the fashion in Spanish wood-carvings, and the altar Retablos often afford examples of it. In the floor of this church are some curious effigies of black marble, with heads and hands of white.[54]Two such remain in the east wall of one of the southern chapels, where they lie north and south.
The Retablos of the two chapels, north and south of the choir, are very sumptuous works.
Against the north-west pier of the crossing there stands what is perhaps the most uncommon piece of furniture in the church, an iron pulpit. It is of very late date, but I think quite worthy of illustration. The support is of iron, resting on stone, and the staircase modern. The framework at the angles, top and bottom, is of wood, upon which the ironwork is laid. The traceries are cut out of two plates of iron, laid one over the other, and the ironwork is in part gilded, but I do not think that this is original. The canopy is of the same age and character, and the whole effect is very rich, at the same time that it is very novel.[55]I saw other iron pulpits, but none so old as this.
I visited two or three other parish churches, but found little in them worth notice. San Lesmes is one of the largest, consisting of a nave with aisles, transepts, apsidal choir, and chapels added in the usual fashion. The window tracery is flamboyant, and the windows have richly moulded jambs, and are very German in their design. The south door is very large and rich, of the same style, and fills the space between two buttresses, on the angles of which are St. Gabriel and the Blessed Virgin.[56]Close to San Lesmes are the church of San Juan, and another, the dedication of which I could not learn, whilst opposite it is the old Convent of San Juan, now converted into a hospital. The entrance is a great doorway, remarkable for the enormous heraldic achievements which were always very popular with the later Castilian architects. The church of San Juan is now desecrated; it is cruciform in plan, with a deep apsidal chancel, and seems to have had chapels on the east side of the transepts. The church is groined throughout, and its window tracery poor flamboyant work. San Lucas has a groined nave of three bays, and there is another church near it of the same character. They both appear to have been built at the end of the sixteenth century.
Of old Convents, the most important appears to have been that of San Pablo. It is now desecrated, and used as a cavalry store; and though I was allowed to look, I could not obtain permission to go, into it. Florez[57]gives the date of the original foundation of the monastery inA.D.1219, and says that it was moved to its present site inA.D.1265, but not completed for more than 150 years after that date. The inscription on the monument of Bishop Pablo de Santa Maria, on the Gospel side of the altar in San Pablo, records him to have been the builder of the church,[58]and his story is so singular as to be worth telling. He was a Jew by birth, a native of Burgos, and married to a Jewess, by whom he had four sons[59]and one daughter. InA.D.1390, at the age of forty, he was baptized; and having tried in vain to convert his wife, “he treated her as though she were dead,dissolving his marriage legally, and ascending to the greater perfection of the priesthood.” InA.D.1415 he was made Bishop of Burgos, and being at Valladolid at the time, all Burgos went out to meet him as he came to take possession of his see. “His venerable mother, Doña Maria, and his well-loved wife Joana, waited for him in the Episcopal Palace, from whence he went afterwards to adore God in the cathedral.” Doña Joana was buried near the bishop in San Pablo, with an inscription in Spanish, ending, “she died (‘falleció’) in the year 1420,” and from the absence of any religious form in the inscription, I infer that she died unconverted. The bishop died inA.D.1435.
The church of San Pablo consists of a nave and aisles of five bays, transepts and apsidal choir, with many added chapels. The nave groining bays are square, those of the aisle oblong, a mode of planning which marks rather an Italian-Gothic than a French or German origin. The church is vaulted throughout, with very domical vaults, and lighted with lancets in the aisles, circular windows in the clerestory, and traceried windows in the choir. Part of the old western gallery still remains. The vaulting has transverse, diagonal, and ridge ribs. The apse is well buttressed, but, like all the churches in Burgos, San Pablo has lost its old roofs, and has been so much spoilt by the additions which have been made to it, that its exterior is very unprepossessing. Not so the interior, which, both in scale and proportion, is very fine. The architect of San Pablo is said to have been Juan Rodriguez, who commenced it in 1415, and completed it before 1435.[60]
Another convent, that of La Merced, has been treated in the same way, and is now a military hospital. Its church is on the same plan as that of San Pablo, with the principal doorway in the north wall instead of the west, and this opening under the usual vaulted gallery. There is, too, a small apsidal recess for an altar in the north wall of the north transept. The window tracery and details here are all of very late Pointed, but the buttresses and flying buttresses are good. Flat roofs, destroyed gables, and the entire absence of any steeple or turret to break the mass, make the exterior of little value. This convent was moved to its present site inA.D.1272, but I doubt whether any part of the exterior now visible is so old as this.
I saw no other churches worthy of mention in Burgos; butthere are others which ought to be examined in the neighbourhood, among which one a little beyond Las Huelgas, of large size, surrounded by trees, and apparently belonging to a convent, seemed to be the most important.[61]
There are but few remains of old Domestic Architecture. The Palace has been modernized, but is still approached by a groined passage from the south door of the cathedral. The Palace of the Constable Velasco is a bald and ugly erection of the sixteenth century, in the very latest kind of Gothic; its walls finished with a strange parapet of crocketed pinnacles and stones cut out into a sort of rude fork; its entrance a square-headed doorway, with a large space above it, enclosed with enormous chains carved in stone, within which are armorial bearings. The internal courtyard is surrounded by buildings of three stages in height, with open arcades to each, and traceried balconies. The arcades and windows throughout have debased three-centred arches.
The principal town gateway, that of Sta. Maria, is close to the cathedral; its rear is a very simple but massive work of the thirteenth century, and rather Italian in its design. The front facing the Prado and the river was so much altered by Charles V. that it is doubtful whether any of the old work remains; it is now a very picturesque jumble of circular towers and turrets, battlemented and crenellated, and looking rather like one of those mediæval castles which are seen either in an illumination, or in a canopy over a figure in stained glass, than like a real and useful fortified gateway.
It will be seen how full of interest to the ecclesiologist Burgos is. My notes are, I have no doubt, not by any means exhaustive; and I have equally little doubt that one who had more time at his disposal would discover much more than I found; besides which, I was under the impression, when I was at Burgos, that the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, so intimately connected with the story of the Cid, and where he lay peacefully till the French invasion, had been entirely destroyed, whereas, in truth, I believe the church founded in the thirteenth century still remains; and, if so, must certainly reward examination. It is but a few miles from Burgos.
The great promenade here is along the river-side, where the houses are all new, bald, and uninteresting; but the back streets are picturesque, and there is a fine irregularly-shaped Plaza, surrounded by arcades in front of the shops, where are to be found capital blankets andmantas, useful even in the hottest weather if any night travelling is to be undertaken, and invariably charming in their colour.
ITwas after a day of hard work at Miraflores, Las Huelgas, and Burgos, taking last looks and notes, that we drove to the railway stationen routefor Palencia. Castile does not improve on acquaintance, and, so far as I could judge in the hurried views obtained from the railway-carriage, we missed nothing by moving apace. The railroad follows the broad valley of the Arlanzon, bounded on either side by hills of moderate height, occasionally capped with sharp cones and peaks, but everywhere of an invariable whitish-grey colour, which soon wearies the eye unspeakably. The few villages seen from the valley seemed generally to occupy the slopes of the hills, and to have large, shapeless, and unattractive churches. Indeed, it is not possible to go very far in Spain without feeling either that Spanish architects seldom cared for the external effect of their buildings, or that whatever they did has been ruthlessly spoilt in later days. Even in a city like Burgos this is the case, and of course it is even more so in villages and smaller towns.
The Spanish railways are, on the whole, well managed. They are usually only single lines, and there is no attempt made to go very fast. Perhaps, too, any one who has travelled along Spanish roads, deep with a five months’ accumulation of dust, and at the pace popular with diligence proprietors, comes to the consideration of the merits and management of a railway in a frame of mind which is not altogether impartial. The luxury even of a second-rate railway is then felt to the utmost, and there is not much desire, even if there is need, for grumbling. It was dark when we arrived at Palencia, and, getting a boy to carry the baggage, we walked off under his directions in search of the Posada de las Frutas. The title was not promising. But Palencia, a cathedral city, and the principal town between Valladolid and Santander, has nothing in the way of an inn better than a Posada, and it was to the best of its class that we had been recommended. The first look was not encouraging, but the people welcomed us cheerfully, and going acrossthe covered entrance way, took us up to a room which was fairly clean and furnished with the remains of eight smart chairs, six of them hopelessly smashed, and the other two so weak in their legs and spines that it was necessary to use them in the most wary and cautious manner! However, the beds were clean, and the bread and grapes—here as everywhere at this season in Spain—so delicious, that, even had the cookery been worse than it was, we might have managed very well. Later in the evening, when I came back from a short ramble through the town, I found the open entrance-court and passage uneven with the bodies of a troop of muleteers, each of whom seemed to have a skinful of wine in his charge and a rough kind of bed laid on the stones; and if I may judge by the way in which they snored as I picked my way among them to my room, they had no occasion to envy me my occupation of the room of state.
I spent a day in Palencia, and found it almost more than its architectural treasures required. I went there with some idea that I should find a very fine cathedral, still retaining all its old furniture of the fourteenth century, and soon discovered that I had been somewhat misinformed. I hoped too, at any rate, if I found no first-rate work, to find something which was peculiar to the district in its artistic character; but in this also I was doomed to be disappointed.
The city is divided into two parts by a very long winding street running entirely across it from north to south. The houses on either side are supported on stone columns (some of them very lofty), so that the general effect is much that of one of the old arcaded Italian cities.
The cathedral, dedicated to S. Antholin, stands in a desolate-looking open space on the edge of the hill which slopes down to the river Carrion on the west side of the city. Cean Bermudez says that it was commenced inA.D.1321,[62]and completed in the beginning of the sixteenth century.[63]An inscriptionon the door from the cloister to the church has the dateA.D.1535, and the enclosure of the choir is ofA.D.1534. These dates appear to be fairly correct; but the work having been so long in progress, it may, I think, be assumed that the ground-plan only is of the earliest date, and that the greater part of the architectural detail belongs more probably to the fifteenth than to the fourteenth century. This is quite consistent with the evidence afforded by the building, for the detail of the design is of very poor character throughout, and the window tracery is generally of inferior and rather late flamboyant style. The triforium is well developed, having large traceried openings; and the church is groined throughout. In the eastern part of the chevet the window tracery has an early character, but the mouldings belie this effect; and, if I may judge by them, none of it is earlier than circaA.D.1350-1370. The plan of the chevet is probably old, but all its details, save those of the piers between the chapels, have been modernized. The thin spandrels of the vaulting in the apse of the choir are pierced with cusped circles, a device occasionally seen in French churches.
It will be seen, therefore, that there is little to praise here, save the grand scale upon which the work has been done. The nave is 36 feet 8 inches from centre to centre of the columns, whilst each aisle is no less than 31 feet 2 inches. The relative proportions are bad, but owing to the arrangement of the Coro in the nave there is not much opportunity of seeing this, and the internal view of the aisles, owing to their width and to the very massive character of the nave columns, is extremely fine. The nave is of five bays in length, the two eastern bays being occupied by the Coro. There is an altar against the western screen of the Coro, in front of which are some steps leading down to a well, said to be that of St. Antholin, the tutelar saint. The whole of the stalls are old, and fine of their kind; they are mainly the work of El Maestro Centellas, a Valencian, who contracted to execute them about the year 1410,[64]but they are not in their old place, for inA.D.1518-1519 Pedro de Guadalupe agreed to move them from the old choir into the new choirfor the sum of fifteen hundred maravedis, and to execute twenty additional stalls for the sum of two thousand maravedis each.[65]At the same time the Retablo was moved forward and enlarged to fit its new position by one Pedro Manso, at a cost of two hundred ducats; whilst Juan de Valmeseda executed the statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. John, and the Crucifixion for it for one hundred ducats.[66]
These facts are of great interest, proving as they do that the stalls stood from the year 1410 to 1518 in their proper place in the choir, and were then moved to their present position in the nave precisely in the same way that we have already seen the old arrangement changed at Burgos at about the same period. This peculiar Spanish arrangement of the Coro in the nave, and separated from the altar, we may now, I think, assume was not known or thought of until this comparatively late date in this part of Spain, though now it is universal throughout the country. The design of the stalls is somewhat like that of late Flemish work, but peculiar in many respects: the forward slope of the stall elbows, the rich traceries behind the lower stalls—very varied in their design—and the upper stalls, are all worthy of notice. I did not observe any distinction in the style of the work answering to the dates at which Maestro Centellas and Pedro de Guadalupe were employed, and I think, therefore, that the latter must have copied rather closely the work of the former. Probably, however the Prie-Dieu desk in front of the bishop’s stall is of the later date, as also the desks which have been widened in front of the upper row of stalls; and possibly Pedro de Guadalupe executed the twenty stalls on each side of the choir forming the easternmost block.
Prie-Dieu.Prie-Dieu.
The eastern part of the church has been worse treated eventhan the nave, all the old arrangements having been ruthlessly altered. The apse, shut in by screens, covered with a low groined gallery, and used as a mere chapel,[67]is dark, dismal, and undignified. The bay west of the apse is open from north to south, but walled in on the west with the wall behind the high altar. West of this are two bays walled in at the sides, and then we come to the transept, which is open, save the rails marking the passage from the Coro to the choir. The whole arrangement is so confused, unintelligible, and contrary to the obvious intentions of the first designers of the fabric, that it hardly needed documentary evidence to prove that it had no kind of ancient authority. There is no lantern or Cimborio at the crossing. The metal screens[68]across the choir are of no special interest, but those round the apse and opening into one or two of the chapels of the chevet are better, and well illustrate the designs of most of the fifteenth-century iron screens in Spain. They are met with in all directions, for there was no country in the middle ages which made so free a use of iron. They have most of the faults of German ironwork of the same age, the smiths having apparently forgotten the right use of their hammers, and, like Birmingham smiths of the present day, having tried to do what was necessary with thin plates of iron twisted about fantastically here and there, but very much more easily wrought, and proportionably less effective, than the work of the English smiths of a couple of hundred years earlier.
The whole of the floor of the eastern part of the church has been lowered, in some places as much as three feet, in order to obtain a level procession path all round the aisles.
On the south side of the nave are the cloisters, which are large, with lofty arched openings, but they have been despoiled of their traceries. Their style is poor third-pointed, and in their present state they are thoroughly uninteresting.[69]To the westof them is the Chapter-house, a large groined room, opening, not, as is usual, from the cloister, but from an outer lobby. The sacristy, on the south side of the choir, contains a few objects of interest, the best being a fine gilt monstrance, covered with crockets and pinnacles, but not earlier than circaA.D.1500.[70]
[larger view][largest view]PALENCIA AND VALLADOLID:—Ground Plans of San Miguel Sta Maria and San Benito Plate III. Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.
The sacristan thought much more of a great plated temple, six or eight feet in height, raised on a stage, and travelling on wheels worked by a couple of men concealed within the platform and its hangings, which is used for processions throughout the town on Corpus Christi day.
I saw only two Gothic churches out of many which I looked into in Palencia—those of San Miguel and San Francesco.
San Miguel is both the earliest and best church in the city, and deserves most careful study. I give an illustration of its ground-plan onPlate III.The portion east of the crossing appeared to me of the end of the twelfth century, and the rest of the church a few years later. The plan is one of a not uncommon type, and suggestive either of Italian or German influence in the mind of its designer. The regular planning of the whole work, the bold dimensions of the groining shafts, and the good character of the mouldings and windows, corbel-tables and buttresses, all deserve special notice. The apse is groined in four compartments, so that a rib and buttress occur in its centre,[71]and the ribs here are square and plain in section, whilst those throughout the nave are well moulded. The bosses at the intersection of the groining ribs in the nave are sculptured: that on the east bay having St. Michael and the Dragon, whilst the next bay but one has an Agnus Dei. There is a peculiarity in the finish of the buttresses of the apse, which I noticed also at San Juan and San Pablo at Burgos. In all of them the face of the buttress is carried up to the eaves-cornice, which is returned round them, instead of being carried on to their centre, as is usual: so that at San Miguel, in place of the apse at the cornice-line having four sides only, it has four long and three shorter sides, the latter above the buttresses. All the work in the chancel appears to be of earlier date than that in the nave, and its western arch is segmental, and of poor character.
Steeple of San Miguel.Steeple of San Miguel.
The windows here are plain, round-arched lancets, but those in the clerestory of the nave are two-light windows, with a plain circle in the head, and richly moulded. The most striking architectural feature on the outside is the western steeple, which well deserves illustration, being full of peculiarity and vigour. The belfry-windows are singularly varied, for they are of three lights on the west, of two very wide lights on the south, and of two narrow lights on the east side. The tracery in all consists of uncusped circles, packed together in the same fashion as in the clerestory of Burgos Cathedral. The west window is of two lights, with simple piercings in the tympanum, and between it and the west doorway are a number of corbels all across the west front, which seem to prove that there was a pent-house roof across the whole of it. This must have largely added to the picturesquenessof the building, whilst at the same time it must, in such a climate, have been a most wise expedient for sheltering the doorway from the heat. The west doorway is a really fine work, but terribly mutilated. It has six series of subjects, in as many lines of archivolt moulding, the innermost order containing angels only: the second, figures with books or instruments of music: the third, angels again: the fourth, the Resurrection (with the Last Judgment, occupying the centre of this and the next order): the fifth and sixth, subjects from the life of our Lord, beginning with the Annunciation on the left. The outside moulding consists of a bold bowtell, with another arranged in continuous cusping in front of it, as in some of our own transitional work. The lower stage of the tower has a groined gallery, in which are the stalls, lectern, and organ.
It is much to be lamented that the finish of the steeple is not original, for we should then have had a complete example of a fine parish church, which must have been building from circaA.D.1190 to circaA.D.1250; but an early building unaltered on the exterior is a treat for which one generally sighs in vain in Spain.
San Francesco has been much more mutilated than San Miguel, but seems to be a work of about the same age; it is said to have been built inA.D.1246.[72]There is a large open market-place, busy with venders of vegetables, in front of the building and a small enclosed courtyard between the two seemed to be the receptacle for all the market filth. The west front has a small sort of cloister in front of the doors, with a tiled lean-to roof above it. Over this roof rises the west front, a strange combination with a western gable, and a great bell-gable rising out of its southern slope. The west window appears to have been a fine cusped circular opening, under a pointed arch, the spandrel between the two being filled with circles similar to the traceries in the steeple of San Miguel. Entering the church, I found its broad aisleless nave completely Paganized, but still retaining the low fifteenth-century gallery for the Coro over the two western bays. At the east bay of the nave are small transeptal chapels, and the chancel arch, and two smaller arches open into the chancel and two chancel aisles. The whole arrangement is thoroughly Italian,[73]but the detail of the arches, which are well moulded and adorned with a chevron,is northern. The chancel is apsidal, but its groining is so late, and its east end so far hidden by a Pagan Retablo, that it was impossible to discover whether any traces of the original work remained.
I saw several other churches, but their old features are in all cases of the very latest Gothic or else Pagan, so as to be hardly worthy of record. Sta. Clara appears to be desecrated: it has windows just like those of San Pablo, Burgos, and buttresses to the apse managed in the same way as at San Miguel. It has also a large flamboyant door of poor style. Near it is another church, which has an apse with buttresses and pinnacles at the angles, and from the even and undisturbed look of its masonry I concluded that it never had any windows. This church has a poor tower, but generally the churches here have enormous bell-gable turrets of the most flaunting Renaissance device, which are common throughout a great part of Spain. They have generally several bells hung in openings in the wall, and are often nearly the whole width of the front, and finished with cornices and broken pediments in the most approved fashion of the worst style of Renaissance.
Everywhere, save in the long main street, Palencia was astristea place as I have seen. The streets were emptied, probably by the heat of the day, and, save a curious crowd of boys who pursued me relentlessly all round San Miguel, I saw few signs of life. Much of the old wall round the city remains, and walking round the north-eastern part of this, I came to a picturesque angle, where is an old walled-up gateway with pointed arch, round towers on either side, and deep machicolations above, which may well have been built before the Cid rode into Palencia for his marriage with Doña Ximena. The town walls are lofty and massive, and crested with what is, I believe, a Moorish battlement. Its peculiarity consists in the battlements and spaces between them being equal, and the former being capped with a stone weathered on all four sides nearly to a point.
On the way to the railway station we saw two churches, both having some portions of fair fifteenth-century work; and then passing the old wall, found ourselves on the melancholy open plain that surrounds the city. Under the hot sun, and after the harvest has all been gathered in, the country looks wretched and arid in the extreme. Not a tree is to be seen, nor a blade of grass; but first a sandy plain of two or three miles, and then rocky and sandy hills, all bleached to much thesame colourless tint, rose in long lines against the deep-blue sky. On the other side of the city the river was hardly more attractive; it was wellnigh dry, though it is true there were some trees near its banks which to some extent redeemed the aridness of the soil out of which they grew. As I neared the station I found the whole city assembled to greet the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier, who were to stop for a few minutes to enjoyazucarillosand sweetmeats. Officers of all grades, the bishop and his clergy, and smart people in abundance were there; and as soon as the train arrived there was lusty cheering, and great firing of rockets. After a fight with the mob for a passage to the train, we secured seats, and were soon off. There are some parts of the road which seemed more interesting than most of the country we had been passing. The river runs here and there under steepish bluffs, and occasionally considerable vineyards give—what is so much wanted—some variety of colour to the landscape. I suppose one ought to be cautious in describing such a country after seeing it in September; for I can well imagine that in the spring, when the whole land is covered with great crops of corn, the impression it produces may be very different.
At Valladolid we were delayed a long time whilst the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier, saluted again with rockets, and escorted by cavalry, took their departure from the station to pass the night at the Captain-General’s. As far as a stranger can see and hear the truth, the Royal family seem to be very popular in Spain, and none of them more so than the Duke and Duchess; and the good people of Valladolid did their best, by illuminations, cheering, and decoration of their houses with coloured cloth, to welcome their coming, and speed their parting the next day.[74]
In the evening I strolled out into the town, and presently found myself in the Great Plaza, an imposing square surrounded on three sides by houses on arcades, and having on the fourth side the Town-hall. This was brilliantly illuminated by a number of enormous wax-candles in great sconces flaring in the air, whilst a good military band played waltzes, and the people—soldiers and civilians, men, women, and children—danced merrily and vigorously in groups all about. Presently crossing the Plaza from this noisy scene, I stumbled over a bundle on theground, and found it to be a couple of labourers who, having been at work at the pavement, had made a bed of sand, covered themselves over with a blanket, and had gone to sleep by the side of their tools for the night, indifferent to all the noise and excitement of the place!
Valladolid is a city of which I have very pleasant general recollections, but of which nevertheless the architecture is nowhere of very great interest. It has the misfortune to have a cathedral built by Herrera, only one or two early works, several gorgeous examples of the richest late-pointed work, and a multitude of examples of the works of Berruguete, Herrera, and their followers. But the streets are picturesque and busy, and have that unmistakably foreign aspect which is always so pleasant to the traveller.
I need say but little of the Cathedral. Its design is said to be the greatest work of Herrera (A.D.1585); but a small portion only of it has been completed. The complete plan is given by Ponz.[75]It was to have been cruciform, with four towers at the angles, four bays of nave, and four of choir, with aisles to both. The stalls of the Coro were intended to be in the choir behind the altar. There is a large cloister on the north side of the nave. The nave of four bays, with its aisles and chapels on either side of them, is all that is completed; and, large as it is, the parts are all so colossal that there is not the impression of size that there ought to be. The piers are some 60 feet from centre to centre north and south, and 45 feet east and west; they carry bold arches, above which runs a great cornice surmounted by a white (plastered and panelled) groined ceiling, which contrasts violently with the dark sombre grey of the stonework below. These vaults are of red tile; and if the plaster were altogether taken off, the vault covered with mosaic, and the mouldings of the cornices carefully removed, the interior would really be fine and impressive. Nothing, however, could ever cure the hideous unsightliness of the exterior. Herrera’s west front was revised by Churriguera in the eighteenth century, and cannot therefore be fairly criticised; but the side elevation remains as Herrera designed it, and is really valuable as a warning. Flying buttresses were of course an abomination; so in their place he erected enormous solid buttresses above the aisles to resist the thrust of the nave vault. They are shapeless blocks of masonry projecting about forty feet from the clerestory wall, and finished with a horrid concave line at thetop. However, it is only right to give Herrera his due, and to say, that after all he only did what Wren did at St. Paul’s, but had the courage and the honesty to let his deeds be seen, instead of spending a vast sum, like Wren, in concealing them. And again it is plain that he thought much more of the internal effect of his church than of the external;—how unlike ourselves, who but too often, if we can attract men to our new churches by a smart spire or a picturesque exterior, seem to forget that we must make the interior noble, winning, solemn, and instructive too, if we would keep them there!
A few fragments of the old cathedral remain to the north-east of the present church, but I could not obtain access to them; and I think nothing now exists but a wall pierced with one or two fourteenth-century windows.
Sta. Maria l’Antigua—the most attractive church, to my mind, in Valladolid—is close to the cathedral. It is so valuable an example, and illustrates so well some peculiarities of Spanish architecture, that I give an illustration of its ground-plan.[76]It is of the common parallel-triapsal arrangement, and has a fine western steeple, and a cloister along the north wall. This kind of cloister is of not unfrequent occurrence: I have already noticed one in the convent at Las Huelgas; and there are two or three churches at Segovia in which also it is introduced. It would seem to be an arrangement expressly adopted to suit a tropical climate, and its effect is always very good.
Cloister. L’Antigua, Valladolid.Cloister. L’Antigua, Valladolid.
The cloister here is walled up, and considerably defaced on the north side; and on the south, if one ever existed, it has been entirely destroyed. That on the northside is of three bays in length, the western bay having four arches, and the others five. The arches are semi-circular, with labels enriched with dog-tooth ornament, and the shafts which carry them are moulded and wrought in imitation of the coupled columns of early Italian artists. Simple buttresses separate the bays, and there is a corbel-table under the eaves. A bold round-arched doorway opened at the west into this cloister.
The interior of this church is fine. It is groined throughout; and most of the groining has longitudinal (but not transverse) ridge-ribs, considerably arched in each bay, to suit the domical section of the vaults. The western bay has the usual late gallery for the Coro supported on a debased arch, and with open tracery in its front, and the stalls and organ still remain in it. The main columns are cylindrical in plan, and each surrounded by eight attached shafts. The transepts are not at all defined in the ground-plan, but are groined at the same level as the nave. The abaci of the capitals are either square or octagonal in plan. The groining has bold and well-moulded transverse arches, and diagonal ribs of an ordinary thirteenth-century section. In the apse of seven bays the vaults, for the greater part of their height, are no thicker than the moulding of their ribs, and are pierced with cusped circles in their spandrels, just above the line of the springing of the windows, in the same manner as at Palencia Cathedral. The clerestory seems to have been lighted with simple lancets, of which one only remains on the south of the nave. Of the old furniture still existing I noticed a good Retablo, partly carved and partly painted, in a chapel on the south side of the choir, and another in the baptistery opening into the south transept.[77]The steeple is the most remarkable feature of the exterior, and from its great height gives, in company with the similar steeple of San Martin, much effect to many views of the city, which, with these exceptions, has nothing to break its monotony. It rises three stages above the roof, the lower stage having an arcaded window of two lights on each face, the middle one of three lights, and the upper,again, one of two lights. The arches are all semi-circular, and are carried upon shafts. There are string-courses under each window, and the abaci are also carried round the steeple as string-courses of inferior scale. There are nook-shafts at the angles, with caps and bases between each of the horizontal string-courses. The upper string-course and the eaves-cornices are carved with a dog-tooth ornament, and the others with a billet mould. The steeple is finished with a low square spire, covered with tiles, some green and some red, and each tile made of a pointed shape, so as to form a series of scallops. This steeple is of the same date as the cloister and lower part of the church—probably circaA.D.1180-1200; but the east end of the church is evidently a work of later date, being much more advanced in style, and corresponding exactly in some respects with the upper part of the transepts and clerestory of Burgos Cathedral. The windows have three engaged jamb-shafts, with square capitals. The tracery has soffeit-cusping, and there is a peculiarity here which is seen also in the clerestory at Burgos. The arches of the lights and the circle above them are only chamfered on one side, and their fillets do not mitre at the junction; it looks, consequently, as though the circle were merely put in loosely on the back of the arched heads to the lights, without being in any way connected with them. I need not say that the effect is not good: it has the appearance of being the work of men who did not quite understand what they were about; and, though I know of no example of the same thing in England or France, it is not uncommonly seen in the thirteenth and fourteenth century works of the Italian architects. It is, however, impossible to charge the architect of this apse with the indifference to, or ignorance of, other examples of the same age which marked the Italians, for in every other respect his work is as good as possible of its kind. The pinnacles marking the junction of the apse with the choir are very fine. They are hexagonal below, but, with admirable effect, are covered with circular stone spires, enriched by delicate crockets of the same fashion as those at Burgos, illustrated at p. 28, and the springing of the spirelet is marked by small pinnacles. The external roofs have been altered in accordance with the invariable custom, and at the east end they now partially obscure the old pierced parapets which fill the spaces between the pinnacles of the apse. The south transept had a rose-window, which is now blocked up, and the open parapet of the choirwas continued round it. This side of the church is now much built against, and concealed by houses, the north side being quite open. I ought not to forget that there is a good sacristy at the north-east angle of the church, and of the same date as the choir.
Sagrador y Vitores[78]says that this church was founded by Don Pedro Ansurez and Doña Eylo his wife, in the latter part of the eleventh century, and rebuilt by King Don Alonso XI. I confess I cannot reconcile these dates (for which no authorities are given) with the existing building. The earlier portions of the work hardly seem to be so early in date as the eleventh century; and the later alterations are so identical in character with work of which we know the age in the thirteenth century, that it is almost impossible they should belong to the time of Alonso XI. (A.D.1350-1369). The reign of Alonso IX. (A.D.1230-44) would have been a more likely date.
The church of San Martin, near Sta. Maria, has been rebuilt, with the exception only of its steeple, which is a fine example, very similar to that of Sta. Maria, though, no doubt, of rather later date. The arches here are pointed, in place of round, as they are in the other example; the two upper stages are arranged just as they are there, and the lower stage has a two-light window, with its tracery contrived in a similar way to the apse windows of that church. San Martin is said to have been founded inA.D.1148,[79]and the earliest part of the steeple may probably be of this age, though I do not think it can have been completed earlier than aboutA.D.1250.
Both these steeples bear unmistakable marks of Lombard influence. The absence of buttresses, the repetition of very nearly similar stages one over the other, and the multitude of horizontal string-courses, are all features of constant occurrence in Italy; and it will be sufficient to mention such an example as the steeple of Lucca Cathedral, as, among others, illustrating this similarity very remarkably.
There is not, so far as I could see or learn, any other work of early date in Valladolid; but, on the other hand, the city is rich in works of the latest Gothic, some of which are exceedingly sumptuous, and among the finest of their kind; and they are socharacteristic of Spanish art—albeit they are undoubtedly derived from German sources—that it would be unpardonable to pass them by without notice. At the same time it is luxury of ornamentation, profusion of labour, marvellous manual skill and dexterity, rather than real art, which we see displayed in all the works of this school; and, attractive as these often are to the uneducated eye, they are almost offensive to one who has learnt ever so little to look for true art first and above all in all works of architecture, and to regard mere excellence of workmanship as of altogether secondary importance.
The most remarkable of these works are the churches of San Pablo, San Benito, La Magdalena, and the colleges of San Gregorio and Sta. Cruz, which last is now converted into a museum. Their dates are all known very exactly, and the following facts relating to them may as well be recorded.
San Pablo was commenced by Cardinal Don Juan Torquemada, and completed inA.D.1463.[80]It is said by some to be the work of Juan and Simon de Colonia, but I can find no proof of this statement, though I think that the elaborate façade may possibly be the work of the artists Gil de Siloe or Diego de la Cruz, who wrought under Juan de Colonia and his son at the monuments and Retablo in the convent at Miraflores.
The first stone of the college of San Gregorio was laid inA.D.1488, and it was finished inA.D.1496.[81]The architect is said to have been Macías Carpintero of Medina del Campo; but as he cut his own throat in 1490,[82]some other architect or sculptor must have completed the work.
The monastery of San Benito was founded by King Don Juan, who obtained a Bull from Pope Clement VII., on Dec. 28, 1389, for the purpose. But the existing church was erected more than a century later, by Juan de Arandia (probably a Biscayan architect), who began his work inA.D.1499. He agreed to execute the nave and one aisle for 1,460,000 maravedis, and afterwards the other aisle for 500,000. The Retablo and the stalls were the work of Berruguete, betweenA.D.1526 and 1532, and are now preserved in the museum.
The college of Sta. Cruz was founded inA.D.1480, andcompleted inA.D.1492, and was designed by Enrique de Egas[83], son of Anequin de Egas of Brussels.
The church of La Magdalena appears, by extracts from the archives of the Marquis de Resilla, to have been planned by Rodrigo Gil, of Salamanca. By a contract, dated June 14, 1576, he undertook the erection of the Capilla mayor and sacristy for 4,000,000 maravedis, whilst the “master of the works,” Francisco del Rio, by an agreement of October 11, 1570, agreed to build the tower and body of the church according to Rodrigo Gil’s plan, for 6400 ducats.
Having given these details of their history, I must now say a few words about the buildings themselves.
Going from the great Plaza de la Constitucion down a narrow street to the north, we soon came out on another large irregular open place, frequented chiefly by second-hand clothesmen, whose wares would be deemed bad even in Houndsditch, and whose wont it seems to be to induce their customers to make complete changes of their apparel behind scanty screenworks of cloths. At the angle of the further side of this Plaza is the grand church and convent of San Benito. The monks are, of course, all gone, as they are everywhere in Catholic Spain, and the convent is turned into a barrack; the church is left open, but unused, and the more valuable portions of its furniture, its stalls and Retablos, have been carried away for exhibition in another religious house, now used as a museum! Valladolid seems to have been a city of religious houses; and when the revolution, following on civil wars, made so clean a sweep of religious orders, that not only does one see no monks, but even Sisters of Mercy are scarcely ever met[84], there was nothing, I suppose, to be done but to convert these buildings to the first miserable purpose that suggested itself; and we ought perhaps to be thankful when we find a church like San Benito simply desolate and unused, and not converted to some purely secular use.
The ground-plan of the church is given onPlate III.Atthe west end are the remains of a tower, which seems never to have been completed, and which, though of vast size, is so poor, tame, and bald in detail, that it could hardly have produced a successful effect if it had been finished. The whole design of the exterior of the church is extremely uninteresting; but the interior is much more impressive, being fine, lofty, and groined, and lighted chiefly by large clerestory windows, aided by others high up in the aisle-walls. The groining is all very domical in section, and rather rich in ribs; and the grand scale of the whole work, and the simplicity of the piers—cylinders with eight engaged shafts round them—contribute to produce something of the effect of a building of earlier date. The bases of the columns are of enormous height from the floor, and their caps are generally carved with stiff foliage. Several altars, monuments, and chapels have been inserted between the buttresses of the north wall; and there is one old tomb on the north side of the high altar, with a sculpture of the Crucifixion. The buttresses on the exterior all rise out of a continuous weathered basement, and there is no variety in their design in any part.
The ritual arrangements deserve a few words of description. There are six steps up from the nave to the altar, and there is an ambon on each side of them entered from the altar side. There is a stalled western gallery, with an organ on its south side, of late mediæval design, but apparently an insertion, and not erected at the same time as the Coro. Beside the gallery Coro, there is a second Coro on the floor, with screens round it on the north, south, and west sides, which are evidently not original, being mere brick walls. A metal screen extends all across the nave and aisles at the east of the Coro; and there are gates, not only in these, but also in the screen on the west side of the Coro, which, it will be remembered, is an unusual arrangement at this late date. The large organ is on the north side of the Coro, and of the same date as the woodwork of the stalls. The good people of Valladolid, who seem to feel inordinately proud of all that Berruguete did, have carried off the stalls to the museum. They are much praised by Mr. Ford, but for what reason I endeavoured in vain to discover. Their sculpture appeared to me to be contemptible, and mainly noticeable for woolly dumplings in place of draperies, and for the way in which the figures are sculptured, standing insecurely on their feet, dwarfed in stature, altogether inexpressive in their faces,out of drawing, and wholly deficient in energy or life. There were also three great Retablos to the principal altars at the ends of the aisles. The Renaissance frames of these are mostlyin situ, but the sculptures have all been taken, with the stalls, to the museum, where they cumber the little chapel in the most uncouth fashion. I never saw such contemptible work; yet Mr. Ford calls this work[85]“thechef-d’œuvreof Berruguete, circa 1526-1532.” I can only say that the architecture is bad, the sculpture is bad, and the detail is bad; that all three are bad of their kind, and that their kind is the worst possible.[86]It is in truth the ugliest specimen of the imbecility and conceit which usually characterize inferior Renaissance work that I ever saw. The whole of the figures are strained and distorted in the most violent way, and fenced in by columns which look like bedposts, with entablatures planned in all sorts of new and original ways and angles. I have no patience with such work, and it is inconceivable how a man who has once done anything which, from almost every point of view, is so demonstrably bad, can have preserved any reputation whatever, even among his own people. It is a curious illustration, however, of the singular extent to which both Gothic and Renaissance were being wrought at the same time in Spain; for at the time he did this work, in which not a trace of Gothic feeling or skill remained, other men at Salamanca, Zaragoza, and elsewhere, were still building in late Gothic, and some buildings were still more than half Gothic which were not erected for at least fifty years later.
A short walk from San Benito leads to another Plaza, on one of which is the west front of San Pablo, whilst the great convent of San Gregorio is on its south side.
I could not find any means of getting into San Pablo, and am uncertain whether it is in use or desecrated. Its façade is a repetition, on a large scale, of work like that of Juan and Simon de Colonia—who are said to have been the architects employed—in the chapel monuments at Miraflores. Armorial bearings have much more than their due prominence, mouldings are attenuated, every bit of wall is covered with carving or tracery, and such tricks are played with arches of all shapes, that,though they are ingenious, they are hardly worth describing. The western doorway is fringed with kneeling angels for crockets, and there are large and small statues of saints against the wall on either side of it. Above is the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, with St. John the Baptist on one side, and the kneeling founder on the other, flanked by angels carrying armorial achievements. Above, in the centre, is our Lord seated, St. Peter and St. Paul on either side, and the four Evangelists seated at desks, and instructed by angels. Every vacant space seems to have a couple of angels holding coats-of-arms, so that it is impossible not to feel that the sculptor and the founder must have had some idea of heaven as peopled by none with less than a proper number of quarterings on their shields, or without claim to the possession ofSangre Azul. I must not forget to say of this work that, though its scheme is displeasing and Retablo-like, its execution is wonderful, and the merit of the detail of many parts of it very great.
The façade of San Gregorio is a long lofty wall, pierced with small ogee-headed windows, and finished with a quaint, carved, and pinnacled parapet; in the centre is the entrance gateway, corresponding pretty much in its detail with the front of San Pablo, but even more extremely heraldic in its decorations. The doorway is a square opening under a segmental arch, with an ogee-trefoiled canopy above. Full-length statues of hairy unclad savages on either side may have a meaning which I failed to discover; to me they looked simply uncouth and rude. The canopy over the doorway runs up and forms a great heraldic tree, with an enormous coat-of-arms and supporters in the centre. The finish at the top is one of those open-work conceits of interlacing pierced cusping, which looks like nothing better than a collection of twigs.
The sculpture on this doorway is altogether inferior in its character to that of the doorway of San Pablo. The convent is now, I believe, a barrack, and the sentry refused me admission; but I saw a picturesque court open in the centre, with the usual galleries round it, supported on columns, the wooden ceiling of the passage being painted.
The church of la Magdalena does not look so late in date as the documentary evidence seems to prove that it is; but it is late enough to be most uninteresting. The west front is thene plus ultraof heraldic absurdity, being entirely occupied with an enormous coat-of-arms and its adjuncts.
Close to the east end of this church is a Moorish archway of brick, a picturesque and rather graceful work. It owes not a little of its effect to the shape of the bricks, which are 7 in. wide by 11 in. long by 1½ in. thick, and to the enormous quantity of mortar used, the joints being not less than an inch wide.[87]The ruggedness and picturesque effect of work done in this way is much greater than that of the smooth, neat walls—badly built of necessity where there is not much mortar used—of our modern buildings.
The Museum is housed in the old college of Sta. Cruz, close to the University, and near to the Cathedral. It is a building of a class whose name is legion in these parts. It encloses a central court surrounded by cloisters, above which there are open arcades all round on each of the three floors, traceried balustrades occupying the spaces between their columns, and the rooms being all entered from these cloister-like open passages. With good detail such an arrangement might easily be made very attractive; but I saw no example in any but the very latest style of Gothic. The contents of the Museum are most uninteresting. There are three paintings said to be by Rubens, but they seemed to me to have been much damaged; and the rest of the pictures are unmixed rubbish. There is a large collection of figures and subjects from sculptured Retablos, all of which are extravagant and strained in their attitudes to the most painful degree. I have already referred to some of Berruguete’s work preserved here, and the rest is mostly of about the same low degree of merit.
The Library, which appeared to have many valuable books, is a large room, well kept and well filled, with a librarian very ready to show it to strangers.
The University is a cold work of Herrera—the coldest of Spanish architects. Mr. Ford mentions an old gateway in it; but I could not find it.
I spent one day only in Valladolid; but this is ample for seeing all its architectural features. It is one of those cities which was too rich and prosperous during an age of much work and little taste, and where, though Berruguete and Herrera may be studied by those who think such labour desirable, very littlemediæval architecture of any real value is to be seen. Yet as a modern city it is in parts gay and attractive, being after Madrid the most important city of the North of Spain. Its suburbs are less cheerful, for here one lights constantly on some desecrated church or ruined building, which recalls to mind the vast difference between the Valladolid of to-day—a mere provincial town—and the Valladolid of two centuries ago, for a short time the capital of Spain.
THElong dreary road which leads over the corn-growing plain from Medina del Campo is at last relieved some two or three miles before Salamanca is reached by the view of its imposing group of steeples and domes, which rise gradually over the low hills on the northern side. The long line of walls round the city still in part remains, but seems daily to be falling more and more to decay, and indeed generally all its grand buildings speak rather of death than of life. Few even of Spanish towns seem to have suffered more at the hands of the French during the Peninsular war than did Salamanca, and we ought not perhaps to be surprised if its old prosperity comes but slowly back again to it.
The public buildings here are generally grandiose and imposing; but almost all of them are of the period of the Renaissance, and there are no very remarkable examples of this bad age. Still when they were perfect there must have been a certain stateliness about them, befitting the importance of a great university.
The main objects of attraction to me were the two cathedrals, the one grand and new, of the sixteenth century, by whose side and as it were under whose wing nestles the smaller but most precious old cathedral of the twelfth century, fortunately preserved almost intact when the new one was erected, and still carefully maintained, though, I believe, very seldom used for service. The remarkable relative positions of these two cathedrals will be readily understood by the accompanying ground-plan,[88]in which, as will be seen, the vast bulk of the later church quite overwhelms the modest dimensions of the earlier. I know indeed few spots, if any, in which the importance, or the contrary, of mere size in architecture can be better tested than here. Most educated artists would, I dare say, agree with me in rating size as the lowest of all really artistic qualities in architecture; and here wefind that the small and insignificant old church produces as good an effect as the large and boastfully ambitious new one, though its dimensions are altogether inferior. This is owing to the subdivision of parts, and to the valuable simplicity which so markedly characterizes them. On the other hand, it would be wrong to forget that from another point of view mere size is of the primest importance, for we may well feel, when we compare, for instance, an extremely lofty church with one of very modest height, that in the former there is on the part of the founders an evident act of sacrifice, whilst in the latter their thoughts have possibly never risen above the merest utilitarianism; and it would be a spirit entirely dead to all religious impressions that could regard such an act of sacrifice otherwise than with extreme admiration.
The foundation of the first of these two cathedrals may be fixed, I think, with a fair approach to certainty, as being some time in the twelfth century. It was at this time, soon after the city had been regained from the Moors, inA.D.1095, that Bernard, Archbishop of Toledo, himself a Frenchman, brought many other Frenchmen into Spain, and through his great influence procured their appointment to various sees—a fact which I may say, in passing, suggests much in regard to the origin of the churches which they built. Among the French ecclesiastics so promoted was Gerónimo Visquio,[89]a native of Périgord, who was for a long time the great friend and close companion of the Cid Rodrigo Diaz, and confessor to him and Doña Ximena his wife. On the Cid’s death he brought his body from Valencia to the monastery of Cardeña, near Burgos, and there dwelt till Count Ramon and Doña Urraca made him Bishop of Salamanca. Gil Gonzalez Dávila[90]says that at this time the church was founded, and Cean Bermudez adds some documentary evidence as to privileges conceded to its chapter for the works about this time by Count Ramon.[91]InA.D.1178 a priest—Don Miguel of San Juan, Medina del Campo—made a bequest to the Chapter of his property for the work of the cloister, and we may fairly assume, therefore, that before this date the church itself was completed. The new cathedral was not commenced untilA.D.1513, and of this I need not now speak; but in an inscription on it, which records its consecration inA.D.1560, the first mass is related to have been said in the old cathedral four hundredand sixty years before,i.e.inA.D.1100.[92]This probably was only a tradition; but it may fairly be taken to point to the twelfth century as that in which the cathedral was built.
This early church is, it will be seen,[93]cruciform, with three eastern apses, a nave and aisles of five bays, and a dome or lantern over the crossing. There is a deep western porch, and I think it probable that there were originally towers on either side of this. The church has been wonderfully little altered, save that its north wall has been taken down in order to allow of the erection of the new cathedral, and at the same time the arch under the northern part of the central lantern or dome was also underbuilt. In other respects the church is almost untouched, and bears every mark of having been in progress during the greater part of the twelfth century.
There is no provision in the plan of the main piers for carrying the diagonal groining ribs, and it may be, therefore, that when they were first planned it was not intended to groin the nave. The groining-ribs are now carried on corbels, in front of which were statues, only two or three of which, however, now remain in their places.[94]The vaulting throughout is quadripartite in the arrangement of the ribs; but the vaults of the three western bays of the nave, of the south transept, and of the aisles are constructed as domes, with the stones all arranged in concentric lines, but with ribs crossing their undersides; the two eastern bays of the nave have quadripartite groining, planned in the common way. The apses have semi-domes. The main arches everywhere are pointed, those of the windows semi-circular, and the capitals throughout are elaborately carved, either with foliage or groups of coupled monsters or birds, a very favourite device of the early Spanish sculptors.
The most interesting feature in this old cathedral still remains to be mentioned: this is the dome over the crossing. The remainder of the original fabric is bold, vigorous, and massive, well justifying the line in an old saying about the Spanish cathedrals, “Fortis Salmantina;” but still it is merely a good example of a class of work, of which other examples on a grander scale are to be met with elsewhere. Not so, however, the dome; for here we have a rare feature treated with rare success, and, so far as I know, with complete originality. The French domed churches, such as S. Front, Perigueux, and othersof the same class, Notre Dame du Port, Clermont, and Notre Dame, le Puy, have, it is true, domes, but these are all commenced immediately above the pendentives or arches which carry them. The lack of light in their interiors is consequently a great defect, and those which I have seen have always seemed to me to have something dark, savage, and repulsive in their character. And it was here that the architect of Salamanca Cathedral showed his extreme skill, for, instead of the common low form of dome, he raised his upon a stage arcaded all round inside and out, pierced it with windows, and then, to resist the pressure of his vault, built against the external angles four great circular pinnacles.
No. 7 SALAMANCA OLD CATHEDRAL p. 80. INTERIOR OF LANTERN, LOOKING EASTNo. 7SALAMANCA OLD CATHEDRALp. 80.INTERIOR OF LANTERN, LOOKING EAST
The effect of his work both inside and out is admirable. It is divided into sixteen compartments by bold shafts, which carry the groining ribs; and three of these divisions over each of the cardinal sides are pierced as windows. The other four occur where the turrets on the exterior make it impossible to obtain light. These arcades form two stages in height between the pendentives and the vault. The vault is hardly to be called a real dome, having a series of ribs on its under side, nor does the external covering follow the same curve as the internal, but with admirable judgment it is raised so much as to have rather the effect of a very low spire, with a considerable entasis, than of a regular dome. The exterior angles have lines of simple and boldly contrived crockets, and the stones with which it is covered seem all to have been cut with scallops on their lower edge. The stonework of the exterior is much decayed, but otherwise the whole work stands well and firmly.
My drawings explain better than any written description can, the various details of the design; but I may well call attention to the admirable treatment of the gables over the windows on the cardinal sides of the dome. No doubt they answer the same purpose as the circular turrets at the angles in providing a counterpoise to the thrust of the vault, and the change from the circular lines of the angle turrets to the sharp straight lines of these gables is among the happiest efforts of art. So again I ought to notice the contrast between the shafted windows, with their springing lines definitely and accurately marked by sculptured capitals, and the openings in the turrets, with their continuous mouldings. The value of contrast—a treasure in the hands of the real artist—is here consciously and most artistically exhibited; and it was no mean artist who could venture to make so unsparing a use of architectural ornamentation withoutproducing any sense of surfeit on those who look at his work even with the most critical eyes.
I have seldom seen any central lantern more thoroughly good and effective from every point of view than this is: it seems indeed to solve, better than the lantern of any church I have yet seen elsewhere, the question of the introduction of the dome to Gothic churches. The lofty pierced tambour, and the exquisite effect of light admitted at so great a height from the floor, are features which it is not, I believe, vain to hope we may see emulated ere long in some modern work. But in any such attempt it must be borne well in mind that, though the scale of this work is very moderate, its solidity and firmness are excessive, and that thus only is it that it maintains that dignified manliness of architectural character which so very few of our modern architects ever seem even to strive for.
From all points, too, this lantern groups admirably with the rest of the church. My sketch was taken from the west end of the nave roof, in order to show the detail of the work to a fair scale; but the best view on the whole is that from the south-east, where it groups with the fine exterior of the eastern apses, with their engaged columns and rich corbel-tables, and with a turret to the east of the transept, which has been carried up and finished rather prettily in the fourteenth century with a short spire, with spire-lights on each side of its hexagonal base.
The old corbel-tables under the eaves remain throughout the east end; but the wall has been raised above them with a line of pierced quatrefoils, over which the rough timbers of the roof project. No doubt here, as we shall find in some other examples, the original intention was to have a stone roof of rather flat pitch. The space between the eaves of the chancel and the lower windows of the lantern would admit of no more than this; and though there is a good deal of piquant effect in the line of dark pierced traceries under the eaves and the rough tiled roof above them, one cannot but regret very much the change from the original design in so important a part of the work. The eaves-cornices are carved with a very rich variety of billet moulding, and carried upon corbels, some of which are carved and some moulded. The walls generally have flat pilasters at short intervals, finishing under the eaves-cornices, and the principal apse has the common arrangement of three-quarter engaged shafts dividing it into three bays. The window-arches are boldly moulded and carved, but the lights are narrow, and those in the main apse are remarkable for the delicate intricacy of the contemporaryirongrilleswith which they are guarded—genuine laborious smith’s work, utterly unlike the poor modern efforts with which in these days men earn fame without using their hammers! The effect here of the intricate curved lines, relieved by the dark shadow of the window opening, is charming. It may fairly be doubted, I think, whether these windows were ever meant to be glazed. In the transept pointed relieving arches are built over the windows, and one of them is a good example of the joggling of the joints of stonework, not uncommonly seen in early flat arches, but the use of which is not very obvious in a high pointed arch. The smaller apses have only one window, and are lower in proportion to the principal apse than is usually the case.