CHAPTERII.THE CATHEDRAL.This building has neither façade, spire, nor dome; it gives no external signs of grandeur, is surrounded by no open space to exhibit its dimensions; there is nothing to raise or satisfy expectation,—following the plan of the Mosque, which it has replaced, and which rose on the ruins of the Roman temple, its predecessor. The cathedral externally is lost in the mass of buildings which forms a parallelogram of 600 by 500 feet, across which it runs; the remainder being made up of a parish church, a parterre of orange trees, the Giralda tower, the sacristy, and offices. As seen from a distance with its flat roof, it appears like a large house in a village; for in the clearness of that sky distances are lost. When it is pointed out as the cathedral, any anticipations you may have indulged in are sobered down. The mind of the spectator is thus artfully managed, and the majesty of the building is veiled.Till you stand within its vaults—I entered not by its own portal, but by the parish church which opens into it—I thought I was in the cathedral, and looked around in surprise and disappointment. I presently perceived an opening, and wandering in the direction, I thought I was advancing up the nave—it was the width that was before me! Now the tower-like pilasters opened all around; but the limit I could not see, for the view is intercepted by the built-up choir. There is no one point from which all is to be seen—you have the sense of the vastness of the whole wherever you look, but which is nowhere paraded for you to admire. You wander around to look for what is to be seen,—to find what is to be admired—as you would through a forest of trees.Raised upon the lines of a mosque and a temple, this building differs wholly from Gothic churches;—there is no lengthened nave—no cross;—it is a parallelogram supported by rows of pilasters, like the Temple of Phyle. The scantling of a church is only to be found in the distribution of the roof, ascending higher in the nave and transept, so as to make the cross. Six rows of pilasters traverse it in length, which support seven rows of roofs or vaults. The nave and transept are 120 feet in height; the two aisles adjoining it on each side are 100; and the two outer aisles are lower, and divided into chapels. The centre vault above the high altar is 142 feet. At the eastern extremity it opens into the Lady Chapel, itself a spacious church; while another, the sacristy, adjoining it to the south, is reached by a passage. The chapels conceal the altar and shroud the paintings, and their gratings seem to close in dens; so that the edifice, excepting the choir, is as a cavern. The stone is without carving or monument; there is no line save what belongs to the construction:—the pillars ascend, the arches join as if the rock had thus fashioned itself; the only exception is the slight tracery of the balustrade of the triforium, and the fret-work of the graining of the central and adjoining vaults. But, contrasting with their grey dulness, the floor is in slabs of marble, alternately black and white in squares and lozenges.The chapels have their own windows. The body of the church has two clerestory rows, one in the nave, one in the second side-aisle above the chapels, besides a Catherine wheel in each corresponding gable. They correspond: there is one to each vault—their lines are in perfect symmetry with the vaults and columns; they are deeply coloured and furnished with curtains, by which the light is regulated, and, when requisite, the sun on the eastern and southern sides excluded. What we all feel regarding the “management” of the light of a painting I now saw in an edifice. How improved its merits—how magnified its vastness—the effects of colossal magic lanterns played around!Here presided the spirit of the Moors; the gloom in which they delight; the deep colour of the admitted rays, repeating the figures and tints of their gorgeous walls, and streaming with a sweet yet solemn beauty on their graceful ornaments. These last, indeed, were wanting, and their Sevillian pupils were determined to show what colour and the sun alone could do. As he travels round, looking in from the different sides and windows, a thousand beauties reveal themselves with all the changes of breaking or departing day.Within this living rock of Gothic grandeur, one feels the nearest approach to the sublimity of the conception of the mosque, imitated by the Arab from the Desert, and the heavens between which his lot has been cast. The high altar has no gorgeous canopy, as in St. Peter’s; there are no gems, as in the chapel of the Medici; neither mosaic nor painting nor gilding meet the eye;—it is surrounded on the sides and in front by a lofty iron gilded grating, through which you can distinguish a screen filling up the width of the chancel, and rising seventy or eighty feet above the altar. This space is divided into compartments by four horizontal and five perpendicular lines, each of which contains a group of figures, in alto and basso relievo, diminishing as they ascend, the four figures coming fully out, and the accessories being traced in slight relief behind. Of these groups there are thirty-six, the principal figures two-thirds the size of life, and over each a Gothic canopy: they are separated by Gothic spaces, with niches and statues of various sizes. The cusps are enriched and enlivened with fine branches and foliage. Over the whole projects a cornice composed of the Twelve Apostles in niches, and the descent from the cross in the centre. These figures are the size of life. This cornice is a frame-work of Gothic niches for holding the statues, while branches are interlaced through its dentated spires and cusps. It fails only in the curve beneath the projection to a corridor which sustains the Twelve Apostles, and which correspond with hexagons. Here would have been peculiar scope for the adaptation either of the Gothic pendants, or the Moorish stalactite.On the top, in the centre, is Christ on the cross, and the two Marys kneeling. These are a little larger than life. The groups contain between 300 and 400 figures. There are 200 small statues on the Gothic pinnacles dividing them: seventeen statues the size of life are on the cornice and in the group above. The whole space, which is above 4000 square feet, is about equally divided between groups and statues, and tracery and foliation. The ornaments display the beauties of the pointed Gothic style, with the richness of the Moresque white, serving as the frame-work to the exquisite Italian groupings. During three generations it passed from master to pupil, and from father to son, and the design was unbroken; and, with the one exception I have mentioned, the whole is perfect as if it had been dreamt by a Cellini at night and executed in the morning. When you look upon it, you forget even the cathedral.I was able to get the great doors opened at the period when the cathedral is closed, and thus see the whole mass at once, and unimpeded. The most distinct sight is from the organ-loft, between twelve and one o’clock, when the side-light falls on the left wing, and slightly illumines the heads over the screen, and you may trace the wonderful minuteness of the ornaments. But all these glimpses are nothing to be compared to the unearthly effect of the setting-sun, when the light through the St. Catherine Wheel over the great door streams full upon its different shades.I was about to say that ten minutes on this spot, at this hour, is worth a journey to Seville; but it is vain to rate the worth of what stands alone, and which furnishes a new standard to rate the resources of art, the genius of man, and the beauty of nature. All are here combined within the majesty of a temple consecrated to the highest aims of life, and the hopes of eternity. This effect of the evening sun I thus described in a letter, at the moment of witnessing it:—“I was passing the cathedral nearly at sunset. I went in intending merely to pass through: it was very dark—the light from the western windows streamed like a phantasmagoria. I got the sacristan to let me into the choir, and I sat down on the archbishop’s throne at the bottom of the chancel, opposite the high altar, with my back to the light, which, passing over the choir, fell full on the upper part of the screen. It was not white light, but deeply-coloured, and the distance from the window blended the tints, so that it came like a rainbow-cloud, and the groups passed through every variety of hue. The light shifted as it changed; it moved, ascending always to other groups, and in the gloom they shone like visions in the sky. The birth, fall, and redemption of the human race, was the story of that wall. The rays then ascended, and caused to shine forth the Apostles, and finally the Calvary was brought to light. The kneeling Marys appeared, not cased in tracery or canopied in Gothic fret-work,—the depths of the temple were beyond them;—then the sacrifice of the cross, limb by limb; came forth, and just as the light reached and showed the outlines of the Saviour’s head and face, averted from its glow, a peal of a distant organ echoed through the roofs, and a moment after voices, as of angels in the clouds, supplied the tones of praises which the overpowered lips of the beholder refused to utter. The light was for a moment lost in the intervening space, and then struck on the groined ribs of the arches above, changing them to rainbows. The orb of the sun touched the horizon; the rays glowed fiery red and remotely yellow, and then all was grey—the vision was gone—the natural light brought back the earth. But I am not recovered, and write now, still tremulous under the unearthly glow of that departing sun—the sudden burst of that choral peal.”It was days before I could deliberate. I was distracted between the effects it presented and the thoughts it inspired. The vistas of aisles upon aisles; the beauteous curves; the tall aspiring lines; the dark embrowning shades! There was light, but it was enshrined in gloom, and was ever undergoing change as the sun went round, or the clouds flitted across,—I went there to expose my mind to its influence, as we set plants in the sun that they may grow. It is sublime—there is nothing for display; it is simple—there is nothing for effect; it is harmonious, for it is all alike and true to itself. Its vastness would not be grand without its symmetry, nor its beauty harmonious without its size;—magnificent in its simplicity, manifold in its unity, it is but man’s performance, yet it elevates our conception of God’s chief work. Yet our “advanced age” can only gaze with stupid bewilderment[324]on achievements such as these, whether of art or polity.This glorious cavern, during the Holy Week, is decked out in crimson brocade. In the centre of the nave the monument itself, an imposing structure, is reared; and the high altar, dark and solemn throughout the remainder of the year, presents a blaze of light before a shrine of silver: and then within these walls and from that temple, the bell tolls and the horn echoes, and before the altar is heard the click of the castanet, and seen the solemn dance of Jewish and classical antiquity.This cathedral is unrivalled in several other respects. It possesses the finest organ, vestry, and sacristy in the world; the largest amount of silver plate and jewels: the paintings are of greater value and number than in any other church; the largest work, or rather monument, in silver, in the world, is theGloria, placed behind the high altar in the Holy Week: it is twenty-five feet in height; it was made from the first-fruits of the mines of America, and saved during the war from French sacrilege.I did not fully estimate this cathedral till I entered that of York. The nave of the one is not equal to the aisles of the other. At York there is but one aisle, and the flat wall stops the sight immediately beyond it. The double side-aisles at Seville are equal in height to the nave and transept at York. Three cathedrals of York might stand, as to width, in that of Seville. In York there is more glass than wall, and these are whitewashed: its windows are its glory—their absence is the splendour of Seville. The vastness of the one is increased by its gloom, the size of the other diminished by its glare: the one may excite admiration, curiosity—the other inspires awe. The want of uniformity in the building and arches at York, brings into evidence the harmony of the Seville church; for the perfect Gothic[325]reigns throughout, although four centuries elapsed between its foundation and completion. In York, the windows and the arches are more acute, the vault more obtuse. The difference indeed is slight, but is quite enough to shock the eye when fresh from the unblemished symmetry of the other.In the lower part of the screen separating the chancel of York from the nave, the fifteen British kings, from William I. to HenryVI., are placed in niches under Gothic canopies. Suppose this row of figures with infinitely more luxurious embellishments, extended a third in length, and expanded upwards by four or five additional stories, and you would then have an idea of theretablohigh altar of Seville.When we look on the tombs, the Nile, the heaps of Babylon, the symmetry of the Erectheum, or the pillared precipices of Syracuse, we are lifted into the times of those who have left these traces of skill and greatness. Had the Sevillians disappeared from the earth, in what rank should we have placed them? The ancient claims of Britain rest on Westminster Hall; the revived aspirations of the fatherland of Germany clusters around Cologne; the glory of the Church of the West is St. Peter’s, as St. Sophia was of that of the East; yet are each outdone and all surpassed by the work of a provincial corporation, who chanced one day to resolve they should “build such a cathedral that future ages would call them mad.” No monarch ordered the plan, no empire furnished the means. This masterpiece was planned and reared by hands unknown; the wealth was furnished by hard-earned gains and persevering parsimony. Well may the Andalusian speak of his “kingdom,” not his province. What means “great nations” when a province can accomplish such works?[326]When the arts flourished in Italy, there were great men and small states; so in Spain, the age of art reveals the independence which belonged to her provinces. What was the universal monarchy of PhilipII., when the Cabildo (the Arab tribe) which raised the cathedral without his aid, existed despite his power?A modern English traveller[327]regrets that so much wealth should thus lie unproductive, and suggests its employmentto put an end(he wrote at the time) to the civil war—that is, to extinguish the liberty of the Basques! Was an Englishman alone to be found to propose the robbery of one of these provinces to aid inthe treacherous design against another?[324]“Ici l’œuvre seule de l’homme suffit pour écraser l’homme.”—A.Dumas.[325]The perfect Gothic is the arch composed of two segments of a circle described from the spring of the opposite arch, as a centre; and the proportion of the span to the height—a point not noted in any work upon architecture—is at Seville in the diameter of the circle from the impact of the arch to the floor.[326]“Aujourd’hui, parce que nostre France n’obéit qu’à un seul roy nous sommes contraints, si nous voulons parvenir à quelque honneur, de parler son langage; autrement nostre labeur, tant fut-il honorable et parfait, serait estimé peu de chose on peut estre totalement mesprisé.”—Rousard,Abr. de l’Art Poet.p.1628.[327]The author of “A Summer in Andalusia.”
This building has neither façade, spire, nor dome; it gives no external signs of grandeur, is surrounded by no open space to exhibit its dimensions; there is nothing to raise or satisfy expectation,—following the plan of the Mosque, which it has replaced, and which rose on the ruins of the Roman temple, its predecessor. The cathedral externally is lost in the mass of buildings which forms a parallelogram of 600 by 500 feet, across which it runs; the remainder being made up of a parish church, a parterre of orange trees, the Giralda tower, the sacristy, and offices. As seen from a distance with its flat roof, it appears like a large house in a village; for in the clearness of that sky distances are lost. When it is pointed out as the cathedral, any anticipations you may have indulged in are sobered down. The mind of the spectator is thus artfully managed, and the majesty of the building is veiled.
Till you stand within its vaults—I entered not by its own portal, but by the parish church which opens into it—I thought I was in the cathedral, and looked around in surprise and disappointment. I presently perceived an opening, and wandering in the direction, I thought I was advancing up the nave—it was the width that was before me! Now the tower-like pilasters opened all around; but the limit I could not see, for the view is intercepted by the built-up choir. There is no one point from which all is to be seen—you have the sense of the vastness of the whole wherever you look, but which is nowhere paraded for you to admire. You wander around to look for what is to be seen,—to find what is to be admired—as you would through a forest of trees.
Raised upon the lines of a mosque and a temple, this building differs wholly from Gothic churches;—there is no lengthened nave—no cross;—it is a parallelogram supported by rows of pilasters, like the Temple of Phyle. The scantling of a church is only to be found in the distribution of the roof, ascending higher in the nave and transept, so as to make the cross. Six rows of pilasters traverse it in length, which support seven rows of roofs or vaults. The nave and transept are 120 feet in height; the two aisles adjoining it on each side are 100; and the two outer aisles are lower, and divided into chapels. The centre vault above the high altar is 142 feet. At the eastern extremity it opens into the Lady Chapel, itself a spacious church; while another, the sacristy, adjoining it to the south, is reached by a passage. The chapels conceal the altar and shroud the paintings, and their gratings seem to close in dens; so that the edifice, excepting the choir, is as a cavern. The stone is without carving or monument; there is no line save what belongs to the construction:—the pillars ascend, the arches join as if the rock had thus fashioned itself; the only exception is the slight tracery of the balustrade of the triforium, and the fret-work of the graining of the central and adjoining vaults. But, contrasting with their grey dulness, the floor is in slabs of marble, alternately black and white in squares and lozenges.
The chapels have their own windows. The body of the church has two clerestory rows, one in the nave, one in the second side-aisle above the chapels, besides a Catherine wheel in each corresponding gable. They correspond: there is one to each vault—their lines are in perfect symmetry with the vaults and columns; they are deeply coloured and furnished with curtains, by which the light is regulated, and, when requisite, the sun on the eastern and southern sides excluded. What we all feel regarding the “management” of the light of a painting I now saw in an edifice. How improved its merits—how magnified its vastness—the effects of colossal magic lanterns played around!
Here presided the spirit of the Moors; the gloom in which they delight; the deep colour of the admitted rays, repeating the figures and tints of their gorgeous walls, and streaming with a sweet yet solemn beauty on their graceful ornaments. These last, indeed, were wanting, and their Sevillian pupils were determined to show what colour and the sun alone could do. As he travels round, looking in from the different sides and windows, a thousand beauties reveal themselves with all the changes of breaking or departing day.
Within this living rock of Gothic grandeur, one feels the nearest approach to the sublimity of the conception of the mosque, imitated by the Arab from the Desert, and the heavens between which his lot has been cast. The high altar has no gorgeous canopy, as in St. Peter’s; there are no gems, as in the chapel of the Medici; neither mosaic nor painting nor gilding meet the eye;—it is surrounded on the sides and in front by a lofty iron gilded grating, through which you can distinguish a screen filling up the width of the chancel, and rising seventy or eighty feet above the altar. This space is divided into compartments by four horizontal and five perpendicular lines, each of which contains a group of figures, in alto and basso relievo, diminishing as they ascend, the four figures coming fully out, and the accessories being traced in slight relief behind. Of these groups there are thirty-six, the principal figures two-thirds the size of life, and over each a Gothic canopy: they are separated by Gothic spaces, with niches and statues of various sizes. The cusps are enriched and enlivened with fine branches and foliage. Over the whole projects a cornice composed of the Twelve Apostles in niches, and the descent from the cross in the centre. These figures are the size of life. This cornice is a frame-work of Gothic niches for holding the statues, while branches are interlaced through its dentated spires and cusps. It fails only in the curve beneath the projection to a corridor which sustains the Twelve Apostles, and which correspond with hexagons. Here would have been peculiar scope for the adaptation either of the Gothic pendants, or the Moorish stalactite.
On the top, in the centre, is Christ on the cross, and the two Marys kneeling. These are a little larger than life. The groups contain between 300 and 400 figures. There are 200 small statues on the Gothic pinnacles dividing them: seventeen statues the size of life are on the cornice and in the group above. The whole space, which is above 4000 square feet, is about equally divided between groups and statues, and tracery and foliation. The ornaments display the beauties of the pointed Gothic style, with the richness of the Moresque white, serving as the frame-work to the exquisite Italian groupings. During three generations it passed from master to pupil, and from father to son, and the design was unbroken; and, with the one exception I have mentioned, the whole is perfect as if it had been dreamt by a Cellini at night and executed in the morning. When you look upon it, you forget even the cathedral.
I was able to get the great doors opened at the period when the cathedral is closed, and thus see the whole mass at once, and unimpeded. The most distinct sight is from the organ-loft, between twelve and one o’clock, when the side-light falls on the left wing, and slightly illumines the heads over the screen, and you may trace the wonderful minuteness of the ornaments. But all these glimpses are nothing to be compared to the unearthly effect of the setting-sun, when the light through the St. Catherine Wheel over the great door streams full upon its different shades.
I was about to say that ten minutes on this spot, at this hour, is worth a journey to Seville; but it is vain to rate the worth of what stands alone, and which furnishes a new standard to rate the resources of art, the genius of man, and the beauty of nature. All are here combined within the majesty of a temple consecrated to the highest aims of life, and the hopes of eternity. This effect of the evening sun I thus described in a letter, at the moment of witnessing it:—
“I was passing the cathedral nearly at sunset. I went in intending merely to pass through: it was very dark—the light from the western windows streamed like a phantasmagoria. I got the sacristan to let me into the choir, and I sat down on the archbishop’s throne at the bottom of the chancel, opposite the high altar, with my back to the light, which, passing over the choir, fell full on the upper part of the screen. It was not white light, but deeply-coloured, and the distance from the window blended the tints, so that it came like a rainbow-cloud, and the groups passed through every variety of hue. The light shifted as it changed; it moved, ascending always to other groups, and in the gloom they shone like visions in the sky. The birth, fall, and redemption of the human race, was the story of that wall. The rays then ascended, and caused to shine forth the Apostles, and finally the Calvary was brought to light. The kneeling Marys appeared, not cased in tracery or canopied in Gothic fret-work,—the depths of the temple were beyond them;—then the sacrifice of the cross, limb by limb; came forth, and just as the light reached and showed the outlines of the Saviour’s head and face, averted from its glow, a peal of a distant organ echoed through the roofs, and a moment after voices, as of angels in the clouds, supplied the tones of praises which the overpowered lips of the beholder refused to utter. The light was for a moment lost in the intervening space, and then struck on the groined ribs of the arches above, changing them to rainbows. The orb of the sun touched the horizon; the rays glowed fiery red and remotely yellow, and then all was grey—the vision was gone—the natural light brought back the earth. But I am not recovered, and write now, still tremulous under the unearthly glow of that departing sun—the sudden burst of that choral peal.”
It was days before I could deliberate. I was distracted between the effects it presented and the thoughts it inspired. The vistas of aisles upon aisles; the beauteous curves; the tall aspiring lines; the dark embrowning shades! There was light, but it was enshrined in gloom, and was ever undergoing change as the sun went round, or the clouds flitted across,—I went there to expose my mind to its influence, as we set plants in the sun that they may grow. It is sublime—there is nothing for display; it is simple—there is nothing for effect; it is harmonious, for it is all alike and true to itself. Its vastness would not be grand without its symmetry, nor its beauty harmonious without its size;—magnificent in its simplicity, manifold in its unity, it is but man’s performance, yet it elevates our conception of God’s chief work. Yet our “advanced age” can only gaze with stupid bewilderment[324]on achievements such as these, whether of art or polity.
This glorious cavern, during the Holy Week, is decked out in crimson brocade. In the centre of the nave the monument itself, an imposing structure, is reared; and the high altar, dark and solemn throughout the remainder of the year, presents a blaze of light before a shrine of silver: and then within these walls and from that temple, the bell tolls and the horn echoes, and before the altar is heard the click of the castanet, and seen the solemn dance of Jewish and classical antiquity.
This cathedral is unrivalled in several other respects. It possesses the finest organ, vestry, and sacristy in the world; the largest amount of silver plate and jewels: the paintings are of greater value and number than in any other church; the largest work, or rather monument, in silver, in the world, is theGloria, placed behind the high altar in the Holy Week: it is twenty-five feet in height; it was made from the first-fruits of the mines of America, and saved during the war from French sacrilege.
I did not fully estimate this cathedral till I entered that of York. The nave of the one is not equal to the aisles of the other. At York there is but one aisle, and the flat wall stops the sight immediately beyond it. The double side-aisles at Seville are equal in height to the nave and transept at York. Three cathedrals of York might stand, as to width, in that of Seville. In York there is more glass than wall, and these are whitewashed: its windows are its glory—their absence is the splendour of Seville. The vastness of the one is increased by its gloom, the size of the other diminished by its glare: the one may excite admiration, curiosity—the other inspires awe. The want of uniformity in the building and arches at York, brings into evidence the harmony of the Seville church; for the perfect Gothic[325]reigns throughout, although four centuries elapsed between its foundation and completion. In York, the windows and the arches are more acute, the vault more obtuse. The difference indeed is slight, but is quite enough to shock the eye when fresh from the unblemished symmetry of the other.
In the lower part of the screen separating the chancel of York from the nave, the fifteen British kings, from William I. to HenryVI., are placed in niches under Gothic canopies. Suppose this row of figures with infinitely more luxurious embellishments, extended a third in length, and expanded upwards by four or five additional stories, and you would then have an idea of theretablohigh altar of Seville.
When we look on the tombs, the Nile, the heaps of Babylon, the symmetry of the Erectheum, or the pillared precipices of Syracuse, we are lifted into the times of those who have left these traces of skill and greatness. Had the Sevillians disappeared from the earth, in what rank should we have placed them? The ancient claims of Britain rest on Westminster Hall; the revived aspirations of the fatherland of Germany clusters around Cologne; the glory of the Church of the West is St. Peter’s, as St. Sophia was of that of the East; yet are each outdone and all surpassed by the work of a provincial corporation, who chanced one day to resolve they should “build such a cathedral that future ages would call them mad.” No monarch ordered the plan, no empire furnished the means. This masterpiece was planned and reared by hands unknown; the wealth was furnished by hard-earned gains and persevering parsimony. Well may the Andalusian speak of his “kingdom,” not his province. What means “great nations” when a province can accomplish such works?[326]When the arts flourished in Italy, there were great men and small states; so in Spain, the age of art reveals the independence which belonged to her provinces. What was the universal monarchy of PhilipII., when the Cabildo (the Arab tribe) which raised the cathedral without his aid, existed despite his power?
A modern English traveller[327]regrets that so much wealth should thus lie unproductive, and suggests its employmentto put an end(he wrote at the time) to the civil war—that is, to extinguish the liberty of the Basques! Was an Englishman alone to be found to propose the robbery of one of these provinces to aid inthe treacherous design against another?
[324]“Ici l’œuvre seule de l’homme suffit pour écraser l’homme.”—A.Dumas.
[325]The perfect Gothic is the arch composed of two segments of a circle described from the spring of the opposite arch, as a centre; and the proportion of the span to the height—a point not noted in any work upon architecture—is at Seville in the diameter of the circle from the impact of the arch to the floor.
[326]“Aujourd’hui, parce que nostre France n’obéit qu’à un seul roy nous sommes contraints, si nous voulons parvenir à quelque honneur, de parler son langage; autrement nostre labeur, tant fut-il honorable et parfait, serait estimé peu de chose on peut estre totalement mesprisé.”—Rousard,Abr. de l’Art Poet.p.1628.
[327]The author of “A Summer in Andalusia.”