Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

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 in A.D. 1442, and when the bishop died in A.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 and entourage of 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 early work, 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.

The north transept differs but little from the other. The doorway—De Los Apostoles—is reached from the transept floor by an internal staircase of no less than thirty-eight steps (the sixteenth-century work of Diego de Siloe), and the whole front is of course much less lofty than that of the south transept, owing to the great slope of the ground up from south to north. Above the doorway is an early triplet, and above this the roof-screen and pinnacles, the same as in the other transept. The doorway has in the tympanum our Lord, seated, with St. Mary and St. John on either side, and angels with the instruments of the Passion above and on either side. Below is St. Michael weighing souls, with the good on his left, and the wicked on his right. The orders of the archivolt have—(1) seraphim, (2) angels, and (3) figures rising from their graves: and the jambs have figures of the twelve apostles.

The ascent to the roofs discloses the remaining early features. These are the clerestory windows, and the double flying buttresses, of which I give an illustration. The water from the main roofs is carried down in a channel on the flying buttresses and discharged by gurgoyles. There are some sitting figures of beasts added in front of the buttresses which are not original. The parapet throughout is an open trefoiled arcade, with an angel standing guard over each buttress. The detail of the clerestory windows is very good; they are of two lights, with a cusped circle above, and a well-moulded enclosing arch. The windows in the apse are built on the curve. The capitals of the shafts in and under the flying buttresses are well carved, and there is a good deal of dog-tooth enrichment. At the back of the screen-walls, in front of the roofs of the nave and transepts, is seen the old weather-moulding marking the line of the very steep-pitched roof (which was evidently intended to be erected), and the stones forming which are so contrived as to form steps leading up to the ridge, and down again to the opposite gutter. In the transept, pinnacles take the place of the angels over the buttresses, and their design is very piquant and original. The moulded stringcourse at the base of these pinnacles is of a section often seen in French work, and never, I believe, used by any but French workmen.

All the steep roofs have long since vanished, and in their place are flat roofs, covered with pantiles laid loosely and roughly, and looking most ruinous. It may well be a question, I think, whether the steep roofs were ever erected. The very fact that they were contemplated in the design and construction of the stonework, appears to me to afford evidence of the design not having been the work of a Spaniard: and it is of course possible that, at the first, the native workmen may have put up a roof of the flat pitch, with which they were familiar, instead of the steep roofs for which the gables were planned. But, assuming that the steep roofs were erected, they must, no doubt, have been damaged by the fall of the lantern in 1539, and as it was reconstructed with reference to roofs of the pitch we now see, the roofs must have been altered at the latest by that time.