Pendentive, &c., under Lantern, Lérida Cathedral.Pendentive, &c., under Lantern,Lérida Cathedral.
The interior of the church has been as completely encumbered with arrangements for soldiers’ convenience as has that of the cloister. A floor has been erected all over the nave at mid-height of the columns, and in the south transept at the level of their capitals. The choir is boarded off, and not actively desecrated. The real floor of the church is now an artillery storehouse; on the raised floor of the nave a regiment of soldiers sleep and live; and in the south transept the bandsmen spend all their time making the most hideous and deafening discord. It is indeed a shameful use for a church, and there is only one small crumb of consolation in the fact that, soldiers notwithstanding, there has hitherto been no great amount of wilful damage done to any of the old work. The capitals throughout are extremely rich in sculpture, and are still perfect though obscured by whitewash, and the groining has nowhere been damaged. I know no style more full of vigour and true majesty than the earliest pointed, of which this interior is so fine an example. The lavish enrichment of the capitals, the fine section of the great clustered columns, the severe simplicity of the unmoulded arches, and the extreme boldness of the groining-ribs, all combine to produce this result. Almost all the principal shafts are coupled, and the groining-bays are kept very distinct from one another by very bold transverse arches; these, and indeed all the main arches, are pointed. There is no triforium, and but a small space between the arches into the aisles and the clerestory windows. The canted sides of the central lantern are supported on pendentives similar to those which occur under the angles of some of the early French domes.[367]Above these is an arcaded string-course, and thenthe windows: these are all double, and of varied tracery. There are monials and traceries nearly flush with both the internal and external face of the wall: this was a necessary arrangement for a work which was to be seen so entirely from below, where the external traceries would all have been lost to the view. There are groining-shafts in the angles of the octagon, and an octagonal dome or vault, with ribs at the angles. The choir is not used at all: it has a quadripartite vault over its western half, and a pointed arch in front of the apse, which is covered with a semi-dome. The western bay is lighted by clerestory windows like those in the nave, and the apse by three windows, which on the outside have flat buttresses between them.
None of the old ritual arrangements remain; but there is nothing here to suggest anything at all different from what might be met with in a similar church elsewhere.[368]The lantern does not prove anything more than our own lanterns do as to the arrangement of the choir for worship: in short, here as elsewhere the central lantern was introduced partly because it was a custom of the Lombard churches, from which this class of Spanish church borrowed so much, and in the next place because it was especially suitable for a climate like that of Spain, where it afforded the chance not only of lighting the church in the most agreeable way, but also of ventilating it most efficaciously.
[larger view][largest view]LÉRIDA:—Ground Plan of Cathedral &c. Plate XX Published by John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1865.
No doubt the external effect of this church was improved much by the addition of the great western steeple, though at the same time it is plain that its somewhat eccentric position has removed it so far from the main fabric of the church as to render the whole group of buildings less compact in its outline than it would have been had it been attached, like most of our own steeples, to the body of the church itself. On the other hand, nothing is more difficult, usually, than to build a steeple to a church which already has a central lantern, without entirely destroying the importance of this, which ought always, where it exists, to be a main feature; and here, as is generally the case in examples derived in any way from Italian examples, the central lantern is not very important in its dimensions, and required therefore more than usual caution on the part of the artist who ventured to add to it. Here, as happens often with detached campaniles, the grouping of the steeple with the church from various points of viewis very diversified, and often very striking. From its great height above the valley, it is seen on all sides, and generally at some distance. From the south, the grand size of the cloister, which connects the steeple with the church, gives it somewhat the effect of being in fact at the west end of an enormous building, of which the cloister may be the nave; whilst from the west, as the ground falls considerably, nothing of the church is seen but the central lantern rising slightly over the cloisters, whilst the steeple rears its whole height boldly to the right, and makes the whole scheme of the work utterly unintelligible until after a thorough investigation. Again, in the views of the cathedral from the east side the steeple has the effect of being, like that of Ely, at the west end of the nave, and here it groups finely with the central lantern. The same results will be found in some of our English examples, and the parish church of West Walton, near Wisbeach, illustrates, as well as any that I know, the extraordinary variety of effect which a detached tower, at some distance from the main building, produces.
The only portion of the building not yet described is a long hall on the north side of the cloister: this is vaulted with a pointed stone barrel-vault, and is gloomy-looking in the extreme, being lighted entirely from one end. A newel staircase has been taken away from the other end.
Near the north side of the cathedral, on slightly higher ground, is another fine fragment of a building of the same age, which looks as if it had always been built as a defensive work. It contains a magnificent hall, groined in four bays of quadripartite vaulting, and measuring about 24 feet by 96 feet. A smaller room next to this has a waggon-vault. The north and east walls of this hall, and of a building at right angles to it, are very boldly arcaded on the outside, and have a simple trefoiled corbel-table under the eaves: the hall windows are set within the wall-arcade. The bosses at the intersection of the ribs on the vault of the hall have interlacing patterns of Moorish character carved upon them, and afford the only distinct evidence of anything like Moorish influence that I noticed in any of the buildings here.
There are two other old churches in Lérida, San Lorenzo and San Juan. San Lorenzo is on the hill, not very far from the cathedral. It is a parallel triapsidal church, the nave vaulted with a pointed waggon-vault, divided into three bays by arches springing from coupled shafts in the side walls. Theapse has a semi-dome, and is lighted by three round-headed windows, five inches wide in the clear, and has a corbel-table under the eaves outside. The side walls of the nave are eight feet thick (the nave being thirty-three feet wide), and through them very simple pointed arches are pierced, opening into the aisles. I have no doubt that these were additions to the original fabric. They have polygonal apses at their east end, with very good window-tracery of circaA.D.1270-1300. On the south side an octagonal steeple was added in the fifteenth century, projecting from the aisle walls. This has a two-light window on each side of the belfry, a pierced parapet, and a simple octagonal spire. There is a fine fourteenth-century Retablo to the high altar. It has a niche in the centre with a figure of St. Laurence under a canopy, and a number of subjects and statues on either side. There is also one of the usual fifteenth-century galleries at the west end.
The interiors both of this church and of San Juan were so dark that I found it almost impossible to make even the roughest notes of their contents or dimensions.
San Juan is another fine early church, perhaps a little later than San Lorenzo, and of about the same age as the cathedral; neither of them, however, show any signs of having been, as is the tradition, built as mosques, and converted into churches after the taking of Lérida from the Moors inA.D.1149. The plan here is but little altered, and exhibits three bays of cross-vaulting, and an apse.[369]On the north side an aisle has been added; but on the south the façade is nearly unaltered, and the interior is similarly very perfect. The mode of lighting with windows very high up is similar to that of the cathedral clerestory, and is worth the attention of those who wish to adapt the Pointed style for tropical climates. The rose window and great south door are both very fine examples, and extremely peculiar in their arrangement. The door, which is very large and imposing, occupies the whole of the central bay, and there are fine windows in the bays on either side of it: the impression produced at first sight is consequently that one is looking at the west end of a large church, upon one side of which an apsidal chancel has been added. The door is in fact out of all proportion to the size of the church, though this very fact gives perhaps somewhat of that monumental character to the whole work which is so rare in small buildings. It is worthy of notice that the very samedesign is to be seen in the church of la Magdalena at Zamora—already described; and there is indeed so much identity of character between the two churches as to make it more than probable that the same architect erected both.
In the street near San Juan is a very fine old Romanesque house of unusually good style. It is of three stories in height, the lower story much modernized. The intermediate stage has a very fine row of three-lightajimezwindows with slender shafts and capitals very delicately sculptured. The string under these windows is also elaborately carved: above is an eaves-cornice, resting on corbels, and above this a modern upper stage. A stone with a Renaissance border to it, in the lower part of the wall, describes this building as the Exchange of Lérida, “built in 1589.” A more impudent forgery I do not know; but probably the architect of that day thought his ugly upper stage the only part worthy of notice, and meant only to record its erection. Thepatioor court-yard behind is small, but has the same kind of windows as the front—though without any carving—and some good corbel-tables and archways.
I saw nothing else of architectural interest in Lérida; but I confidently recommend other ecclesiologists to examine its buildings for themselves. They form an important link between the noble cathedral at Tarragona and the smaller but beautiful church of Tudela; and belonging as they do to the most interesting period of our art, the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, they afford examples for our emulation and study of even more value than the later works at Barcelona and Manresa, which I have before had to describe.[370]
TOthe north of the railway between Lérida and Zaragoza, and within easy distance of the stations of Monzon and Tardienta, are the two old Aragonese cities of Barbastro and Huesca Monzon—a possession of the Knights Templars sinceA.D.1143—is still dignified by a castle on the hill, which rises steeply above the town, and in which there are said to be some remains of the residence of their superior in Aragon. The accounts I obtained of Barbastro made me think it hardly worthy of a visit. The cathedral was built between 1500 and 1533; and it is a small church (about 140 feet in length), without either triforium or clerestory, the groining springing from the capitals of the columns, and being covered with ogee lierne ribs.[371]Huesca seemed to promise more, so leaving the railway at Almudévar[372]I made an excursion thither. It is a drive of three or four hours from the railway; and the distant views of the old city are striking, backed as it is by a fine mountain-range, on one of whose lower spurs it is built. The cathedral stands on the highest ground in the city; and the rocky bluffs of the mountain behind it look like enormous castles guarding itsenceinte. These picturesque views are the more refreshing by the contrast they offer to the broad corn-covered plain at their feet. Two or three miles from Huesca, on another hill, are the remains of the great monastery of Monte Aragon, which was, however, rebuilt in 1777, and is not very likely therefore now to reward examination.
The Plaza in front of the cathedral is surrounded by an important group of buildings—the palace of the kings of Aragon, the college of Santiago, and others belonging to the old university. They are mostly Renaissance in their design; but in the old palace is a crypt called “la Campana del Rey Monje,” which seems to date from the end of the twelfth century. It has an apse covered with a semi-dome; and a quadripartitevault of good character covers the buildings west of the apse. The arches are all semi-circular.
The cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt in the fifteenth century, from the designs of a Biscayan architect, Juan de Olotzaga.[373]The cloister on the north side is the principal remaining portion of the older church, and this is so damaged and decayed as to present hardly a single feature of interest save two or three of the picturesque tombs corbelled out from the walls, which are so frequently seen in the north of Spain.
The plan[374]of the cathedral consists of a nave and aisles of four bays in length, with chapels between the buttresses. The Coro is formed by screens which cut off the two eastern bays of the nave; it opens at the east into the rather grand transept, which, as is so invariably the case in the later Spanish churches, completely usurps the functions of the nave as the place of gathering for worshippers. To the east of the transept are five apsidal chapels opening out of it; that in the centre larger than the others, and containing the High Altar. Three broad steps are carried all across the church from north to south, in front of these chapels. It struck me that the plan of this east end was so very similar to that of some of the earlier Spanish churches[375]as to render it probable at any rate that Olotzaga raised his church upon the foundations of that which was removed to make way for his work. The steeple which takes the place of the westernmost chapel on the north side of the nave is octagonal in plan, but is much modernized, and finished with a brick belfry-stage: it is evidently of older foundation than the church. The columns between the nave and aisles are all clustered, and the main arches are boldly moulded. There is no triforium, the wall above the arcade being perfectly plain up to a carved stringcourse which is carried round the church below the clerestory; the windows in which are filled with flamboyant tracery. The groining is generally rather intricate, and has bosses at all the intersections of the ribs. There is no lantern at the intersection of the nave and transepts. It has been already said that the Coro occupies the usual place in the nave; and it is clear that it has never been moved, as there are small groined chapels formed between the columns on either side of it. The Reja atthe west end of choir is not old; the usual brass rails are placed to form a passage from the Coro to the Capilla mayor, across the transept.
The reredos behind the high altar is carved in alabaster: it is of the latest Gothic, but certainly very fine. Damian Forment, a Valencian sculptor, executed it betweenA.D.1520 and 1533.[376]It is divided into three great compartments, the centre rising higher than the others. Each compartment has a subject, crowded lavishly with figures in high relief; whilst a broad band of carving is carried round the whole, and many figures in niches are introduced. The subjects are: 1, The Procession to Calvary; 2, the Crucifixion, with the First Person of the Holy Trinity surrounded by angels in the sky; and, 3, the Descent from the Cross. Between these subjects and the altar are statues of the twelve Apostles and our Lord, and a door on either side of the altar opens into the space behind the reredos.
The west doorway is said by Cean Bermudez to be the work of Olotzaga. My own impression is that it is a work of circaA.D.1350. It is a fine middle-pointed doorway of rich character. The arch is of seven orders; three enriched with foliage, and the remainder with figures under canopies, of—1, figures with scrolls; 2, angels; 3, holy women; 4, apostles and saints. The tympanum has the B. V. Mary and our Lord under a canopy; she is standing on a corbel, on which is carved a woman with asps at her bosom; on either side of the canopy is an angel censing; below, on the left, are three kings, and on the right the Noli me tangere. The lintel has some coats of arms; and there are seven statues of saints in each jamb; and below them were subjects enclosed within quatrefoils, all of which have been destroyed.[377]The gable over the doorway arch is crocketed, and pierced with tracery, and has pinnacles on either side. The horn-shaped leaf so often seen in English work is profusely used here, and in the arches is generally arranged in the French fashion,à crochet. The wooden doors are covered with iron plates beaten up into a pattern, and nailed on with great brass nails.
The west end is finished at the top with a straight cornice,with circular turrets at the angles, and pinnacles between, dividing it into three compartments. The detail of all this upper part is very poor and late in style, and altogether inferior to that of the west doorway. The clerestory is supported by simple flying buttresses, finished with rich pinnacles.
There are two other old doorways. That from the cloister on the north side is round-arched, with dog-tooth, chevron, and roses carved on it; yet the detail seems to prove that it cannot be earlier thanA.D.1300, whilst some of the carving looks as if it were even later than this. The other door is in the south transept, and certainly deserves examination. It has a small groined porch formed between two buttresses in front of it; over the arch is the Crucifix, S. Mary, and S. John; whilst on the west wall are the three Maries coming with spices, &c., to the grave of our Lord, which is represented on the east wall of the porch, with the angel seated on it.
The church of San Pedro el Viejo, which I now have to mention, is by far the most interesting in the city, being of much earlier date than any part of the cathedral.[378]It has a nave and aisles of four bays, a transept with a raised lantern over the crossing, and three parallel apses at the east end. A hexagonal tower is placed against the north wall of the north transept, and a cloister occupies the whole south side of the church; whilst on the east of the cloister is a series of chapels or rooms of early date. There is, so far as I know, no evidence of the date of this work; but judging by its style, it can hardly be later than the middle of the twelfth century, with the exception of the raised vault of the lantern, which was finished, however, before the consecration of the church, which is said to have taken place inA.D.1241.[379]
The nave and aisles are vaulted with continuous waggon-vaults, the chapels at the east end with semi-domes, and the lantern with a quadripartite vault, the ribs of which are enriched with the dog-tooth ornament. The waggon-vault of the nave is divided into bays by cross arches corresponding with the piers of the arcades. The vaulting of the lantern springs from a higher level than the other vaults, and has ridge ribs as well as diagonal and wall ribs. The lantern is lighted by four circular windows, which have rich early thirteenth-century mouldings, and are filled in with tracery which is evidently of Moorish origin. A fine round-arched doorway, with three engaged shafts in eachjamb, leads from the transepts into the tower, which has groining shafts in each angle. The Coro here now occupies the western bay of the nave, and is fitted up with fair fifteenth-century stalls, which, being carried across the end, block up the old western doorway.
Interior of San Pedro, Huesca.Interior of San Pedro, Huesca.
The whole church is built of red sandstone, but is whitewashed throughout, and the exterior is much modernized, though the old work is still in part visible. The west front has a bold arch under the roof, which corresponds with the waggon-vault inside. The abacus from which this springs is carried across as a stringcourse, and in the space enclosed between it and the arch is a round-headed window, with a broad external splay and plain label moulding. A very plain western doorway is now (as also is this window) blocked up. The aisles have also small windows high up in the walls, and the whole church is covered with a roof of very flat pitch laid immediately on the stone vaults.The lowest stage of the tower had windows in each of its disengaged sides: it rises in four stages of equal height, divided by stringcourses, but is capped with a modern belfry stage. The lantern is carried up to the level of the top of its vault, and then covered like the rest of the church with a flat tiled roof. A stringcourse, richly worked with a billet moulding, is carried round the outer walls of the aisles, and round their pilaster buttresses.
[larger view][largest view]HUESCA: Ground: Plans: of: Cathedral: and: of: San: Pedro: Plate XXI. W. West, Lithr. Published by John Murray, Albermarle St. 1865.
The cloister, though in a very sad state of dilapidation, is still very interesting. It is covered with a lean-to roof, and has round arches throughout springing from capitals, some of which are carved with figures, and some with foliage only, but all of rude character. Several arched recesses for monuments are formed in the outer walls, but none of the inscriptions that I observed were earlier thanA.D.1200. In the south wall six of these arches have enormous stone coffins, each supported on three corbels on the backs of three lions. These coffins are about two feet deep, by seven feet in length, and covered with a gabled stone cover. The columns in the arcades of this cloister are curiously varied, some being coupled shafts, some quatrefoil in section, some square, and some octagonal. Against the east wall are four chambers opening into the cloister. That nearest the church is the Chapel of San Bartolomé, and of the same style as the nave, covered with a low waggon-vault, and with the original stone altar still remaining against the square east end. The chapel next to this has a very late vault; the next, a quadripartite vault; and the southernmost has a pointed waggon-vault, with three plain, pointed-arched recesses in each of the side walls.
Over the modern doorway from the cloister into the church is the tympanum of the original doorway, rudely sculptured with the Adoration of the Magi, above which two angels hold a circle, on which are inscribed the monogram of our Lord, and the letters A and Ω.
I could find nothing else of much architectural interest in Huesca. The Church of San Martin has a plain thirteenth-century west doorway, and that of San Juan—said to have been consecrated inA.D.1204—seemed to have an apse of about that date, with a central lantern-tower carried on pointed arches. There are remains also of two of the town gateways, but they are of no interest.
In the distance, as I approached Huesca, I had noticed what looked like an old church at Salas, and, having time to spare, Iwalked there. The way lay along fields and by the muddiest of roads, where ruts were being levelled, and the whole made uniformly muddy, in order to accommodate the Bishop of Huesca, who was coming out in procession to have a service in the church there. I found the east and west ends of the church to be old, but the rest, inside and out, had been hopelessly modernized. The east end retains nothing beyond three very long slits for windows, about six inches wide, and not intended for glazing. The west end is very fine, and almost untouched. It has a noble doorway of six orders, very richly sculptured with chevrons, dog-tooth, mouldings of first-pointed character, and rich transitional foliage. The capitals have similar foliage, but the shafts and their bases have been destroyed, and a modern head to the door has been inserted within the arch. This door is set forward from the face of the wall nearly four feet, and has engaged shafts in the angles, and a richly-carved cornice. The gable (which is of flat pitch) is filled with a large circular window, the tracery of which has been destroyed. It has three orders of moulding round it, one moulded only, the others carved with a very bold dog-tooth enrichment. The label has rather ingeniously contrived crockets of very conventional design. The whole of this front is of very much the same character as the early work in the cathedral at Lérida. It is only about a mile and a half out of Huesca, and ought to be visited, as, with the exception of San Pedro el Viejo, it is certainly the most interesting work to be seen.
Travellers will find accommodation which is just tolerable in the Posada at Huesca. They should not return, as I was obliged to do, to Zaragoza, but should extend the journey to Jaca, where there seems to be a fair Romanesque cathedral. Near Jaca, too, Sta. Cruz de los Seros has a fine Romanesque church, with an octagonal raised central lantern, and a steeple of several stages in height on its north side. San Juan de la Peña, a monastery in the same district, has a fine Romanesque cloister, of the same character as that of San Pedro at Huesca: but the church is, I think, modern.[380]
No. 46. SALAS, NEAR HUESCA. WEST FRONT OF THE CHURCH.No. 46.SALAS, NEAR HUESCA.WEST FRONT OF THE CHURCH.
I returned from Huesca to the railway, and thence to Zaragoza, hoping that, notwithstanding all it had suffered from wars and sieges, something might still be found to reward examination. I have seen no city in Spain which is more imposing inthe distance, and yet less interesting on near acquaintance. A great group of towers and steeples stands up so grandly, that it is natural to suppose there will be much to see. But whether the French in their sieges destroyed everything, or whether it is that the city is too prosperous to allow old things to stand in the way, it is certainly the fact that but few old buildings do stand, and that none of them are of first-rate interest. The river here is rapid and broad, and the view of the distant mountains fine, whilst, partly owing to its being a centre for several railways, it is a fairly gay and lively city, and is year by year in process of improvement, in the modern sense of the word.
There are here two cathedrals, in which I believe the services are celebrated alternately for six months at a time, the same staff serving both churches. On the two occasions on which I have stopped in Zaragoza, it has fortunately happened that the old cathedral was open, and the exterior of the other promises so little gratification in the interior, that I never even made the attempt to penetrate into it.
The old cathedral is called the “Seu,” par excellence, the other being the Cathedral “del Pilar.” The Seu[381]is the usual term for the principal church, and the name of the second is derived from a miracle-working figure of the Blessed Virgin on a pillar, which it seems that the people care only to worship half the year.
The Seu is in some respects a remarkable church, but it is so much modernized outside as to be, with the exception of one portion, quite uninteresting, and the interior, though it is gorgeous and grand in its general effect, is of very late style and date, and does not bear very much examination in detail. It is very broad in proportion to its length, having two aisles on each side of the nave, and chapels beyond them between the buttresses; and there are but five bays west of the Crossing, and of these the Coro occupies two. There is a lantern at the Crossing, and a very short apsidal choir. The nave and aisles are all roofed at the same level, the vaulting springing from the capitals of the main columns, and the whole of the light is admitted by windows in the end walls, and high up in the outer walls of the aisles. In this respect Spanish churches of late date almost always exhibit an attention to the requirements of the climate, which is scarcely ever seen in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and this church owes almost all its good effect to this circumstance, for it is in light and shade only, and neither ingeneral design nor in detail, that it is a success. The detail, indeed, is almost as much Pagan as Gothic. The capitals of the columns, for instance, have carvings of fat nude cherubs, supporting coats of arms, and the groining, which is covered with ogee lierne ribs, has enormous bosses and pendants cut out of wood and gaudily gilded.
There is some interesting matter in the history of the Cimborio over the Crossing. It seems that in the year 1500 there was supposed to be some danger of the old Cimborio falling, and the Archbishop, D. Alonso de Aragon, and his Chapter, thereupon invited several artificers and skilled engineers to examine the works, and advise as to its repair. At this Junta there were present twomaestrosfrom Toledo—one of them Henrique de Egas; Maestro Font, from Barcelona; Carlos, from Montearagon (Huesca); and Compte, from Valencia; and they, having deliberated with the artificers attached to the cathedral, reported that it would be necessary to take down the Cimborio and rebuild it, and do other repairs to the rest of the church.
This report having been presented, the archbishop some time afterwards, in January, 1505, makes an appeal to the King on the subject, in order that he may obtain the services of Henrique de Egas as architect for the work. He says that he has had the advice of the most experienced and able architects of the day, and among them of Egas, and that they were all agreed that the Cimborio must be taken down, which had been done. And then he says that, inasmuch as the rest of the church seems to be much in want of repair, and as Egas seemed to be a man of great ability and experience, he was very anxious to procure his aid, but that Egas had excused himself on the plea that he had a certain hospital to build at Santiago in Galicia for the King, who required him to go there. Whereupon the archbishop begs the King, for the love of God our Lord, that he will have pity on him; and since there is no great necessity at Santiago, and a very great one at Zaragoza, that he will command Egas to undertake the work.
It is said that Egas did execute the work after all. But it is impossible not to be amused at the enormous contrast between those times and our own, if then it was necessary for an archbishop to appeal to the King to make an architect undertake such a work![382]
The detail of the Cimborio is, as might be expected from its date, most impure. It is octagonal in plan, the canted sides being carried on semi-circular arches thrown across the angles. It is of two stages in height, the lower having square recesses for statues, and the upper traceried windows. The general scheme is Gothic, but the detail is all very Renaissance in character.[383]
The choir is apsidal, but the apse is concealed by an enormous sculptured Retablo, which, in spite of its very late date, is certainly dignified in its effect.
Externally there are evidences of the existence of an earlier church, the lower part of the apse being evidently Romanesque, a portion of the buttresses and one of the windows retaining their old character. The new work is of brick, the windows generally of four lights, with flamboyant tracery, and the walls crowned with rich cornices. The exterior of the Cimborio, as well as of the church, owes much of the picturesqueness which marks it to the fact that the brickwork is everywhere very roughly and irregularly executed.
One portion of the exterior of the church is, however, most interesting; for on the face of the wall, at the north-east angle, is a very remarkable example of brickwork, inlaid with coloured tiles, the character of which proves that it is, no doubt, part of the cathedral which was approaching completion in the middle of the fourteenth century, and earlier in date therefore than the greater part of the existing fabric. This wall is a lofty unbroken surface, about sixty-four feet in length from north to south, and is erected in front of a building of two stages in height, and pierced with pointed windows in each stage. It is built with bricks of, Ithink, a reddish colour (though I am a little uncertain, owing to their being now very dirty), which are all arranged in patterns in the wall, by setting those which are to form the outlines forward from one-and-a-half to two inches in advance of the general face of the wall. The spaces so left are then filled in with small tiles set in patterns or diapers, the faces of which are generally about three quarters of an inch behind those of the brick outlines. The tiles are of various shapes, sizes, and colours, red, blue, green, white, and buff on white. The blue is very deep and dark in tone, the green light and bright. The patterns are generally of very Moorish character; and there can be no doubt, I think, that the whole work was done by Moorish workmen. The general character of this very remarkable work is certainly most effective; and though I should not like to see the Moresque character of the design reproduced, it undoubtedly affords some most valuable suggestions for those who at the present day are attempting to develop a ceramic decoration for the exteriors of buildings. Here I was certainly struck by the grave quiet of the whole decoration, and was converted to some extent from a belief which I had previously entertained rather too strongly, that the use of tiles for inlaying would be likely to lead to a very gay and garish style of decoration, foreign to all dignity and repose in its effect. There is an intersecting arcade under the lowest windows, in which, as also in some other parts, the ground of the panels is plastered; and in this plaster panels of tiles and single sunk disks of tile are inserted on the white ground. The windows are pointed, and all of them have rich borders to their jambs, which are continued round the arches. Within their borders there appears to have been an order of moulded brickwork, and then the window opening, which is now blocked, but which may possibly have had stone monials and tracery. The bricks used here are of the usual old shape, about 1 ft. 1½ in. long by 6¾ in. wide. They are generally built alternately long and short, but not by any means with any great attempt to break the bond. The mortar-joints are also not less than half an inch in thickness, and this, it must be remembered, in a work the whole characteristic of which is the extreme delicacy and refinement of the decoration. The tiles are five-eighths of an inch thick; some of them are encaustic, of two colours; and all are, as is usual with Moorish tiles, glazed all over. This tile and brick decoration begins at a height of about eight feet from the ground, and is carried up from that point to the top of the wall. Such work seems to be obviously unfitted to be close tothe ground; and the lower part of the wall is therefore judiciously built with perfectly plain brickwork.
The most important church in Zaragoza after the cathedral is that of San Pablo. This is an early thirteenth-century church, of the same class as that of San Lorenzo at Lérida, having a nave of four bays, and an apse of five sides with a groined aisle round it. The side walls of the nave, which are of enormous thickness, are pierced with pointed arches opening into the aisles, which seem to be of the same date, though from the enormous size of the piers they are very much cut off from the nave. The groining ribs are of great size, and moulded with a triple roll in both nave and aisles. Some trace of the original lancet windows is still to be seen in the apse; but most of them are blocked up or destroyed. The aisle is returned across the west end of the nave; and there is a western door and porch, with a descent of some eleven or twelve steps into the church. The Coro is at the west end of the nave, and is fitted with stalls executed circaA.D.1500-1520, with a Renaissance Reja to the east of them. There is a good reredos, rich in coloured and sculptured subjects, which is said to be a work of the beginning of the sixteenth century, by Damian Forment, of Valencia, who, as will be recollected, carved the reredos in the cathedral at Huesca. The fine octagonal brick steeple is evidently a later addition to the church, and rises from the north-west angle of the nave. It is very much covered with work of the same kind as the wall veil at the cathedral, which I have just been describing, though on a bolder and coarser scale; and it belongs, as far as I can judge by its style, to somewhere about the same period.[384]The brick patterns here, as there, are in parts filled in with glazed tiles; and the general effect of the steeple is very graceful, rising as it does with richly ornamented upper stages, upon a plain base, out of the low and strange jumble of irregular roofs with which the church is now covered.
The great steeple, called the Torre Nueva, in the Plaza San Felipe, is finer and loftier than that of San Pablo, and is, I suppose, on the whole, the finest example of its kind anywhere to be seen. It is octagonal, in plan, and the sections of the various stages differ considerably in outline, owing to the ingeniousmanner in which the face of the walls is set at various angles. The face of most of the work is diapered with patterns in brickwork as in the other Zaragozan examples; but the most remarkable feature is, perhaps, the extraordinary extent to which the whole fabric falls out from the perpendicular. This, which is so common a fault with the Italian campaniles, arises here evidently from the same causes, the badness of the foundations, and the absence of buttresses. A great mass of brickwork has been built up on one side, in order to prevent the further settlement of this steeple; and it is to be hoped that the remedy may be effectual; for Zaragoza can ill afford to lose so remarkable a feature out of the scanty number still left; and it is valuable also as one of the grandest examples of a very remarkable class. It is said to have been built inA.D.1504.
Another parish church in the principal street has a very small brick steeple of the same class, but very simple, and with it I think I must close my list of really Gothic erections here. The Renaissance buildings have often a certain amount of Gothic detail, and some Gothic arrangements of plan, but of so late and debased a kind as to make them little worthy of much study. Their real merit is their great size, and the rude grandeur of their treatment. They are usually built of rough brickwork, boldly and massively treated. They have always an arcaded stage, just below the eaves, which are very boldly corbelled out from the walls, and generally supported on moulded wood corbels, carrying a plate which projects some three or four feet from the face of the wall, and throws, of course, a very fine shadow over it. Thepatios, or court-yards, are lofty, and surrounded by columns which carry the open stages of the first and second floors. There is here no attempt at covering the brickwork with plaster or cement; and accordingly, though the detail is poor and uninteresting, the general effect is infinitely more noble than that of any of our compo-covered, smooth-faced modern London houses. The picturesque roughness of the work which was always indulged in by the mediæval architects was no sin, it seems, in the eyes of the early Renaissance architects; and it is, indeed, reserved for our own times to realize the full iniquity of any honest exhibition of facts in our ordinary buildings!
Among the buildings here which illustrate the transition from Gothic to Renaissance the cloister of the church of Sta. Engracia seems to be one of the most remarkable. It is said tohave been constructed in 1536 by one Tudelilla of Tarazona, and an illustration is given of it in Villa Amil.[385]The Gothic element seems here to have been as much Moresque as Gothic, and hence the combination of these with Renaissance makes a whole which is as strange and heterogeneous as anything ever erected.
It will be seen that Zaragoza has not very much to interest an architect or ecclesiologist. Travellers in Spain who find it necessary to recruit after roughing it in country towns may no doubt feel grateful for the creature comforts they will be able to enjoy there, and it is now rather a centre of railway communication, being on the line of railway which runs from Bilbao to Barcelona, and at the point where the line from Madrid joins it.
I FOUND a pleasant drive of two and a half hours, through vineyards and olive-grounds, from Tudela to Tarazona. In front all the way was the noble Sierra de Moncayo, which, according to one of my Spanish fellow-travellers, is the highest mountain in Spain, from which view however I humbly, and somewhat to his annoyance, dissented. But whether he were right or not, it is still of very grand height, and the more impressive in that it rises by itself in the midst of a comparatively flat country. Behind us was an admirable view of Tudela, backed by the brown and arid hills which skirt the Ebro; beyond them, in the far distance, the Pyrenees; whilst in the immediate foreground we had a rich green mass of olives and vines spread in a glorious expanse over the country.
The villages on the road have nothing to boast of if I except a pilgrimage church at Cascante, approached by a long covered gallery from below, and a brick tower at Monteacadeo, of the Zaragozan type. We passed, too, a newly-established convent for monks, who are already beginning to build, in spite of the ruin with which they have so lately been visited. But long before the end of our journey was reached, the towers and steeples of Tarazona rose attractively in front over the low hill which conceals the complete view of the city until you are almost close upon it.
Attractive as this general view undoubtedly is, this old city does not lose when it is examined more closely and carefully. It is not only in itself picturesque, but its situation on either side of the stream which a few miles below falls into the Ebro is eminently fine, and has been made the most of by the happy and probably unconscious skill of the men who have reared on the cliff above the water a tall pile of buildings on buildings, carried on grand arches, corbelled here and buttressed there, and with a sky-line charming in itself, and rendered doubly beautiful by thesudden break in its outline caused by the lofty brick steeple of la Magdalena—one of the finest of its class—which rears itself, with admirable hardihood, on the very edge of the cliff. The streets and Plazas, too, of the old city are all picturesquely irregular, full of colour and evidences of national peculiarities, and climb the steep sides of the hills from the river-side to the high ground at the northern end of the city, which is crowned by the church of San Miguel. I call such skill as this “unconscious,” because it is so much a characteristic of old works of this kind that their authors never exhibit any of that pert conceit which so distinctly marks the efforts of so many of us nowadays. Old architects fortunately lived in days when society was moderate in its demands, and had not ceased to care for that which is true and natural: sad for us that we live when every man wishes only to excel his neighbour, and that without regard to what is true or useful; so that, instead of obtaining those happy results which always reward the artist who does exactly what is needed in the most natural and unartificial manner, we, by our attempts to show our own cleverness, constantly end in substituting a petty personal conceit, where otherwise we might have had an enduring and artistic success.
The cathedral stands very much alone, and away from the busier part of the city, at the upper end of a grass-grown and irregular Plaza, on the opposite side of the river from the Alcazar, and indeed from the bulk of the houses. This Plaza, when I first saw it, on a Sunday afternoon, was thoroughly beautiful and characteristic as a picture of Spanish life. There was a fountain in the centre, around which hundreds of peasants were congregated in lively groups, talking at the top of their voices, and all gay with whitest shirt-sleeves, bright-coloured sashes, and velvet breeches, slashed daintily at the knees, to show the whiteness of the linen drawers; and when I went on into the church, I found in the Lady Chapel another group of them kneeling before the altar, and following one of their own class in a litany to the Blessed Virgin, the effect of which was striking even to one unable to join in the burthen of the prayer.
The cathedral here is said to have been restored by Alonso the First of Aragon, in the year 1110; but an old Breviary, cited by Argaïz, fixes the foundation of the present cathedral in 1235,[386]and with this date the earliest part of the existing church agrees very closely. The plan[387]is very good, consisting of a nave of six bays, with aisles and chapels between their buttresses, transepts, a lofty Cimborio over the Crossing, and a choir of two bays, ended with a five-sided apse. The chapels in the chevet have mostly been altered, though the first on the north side appears to be original, and proves that the outline of the plan of the chevet could never have been very good. This chapel is four-sided in plan, but much wider at one end than the other, and we must, I fear, give but scant credit to the architect who planned it. The Lady Chapel is a late and poor addition of a very inferior kind, and completely modernized—as indeed is the greater part of the church—on the exterior. On the south side of the cathedral there are old sacristies and a large cloister, of which more presently. The west end seemed to me to have been intended for two steeples, but one only has been completed, and this is on the north side of the north aisle.
The remaining portions of the thirteenth-century church have been so much altered that the general effect of the early work is almost entirely destroyed. The columns and arches generally are original; the former have carved capitals; many of the latter are slightly horseshoe in shape, and have labels enriched with the dog-tooth ornament. The choir and transepts retain a good simple arcaded triforium, carried on detached shafts, and this returns across the gable-walls of the latter; it is of the simplest early pointed character; so too are the choir windows, which before their alteration appear to have been lancets, with engaged shafts in their jambs, whilst in the eastern wall of the transepts are windows of two lancet lights, with a circle above within an enclosing arch. Most of the arches of the nave are adorned with carved flowers on the chamfers, the effect of which is not good; indeed I half doubted whether they were not plaster additions, though they seemed to be just too good for this. The choir has two (and only two) flying buttresses; and as they are evidently of early date, with pinnacles of the very simplest pyramidal outline, they were probably erected to counteract a settlement which showed itself immediately after the erection of the church, for there is no evidence of any others having existed. The walls of the apse had originally a richly carved cornice, filled with heads and foliage. The groining ofthe aisles is generally simple and early in date, and quadripartite in plan: that of the whole of the rest of the choir and nave is of the richest description, and of the latest kind of Gothic.
[larger view][largest view]TARAZONA Ground Plan of Cathedral Plate XXII. W. West, Lithr. Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.
Here, as is so frequently the case all over the world, the builders of one period used an entirely different material from that used by those of earlier times;[388]so that you may tell with tolerable accuracy the date of the work by the material of which it is built. Here the early church was entirely built of stone, but in all the later additions brick is the prevailing material; and at first sight it is in these later additions that we seem to find almost all the most characteristic work in the church. Many of these additions, as for instance the Churrigueresque alterations of the clerestory, are thoroughly bad and contemptible; but some of them, though they damage the unity of effect of the building, and have taken the place of work which one would much rather have seen still intact, are nevertheless striking in themselves. Such is the singular and picturesque Cimborio erected by Canon Juan Muñoz[389]in the sixteenth century; it is certainly most picturesque, but such a curious and complex combination of pinnacles and turrets built of brick, and largely inlaid with green, blue, and white tiles, is perhaps nowhere else to be seen. It is octagonal in plan, and of three stages in height, the angles of the octagons in the several stages being all counterchanged. Enormous coats of arms decorate the fronts of the buttresses. The whole work is of the very latest possible Gothic, utterly against all rules both in design and decoration, and yet, notwithstanding all this, it is unquestionably striking in its effect. The mixture of glazed tiles with brickwork has here been carried to a very great extent, and the result does not, I think, encourage any one to hope for much from this kind of development. This work is not to be compared to that at the east end of Zaragoza Cathedral, where a plain piece of wall is carefully covered all over with a rich coloured diaper of brickwork and tiles, which are all harmonious and uniform in character, and—which is equally important—intexture, and it has, on the contrary, great similarity to some attempts to combine bricks and tiles which we see made in the present day, and seems to show that these attempts are not to be carelessly encouraged. For even when such work is first executed, and the brickwork is fresh and neat, I think we always feel that the smooth hard surface of the tile offers rather too great a contrast to the rougher texture of the bricks; and whilst the former is likely to remain almost unchanged for ever, the latter is certain gradually to grow rougher and ruder in its aspect, until, in the end, we shall have walls showing everywhere picturesque marks of age, and yet with their decorations as fresh as if they had but just been introduced. Nothing can well be worse than this; for if the appearance of age is to be venerated at all, it must be somewhat uniformly evident; and it no more answers to permit the decorations on an old and rugged wall to be always new and fresh-looking, than it does to allow a juvenile wig to be put on the venerable head of an old man!
The brick steeple of the cathedral is an inferior example of the same kind as that of la Magdalena, which I shall have presently to describe; its upper half is modern, and the lowest stage of stone. The west front is all modernized, and the north transept is conspicuous for a large porch of base design, erected probably in the sixteenth century, and exhibiting a curious though very unsuccessful attempt to copy—or perhaps I ought to say caricature—early work.
The whole of the clerestory walls have been raised with a stage of brickwork above the windows, which was added probably in the sixteenth or seventeenth century.
The cloister, built in the beginning of the sixteenth century, by D. Guillen Ramon de Moncada, is a remarkable example of very rich brickwork. It deserves illustration as being of an extremely uncommon style, and withal very effective. All the arches and jambs of the openings are of moulded brick, and there are brick enclosing arches, and a very simple brick cornice outside; but the delicate traceries which give so much character to the work are all cut in thin slabs of stone let into the brickwork. Of course such a work was not intended for glazing, and was an ingenious arrangement for rendering the cloister cool and unaffected by the sun, even when at its hottest. The forms of the openings here are certainly not good, and look much more like domestic than ecclesiastical work; but in spite of this one cannot but be thankful for novelty, whenever it is, as here,legitimately obtained. The bricks are of a very pale red tint, 12½ inches long, 6¼ inches wide, and from 1½ to 1¾ thick, and the mortar-joint, as usual, is very thick—generally about ¾ of an inch. The cloister is groined, and probably in brick, but is now plastered or whitewashed unsparingly, and its effect is in great degree ruined.
Cloister, Tarazona.Cloister, Tarazona.
The sacristies are rather peculiar in their arrangement: they are all groined, and one of them has a small recess in one angle with a chair in it facing a crucifix, of which I could not learn the use. Another of this group of buildings contains a fountain under a small dome, the plashing of whose waters seemed to make it a very popular rendezvous of the people, and made itself heard everywhere throughout the sacristies and their passages.
The stalls in the Coro are of very late Gothic, the bishop’s stall, with one on either side of it in the centre of the west end,having lofty canopies. The Coro is more than usually separated from the Capilla mayor, and there can be little doubt that it does not occupy its original position. The men who built so long a nave would never have done so simply to render its length useless by so perverse an arrangement of the choir. Here, in fact, the Coro occupies the same kind of position to which one so often sees it reduced in parish churches in Spain, where it is usually either in a western gallery, or at any rate at the extreme western end of the nave, behind everybody’s backs, and apparently out of their minds!
A chapel on the north side of the nave, dedicated to Santiago, has a richly cusped arch opening from it to the aisle, and its vault springs from large corbels, carved with figures of the four evangelists, rudely but richly sculptured. It is mainly worthy of notice now on account of the beauty of a panel-painting still preserved over the altar: this is painted on a gold background, richly diapered, and the nimbi and borders to the vestments all elaborately raised in gold in high relief. The frame is richly carved with figures of saints, and gilt. The predella has on either side of the centre St. John and the Blessed Virgin, and four other holy women; in the centre a sculpture of our Lord and four saints which serves as a pedestal for a well-posed figure of Santiago; and on either side of the saint are two pictures with subjects illustrating his life. It is, on the whole, a very fine example of the combination of painting and sculpture, of which the Spaniards in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were so fond. The paintings are less realistic than German work of the same age, and, if not so delicately lovely as early Italian works, are yet of great interest and merit.
No 47. TARAZONA. CAMPANILE OF LA MAGDALENA.No 47.TARAZONA.CAMPANILE OF LA MAGDALENA.
Returning from the cathedral to the town, and before one crosses to the opposite side of the river, a noble view of the buildings on the cliff above it is obtained from the bridge. The grandest of these is an enormous bishop’s palace, once I believe the Alcazar; and close to it is the church of la Magdelena. The interior of this is entirely modernized, but the east end outside is a valuable example of untouched Romanesque. The eastern apse is divided into three by engaged shafts, stopping with capitals at the eaves-cornice, which is carried on a very simple corbel-table. To the west of this church is the steeple to which I have already alluded as giving so much of its character to Tarazona. It is a very lofty brick tower, without buttresses, with a solid simple base battering out boldly and effectively, and diapered in its upper stages with the patterns formed by projecting bricks,of which the builders of the brick buildings throughout this district were so fond. At a very slight expense a great effect of enrichment is obtained; the dark shadows of the bricks under the bright Spanish sunlight define all the lines clearly; and the uniformity of colour and the absence of buttresses make the general effect simple and quiet, notwithstanding the intricacy of the detail. The upper stage of this steeple is, as I need hardly say, a comparatively modern addition, but it no doubt adds to its effect by adding so much to the height, and in colour and design it harmonizes fairly with the earlier work below.
The church of La Concepcion, not far from this, is a very late Gothic building, with a western gallery whose occupants are quite concealed by stone traceries of the same kind as those in the cloisters of the cathedral. The sanctuary walls here are lined with glazed tiles, and the floor is laid with blue, green, and white tiles, the colour of each of which being half white and half blue or green allows of the whole floor being covered with a diaper of chequer-work, which is very effective and very easily arranged.
At the farther end of the city, and on the top of the long hill on which it is built, is a church dedicated to San Miguel. This has a simple nave with a seven-sided apse. The groining is all of very late date, the ribs curling down at their intersection as pendants, the under sides of which are cut off to receive bosses which were probably large and of wood. This groining is probably not earlier than the end of the sixteenth century, though the church itself is of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, having two doors of one of these dates: that on the north side has, in most respects, the air of being a work of the thirteenth, but its sculpture seems to prove that it cannot be earlier than the fourteenth century. It has the Judgment of Solomon carved on one of the capitals, angels in the label, and a figure of St. Michael above. The south doorway is executed in brick and stone, and is of the same date as the other. A brick belfry on the north side is enriched in the same fashion as that of la Magdalena, and, like it, batters out considerably at the base, but it is altogether inferior both in size and design.
From Tarazona I made a delightful excursion to the Abbey of Veruela. It is a two hours’ ride, and the path takes one over a hill which conceals the Sierra de Moncayo from sight in most parts of Tarazona. The scenery on the road was beautiful.The town itself is always very striking; and as we ascended, the views of the distant hills and mountains beyond the Ebro were finer and finer. After riding for an hour and a half, a grand view of the whole height of Moncayo is obtained; below it to the right is a little village guarded by a picturesque castle keep, and on beyond and to the left a long line of roof, and towers, and walls girt around with trees, which seems to promise much to reward examination: and this is the old abbey of Veruela. At last the avenue is reached, which leads to the abbey gateway, in front of which stands a tall but mutilated cross, which forms the centre from which five paths—each planted with an avenue of trees—diverge.
The history of this abbey is interesting. It was the first Cistercian house in Spain, and was founded by a certain Don Pedro de Atares, and his mother Teresa de Cajal, who commenced it in A.D. 1146, completed it in 1151, and obtained its formal incorporation in the Cistercian order on the 1st of September of the same year. There was a foundation for twelve monks, who were the first of their order to cross the Pyrenees, and who established themselves definitively here on the 10th August, 1171, under the direction of Bernard, Abbat of Scala Dei.[390]
I suppose the desolate situation of Veruela led to its being carefully fortified, though, indeed, at the date of its foundation, most religious houses were enclosed within fortified walls, and the severe rule of the early Cistercians will account fully for the remote and solitary situation chosen by the brethren who planted this house where we see it: at any rate, whatever the cause, it is now completely surrounded by walls, from which round towers project at intervals. The walls and towers are all perfectly plain, and surmounted with the pointed battlement so often seen in early Spanish buildings. A walled courtyard protects the entrance to the main gateway, and it is in front of this that the avenues mentioned just now all unite.
No. 48. ABBEY OF VERUELA ENTRANCE GATEWAYNo. 48.ABBEY OF VERUELAENTRANCE GATEWAY
The view here is very peculiar. In front are the low walls of the outer court, with a raised archway in the centre; behind these the higher walls and towers, with a lofty and very plain central gateway, finished with an octagonal stage and low crocketed spire of late date, but pierced at the base with very simple thirteenth-century archways, leading into the inner court. Beyond this, again, is seen the upper part of the walls and thesteeple of the Abbey Church, backed by a bold line of hills. Passing through this gateway, a long narrow court leads to the west front of the church; and to the right of this court is a long range of buildings, all of which I think are of comparatively modern erection, though the brickwork in apatioentered by one of the openings is picturesque and good.
The west front of the church has a very noble round-arched doorway, boldly recessed, and with many shafts in the jambs. Above this is a small stone inscribed with the monograms X. P. and A. Ω.; and then, higher, a delicate line of arcading carried on slender shafts. All this work is set forward in advance of the general face of the wall. The nave and aisles were each lighted with a plain circular window, and the arcading up the eaves of the western gable still remaining shows that its pitch was always very flat. A steeple was built by an Abbat—Lope Marco—in the sixteenth century, against the western bay of the north aisle, and before its erection there was, I suppose, no tower attached to the abbey.
In plan[391]the church consists of a nave and aisles six bays in length, transepts with eastern apses, and a choir with an aisle round it, and five small apsidal chapels. To the south of the nave is a large cloister with a Chapter-house on its eastern side, and other ranges of buildings on the west and south. To the east, too, are large erections now occupied as a private residence, and of which consequently I saw nothing properly, but without much regret, as they did not seem to show any traces of antiquity, and had probably been all rebuilt in those halcyon days in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, when Spaniards had more money than they well knew how to spend.
If we compare this church with one of the earliest French convents of the same order—as, for instance, Clairvaux—we shall find a very remarkable similarity in most of the arrangements. In both, the church is approached through a long narrow court, to which it is set in a slightly oblique line. In both, the extreme simplicity, the absence of sculptures, the absence of a steeple, are observed in compliance with the fundamental rules of the Order. Both have their cloisters similarly placed, with similar Chapter-houses, and lavatories projecting from their southern alleys. The sacristies and the great libraries are in the same position—though here the latter has been convertedinto an enormous hall—and there are here groups of buildings all round the cloister, which were probably appropriated much in the same way as were those at Clairvaux. Both, too, were enclosed in a very similar way with walls and towers, though at Clairvaux the enclosure was far larger than at Veruela.
It is clear, therefore, that the French monks who were brought here to found this first Spanish Cistercian house, came with the plan approved by their Order, and it is probable with something more than the mere ground-plan, for the whole of the work is such as might at the same date have been erected in France.
The whole exterior of the church is very fine, though severely simple. The west front has already been described. The exterior of the chevet is more striking. The roofs of the chapels which surround it finish below the corbel-table of the aisle, which has a steepish roof finishing below the clerestory; and the latter is divided into five bays by plain pilasters. All the eaves have corbel-tables, and the windows throughout are round-headed. The chapels on the eastern side of the transepts are of the same height as the aisle round the choir, and higher than the chapels of the chevet. The design of the interior, though very simple, is extremely massive and dignified. The main arches are all pointed, the groining generally quadripartite (save in the small apses, which are roofed with semi-domes), and the piers large and well planned. Many of the old altars remain; and among them the high altar in the choir, and those in the chapels of the chevet. The former is arcaded along its whole front, but has been altered somewhat in length at no very distant period. Near it is a double piscina, formed by a couple of shafts with capitals hollowed out with multifoil cusping.
The chapel altars are all like each other, and unlike the high altar, which is solid, whilst they are stone tables, each supported upon five detached shafts. They stand forward from the walls in the centre of the apses, and have rudely carved and planned piscinæ, and credence niches on the right-hand side as you face them.
The stones are marked in all directions by the masons, some of them with a mere line across from angle to angle, but mostly with marks of the usual quaint description. A number of examples of them are given on the engraving of the ground-plan.
No. 49. VERUELA ABBEY CHURCH. INTERIOR.No. 49.VERUELA ABBEY CHURCH.INTERIOR.
Some part of the floor is laid with blue and white tiles,arranged in chevrons with good effect, and other parts with tombstones of Abbats, whose effigies are carved on them in low relief. They are flatter than the somewhat similar stones in some of the German churches (ase.g.at S. Elizabeth, Marburg) but are still a great deal too uneven on the surface to be suitable for a pavement.
Chapel Altar, Veruela.Chapel Altar, Veruela.
The capitals are all very rudely sculptured, and the whole of the work has the air of extreme severity, almost of rudeness, which might be anticipated from the circumstances of its erection. A chapel was built in the sixteenth century to the north of the north transept by Ferdinand of Aragon, Bishop of Zaragoza, and nephew of Ferdinand the Catholic. It has nothing remarkable in its design. Later than this a large chapel was added to the east of the sacristy; and from what still remains of the fittings of the Coro in the nave, they seem to have been still later in date.
A fine late Romanesque door leads from the south aisle into the cloister, the whole of which is a good work of the early part of the fourteenth century, with well-traceried windows of four lights. The groining piers are clusters of shafts, and the buttresses on the outside are finished with crocketed gables and a bold cornice carved with foliage. The traceries are now all filled in with very thin panels of alabaster, which do not obscure the light much, whilst they effectually keep out the sun; but this precaution against sunshine does not seem to have been much needed, if the men were right who raised a second stageupon the old cloister, the Renaissance arcades of which are all left perfectly open. On the southern alley of the cloister there is a very pretty hexagonal projecting chamber, in which no doubt—if we may judge by the analogy of Clairvaux—was once the lavatory. The cloister has been built in front of, and without at all disturbing, the original Chapter-house, on its east side. The new groining shafts stand detached in front of the old arcade to the Chapter-house, and the combination of the two is managed very cleverly and picturesquely. This old arcade consists of the usual arrangement of a central doorway, with two openings on either side, all carried on clusters of detached shafts with capitals of foliage. The Chapter-house itself is divided into nine groining bays by four detached shafts; it is very low and small, and its three eastern windows are blocked up, but nevertheless its effect is admirable. One of its columns has been spoilt by the elaborate cutting in of the names of a party of Englishmen who ascended the Sierra de Moncayo to see the eclipse of the sun in 1860, and who recorded their not very hazardous or important achievement in this most barbarous fashion.
Entrance to Chapter-House, Veruela.Entrance to Chapter-House, Veruela.
It is a fact quite worth notice here, that none of the old windows are blocked up: the truth is that the churches from which this was derived were, in common with all Romanesque churches, taken straight from Italy, where the requirements ofthe climate were very similar to those of Spain. Yet it was only very gradually that the northern architects discovered their unfitness for a northern climate, and increased their dimensions. Here they give just enough and not too much light; but at a later day, when the northern churches were all window from end to end, the same fault was committed; and when their architects were employed to build in other climates, they followed their own traditions without reference to altered circumstances, as we see at Milan, at Leon, and elsewhere frequently.
The church at Veruela seems now to be but little frequented, the high altar alone being ever used. The stalls of the Coro are gone, and a shattered fragment of the old organ-case standing out from the wall serves only as a forlorn mark to show where it once stood. The buildings generally are sadly decayed and ruinous, and I have seldom seen a noble building less cared for or respected. It is sad to see this result of the suppression of religious orders, and one may be permitted to doubt whether it can be for the interest of religion that this noble foundation should now be nothing more than the private residence of a Spanish gentleman, instead of—as it was intended it should be by its pious founder—a perpetual refuge from the cares of the world of those in every age who aim to lead the holiest and most devoted lives.