Spain, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

Before entering you have lost your gaiety; you no longer smile; you think. You are arrested at the doors of the Escurial by a sort of trepidation, as at the gates of a desolate city; it seems that if the terrors of the Inquisition still linger in any corner of the earth, they must be found within these walls; you would say that here one might see its last traces and listen to its last echo.

Every one knows that the basilica and convent of the Escurial were founded by Philip II. after the battle of San Quintino, in fulfilment of a vow to Saint Lawrence made during the siege where the besieging force was obliged to storm a church consecrated to that saint. Don Juan Batista of Toledo began the work, and Herrera finished it; twenty years were spent in its construction. Philip II. wished the edifice to present the form of a gridiron, in commemoration of the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, and such indeed is its form. The foundation is a rectangular parallelogram.

At the four corners rise four great square towers with pointed roofs, which represent the four feet of the gridiron; the church and the royal palace, which rise on one side, are symbolic of the handle, the interior buildings, which connect the two sides lengthwise, answer for the cross-bars. Other smaller buildings rise beyond the parallelogram at a short distance from the convent, and extend along one of the longer sides and one of the courts, forming two great squares; on the other two sides are gardens. The façades, the doorways, the vestibules—everything is in harmony with the grandeur and dignity of the edifice, and it is useless to add description to description. The royal palace is most splendid, and it is well to see it before entering the convent and the church, so as not to confuse the different impressions. This palace occupies the north-east corner of the structure. Some of the rooms are full of paintings; others hung from floor to ceiling with tapestries designed by Goya, representing bull-fights, popular balls, sports, festivals, and Spanish costumes; others royally furnished and adorned; the pavement, the doors, the windows covered with marvellous workmanship in mosaic and superb gilding.

But the chamber of Philip II. is the important one among all these rooms—a cell rather than a room, bare and squalid, with an alcove which opens into the royal oratory of the church, so that from the bed, when the doors are closed, one may see the priests saying mass. Philip II. slept in that cell, there he had his last sickness, and there he died. One may still see some chairs which he used, his writing-desk, and two small benches on which he rested his gouty leg. The walls are white, the ceiling is flat and without ornament, and the floor is of brick.

After seeing the royal palace one leaves the building, crosses the square, and re-enters by the principal doorway. A guide attaches himself to your person; you are led through a large vestibule and find yourself in the Courtyard of the Kings.

Then, for the first time, you are able to form an idea of the vast skeleton of the edifice. The courtyard is entirely surrounded by walls; on the side opposite the doorway rises the façade of the church. From the spacious platform rise six enormous Doric columns, each of which supports a great pedestal and every pedestal a statue. There are six colossal statues by Battista Monegro, representing Jehosaphat, Ezekiel, David, Solomon, Joshua, and Manasseh. The courtyard is paved with stone sprinkled with bits of mouldy turf; the walls look like rocks cut in vertical lines; everything is rigid, massive, and heavy, and offers the fantastic appearance of a building carved by Titans out of the solid mountain, ready to defy the shocks of time and the thunderbolts of heaven. There one begins to understand what the Escurial is.

One mounts the platform and enters the church.

The interior of the church is bare and gloomy; four enormous pilasters of gray granite bear up the vaulted roof painted in fresco by Luca Giordano; beside the great altar, carved and gilded in the Spanish style, and between the columns of the two royal oratories, one sees two groups of bronze statues, kneeling figures with clasped hands stretched toward the altar—on the right, Charles V., the empress Isabella, and several princesses; on the left, Philip II. with his wives. Over the doorway of the church, thirty feet from the ground, at the end of the great nave, rises the choir, with two rows of seats, in the Corinthian style and simple in design. In a corner near a secret door is the seat where Philip II. used to sit. Through that door he received letters and important despatches without being seen by the priests chanting in the choir. This church, which, compared with the whole edifice, seems very small, is nevertheless one of the largest churches in Spain, and, although it appears so devoid of ornament, contains a vast wealth of marbles, gold, relics, and paintings, which a dim light in part conceals, and from which the attention is diverted by the gloominess of the building. Besides the thousand works of art which one sees in the chapels, in the rooms which open out of the church, and on the staircases which lead to the galleries, there is in a corridor behind the choir a superb white marble crucifix, the work of Benvenuto Cellini, which bears the inscription, Benvenutus Zalinus, civis Florentinus, facebat 1562. In other parts one sees paintings by Navarrete and Herrera. But all surprise is overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness. The color of the stone, the dim light, the profound silence which encircles you incessantly draw your thoughts to the vastness, the hidden recesses, and the solitude of the edifice, and leave no place for the indulgence of your admiration. The appearance of that church inspires an inexpressible sense of restlessness. You would know by intuition, if you had not learned it otherwise, that around those walls for a long distance extend only granite, shadows, and silence; you feel that measureless structure without seeing it; you feel that you are standing in the midst of a forsaken city; you would hasten your steps to see it at once, to free yourself from the incubus of that mystery, and to seek, if anywhere they might be found, light, noise, and life.

From the church, through several bare, cold rooms, one passes into the sacristy, a large, vaulted chamber, along one of whose walls runs an unbroken row of wardrobes made of various fine woods. It contains also a series of paintings by Ribera, Giordano, Zurbarán, Tintoretto, and other Spanish and Italian painters; and at the end stands the famous altar of the Santa forma, with the very celebrated painting of poor Claude Coello, who died of a broken heart when Luca Giordano was summoned to the Escurial. The effect of this painting is truly above all expectation. It represents with life-size figures the procession which once marched to place the Santa forma in that very spot; it depicts the sacristy and the altar, the prior kneeling on the steps, with the casket and the sacred Host in his hands; around him are grouped the deacons on one side, Charles II. on his knees, and beyond the monks, priests, collegians, and the other worshippers. The figures are so life-like and natural, the perspective so true, the coloring, shading, and light so effective, that on first entering the sacristy one mistakes the painting for a mirror which reflects a religious ceremony being celebrated at that moment in the next room. Then the illusion vanishes, but one is still deceived as to the background of the picture, and it is actually necessary to approach close enough to touch it before one believes that it is only a painted canvas and not another sacristy. On the festival days the canvas is rolled up, and there appears in the centre of a little chapel a small temple of gilded bronze, within which one sees a magnificent casket, which contains the sacred Host, adorned with ten thousand rubies, diamonds, amethysts, and garnets arranged in the form of dazzling rays.

From the sacristy we went to the Pantheon. A guide led the way with a lighted torch: we descended a long granite staircase and came to a subterranean door, where not a single ray of light penetrated. Over this door one reads the following inscription in gilded letters of bronze: