Toledo: an historical and descriptive account of the "City of generations"

by Albert Frederick Calvert

The Cathedral forms an oblong, semicircular at the eastern end, and lying east and west. In width it is exceeded only by the Cathedrals of Milan and Seville, measuring 178 feet broad by 395 feet long. On the north side are the cloisters and additional chapels and sacristies. From the eastern side project the chapels of the Reyes Nuevos, San Ildefonso, and Santiago, and the Winter Chapter-room. The plan of the interior is easy of comprehension. The nave extends from the western entrance to the Capilla Mayor: on either side of it are two aisles which are continued round and behind this chapel in a semicircular sweep. Street extols the skill with which this arrangement has been carried out. Between the Choir and the Capilla Mayor a transept extends across the church, not projecting, however, beyond the outer walls of the farther aisles. The eighty-eight pillars which support the fabric and mark off these divisions are composed each of from eight to sixteen light columns, standing on the same base. The capitals are moulded in plain foliage. The arches resting on these pillars make up the seventy-two vaults of which the roof is composed. The aisles rise gradually in towards the central nave, which is 116 feet high. The crypt or substructure corresponds in its divisions and the number of its piers to the edifice above. The pavement is of bluish white marble arranged in chequers.

In the original plan no side-chapels appear to have been contemplated. But the chapel of Santa Lucia was added by Archbishop de Rada in memory of Alfonso VI. And, in addition to chapels built since the rest of the church, the spaces between the buttresses in the outer aisles have been railed off so as to form twenty-three chapels of various styles and periods. The interior is lit by 750 stained-glass windows of rich hues that delight the spectator. They depict episodes from the Scriptures, and are said to have been as carefully designed as if intended for close inspection. Among the artists were Dolfin (1418), De Vergara, Albert of Holland, Maese Cristobal, Juan de Campos, Vasco Troya, and Pedro Francés. The effect of the light falling in rays of richest colour on the pavement and columns is magical. The walls are denuded of colour and rudely whitewashed.

The centre of the Cathedral is occupied by the choir (Coro), to the east of which, separated by the transept, is the Capilla Mayor. The choir is enclosed by walls and cloisters, except on the side facing the Capilla Mayor, where it is railed in by the magnificent reja, designed by Domingo de Cespedes and Hernando Bravo (1548). Like the corresponding railing of the High Chapel opposite, this work was formerly heavily silver-plated and gilded, but at the time of the French invasion it was recoated with iron to secure it from spoliation. Unfortunately, no means have yet been discovered of restoring the reja to its original state. Among the elaborate ornamentation may be noticed the arms of Cardinal Siliceo and of the Ayala family, with the interwoven inscriptions Procul esto prophani and Psale et psile. The Choir is paved with white marble inlaid with dark. The vaulting above the Choir itself rises to the height of a hundred feet, the aisle round it to ninety feet, and the outer aisle to thirty-five feet. In the outer aisle are small chapels placed between the buttresses. Mr. Street describes this part of the building in great detail and considers that the original scheme of the Cathedral is only to be seen here. The triforium, formed of an arcade of cusped arches, in the outer wall of the inner aisle exhibits Moorish influence. “It would be impossible,” writes the authority just mentioned, “to imagine any circumstance which could afford better evidence of the foreign origin of the first design than this slight concession to the customs of the place in a slightly later portion of the works. An architect who came from France, bent on designing nothing but a French church, would be very likely, after a few years’ residence in Toledo, somewhat to change in his views, and to attempt something in which the Moorish work, which he was in the habit of seeing, would have its influence. The detail of this triforium is, notwithstanding, all pure and good....”

The Choir is enriched by a magnificent screen, lecterns, and stalls. The screen, or respaldo, which at one time seems to have been continued right across the transept, encloses the Choir on three sides, and consists of an arcade carried on fifty-two columns of jasper and marble, and supporting and enclosing admirable statuary and sculpture. Above the capitals of the columns is a series of fifty-six medallions in high relief, dating from 1380, and representing scenes from the Old Testament. These reliefs are worthy of close study, and are beautiful examples of simple and faithful mediæval treatment. The series is supplemented by a medallion with a bust by Berruguete and the statues of Innocence and Sin, by Nicolas de Vergara—works on which Street outpours the vials of his wrath.

Of the wonderful Choir Stalls of Toledo everyone has heard. They are unsurpassed triumphs of the carver’s art. The lower tier, including fifty seats, is the work of Maese Rodrigo, and dates from 1495. The stalls are of walnut wood, and the carving portrays the campaign against Granada by the Catholic Sovereigns. The carving being almost contemporary with the events illustrated has given these reliefs an historical as well as an artistic value. The names of the fortresses are here and there indicated by labels, and the designs are somewhat marred by the introduction of fanciful monsters. The whole breathes very much of the mediæval spirit, and we can, therefore, hardly complain of a certain stiffness and lack of variety. They form an admirable contrast to the finer, more finished work of the upper tier of stalls, executed fifty years later by Berruguete and Philip of Burgundy, surnamed Vigarni. Thirty-five seats, including the Primate’s, are the work of the Spaniard, the thirty-six opposite exhibiting the skill of the Burgundian. “They were wrought,” says O’Shea, “in rivalry of each other, and finished in 1543; and as Cardinal Tavera’s inscription runs: ‘Certaverunt turn artificum ingenia; certabunt semper spectatorum judicia.’” The stalls are placed in recesses of alabaster, and separated by fine red jasper columns, with capitals in white marble. Over the recesses is a series of alabaster figures in low relief of the prophets and patriarchs. The carvings on the stalls themselves depict episodes from both the New and Old Testaments. The work breathes the spirit of the Renaissance, interpreted by Berruguete and his colleague with a skill, it has been truly observed, worthy of Benvenuto Cellini himself. Berruguete was a pupil of Michelangelo. His work is more vigorous than that of Vigarni, who excels in elegance and softness of outline. Street’s denunciations of these triumphs of the carver’s art are a curious instance of the length to which an artistic bias may lead a clever writer and critic. The reliefs representing the visits of the Blessed Virgin to Purgatory and to St. Ildefonso are not by Philip of Burgundy, but by his brother Gregorio.

Very fine are the reading-desks, with friezes of gilded bronze, executed by the two Vergaras in the middle of the sixteenth century. Those on the Epistle side are carved in low relief with the stories of David and Saul, the Blessed Virgin and St. Ildefonso, and the Apocalypse; those on the Gospel side, the stories of St. Ildefonso, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Passage of the Red Sea. In the centre of the Choir is a magnificent brass lectern upheld by a great eagle with wings outspread; its eyes are of red stones and it crushes with its talons a struggling dragon. It was executed in 1646 by Salinas. The pedestal on which it stands is older by two hundred years, and is thoroughly Gothic in character, with buttresses, pinnacles, and statuary. The work is said to be German. The pedestal is borne by six lions, finely sculptured.

The northern entrance to the transept, which separates the Choir from the Capilla Mayor, affords the best and least interrupted view of the Cathedral. That view impressed the writer with its calm majesty and sanctity, but by way of contrast it is worth while recording the impressions of a traveller only lately returned (Mr. Stewart Dick): “My first feeling was one of disappointment—a feeling that even now has hardly worn away.

“It is vast and cold. A white expanse. Huge pillars towering up to a great height. A blaze of harsh daylight. In the middle, blocking up the view down the nave, the tawdry gilt of the Coro. Doors opening and banging all round, people promenading, sitting on the bases of the pillars and talking with undropped voices. You ask yourself with amazement, Is this a church? The form is here, but where is the spirit?

“In fact, it is only in the evening that Toledo Cathedral comes into its own. It is quiet and peaceful then. The promenaders have all gone away, the blaring of the organ has ceased, and through the open door you hear the twittering of birds in the cloisters. The shadows darken among the pillars, the beautiful windows begin to glow, and a soft light fills the upper part of the church. It is like the opening of a flower.

“Then at last you begin to feel the impressiveness and the dignity of those avenues of mighty pillars. The trivialities that annoyed you are lost, the effects are broad, grand, and majestic, and at last the building is a temple; it seems as if the Holy Spirit had entered with the fall of the twilight.”