SOlittle has it been the fashion hitherto to explore the North of Spain in search of artistic treasures, that it was with somewhat more than usual of the feeling that I was engaged in an adventure that I left Bayonne on my first journey West of the Pyrenees. Yet, in truth, so far as I have seen there is little in the way of adventure to anticipate even there in these matter-of-fact days; and, some slight personal inconvenience excepted, there is nothing to prevent any traveller of ordinary energy doing all that I did with complete success, and an uncommon amount of pleasure. For if there are no serious perils to be encountered, there is great novelty in almost everything that one sees; and whether we wish to study the people and their customs, or to visit the country and explore it in search of striking and picturesque scenery, or to examine, as I did, its treasures of ancient art, we shall find in every one of these respects so much that is unlike what we are used to, so much that is beautiful, and so much that is ancient and venerable by historic association, that we must be dull indeed if we do not enjoy our journey with the fullest measure of enjoyment. Indeed the drawbacks about which so much is usually said and written—the difficulty of finding inns fit to sleep in, or food fit to eat—seem to me to be most enormously exaggerated. It is true that I have purposely avoided travelling over the well-beaten Andalusian corner of Spain; and it is there, I suppose, that most English ideas of Spain and the Spaniards are formed. But in those parts to which my travels have taken me, but in which English travellers are not known so well as they are in Andalusia, I have certainly seldom found any difficulty in obtaining such creature-comforts as are essential. Somewhat, it is true,depends upon the time of year in which a journey is undertaken; for in the spring, when the climate is most enjoyable, and the country gloriously green and bright with wavy crops of corn, the traveller has to depend entirely upon the cook for his food; and has no other resource even where the cookery is intolerable to his English sense of smell, taste, and sight! But in the autumn, if he chances to travel, as I have twice done, just when the grapes are ripening, he may, if he choose, live almost entirely, and with no little advantage to his health, on grapes and bread, the latter being always pure, light, and good to a degree of which our English bakers have no conception; and the former tasting as none but Spanish grapes do, and often costing nothing, or at any rate never more than a merely nominal sum.
On the whole, from my own experience, I should be inclined to recommend the autumn as the most favourable season for a Spanish journey, the weather being then generally more settled than in the spring. But, on the other hand, there is no doubt that any one who wishes to judge fairly of the scenery of Old and New Castile, of great part of Aragon, and of Leon, ought on no account to visit these provinces save in the spring. Then I know no sight more glorious in its way than the sea of corn which is seen covering with its luxuriance and lovely colour the endless sweeps of the great landscape on all sides; whereas in the autumn the same landscape looks parched and barren, burnt up as it is by the furious sun until it assumes everywhere a dusty hue, painful to the eye, and most monotonous and depressing to the mind; whilst the roads suffer sometimes from an accumulation of dust such as can scarcely be imagined by those who have never travelled along them. Even at this season, however, there are some recompenses, and one of them is the power of realizing somewhat of the beauty of an Eastern atmosphere, and the singular contrasts of colours which Eastern landscapes and skies generally present; for nowhere else have I ever seen sunsets more beautiful or more extraordinary than in the dreariest part of dreary Castile.
So far as the inns and food are to be considered, I do not think there is much need ordinarily for violent grumbling. All ideas of English manners and customs must be carefully left behind; and if the travelling-clothes are donned with a full intention to do in Spain as Spain does, there is small fear of their owner suffering very much. But in Spain more than in most parts of Europe the foreign traveller is a rare bird, and ifhe attempt to import his own customs, he will unquestionably suffer for his pains, and give a good deal of unnecessary—because fruitless—trouble into the bargain.
Spanish inns are of various degrees, from thePosada, which is usually a muleteer’s public-house, and theParador, which is higher in rank, and where the diligence is generally to be found, up to theFonda, which answers in idea to our hotel. In small country towns and villages a posada is the only kind of inn to be found; and sometimes indeed large towns and cities have nothing better for the traveller’s accommodation; but in the larger towns, and where there is much traffic, the Parador or Fonda will often be found to be as good as second-rate inns elsewhere usually are.
In a Posada it is generally easy to secure a bed-room which boasts at any rate of clean, wholesome linen, though of but little furniture; and in the remoter parts of the country—as in Leon and Galicia—there is no difficulty in securing in the poorest Posada plenty of bird or fish of quality good enough for a gourmand. The great objection to these small inns is, that nothing but the linen for the beds and the face of the waiting-maid ever seems to be washed. The water is carried to and fro in jars of the most curious and pleasant form and texture, and a few drops are now and then thrown on the floor of the comedor or eating-room by way of laying the ancient dust; but washing in any higher sense than this is unknown. It must be said also, that the entrance is common to the mules and the guests; and that after passing through an archway where the atmosphere is only too lively with fleas, and where the stench is something too dreadful to be borne with ease, you turn into the staircase door, and up the stairs, only to find when you have mounted that you have to live, sleep, and eat above the mules; and (unless you are very lucky), when you open your window, to smell as badly as ever all the sweets of their uncleaned and, I suppose, uncleanable stables!
The kitchen is almost always on the first floor; and here one may stand by the wood fire and see the dinner cooked in a mysterious fashion in a number of little earthen jars planted here and there among the embers; whilst one admires the small but precious array of quaint crockery on the shelves, and tries to induce the cooking-maid to add somewhat less of the usual flavouring to one at any rate of her stews! I confess, in spite of all this, to a grateful recollection of many a Posada, to a hearty appreciation of anolla podrida—a dish abused most by those who knowleast about its virtues—and to some suspicion that many of the humblest have treasures in their unsophisticated cooks for which one longs in vain in our own English country-town inns, which of all I have seen seem to me to be the worst, in their affectation of superiority, and in their utter inability to support their claim with anything more worthy than bad mutton-chops, doubtful beer, and wine about which there is no kind of doubt whatever! So much for the Posada. In the Parador or the Fonda the entertainment is generally very fair, whilst in many the sleeping-rooms are all that need be desired. But even here the smell of the stables is often so intolerable as to make it very desirable to find other quarters; and about this there is seldom if ever any difficulty; for in almost all towns of moderate size there are plenty of houses where lodgers are taken in for a night; and in these one may generally depend upon cleanliness, the absence of mules, and fairly-good cookery.
In all—whether inns or lodgings—it is well to eat when the Spaniard eats, and not to attempt to do so at any other time, else much precious time and temper will assuredly be lost, and with results entirely incommensurate with the sacrifice. At whatever hour you rise the maid will bring a small cup of chocolate and a vast glass of water, with some sweet biscuits or toast. And you must learn to love this precious cup, if you intend to love Spain: nowhere else will you get chocolate so invariably well made; and if after you have taken it you drink heartily of the water, you have nothing to fear, and may work hard without fainting till you get your morning meal, at about eleven o’clock. This is a dinner, and can be followed by another at sunset, after which you can generally find in a café either coffee, chocolate, or iced lemonade, whilst you watch the relaxation of the domino-playing natives.
Finally, there is seldom anything to quarrel with in the bill, which is usually made out for the entertainment at so much a day; and when this has been paid, the people of the house are sure to bid you God speed—a dios—with pleasant faces and kind hearts.
The journeys which I have undertaken in Spain have all been made with the one object of inspecting the remains of Gothic building which I either hoped to, or knew I should, find there. My knowledge of Spanish scenery has therefore been very much limited, and it is only incidentally that I am able to speak at all of it. Yet I have seen enough to be able to recommend a great extent of country as thoroughly worthy of exploration by thosewho care for nought but picturesque scenery. The greater part of Catalonia, much of Aragon, Navarre, the north of Leon, Galicia, and the Asturias, are all full of lovely scenery, and even in other districts, where the country is not interesting, there seem always to be ranges of mountains in sight, which, with the singular purity of the atmosphere through which they are seen, never fail of leaving pleasant recollections in one’s mind. Such, for example, is the view of the Guadarrama Mountains from Madrid—a view which redeems that otherwise forlorn situation for a great city, and gives it the only charm it has. Such again are the mountain backgrounds of Leon, Avila, and Segovia.
In my first Spanish tour I entered the country from Bayonne, travelled thence by Vitoria to Burgos, Palencia, Valladolid, Madrid, Alcalá, Toledo, Valencia, Barcelona, Lérida, and by Gerona to Perpiñan. In the second I went again to Gerona, thence to Barcelona, Tarragona, Manresa, Lérida, Huesca, Zaragoza, Tudela, Pamplona, and so to Bayonne; and in the third and last I went by Bayonne to Pamplona, Tudela, Tarazona, Sigüenza, Guadalajara, Madrid, Toledo, Segovia, Avila, Salamanca, Zamora, Benavente, Leon, Astorga, Lugo, Santiago, la Coruña, and thence back by Valladolid and Burgos to San Sebastian and Bayonne.
Tours such as these have, I think, given me a fair chance of forming a right judgment as to most of the features of Spanish architecture; but it were worse than foolish to suppose that they have been in the slightest degree exhaustive, for there are large tracts of country which I have not visited at all, others in which I have seen one or two only out of many towns which are undoubtedly full of interesting subjects to the architect, and others again in which I have been too much pressed for time. Yet I hardly know that I need apologize for my neglect to see more when I consider that, up to the present time, so far as I know, no architect has ever described the buildings which I have visited, and indeed no accurate or reliable information is to be obtained as to their exact character, or age, or history. The real subject for apology is one over which I have had, in truth, no control. The speed with which I have been compelled to travel, and the rapidity with which I have been obliged to sketch and take dimensions of everything I have seen, have often, no doubt, led to my making errors, for which, wherever they exist, I am sincerely sorry. In truth, the work I undertook was hardly the mere relaxation from my ordinary artistic labour for which it was first of all intended, and has been increased not alittle by the labour which I have undertaken in the attempt to fix by documentary evidence, where possible, the ages of the various parts of the buildings I have described.
It will be observed that I have not visited the extreme south of Spain; and this was from the first a settled purpose with me. We have already been treated almost to surfeit with accounts of the Moorish remains at Granada, Seville, Cordoba, and other places in the south; but beside this my anxiety was to see how the Christians and not how the Moors built in Spain in the middle ages, and I purposely, therefore, avoided those parts of the country which during the best period of mediæval art were not free from Moorish influence. The pages of this book are the best evidence I can give of the wisdom of such a decision, and I need only say here that I was more than satisfied with the purity and beauty of the Christian architecture of Spain, and that I have no hesitation in the advice which I give to others to follow in my track and to make good the deficiencies in my investigations, of which I am so thoroughly conscious.
By this time travelling on the great high road through SpainviâMadrid is much easier than it was when I first made the journey. The railway to Madrid is now either completed or all but completed, and it is possible to travel from Calais to Alicante on an almost unbroken line. It is a matter to be grateful for in most respects, yet I rejoice that I made my first journey when it was still necessary to make use of the road, and to see something on the way both of the country and of the people.
It was after a hurried journey by night to Paris, and thence the next night on to Bordeaux, that I arrived, after a few hours spent in that interesting old city, at the end of the second day in Bayonne. Here my first work was to furnish myself with money and places in the Spanish diligence; and in both these matters I received my first lesson in one peculiarity of Spaniards—that of using foreign words in another and different sense from that to which we are accustomed. Napoleons are said to be the best coin for use in Spain, and I furnished myself with them only to discover, when it was too late, that in Spain a Napoleon means a silver five-franc piece, and that my gold Napoleons were all but useless out of Madrid. And again, when I asked for places in the coupé of the diligence, I found that I was really trying to secure seats in the banquette—the coupé being called the berlina, and the banquette the coupé.
At Bayonne there is not very much to be seen beyond the cathedral, the river crossed by the Duke for his attack on Soult,and a charming view from the top of the cathedral tower of the lower ranges of the Pyrenees. The Trois Couronnes is the most conspicuous peak, and its outline is fine; but here, as generally in the distant views of the chain which I obtained, there is a lack of those snow peaks which lend so much beauty to all Alpine views. The exterior of the cathedral has been almost entirely renewed of late, and a small army of masons was busy in the cloister on the south side of the choir. It is to be hoped that the stoppage of the funds so lavishly spent upon the French cathedrals may happen before the Bayonne architects and masons have come round to the west end. At present there is a savage picturesqueness about this which is beyond measure delightful, whilst the original arrangement of the doorways and porches on the west and south, with enormous penthouse roofs over them, is just so far open to conjecture and doubt as to be best left without very much alteration. The general character of the interior of the cathedral is only moderately good, the traceries of the lofty traceried triforium and the great six-light windows of the clerestory in the nave being unusually complicated for French work. The choir is of late thirteenth century work, very short, with five chapels in the chevet.
In the afternoon we followed the stream and drove to Biarritz. A succession of vehicles of every kind, crowded with passengers, gave strong evidence of the attractions either of the place or else of the Emperor and Empress, who had been there for a week or two; and the mob of extravagantly dressed ladies, French and English, who thronged the bathing-places and the sandy plain in front of the Villa Eugénie, accounted for the enormous black boxes under which all the vehicles seemed to groan. The view from the cliffs on the western side of Biarritz is strikingly beautiful, embracing as it does the long range of the Pyrenees descending to the sea in a grand mass above Fuenterrabia, and prolonged as far as the eye could reach along the coast of Biscay. The next morning we left Bayonne at four o’clock for Burgos. We had seats in the coupé, the occupants of the berlina on this journey being a son of Queen Christina, with his bride. In Spain every one seems to travel by the diligence; you seldom meet a private carriage; there are no posting arrangements; and owing to the way in which the diligences on the great roads are crowded, it is very difficult indeed to stop on the road without running great risk of indefinite delays in getting places again.
The drive was very charming. The sun rose before we reachedSt. Jean de Luz,[6]and we enjoyed to the full the lovely scenery. Crossing the Bidassoa at Irun, the famous Ile de Faisans was seen—a mere stony bank in the middle of the stream, recently walled round and adorned with a sort of monument—and then ensued a delay of an hour whilst our luggage was examined andplombéin order that it might pass out of Guipuzcoa into Castile without a second examination.
There is a rather characteristic church of late date here. It stands on ground sloping steeply down towards the river, and has a bald look outside, owing to the almost complete absence of window openings, what there are being small, and very high above the floor. The plan is peculiar: it has a nave and chancel, and aisles of two bays to the eastern half of the nave, so that the western part of the nave corresponds in outline very nearly with the chancel. There is a tower at the west end of the south aisle. The groining is many-ribbed, and illustrates the love of the later Spanish architects for ogee surface-ribs, which look better on a plan of vaulting than they do in execution. The east end is square, but the vaulting is apsidal, the angles of the square end being cut across by domical pendentives below the vaulting. The most remarkable feature is the great width of the nave, which is about fifty-four feet from centre to centre of the columns, the total length not being more, I think, than a hundred and fifty feet. The church floor was strewed with rushes, and in the evening when I visited it the people stole in and out like ghosts upon this quiet carpeting. This church was rebuilt inA.D.1508, and is of course not a very good example of Spanish Gothic.
Fuenterrabia is just seen from Irun in the distance, very prettily situated, with the long line of the blue bay of Biscay to its right. From Irun the road to San Sebastian passes the landlocked harbour of Pasage: this is most picturesque, the old houses clustering round the base of the great hills which shut it in from the sea, between which there is only a narrow winding passage to the latter, guarded by a mediæval castle. Leaving this charming picture behind, we were soon in front of San Sebastian. Here again the castle-crowned cliff seems entirely to shut the town out from the sea, whilst only a narrow neck of land betweentheembouchureof the river on the one side, and a landlocked bay on the other, connects it with the mainland. We had been seven or eight hoursen route, and were glad to hear of a halt for breakfast. Whilst it was being prepared I ran off to the church of San Vicente on the opposite side of the town to the Fonda. I found it to be a building of the sixteenth century—built in 1507—with a large western porch, open-arched on each face, a nave and aisles, and eastern apsidal choir. The end of this is filled with an enormous Retablo of Pagan character, reaching to the roof. The church is groined throughout, and all the light is admitted by very small windows in the clerestory. The aisles have altars in each bay, with Retablos facing north and south. There is little or no work of much architectural interest here; but it was almost my first Spanish church, and I had my first very vivid impression of the darkened interiors, lighted up here and there by some brilliant speck of sunshine, which are so characteristic of the country, and as lovely in their effects as they are aggravating to one who wants to be able to make sketches and notes within them.
Leaving San Sebastian at mid-day, we skirted the bay, busy with folk enjoying themselves in the water after the fashion of Biarritz. The country was wild, beautiful, and mountainous all the way to Mondragon. At Vergara there was a fair going on, and the narrow streets were crowded with picturesquely dressed peasants; everywhere in these parts fine, lusty, handsome, and clean, and to my mind the best looking peasantry I have ever seen. In the evening the villages were all alive, the young men and women dancing a wild, indescribable dance, rather gracefully, and with a good deal of waving about of their arms. The music generally consisted of a tambourine, but once of two drums and a flute; and the ball-room was the centre of the road, or the littleplazain the middle of the village. At midnight there was another halt at Vitoria, where an hour was whiled away over chocolate andazucarillos—delicate compositions of sugar which melt away rapidly in water, and make a superior kind ofeau sucré; and again at sunrise we stopped at Miranda del Ebro for the examination of luggage before entering Castile.
Close to the bridge, on the opposite side of the Ebro to Miranda, is a church of which I could just see by the dim light of the morning that it was of some value as an example of Romanesque and Early Pointed work. The apse, of five sides, has buttresses with two half-columns in front of each, and anarch thrown across from buttress to buttress carries the cornice and gives a great appearance of massiveness to the window arches with which it is concentric. The south doorway is of very fine Early Pointed style, with three shafts on each jamb, and five orders in the arch.
On the road from Miranda to Pancorbo there is a striking defile between massive limestone cliffs and rocks, through which the Madrid Railway is being constructed with no little difficulty, and where the road is carried up, until, at its summit, we found ourselves at the commencement of the arid, treeless, dusty, and eminently miserable plain of Castile, whilst we groaned not a little at the slow pace at which the ten or twelve horses and mules that drew us got over the ground. These Spanish diligences are certainly most amusing for a time, and thenceforward most wearying. They generally have a team of ten or twelve animals, mostly mules. The driver has a short whip and reins for the wheelers only; a boy, theadalantero, rides the leaders as postilion, and with a power of endurance which deserves record, the same boy having ridden with us all the way from San Sebastian to Burgos—twenty-five hours, with a halt of one hour only at Vitoria. The conductor, ormayoral, sits with the driver, and the two spend half their time in getting down from the box, rushing to the head of one of the mules, belabouring him heartily for two or three minutes till the whole train is in a mad gallop, and then climbing to the box to indulge in a succession of wild shrieks until the poor beasts have fallen again into their usual walk, when the performance is repeated. I believe that for a day and a half ourmayoralnever slept a wink, and spent something like a fourth of his time running with the mules: though I am bound to say that subsequent experience has convinced me that he was exceptionally lively and wakeful, for elsewhere, in travelling by night, I have generally found that the mules become their own masters after dark, walking or standing still as seemeth them best, and seldom getting over much more than half the ground they travel in the same number of hours of daylight.
A few miles before our arrival at Burgos, we caught the first sight of the three spires of the cathedral; and presently the whole mass stood out grandly, surmounted by the Castle hill on the right. One or two villages with large churches of little interest were passed, the great Carthusian Convent of Miraflores was seen on the left, and then, passing a short suburb, we stopped at the Fonda de la Rafaela; and after an hour spent in recovery from dust, dirt, and horrid hunger, betook ourselves to thefamous Cathedral, with no little anxiety as to the result of this first day of ecclesiologizing in Spain.
The railroad, which is now open to Burgos, follows very much the same line as the old road. As far as Miranda the scenery is generally very beautiful, and here there is a junction with the wonderfully-engineered railway to Bilbao, which is continued again on the other side until it joins the Pamplona and Tudela Railway near the latter city. It is therefore a very good plan to enter Spain by the steamboat from Bayonne to Bilbao, to come thence by railway, join the main line at Miranda, and so on to Burgos, or else by the valley of the Ebro to Tudela and Zaragoza. The passage of the Pancorbo defile by the railway is even finer than by the road; and for the remainder of the distance to Burgos the traveller’s feeling must be in the main one of joy at finding himself skimming along with fair rapidity over the tame country, in place of loitering over it in a tiresome diligence.
THEREare some views of Burgos Cathedral which are constantly met with, and upon which I confess all my ideas of its style and merits had been founded, to their no little detriment. The western steeples, the central lantern, and the lantern-like roof and pinnacles of the chapel of the Constable at the east end, are all very late in date—the first of the latest fifteenth century, and the others of early Renaissance work; and their mass is so important, their character so picturesque, and their detail so exuberantly ornate, that they have often been drawn and described to the entire exclusion of all notice of the noble early church, out of which they rise. The general scheme of the ground-plan of the cathedral is drawn with considerable accuracy in the illustration which I give of it.[7]The fabric consists of a thirteenth-century church, added to somewhat in the fourteenth century, altered again in the fifteenth, and even more in the sixteenth century. The substratum, so to speak, is throughout of the thirteenth century, but the two western steeples, with their crocketed and perforated spires, the gorgeous and fantastic lantern over the crossing, and the lofty and sumptuous monumental chapel at the east end, are all later additions, and so important in their effect, as at first sight to give an entirely wrong impression both of the age and character of the whole church. The various dates are, as well as the scale will admit, explained by the shading of the plan. Theearly church seems to have consisted of a nave and aisles of six bays, deep transepts, and a choir and aisles, with apses and chapels round it. The transepts probably had chapels on the east, of which one still remains in the north transept; but this is the only original chapel, none of those round the chevet having been spared. Externally, the two transept fronts are the only conspicuous portions of the old church, but, on mounting to the roof, the flying buttresses, clerestory windows, and some other parts, are found still little damaged or altered. Never was a church more altered for the worse after its first erection than was this. It is now a vast congeries of chapels and excrescences of every shape and every style, which have grown round it at various dates, and, to a great extent, concealed the whole of the original plan and structure; and of these, the only valuable Mediæval portions are the cloisters and sacristies, which are, indeed, but little later in date than the church, and two of the chapels on the north side of the chevet, one of which is original, and the other at any rate not much altered. The rest of the additions are all either of the latest Gothic, or of Renaissance.
The principal entrances to this church of “Santa Maria la Mayor” are at the west end and in the north and south transepts—the two last original, the former a modern alteration of the old fabric, made only a few years ago, and of the meanest kind. The Archbishop’s palace occupies the space on the south side of the nave; and the ground on which the whole group of buildings stands, slopes so rapidly from the south up to the north, that on the south side a steep and picturesque flight of steps leads up to the door, whilst on the north, on the contrary, the door is some fifteen feet above the floor, and has to be reached by an elaborate flight of winding steps from the transept. Owing to the rapid rise of the ground, and to the way in which the church is surrounded by houses, or by its own dependent buildings, it is very difficult to obtain any good near views of it, with the exception of that of the west end from the Plaza in front of it; but the views from the Prado, from the opposite side of the river, and from the distant hills and country, are all very fine; and it must be allowed that in them the picturesque richness of the later additions to the fabric produces a very great effect.
Having thus given some general idea of the plan of the church, I will now describe its parts more in detail.
Compartment of Nave.Compartment of Nave.
On entering the nave at the west end, the effect of the arcades, triforia, and clerestory is very fine, though muchdamaged by the arrangement of the choir, which, as in most Spanish churches, is brought down into the nave, enclosed with close walls or screens, and entered only from the transept at its eastern end. An altar is placed against the western entrance of the choir, and the nave being only six bays in length, and equally divided, the view is—it may easily be imagined—very confined and cramped. Otherwise, the architectural features of the nave are thoroughly good. The original scheme evidently included two western steeples, the piers which support them—large clusters of engaged shafts—being larger than any of the others, yet of the same date. The nave columns are circular, with eight engaged shafts around them. The bases are circular, finished on squares, with knops of foliage filling in the spandrels. The abaci are all square in plan, and both bases and caps are set at right angles to the direction of the arches they support. One of the smaller columns carries the pier arch, the other three carry the transverse and diagonal groining ribs, whilst the wall ribs are carried on shafts on each side of the clerestory window. The pier arches are of ordinary early-pointed character, and well moulded. There is not much variety in the general design of the nave and transepts, though some changes of detail occur. The triforium in both is very peculiar, as will be seen by the illustration which I give of one bay of the nave. The openings vary considerably in number, and the piercings of the tympanum and in the enclosing arch are also singularly arranged. I know nothing like this singular triforium elsewhere. It is certainly more curious than really beautiful, but at the same time it is valuable, as seeming to prove this part of the work to befrom the hand of a native artist. The enclosing label is in all cases a segment of a circle, and filled with sculptured heads at short intervals apart. At first sight this triforium hardly seems to be of early date, having suffered by the addition of pinnacles covered with crockets in front of, and open traceried parapet walls between, the detached shafts on which the early traceries were carried; the result is, that one of the most striking features in the church is completely spoiled, and a general effect of very poor and tawdry design is felt more or less throughout the whole building.[8]
The original clerestory still, in great part, remains; it is simple, but good and vigorous in style, and with but one special peculiarity in its detail. The windows are for the most part of two lights, with a quatrefoiled circle in the head; and the peculiarity referred to here is the omission to carry the chamfer round the extrados of the arched heads to the lights or the circle; the effect produced is peculiar, the tracery not looking as if it were properly constructed, but as if the wheel had been loosely placed within the arch without having any proper connection with it. I have noticed the same arrangement in a church at Valladolid, and it must, I think, be regarded either as a freak of the workmen, or more probably as the exhibition of some degree of ignorance of the ordinary mode of executing the mouldings in window traceries.
But here, with this one exception, as in almost all the details throughout the original work of this cathedral, there is little, if anything, to show that we are not in France, and looking at some of its best and purest thirteenth-century Gothic. There is no trace of Moorish or other foreign influence, the whole work being pure, simple, and good. In the aisles two only of the original windows still remain, and these show that they were lighted originally by a series of well-shaped lancets, with engaged jamb-shafts inside. The vaults are all slightly domical in section; the diagonal ribs generally semi-circular, as also are the wall-ribs. The masonry of the cells is arranged in lines parallel to the ridge, but considerably distorted near the springing.
The transepts, which, as has been said, are similar in their design to the nave, are of considerable size, and the view acrossthem is in fact the best internal view in the church. One early chapel alone remains,—on the east side of the north transept,—and its groined roof is remarkable. It is a square in plan, with its vault divided into eight groining cells, forming two bays on each side, and with two lancet windows at the east end, each under a division of the vault. No one who has studied the groining of the churches in Poitou and Anjou—so decided in their local peculiarities—can doubt, on comparison of them with this chapel, that it was the work of men who had studied in the same school, and it is remarkable that we find it reproduced in the lantern of the great church of the Convent of Las Huelgas, near Burgos, of which I shall presently have to speak. In both cases the vaulting is very domical, and the joints of the stone filling-in of the cells arevertical. This chapel suggests, too, the question whether the first idea was not here, as well as at Las Huelgas, to have a series of chapels on the east side of the transepts, though I should decide this in the negative, inasmuch as there is no mark of a chapel in the next bay to the north, and there was probably from the first a complete chevet to the choir.
It will be as well, perhaps, to leave the description in detail of the early features of the exterior for the present, and to complete the notice of the interior first of all.
And here it is necessary to say a few words as to the cathedral arrangements commonly seen in Spain, which exist in full force at Burgos, and must be constantly referred to in all my notices of Spanish churches.
I have already said that the choir proper (Coro) is transferred to the nave, of which it occupies commonly the eastern half; the portion of the nave outside, or to the west of the Coro, being called the “Trascoro,” and that to the east of it the “Entre los dos Coros;” and in most great churches the “Crucero,” or crossing, and the transept really do the work of the nave, in the way of accommodating the people. The floor of the nave proper is, indeed, too often a useless appendage to the building, desolate, dreary, unused, and cold; whereas in the transepts, the services at the altar and in the choir are both seen and heard, and this accordingly is the people’s place. A passage is sometimes, or perhaps I ought to say is usually, made with low iron or brass screens or rails leading from the eastern gate of the Coro to the screen in front of the altar. This is especially necessary here, as the choir proper is deep, and the people are thus kept from pressing on the clergy as they pass to and fro in thelong passage from the altar to the Coro. Gates in these screens admit of the passage of the people from one transept to the other whenever the services in the Coro are not going on. The Coro is usually fitted with two rows of stalls on its north, south, and west sides, the front row having no desks before them. The only entrance is usually through the screen on the eastern side, and there are generally two organs placed on either side of the western bay of the Coro, above the stalls. In the centre of the Coro there is always one, and sometimes two or three lecterns, for the great illuminated office-books, which most of the Spanish churches seem still to preserve and use. High metal screens are placed across the nave to the east of the Coro, and across the entrance to the choir, or “capilla mayor,” as its eastern part is called. These screens are calledrejas. Above the crossing of the choir and transepts there is usually an open raised lantern, called by the Spaniards thecimborio; and behind the altar, at the end of the Capilla mayor, is usually a great sculptured and paintedretabloor reredos. All these arrangements are generally described as if they were invariably found in all Spanish churches, as they certainly are at Burgos and many others now; and an acute and well-informed writer in the ‘Ecclesiologist’ suggests that their origin may perhaps be looked for in the early churches of the Asturias and Galicia, since he had looked in vain, in both Spanish and Mozarabic liturgies, for any peculiar dogma or ritual practice which would have involved arrangements so different from those common in other countries. The grounds for my opinion will appear as I describe other churches in other places; but I may here at once say that what occurred to me at Burgos was to some extent confirmed elsewhere, namely, that most of these arrangements have no very old authority or origin, but are comparatively modern innovations, and that they are never seen in their completeness save where, as here, they are alterations or additions of the sixteenth or subsequent centuries, and they are usually Renaissance in their architectural character. This is particularly the case in regard to the arrangement of the Coro, as well as to its position in the church. At present the bishop is generally placed in a central stall at its western end; yet of this I have seen only one or two really genuine old examples; for, wherever the arrangement occurs in a choir where the old stalls remain, it will be found, I believe, that the bishop’s stall is an interpolation and addition of the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth century, and that where the old western screenremains, the throne blocks up the old door from the nave into the Coro. The word Cimborio is only the Spanish term for our lantern. The early Spanish churches were like our own in the adoption of this fine feature, and, with such modifications as might be expected, the central lantern is still an invariable feature in most of them. The term Cimborio, however, seems to have no special significance, and, as I prefer the use of an English terminology wherever it is appropriate, I shall generally use the word lantern, rather than Cimborio. There are some of these terms, however, which it will frequently be convenient to use; such, for instance, are the words Reja, Coro, Capilla mayor, and Trascoro, all of which describe Spanish features or arrangements unknown in our own churches.
At Burgos the Coro occupies the three eastern bays of the nave, and the only entrance to it is through a doorway in its eastern screen. The stalls, screens, and fittings are all of early Renaissance work, and were the gift of Bishop Pascual de Fuensanta, betweenA.D.1497 andA.D.1512. There are about eighty stalls, in two rows, returned at the ends, and very richly carved, over the lower stalls with subjects from the New, and over the upper stalls with subjects from the Old Testament. In the centre of the choir, concealed by the great desk for the books (which, by the way, are old, though not very fine[9]), lies a magnificent effigy of Bishop Maurice, the founder of the church. It is of wood, covered with metal plates, and very sumptuously adorned with jewels, enamels, and gilding. He was bishop fromA.D.1213 toA.D.1238, and his effigy appeared to me to be very little later than the date of his death.
A special architectural interest attaches to the life of this prelate, for the tradition in Burgos has always been that he was an Englishman, who came over in the train of the English Princess Alienor, Queen of Alfonso VIII., and, having been Archdeacon of Toledo, became inA.D.1213 Bishop of Burgos. Florez,[10]however,doubts the tradition, and observes that his parents’ names, Rodrigo and Oro Sabia, were those of Spaniards. Two years before the cathedral was commenced he went on an embassy through France to Germany, to bring Beatrice, daughter of the Duke of Suabia, to marry King Ferdinand; so that, even if he were not of English birth, he was at any rate well travelled, and had seen some of the noble works in progress and completed in France and Germany at this date. InA.D.1221 he laid the first stone of his new cathedral:—“Primus lapis ponitur in fundamento novi operis ecclesiæ Burgens: xx. die mensis Juliieramillesima quinquagesima nona die Sancte Margarite.”[11]Florez gives two other similar statements, one from the Martyrology of Burgos, and the other from the Chronicle of Cardeña. The King and the Bishop are said to have laid the first stone in the grand column on the epistle side of the choir; and the work went on so rapidly that in November,A.D.1230, when he drew up directions as to the precedence of the various members of the chapter, their order of serving at the altars, and of walking in processions, the Bishop was able to write, “Tempore nostræ translationis ad novam fabricam.”[12]
Bishop Maurice was buried in the church, and his monument was afterwards moved to the front of the Trascoro (or screen at the west end of the choir) by Bishop Ampudia, before his death, inA.D.1512. It has never been moved from the spot in which it was then placed, and yet, owing to the rearrangement of the stalls, it is now in the very midst of the Coro,[13]and affords an invaluable piece of evidence of the fact already stated, that of old the stalls did not occupy their present place in the nave.[14]
There is nothing else worthy of note in the Coro. Its floor is boarded, and a long passage about six feet wide, between rails, leads from its door through the choir to a screen in front of the high altar. The people occupy the choir, hemmed in between these rails and the parclose screens under the side arches. The altar has a late and uninteresting Retablo, in Pagan style, carved withlarge subjects and covered with gold.[15]The steps to the altar are of white, black, and red marble, counterchanged; and at the entrance to the choir under the lantern are two brass pulpits or ambons, for the Epistoler and Gospeller, an admirable and primitive arrangement almost always preserved in Spanish churches.
The columns of the choir arches have been modernized, and there is consequently but little of the old structure visible on the inside, the Retablo rising to the groining, and concealing the arches of the apse. Between these arches sculptures in stone are introduced, which are said to have been executed by Juan de Borgoña, in 1540. They are bold and spirited compositions in high relief, and give great richness of effect to the aisle towards which they face. The subjects are—(1) the Agony in the Garden; (2) our Lord bearing His Cross; (3) the Crucifixion; (4) the Descent from the Cross and the Resurrection; (5) the Ascension. Numbers 1 and 5 are not original, or at any rate are inferior to and different in style from the others.
When we leave the choir for its aisles, we shall find that everything here, too, has been more or less altered. Chapels of all sizes and shapes have been contrived, either by addition to or alteration of the original ground-plan; and, picturesque as thetout ensembleis, with dark shadows crossed here and there by bright rays of light from the side windows, with here a domed Renaissance chapel, there one of the fourteenth century, and here, again, one of the fifteenth, it has lost all that simplicity, unity, and harmony which in a perfect building ought to mark this, the most important part of a church. In truth hardly any part of the aisles or chapels of the chevet of Bishop Maurice now remains; for of the two early chapels on the north side (markedaandbon the plan), the former is evidently of later date, being possibly the work of Bishop Juan de Villahoz, who founded a chapel here, dedicated to S. Martin, inA.D.1268-69.[16]The style of this chapel is very good middle-pointed; the abaci of the capitals are square, the tracery is geometrical, the vaulting very domical, and its north-western angle is arched across, and groined with a small tripartite vault, in order to bring the main vault into the required polygonal form. This arrangement occurs at an earlier date, as I shallhave presently to show, at Las Huelgas (close to Burgos), but ought to be noticed here, as the same feature is seen reproduced, more or less, in many Spanish works of the fifteenth century, and here we have an intermediate example to illustrate its gradual growth. It is, in fact, the Gothic substitute for a pendentive.
The other chapel (b) I believe to be the one remaining evidence of the original plan of the chevet; and, looking at it in connexion with the other portions of the work, and especially with the blank wall between which and the cloister the new sacristy is built, it seems pretty clear that originally there were only three chapels in the chevet, and all of them pentagonal in plan. Between these chapels and the transepts there would then have been two bays of aisle without side chapels, and on the eastern side of each of the transepts a small square chapel, one of which still remains. This plan tallies to some extent with that of the cathedral at Leon (with which the detail of Burgos may well be compared), and is in some respects similar to that of the French cathedrals of Amiens, Clermont, and some other places. In fact, the planning of this chevet is one of the proofs that the work was of French, and not of Spanish origin.
At the east end of the cathedral is a grand chapel, erected aboutA.D.1487, by the Constable D. Pedro Fernandez de Velasco and his wife. This remarkable building was designed by an architect whose work we shall see again, and of whom it may be as well at once to say a few words. Juan de Colonia—a German by birth or origin, as his name shows—is said to have been brought to Burgos by Bishop Alfonso de Cartagena (A.D.1435 toA.D.1456) when he returned from the Council of Basle. There is evidence that he built the chapel of the great Carthusian monastery of Miraflores, on the hill just outside the town; and there is, I believe, but little doubt that he wrought here too. His work is very peculiar. It is essentially German in its endless intricacy and delicacy of detail, but has features which I do not remember to have seen in Germany, and which may fairly be attributed either to the Spaniards who worked under him, or to an attempt on his own part to accommodate his work to Spanish tastes.
The chapel is octagonal at the east, but square at the west end; and pendentives of exactly the same kind of design as those of the early German and French churches are introduced across the western angles of the chapel, to bring the plan of the central vault to a complete octagon. They are true pendentives, andquite unlike those three-sided vaulting bays across the angles of the apse chapels, to which I just now referred, and which answer precisely the same purpose. They are hardly at all Gothic, having semi-circular arches, and the masonry below them being filled in with stones radiating as in a fan, from the centre of the base of the pendentive. The groining ribs (the mouldings of which interpenetrate at the springing) form by their intersection a large star of eight points in the centre, and the cells between the ribs of this star are pierced with very elaborate traceries. This is a feature often reproduced in late Spanish works, and it is one which aids largely in giving the intricate and elaborately lacelike effect aimed at by the Spanish architects at this date, to a greater extent even than by any of their contemporaries in other lands; for though this, which is wellnigh the richest example of the Spanish art of the fifteenth century, was designed by a German, we must remember that he was following, to a great extent, Spanish traditions, and was largely aided in all the better portion of the detail by national artists, among whom the greatest was, perhaps, Gil de Siloe, whose work in the monuments at Miraflores I shall presently have to describe. And it is not a little curious, and perhaps not very gratifying to theamour propreof Spanish artists, that in this great church the two periods in which the most artistic vigour was shown, and the grandest architectural works undertaken, were marked, the first by the rule of a well-travelled bishop—commonly said to be an Englishman—under an English princess, and who seems to have employed an Angevine architect; and the second by the rule of another travelled bishop, who, coming home from Germany, brought with him a German architect, into whose hands all the great works in the city seem at once to have been put. I must return, however, to the description of the detail of the Constable’s chapel. Each bay of the octagonal part of the chapel below the vaulting is divided in this way: below is a recessed arch, under which is an enormous coat-of-arms set aslant on the wall, with coarse foliage round it. These arches have a very ugly fringe of shields and supporters, and finish with ogee canopies. Above are the windows, which are of flamboyant tracery of three lights; the windows being placed one over the other, the outer mouldings of the upper window going down to the sill of the lower. There are altars in recesses on the east, north, and south sides of the octagon; and the two latter stand upon their old foot-paces, formed by flights of three steps, the ends of whichtowards the chapel are filled with rich tracery. The monument of the Constable Velasco is in the centre of the chapel; and a velvet pall belonging to it is still preserved, adorned with one of those grand stamped patterns so constantly seen in mediæval German paintings. The stalls for the clergy are arranged strangely in an angle of the chapel, fenced round with a low screen, and looking like one of those enclosures in some of our own churches sacred to archdeacons and their officials.
A quaint little vestry is contrived outside the south-east angle of the octagon, and in it are preserved some pieces of plate of the same age as the chapel. Among these are—
A chalice of silver gilt, enamelled in white and red, with its bowl richly set with pearls strung on a wire: the knop is richly enamelled, and its edge set with alternate emeralds and sapphires; whilst the sexfoiled foot is in the alternate compartments engraved with coats-of-arms, and set with sapphires. It is a very gorgeous work, and, though all but Renaissance in style, still very finely executed.
A pax; the Blessed Virgin Mary holding our Lord, and seated on a throne covered with pearls and other jewels. The figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary is enamelled with blue, and our Lord is in ivory. The old case for this is preserved, and has a drawer below it which contains papers referring to the gift of it.
Another small pax; a flat plate enamelled, with crocketed pinnacles at the side, but no figure.
A fine thurible for incense, in the form of a ship, with Adam and Eve on the lid.
A very good flagon, richly chased all over, sexfoil in section, and with a particularly good spout and handle.
There are many other chapels, as will be seen by reference to the plan, added to various parts of this cathedral, though none of them are of anything like the same importance as that of the Constable, which gives, indeed, much of its character to the exterior of the whole church, so large, lofty, and elaborate is it. On the south side of the south aisle of the nave is one which in the treatment of its groining cells, which are filled with tracery, seems to show the hand of Juan de Colonia; whilst another chapel on the north side of the nave, partly covered with a late Gothic vault, and partly with a dome, may be either a later work of his, or, more probably, of his son Simon de Colonia; another to the east of this is remarkable for the cusps, which come from the moulded ribs and lie on the surface of the vaulting cells in a way I donot remember to have seen before. In these chapels[17]we see the dying out of the old art in every stage of its progress; and I think that both here and elsewhere in Spain the change was much more gradual than it was in most other parts of Europe, many of the early Renaissance masters having availed themselves largely of the picturesque detail of their predecessors’ work.
The central lantern was the last great work executed in this cathedral, and its history must be given somewhat at length, as it is of much interest. In the Royal Library at Madrid[18]there is preserved a MS., from which we learn that the “crossing” of the cathedral fell on the 4th of March, 1539; and that Felipe de Borgoña, “one of the three ‘maestros’ who in the time of our Emperor came to our Spain, from whom we have learned perfect architecture and sculpture, though in both they say he had the advantage over the others,” was intrusted with the execution of the new work erected in its place. This Cimborio or lantern was completed, according to this MS., in December,A.D.1567, Maestro Vallejo being mentioned as having wrought at the work under Felipe de Borgoña; Cean Bermudez,[19]without giving his authorities, says, that the Bishop (celebrated for the many buildings he had erected, among others San Esteban at Salamanca), on the fall of the “crucero,” summoned Felipe de Borgoña from Toledo, where he was at work with Berruguete on the stalls, to superintend the cathedral architects Juan de Vallejo and Juan de Castañeda. Maestro Felipe seems to have died inA.D.1543, so that it is probable that after all most of the work was done after his death by Juan de Vallejo, who was sufficiently distinguished to be consulted with the architects of Toledo, Seville, and Leon about the building of the new cathedral at Salamanca inA.D.1512, and had also, between the yearsA.D.1514-1524, built the very Renaissance-looking gateway which opens from the east side of the north transept into the Calle de la Pellegria. The whole composition of this lantern is Gothic and picturesque; yet there is scarce a portion of it which does not show a most strange mixture of Pagan and Gothic detail. The piers which support it arehuge, ungainly cylinders, covered with carving in low relief, and everywhere there is that combination of heaviness of parts and intricacy of detail, which in all ages marks the inferior artist. I cannot help lamenting much, therefore, the fall of the old work inA.D.1539. There is no evidence, so far as I know, as to what it was that fell,[20]but the nearly coeval church of Las Huelgas has a fine simple lantern, and it is probable that some such erection existed in the cathedral, and that Bishop Luis de Acuña y Osorio raised it, and, by increasing its weight, caused its fall. The central lantern is so completely a feature of English buildings, or of those built in lands over which our kings also ruled, that any evidence of their early existence here would have been most valuable, seeing how close the connexion was at the time of its erection between the families of the kings of Castile and of England.
No. 1. BURGOS CATHEDRAL P. 25 NORTH-WEST VIEW.No. 1.BURGOS CATHEDRAL P. 25NORTH-WEST VIEW.
The groined roofs next to the lantern, on all sides, were of necessity rebuilt at the same time, and with detail quite unlike that of the original vault.
The exterior of the cathedral may be described at less length than the interior, presenting, as it does, fewer alterations of the original fabric, and much of what has been said of the one necessarily illustrating the other also.
The west front is well known by the many illustrations which have been published of it. The ground on which the church stands slopes up, as I have said, rapidly from south to north, but a level Plaza has been formed in front of the doors, and part of which is enclosed with balustrades and pinnacles of a sort of bastard Gothic, which I see drawn in a view published circa 1770, and which may possibly be of the same age as the latest Gothic works in the cathedral. On the rising ground to the north-west stands the little church of San Nicolas, high above the cathedral parvise, and hence it is that the view which I give from Mr. Fergusson’s book is taken. Nothing can be more determinately picturesque, though nothing can be less really interesting, than this florid work, which everywhere substituted elaboration for thought, and labour for art. But I need say no more on this point; for if we now look more closely, we shall see that, underlying all these unsatisfying later excrescences, theold thirteenth century cathedral is still here, intact to an extent which I had not at first ventured to hope for.
The western doors are three in number, but have been completely modernized. Of old the central door, “del Pardon,” had effigies of the Assumption, with angels and saints; the northern door “the mystery of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin;” and the southern door her coronation.[21]Above the side doorways the two steeples rise, whilst in the centre is a finely-traceried rose-window, which lights the nave; and above this two lofty traceried openings, each of four lights, with effigies of saints standing one under each light, the whole forming a screen connecting the steeples, and entirely masking the roof. The steeples, up to this level, are of the original foundation, much altered in parts, and now put to strange uses, their intermediate stages being converted into dwelling-houses, and lively groups of cocks and hens being domesticated on a sort of terrace a hundred feet from the floor. The upper part of the towers and the spires was added in the fifteenth century, by Bishop Alfonso de Cartagena (1435-56), who employed Juan de Colonia (the German of whom I have already spoken) to design them. German peculiarities do not gain in attractiveness by being exported to Spain, and this part of Juan de Colonia’s work is certainly not a success. Nothing can be less elegant than the termination of the spires, which, instead of finishing simply and in the usual way, are surrounded near the top by an open gallery, and then terminated with the clumsiest of finials. This work was commenced inA.D.1442, and when the bishop died inA.D.1456, one spire was finished, and the other, being well advanced, was soon completed under Bishop Luis Acuña y Osorio, the founder also of the central lantern.[22]Between the two towers is a figure of the Blessed Virgin, with the words “Pulcra es et decora.” On the upper part of the towers, “Ecce Agnus Dei,” and “Pax vobis;” and on the spires, “Sancta Maria,” and “Jesus.” These words are in large stone letters, with the spaces round them pierced.
The detail of the spires is coarse, and the open stonework traceries with which they are covered are held together everywhere by ironwork, most of which appeared to me to have been added since the erection. The crockets are enormous,projecting two feet from the angles of the spires, curiously scooped out at the top to diminish their weight, and with holes drilled through them to prevent the lodgement of water. The bells are, I think, the most misshapen I ever saw; and, as if to prove that beauty of all kinds is sympathetic, they are as bad in sound as they are in form!
The façades of the two transepts are quite unaltered, and as fine as those of the best of our French or English churches. I particularly delighted in the entrance to andentourageof the southern transept, presenting as it does all those happy groupings which to the nineteenth-century Rue-de-Rivoli-loving public are of course odious, but to the real lover of art simply most exquisite and quaint.[23]The cloister and bishop’s palace, built out from the church on the south, leave a narrow lane between them, not absolutely in face of the great door, but twisting its way up to it; the entrance to this is through a low archway, called the Puerta del Sarmental, above which, on the right, towers one of the enormous and really noble crocketed pinnacles which mark the angles of the cloister, and then, passing by several old monuments built into the walls of the passage, the great doorway is reached by a flight of steps at its end. Above this doorway is a fine rose window of twenty rays of geometrical tracery, and above this is a screen in front of the roof, consisting of four traceried openings, each of four lights, and each monial protected, as are the lights at the west front, by figures of angels rather above life-size. The angles of the transepts are flanked by crocketed pinnacles, the crockets here, as elsewhere throughout the earlywork, being simple in form and design, but as perfect in effect as it is possible for crockets to be. The sculptures of the south door are, in the tympanum, our Lord seated with the evangelistic beasts around Him, and the four evangelists, one on either side and two above, seated and writing at desks, whilst below His feet are the twelve apostles, seated and holding open books. Below, there is a bishop in front of the central pier, and statues on either side, of which I made out two on the right to be St. Peter and St. Paul, and two answering to them on the left Moses and Aaron. The three orders of the archivolt have—(1) angels with censers, and angels with candles; (2 and 3) kings seated, and playing musical instruments. Here, as throughout the early sculpture, the character of the work is very French, and the detail of the arcading below the statues in the jambs is very nearly the same as that of the earliest portion of the work in the west front of the Cathedral at Bourges.