Galicia, the Switzerland of Spain

by Annette M. B. Meakin

On our way we will take a look at the four patios, or, rather, cloisters which the four quadrangles of the hospital enclose. These cloisters, as well as the chapel, were designed by Enrique Egas, the famous architect of the beautiful Colegio de Santa Cruz in Toledo which was completed in 1514. Villa-Amil, quoting Cean Bermúdez, calls Egas “one of the best architects of Spain.”[175] The first one, to our left, is the south-western cloister, a precious jewel of the Renaissance style. We note its slender columns, each cut from a single block, its elegant pointed Gothic arches supporting the stone galleries, its coats of arms, its curiously sculptured corbels, and the wonderful and weird gargoyles springing forth as if alive from its cornices, each representing the head, shoulders, and two front feet of a different animal—a bear here, a fox there, and so on. And, last but not least, we admire the doorways, with their very original plateresque (conopiada) tracery, the most striking of these being the doorway at the foot of the steps leading to the Sala de San Louis, of which I was fortunate in securing a photograph. In the centre of this cloister is a fountain whose water flows through extraordinary gargoyles, representing fantastic animals, into the large basin below; some of these gargoyles have human faces. The capitals in this cloister are really plateresque in style, though their resemblance to those in the cathedral suggest that their sculptor must have had Mateo’s work in his mind’s eye. This is by far the most beautiful of the four cloisters.

The north-west cloister and the north-east cloister are both adorned with Doric columns, but in the case of the upper storey it is of later date and does not correspond with the lower. Both these cloisters have fountains enclosed in elegant Gothic miniature temples, templetes with arches, columns, and pinnacles. We passed on to the south-east cloister through a small passage with elegantly decorated doors: this one is separated from the last by the eastern transept of the chapel; it is more like the first cloister than the other two, with its fountain, its bronze statue, and its handsome granite basin, all of which attracted our attention. We noticed its pretty doorways leading to the kitchen and the dispensary, and the smaller doorway leading to the vestry, all of these were ornamented with plateresque tracery.

The chapel occupies the centre of the building, and is in the form of a Latin cross, with a shortened head, so often found in churches of the last decade of the fifteenth and in the early years of the sixteenth century; the shortened head is the sacristy. The most interesting portion of this chapel is its transept, which is separated from the nave by a strikingly artistic railing of beaten iron which, like the one in the portico of the hospital, is the work of Master Guillen: on it we distinguish the Arms of Spain, the Imperial Eagle, and the scallop shell of St. James. Sanchez says of the transept: “It is in the Gothic style peculiar to the architecture of Galicia”; and then he complains bitterly of the barbaric coating of whitewash which covers the beautiful granite vaulting, the balustrades, and the finely sculptured columns. Spanish architects divide the Gothic style into three periods, and it is to the third or last of these that the architecture of this chapel belongs, while its ornamentation is plateresque. In all its lines and in all its component parts there exists the most perfect harmony and the most correct composition imaginable; it is consequently a very beautiful example of the transition epoch, in which the florid elements of the Gothic style mingled with those of the plateresque to form, as it were, a new style of architecture. In describing it thus I am not venturing to give a new and unauthorised opinion, I am simply repeating a truth that has been endorsed by every connoisseur who has had the privilege of visiting this beautiful little chapel.

Entering the chapel by the door from the first cloister we note a graceful font for consecrated water, very shallow, and supported by a slender pedestal—it is enriched with Gothic moulding. Ancient fonts were always large enough to allow for the immersion of infants; this one probably dates from the end of the fifteenth century, and its sculpture is of the same class as that of other parts of the chapel. The beaten iron candelabra is also good work, though gilded and silvered in a tasteless manner.

The beautifully sculptured and decorated altars at the four angles of the central square of the transept are considered to be the greatest glory of the hospital; their sculpture is in the Flemish Gothic style, and rivals even that of Toledo in its perfect grace and finish. So finely chiselled are the lace-like canopies of white stone which adorn the niches in which the statues are placed, that at first sight the traveller may be pardoned for mistaking them for stucco, though in reality they are carved from the same white Portuguese stone as that of which the new cathedral in Madrid is being constructed. To appreciate the work here we must have ample leisure at our disposal; we must look closely and spy out for ourselves the innumerable beauties, the sculptured idyls, the pictorial poems, the doves, fruits, and foliage that are interwoven with the pedestals on which the little statues

VESTIBULE OF THE ROYAL HOSPITAL, SANTIAGO

PHOTO. BY VARELA