Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

At the other extremity of the town (or village as it ought rather to be called) is the church of San Pedro. This forms an important feature in the picturesque view of the place, owing to its fine and peculiar tower and spire. This is built against the south side of the church, is quite plain until it rises above the roof, and then has two stages each pierced with windows; above this a pierced overhanging parapet, carried upon very bold corbels, and then a low octagonal stage, each side surmounted by a crocketed gable, and the whole finished with a spire, the entasis of which is very distinctly marked. An original design, such as this is, deserves illustration. The height of the spire bears, it will be seen, but a small proportion to that of the tower, as is often to be observed in the case of good steeples; but the most unusual feature is the enormous parapet, and taking into account the position of the church just at the extreme angle of the town, it may be supposed to have been built with some view to military requirements. The greater part of the steeple is a work I suppose of the fourteenth century—much later than the church, which, saving modern additions, is a fine work of quite the beginning of the thirteenth century, if not earlier. The west doorway is round-arched, having three shafts in each jamb, with sculptured capitals, and an arch of six orders alternately carved and moulded. The tympanum is sculptured with our Lord and two censing angels, and below are subjects from the life of St. Peter: (1) His commission; (2) His walking on the sea; (3) His trial; and (4) His crucifixion. Above the doorway is a stringcourse carved in the fourteenth century, and in the gable a wheel window within a pointed enclosing-arch. The plan of the nave and aisles is of the same kind as that of the church at Tudela, though on a smaller scale. A curious difference in the design is the carrying up of the aisle groining almost to the same level as that of the nave, whilst the transverse arches across the aisle are at a much lower level, and have fine pointed and circular windows pierced in the walls between the arches and the groining. The eastern part of the church is all modern and very bad.

Olite is a very squalid and miserable place; but a few hours may be well spent here; and the castle in particular, which has been very badly treated within a few years, ought to be carefully examined and drawn before it is too late. I was there on a hot day in June,—so hot as to make it difficult to work,—and yet on the summit of the hills, lying to the south-south-west of the town, a good deal of snow was lying, and in the evening, as the sun went down, the cautious Spaniards put on their great cloth cloaks, and stole about muffled up to the eyes as though it were mid-winter.

From Olite to Tafalla there was once, or was once intended to be, a continuous subterraneous communication. The distance must be some three or four miles, so that the story would appear to be rather improbable. The intention of Charles III. of Navarre to make such a communication between the great palace he was building at Tafalla and the already existing castle of Olite, is mentioned by Cean Bermudez under the date of 1419; but he gives no authority for his statement.

I was unable to stop at Tafalla: it is a more important place than Olite, and has two churches, both apparently of the latest Gothic, with square-ended transepts, and windowless apsidal choirs like those of the late Burgalese churches.

After leaving Tafalla the country becomes at every step wilder and more beautiful. The hills rise grandly on either side, and are bare and rocky. The railway passes under an aqueduct, which in height, length, and simple grandeur of design, is worthy to be ranked among the finest European aqueducts. It was built at the end of the last century by D. Ventura Rodriguez. The only old church I saw on this part of the road was close to Las Campanas station. Its west front had a good doorway, and above this a great arch rising almost to the point of the gable, with a circular window pierced within it. The same design is repeated in one of the churches of Pamplona.

The towers and walls of Pamplona are seen for some time before they are reached. The railway follows the winding of a pretty stream, and the city stands well elevated above it. The situation is indeed very charming, the whole character of the country being thoroughly mountainous, and the city standing on an elevated knoll rising out of an ample and prosperous-looking valley surrounded by fine hills.

The views from the cathedral and walls are very beautiful, and as the town is large and rather handsomely laid out with a grand arcaded Plaza in the centre, it gives a very favourable impression of Spain to those who make it their first resting-place on a Spanish tour.

The cathedral stands on the outside of the city and close to the walls. It was commenced in A.D. 1397 by Charles III. of Navarre, who pulled down almost[396] the whole of the old church (built circa A.D. 1100). The planning of this church is both ingenious and novel. Its chevet is entirely devised upon a system of equilateral triangles, and, as will be seen by reference to my plan,[397] the apse has only two canted sides, having a column in the centre behind the altar; and though it is perfectly true that this two-sided apse is in itself not a very graceful scheme, it is at the same time equally true that the combination of the chapels with the central apse is very ingenious and clever. The distortion of the chapel next to the transept is very objectionable, and seems to be without reason or necessity. There are transepts and a nave and aisles of six bays in length, with side chapels along the greater part of the aisles. The extreme shortness of the constructional choir makes it certain that the church was planned for the modern Spanish arrangement of the Coro, which now occupies two bays of the nave, leaving one bay between its eastern Reja and the Crossing. The Reja of the Capilla mayor is under the eastern arch of the Crossing, so that the low rails marking the passage from the Coro to the Capilla mayor are very long. The detail of all the architecture is characteristic of the late date at which the church was built. The columns are large, but composed of a succession of insignificant mouldings, so as to produce but little effect of bold light and shade: those in the choir are cylindrical, with clusters of mouldings supporting, and continued on as, the groining ribs, and they all lack that definiteness of arrangement and plan which is one of the surest tests of the difference between good and bad Gothic architecture generally, as it is between the work of men of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries almost everywhere.