Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

It is quite worth while to ascend to the roofs, if only to see what is, perhaps, the most charming view in the whole church; that, namely, which is obtained from the south-east angle of the lantern, looking down into the cloister, above the traceries of which rise the quaint pinnacles and parapets of the old sacristy, and the great angle pinnacles of the cloister itself, whilst beyond are seen the crowded roofs of the city, the all but dry bed of the Arlanzon dividing it in two parts, and beyond, on the one side, the steeple of the Convent of Las Huelgas rising among its trees, and on the other the great chapel of Miraflores, crowning a dreary, dusty, and desolate-looking hill in the distance.

I have left to the last all notice of the cloisters, which are said to have been built in the time of Enrique II. (1379-90), but I can find no authority for the statement, and believe that they would be more rightly dated between A.D. 1280 and A.D. 1350.[24] They are entered from the south transept by the fine doorway, of which a drawing is given by Mr. Waring in his work on Burgos. This would be thought an unusually good example of middle-pointed work even in England, and is as fair an instance as I know of the extreme skill with which the Spanish artists of the same period wrought. The planning of the jambs, with the arrangement of the straight-sided overhanging canopies over the figures which adorn them, are to be noticed as being nearly identical in character with those of the north transept doorway at Leon, and the strange feature of an elliptical three-centred arch to the door opening under the tympanum is common to both. The tympanum is well sculptured with the Baptism of our Lord, and the well-accentuated orders of the arch have sitting figures under canopies, and delicately-carved foliage. The flat surfaces here are, wherever possible, carved with a diaper of castles and lions, which was very popular throughout the kingdom of Castile and Leon in the fourteenth century. The figures on the left jamb of the door are those of the Annunciation, whilst, on the right, are others of David and Isaiah. The wooden doors, though much later in date, are carved with extreme spirit and power, with St. Peter and St. Paul below, and the Entry into Jerusalem and the Descent into Hell above. The ecclesiologist should set these doors open, and then, looking through the archway into the cloister, where the light glances on an angle column clustered round with statues, and upon delicate traceries and vaulting ribs, he will enjoy as charming a picture as is often seen. The arrangement of the masonry round this door shows, as also does its detail, that it is an insertion in the older wall.[25]

The cloisters are full of beauty and interest. They are of two stages in height, the lower plain, the upper very ornate, the windows being of four lights, with a circle of ten cusps in the centre, and a quatrefoiled circle within the enclosing arch over the side lights. The groining ribs are well moulded, and the details throughout carefully designed and executed. At the internal angles of the cloister are groups of saints on corbels and under canopies placed against the groining shafts, and there is generally a figure of a saint under a recessed arch in the wall opposite each of the windows;[26] besides which there are numerous monuments and doorways. Those on the east are the most noticeable. There is the entrance to the sacristy, with a sculpture of the Descent from the Cross in its tympanum; the entrance to the room in which the coffer of the Cid is preserved, with our Lord seated between SS. Mary and John and Angels; and on the south side are in one bay S. Joseph of Arimathea laying our Lord in the sepulchre, in another the Crucifixion; whilst sculptured high tombs, surrounded by iron grilles, abound. Indeed, I hardly know any cloister in which an architect might be better contented to be confined for a time; for though there are many which are finer and in better style, I know none altogether more interesting and more varied, or more redolent of those illustrations of and links with the past, which are of the very essence of all one’s interest in such works.

One of the doors on the east side of the cloister opens into the old sacristy, a grand room about forty-two feet square, the groining of which is octagonal, with small three-sided vaulting bays filling in the angles between the square and the octagon. The corbels supporting the groining shafts are very quaintly carved with the story of a knight battling with lions.

Here are kept the vestments of the altars and clergy, a right goodly collection in number, and three of them very fine. These are a blue velvet cope with orphreys, fairly wrought on a gold ground, and all the work bound with a twisted cord, which in one part is black and yellow; another cope, also of blue velvet, has a half-figure of our Lord in the centre of the orphrey, and angels on the remainder and on the hood, with wings of green, purple, and blue, exquisitely shaded and lined with gold; another has St. John the Baptist, the Blessed Virgin, our Lord, and three saints, under canopies. In all of them the velvet ground was covered with a large diaper pattern in gold, done before the embroidery was appliqué.

To the south of this sacristy is another groined chamber, in which is kept the coffer of the Cid,[27] and where the groining ribs are painted in rich colour for about three feet from the centre boss. A door out of this leads into the Chapter-house, a room with a flat wooden ceiling of Moresque character. It is made in parqueterie of coloured woods arranged in patterns with gilt pendants, and the cornice is of blue and white majolica, inlaid in the walls: the combination of the whole is certainly very effective. East of these rooms were others, of which traces still remain on the outside; but they have been entirely destroyed, and streets now form, on the east and on the south, the boundaries of the church and its dependent buildings. Advantage was taken of the rise of the ground to make a second cloister below that which I have been describing. In the centre of the enclosure stands a cross, but the arches are built up, and the cloister is now used for workshops, so that there is here none of that air of beauty which the gardened cloisters of Spain usually possess. In the north-west angle of this lower story is a sacristy, reached by a staircase from one of the choir chapels, and still in use for it.

I have now in a general way gone over the whole of this very interesting church, and have said enough, I hope, to prove that popular report has never overrated its real merits, though no doubt it has regarded too much those points only of the fabric which to my eye seemed to be least worthy of praise—the late additions to it rather than the old church itself. As to the charm of the whole building from every point of view there cannot be two opinions. It has in a large degree that real picturesqueness which we so seldom see in French Gothic interiors, whilst at the same time it still retains much of that fine Early Pointed work which could hardly have been the work of any but one who knew well the best French buildings of his day; whoever he was—and amid the plentiful mention of later artists I have looked in vain for any mention of him—he was no servile reproducer of foreign work. The treatment of the triforium throughout is evidently an original conception; and it is to be noted that the dog-tooth enrichment is freely used, and that the bells of the capitals throughout are octagonal with concave sides. The crocketing of the pinnacles is, I believe, quite original; and the general planning and construction of the building is worthy of all praise. Nor was the sculptor less worthy of praise than the architect. The carving of foliage in the early work is good and very plentiful; the figured sculpture is still richer, and whether in the thirteenth-century transept doors, the fourteenth-century cloisters, or the fifteenth-century Retablos, is amazingly good and spirited. The thirteenth-century figures are just in the style of those Frenchmen who always conveyed so riant and piquant a character both of face and attitude to their work. The later architects all seem to have wrought in a fairly original mode; and even where architects were brought from Germany, there was some influence evidently used to prevent their work being a mere repetition of what was being done in their own land; and so aided by the admirable skill of the Spanish artists who worked under them, the result is much more happy than might have been expected. Much, no doubt, of the picturesque effect of such a church is owing to the way in which it has been added to from time to time: to the large number, therefore, of personal interests embodied in it, the variety of styles and parts each of them full of individuality, and finally to the noble memorials of the dead which abound in it. In France—thanks to revolutions and whitewash without stint—the noblest churches have a certain air of baldness which tires the eye of an Englishman used to our storied cathedrals: but in Spain this is never the case, and we may go to Burgos, as we may anywhere else in the land, certain that we shall find in each cathedral much that will illustrate every page of the history of the country, if well studied and rightly read.