Near the north side of the cathedral, on slightly higher ground, is another fine fragment of a building of the same age, which looks as if it had always been built as a defensive work. It contains a magnificent hall, groined in four bays of quadripartite vaulting, and measuring about 24 feet by 96 feet. A smaller room next to this has a waggon-vault. The north and east walls of this hall, and of a building at right angles to it, are very boldly arcaded on the outside, and have a simple trefoiled corbel-table under the eaves: the hall windows are set within the wall-arcade. The bosses at the intersection of the ribs on the vault of the hall have interlacing patterns of Moorish character carved upon them, and afford the only distinct evidence of anything like Moorish influence that I noticed in any of the buildings here.
There are two other old churches in Lérida, San Lorenzo and San Juan. San Lorenzo is on the hill, not very far from the cathedral. It is a parallel triapsidal church, the nave vaulted with a pointed waggon-vault, divided into three bays by arches springing from coupled shafts in the side walls. The apse has a semi-dome, and is lighted by three round-headed windows, five inches wide in the clear, and has a corbel-table under the eaves outside. The side walls of the nave are eight feet thick (the nave being thirty-three feet wide), and through them very simple pointed arches are pierced, opening into the aisles. I have no doubt that these were additions to the original fabric. They have polygonal apses at their east end, with very good window-tracery of circa A.D. 1270-1300. On the south side an octagonal steeple was added in the fifteenth century, projecting from the aisle walls. This has a two-light window on each side of the belfry, a pierced parapet, and a simple octagonal spire. There is a fine fourteenth-century Retablo to the high altar. It has a niche in the centre with a figure of St. Laurence under a canopy, and a number of subjects and statues on either side. There is also one of the usual fifteenth-century galleries at the west end.
The interiors both of this church and of San Juan were so dark that I found it almost impossible to make even the roughest notes of their contents or dimensions.
San Juan is another fine early church, perhaps a little later than San Lorenzo, and of about the same age as the cathedral; neither of them, however, show any signs of having been, as is the tradition, built as mosques, and converted into churches after the taking of Lérida from the Moors in A.D. 1149. The plan here is but little altered, and exhibits three bays of cross-vaulting, and an apse.[369] On the north side an aisle has been added; but on the south the façade is nearly unaltered, and the interior is similarly very perfect. The mode of lighting with windows very high up is similar to that of the cathedral clerestory, and is worth the attention of those who wish to adapt the Pointed style for tropical climates. The rose window and great south door are both very fine examples, and extremely peculiar in their arrangement. The door, which is very large and imposing, occupies the whole of the central bay, and there are fine windows in the bays on either side of it: the impression produced at first sight is consequently that one is looking at the west end of a large church, upon one side of which an apsidal chancel has been added. The door is in fact out of all proportion to the size of the church, though this very fact gives perhaps somewhat of that monumental character to the whole work which is so rare in small buildings. It is worthy of notice that the very same design is to be seen in the church of la Magdalena at Zamora—already described; and there is indeed so much identity of character between the two churches as to make it more than probable that the same architect erected both.
In the street near San Juan is a very fine old Romanesque house of unusually good style. It is of three stories in height, the lower story much modernized. The intermediate stage has a very fine row of three-light ajimez windows with slender shafts and capitals very delicately sculptured. The string under these windows is also elaborately carved: above is an eaves-cornice, resting on corbels, and above this a modern upper stage. A stone with a Renaissance border to it, in the lower part of the wall, describes this building as the Exchange of Lérida, “built in 1589.” A more impudent forgery I do not know; but probably the architect of that day thought his ugly upper stage the only part worthy of notice, and meant only to record its erection. The patio or court-yard behind is small, but has the same kind of windows as the front—though without any carving—and some good corbel-tables and archways.
I saw nothing else of architectural interest in Lérida; but I confidently recommend other ecclesiologists to examine its buildings for themselves. They form an important link between the noble cathedral at Tarragona and the smaller but beautiful church of Tudela; and belonging as they do to the most interesting period of our art, the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, they afford examples for our emulation and study of even more value than the later works at Barcelona and Manresa, which I have before had to describe.[370]
CHAPTER XVII.
HUESCA—ZARAGOZA.
TO the north of the railway between Lérida and Zaragoza, and within easy distance of the stations of Monzon and Tardienta, are the two old Aragonese cities of Barbastro and Huesca Monzon—a possession of the Knights Templars since A.D. 1143—is still dignified by a castle on the hill, which rises steeply above the town, and in which there are said to be some remains of the residence of their superior in Aragon. The accounts I obtained of Barbastro made me think it hardly worthy of a visit. The cathedral was built between 1500 and 1533; and it is a small church (about 140 feet in length), without either triforium or clerestory, the groining springing from the capitals of the columns, and being covered with ogee lierne ribs.[371] Huesca seemed to promise more, so leaving the railway at Almudévar[372] I made an excursion thither. It is a drive of three or four hours from the railway; and the distant views of the old city are striking, backed as it is by a fine mountain-range, on one of whose lower spurs it is built. The cathedral stands on the highest ground in the city; and the rocky bluffs of the mountain behind it look like enormous castles guarding its enceinte. These picturesque views are the more refreshing by the contrast they offer to the broad corn-covered plain at their feet. Two or three miles from Huesca, on another hill, are the remains of the great monastery of Monte Aragon, which was, however, rebuilt in 1777, and is not very likely therefore now to reward examination.
The Plaza in front of the cathedral is surrounded by an important group of buildings—the palace of the kings of Aragon, the college of Santiago, and others belonging to the old university. They are mostly Renaissance in their design; but in the old palace is a crypt called “la Campana del Rey Monje,” which seems to date from the end of the twelfth century. It has an apse covered with a semi-dome; and a quadripartite vault of good character covers the buildings west of the apse. The arches are all semi-circular.
The cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt in the fifteenth century, from the designs of a Biscayan architect, Juan de Olotzaga.[373] The cloister on the north side is the principal remaining portion of the older church, and this is so damaged and decayed as to present hardly a single feature of interest save two or three of the picturesque tombs corbelled out from the walls, which are so frequently seen in the north of Spain.