Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

And now I must say a few words on the three last-named churches. I have already expressed my opinion as to their origin, which seems to me to be most distinctly and undoubtedly French. The history of the Spanish Church at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, points with remarkable force to such a development as we see here. What more natural than that the country which looked, on the recovery from its troubles—on the expulsion of the Saracen—to its neighbour the French Church to supply it with bishops for its metropolitan and other sees—should look also to it for a supply of that instruction in art which had grown and flourished there, whilst men were fighting and striving with all their might and main here? And what is there more natural than that French architects, sent over for such works, should first of all plan their buildings on the most distinctly French plan, with French mouldings and French sculpture; and then—as we see both at Burgos and Toledo, in the singular treatment of the triforia—should have gradually succumbed to the national and in part Moresque influences by which they were surrounded? At Leon the evidences of imitation of French work are so remarkable, that no one capable of forming a judgment can doubt the fact; and if at Burgos and Toledo they are not quite so strong, the difference is slight, and one only of degree. I have already spoken upon these points in describing the churches in question; and here I will only repeat that, as the features of which I speak are exceptional and not gradually developed, it is as certain as anything can be that their style was not invented at all in Spain. We have only to remember the fact, that at the same time that Lérida Cathedral was being built, those of Toledo and Burgos were also in progress, whilst that of Valencia was not commenced until much later, to realize how fitful and irregular was the progress of art in Spain. It is, in fact, precisely what we see in the history of German art. There, just as in Spain, the Romanesque and semi-Romanesque styles remained long time in quiet possession of the field, and it was not until the marvellous power and success of the architects of Amiens and Beauvais excited the German architects to emulation in Cologne Cathedral, that they moved from their Romanesque style into the most decided and well-developed geometrical Gothic. And just as Cologne Cathedral is an exotic in Germany, so are those of Burgos, Leon, and Toledo in Spain; so that, whilst Spaniards may fairly be proud of the glory of possessing such magnificent works of art, their pride ought to be confined to that of ownership, and should not extend to any claim of authorship.

The demands of these three great churches upon our admiration are very different. The palm must be awarded to Toledo, which, as I have shown, equals, if it do not surpass, all other churches in Christendom in the beauty and scale of its plan. Undoubtedly, however, it lacks something of height, whilst later alterations have shorn it also of some of its attractiveness in design, the original triforium and clerestory remaining only in the choir. Nevertheless, as it stands, with all its alterations for the worse, it is still one of the most impressive churches I have ever seen, and one in which the heart must be cold indeed that is not at once moved to worship by the awefulness of the place.

I have already, in my account of this great church, entered somewhat fully into a description of the peculiarities of its plan, and the evidence which they afford of its foreign origin. The unusual arrangement of the chevet, in which the vaulting bays in both the surrounding aisles of the presbytery are made of nearly the same size,[415] by the introduction of triangular vaulting compartments, and in which the chapels of the outer aisle are alternately square and circular in plan, renders it, however, not merely an example of a French school, but one of the very highest interest and peculiarity. There is no church, so far as I know, similarly planned, though some are extremely suggestive as to the school in which its architect had studied. The cathedral at Le Mans has triangular vaulting compartments in the outer of its two aisles, arranged somewhat as they are at Toledo, but with inferior skill, the aisle next the central apse having the unequal vaulting compartments, which have been avoided here; but the surrounding chapels in these two examples are utterly unlike. Notre Dame, Paris, also has triangular vaulting compartments, but they are utterly different in their arrangement from those in Toledo Cathedral.[416] Neither of these examples, in short, proves much as to the authorship of the latter. A far more interesting comparison may, however, be instituted between the plan of this chevet and that rare example of a Mediæval architect’s own handiwork, which has been handed down to us in the design for a church made by Wilars de Honecort, under which he wrote the inscription, “Deseure est une glize a double charole. K vilars de honecort trova & pieres de corbie.” In English: “Above is (the presbytery of) a church with a double circumscribing aisle, which Wilars de Honecort and Peter de Corbie contrived together.”[417] In this plan we find these two old architects, not only introducing alternate square and circular chapels round their apse, but also an arrangement of the groining which looks almost as though they were acquainted with some such arrangement as that of the triangular vaulting compartments of Le Mans and Toledo. The diligent and able editors of Wilars de Honecort—M. Lassus and Professor Willis—say that no such plan as this is anywhere known to exist; and I believe they were nearly, though not, as I have shown, absolutely correct in this assertion. At Toledo they still exist in part, and once, no doubt, existed all round the chevet; and it may well, I think, be a question whether Peter, the architect of Toledo, had not studied in the French school, and with these very men—Wilars de Honecort and Peter de Corbie—who, “inter se disputando,” as they wrote on this plan, struck out this original scheme. At the same time it will be seen, on comparison of the two plans, that if he derived his idea from his brethren, he developed it into a much more scientific and perfect form.

It will be recollected that though I claim a French origin for Toledo Cathedral, I allow that it is not only possible, but probable, that, as the work went on, either Spaniards only were employed on it, or (which is more likely) that the French architect forgot somewhat of his own early practice, and was affected by the work of other kind being done by native artists around him. The evidence of this change is mainly to be seen in the triforium and clerestory of the choir and transepts.

The religious gloom of the cathedral at Toledo is strangely different from the religious brightness of that of Leon; for in the latter, where the sole end of the architect seems to have been the multiplication of openings and the diminution of solid points of support, the artist in stained glass has fortunately come to the rescue, and filled the windows with some of the most gorgeous colouring ever seen, so as to redeem it from its otherwise utter unfitness for its work in such a climate as that even of Northern Spain. I have already said that this church has not stood well. It was, in truth, too daring, and has in consequence failed to some extent. Yet, in spite of this, I cannot but admire immensely the hardihood and the skill of the man who could venture—knowing as much as he did—upon such a daring work as this; and I know not to whom to liken him so well as to the first architect of Beauvais Cathedral, though certainly the work at Leon has not failed so conspicuously as it did there. In both these churches the arrangement of the ground-plan of the chevet is so nearly similar as to allow of their being classed together as at any rate works of the same style, if they are not indeed both works of the same school. Both have pentagonal chapels round the apse, and square chapels to the west of them, and they were built within a few years of each other.[418] The detail at Leon is almost all very French, and the windows of its clerestory are, in their general design as well as in their detail, almost reproductions of those at Saint Denis, in the peculiar mode adopted there of strengthening the principal monials by doubling the smaller monials in width, without any change in their thickness.

The cathedral at Burgos is certainly in most respects a somewhat inferior work to that at Leon. It, too, is French; but its architect was familiar not with the best examples of French art in the Ile de France and Champagne, but only, I think, with those of the somewhat inferior Angevine school. The plan of this chevet[419] was probably never so fine as that of Leon, though it was very similar to it. Here, too, I think, we see some local influence exerting itself in the design of the triforia throughout the church, whereas at Leon the original scheme seems from first to last to have been faithfully adhered to. But if Burgos Cathedral is far inferior in scale to that of Toledo, and somewhat so to that of Leon in skilfulness of design, it is in all other respects equally deserving of study, and is in its general effect at present far more Spanish than either of them. The many additions have to a great extent, it is true, obscured the original design; but the result is so picturesque, and so far more interesting than an unaltered church usually is, that one cannot well find fault. The main failure of the design is the smallness of the scale, and the loss of internal effect owing to the alteration of the primitive arrangements by the placing of the Coro in the nave, and the leaving of the ample choir unoccupied save by the altar at its eastern end.

The succeeding great division of Gothic art is much more distinctly marked and more uniform throughout Spain, whilst at the same time it is even less national and peculiar. There are in truth very considerable remains of fourteenth-century works, though, perhaps, no one grand and entire example of a fourteenth-century building. All these examples are extremely similar in style; and I think, on the whole, more akin in feeling and detail to German middle-pointed than to French. The west front of Tarragona Cathedral, the lantern and north transept of Valencia Cathedral, the chapel of San Ildefonso, the Puerta of Sta. Catalina, and the screen round the Coro at Toledo, Sta. Maria del Mar and the cathedral at Barcelona, the chevet of Gerona Cathedral, the north doorway and nave clerestory of Avila Cathedral, and the cloisters of Burgos and Veruela, afford, with many others, fair examples of the design and details of churches of this period. The traceries are generally elaborately geometrical and rather rigid and ironlike in their character, the carving fair but not especially interesting—dealing usque ad nauseam in diapers of lions and castles—and the whole system of design one of line and rule rather than of heart and mind. Yet, in this, Spain reflected much more truly than before what was passing elsewhere in the fourteenth century; and exhibited, just as did Germany, France, and England[420] at the same moment, the fatal results of the descent from poetry and feeling in architecture to that skill and dexterity which are still in the nineteenth century, as they were in the fourteenth, regarded—and most wrongly regarded—as the elements of art most to be striven after and most taught. Art, in truth, was ceasing to be vigorous and natural, and becoming rapidly tame and academical!

Yet if these works are not very national, they are at any rate most interesting and deserve most careful study. He was no mean artist who made the first design for Barcelona Cathedral, who completed the chevet of Gerona, or who designed the steeple at Lérida, or the cloisters of Burgos, Leon, or Veruela. At this time indeed art was cosmopolitan, and all Europe seems to have been possessed with the same love for geometrical traceries, for crockets, for thin delicate mouldings, and for sharp naturalesque foliage, so that no country presents anything which is absolutely new, or unlike what may be seen to some extent elsewhere. There are perhaps only two features of this period which I need record here, and these are, first, the reproduction of the octagonal steeple, which, as we have seen, was a most favourite type of the Romanesque builders; and, secondly, the introduction of that grand innovation upon old precedents, the great unbroken naves, groined in stone, lighted from windows high up in the walls, and inviting each of them its thousands to worship God or to hear His word in such fashion as we, who are used to our little English town churches, can scarcely realize to ourselves.[421] But on this point I will say no more because its consideration more naturally arises in the succeeding period, in which the problem was more distinctly met and more satisfactorily settled.

The survey of Spanish art in the fifteenth century is, I think, on the whole, more gratifying than it is in the fourteenth. In the earliest churches, as the models from which they were derived were first of all built in hot climates, the windows were small and few, the walls thick, the roofs flat-pitched, and the whole construction eminently suited to the physical circumstances of the country. But these models, having been taken to the north of Europe, and there largely and perhaps thoughtlessly copied, in spite of the vast difference of climate, were soon found to be unfitted for their purpose, and were consequently, in due course of time, developed into that advanced style of Gothic of which the main characteristic is the size and beauty of its windows. Of course this development was just that of all others which ought not to have been tolerated at all under a southern sun; and we must allow the fifteenth-century architects the credit of having discovered this, and of having returned very much to the same kind of design as that in which their thirteenth-century predecessors had indulged.

The examples of this age which I have described will have given a fair idea of their main characteristics. The magnificent size, the solid construction, and the solemn internal effect of such churches as those of Segovia, Salamanca, Astorga, Huesca, Gerona, Pamplona, and Manresa, would be sufficient to mark the period which produced them as one of the most fertile and artistic the world has ever seen. We may approach such buildings full of prejudice in favour of an earlier style of architecture, of a purer form of art; but we cannot leave them without acknowledging that at least they are admirable in their general effect, and if not conceived in the very purest art, still conceived in what is at any rate a true form of art. By the time in which they were erected, Spain had become far more powerful than ever before; she was quite free from all fear of the Moors, and was so rich as to be able to expend vast sums of money in works of art and luxury. She had also more trade and communication with her neighbours; and no doubt their customs and their schools of art had become so familiar to Spanish architects as to lead naturally to some imitation of them in their works. In their later works we find, at any rate, a development beyond that point at which Spaniards had before arrived, and noticeably an affection for the French chevet or apsidal choir surrounded by a procession-path and group of chapels. This arrangement, which, when it was adopted at Veruela, Santiago, Burgos, Leon, and Toledo, was evidently only adopted because the architects of these churches were French, was a favourite one of the artists of the fifteenth century. Huesca and Astorga alone of the great churches mentioned just now are founded upon the old Spanish type of parallel apses at the east end: the others are all founded upon that of the French chevet with some modifications in the details of their design. Of these, few are more interesting than that which we see in the cathedral at Pamplona, the chevet of which is, to the best of my belief, unique in its curious use of the equilateral triangle in the plan. This is perhaps the most novel modification of the French plan; but among all of them it is impossible not to award the palm, most decidedly, to the really magnificent works of the Catalan School. In other parts of Spain the great churches of this period had no very special or marked character; nothing which clearly showed them to be real developments in advance of what had been done before or elsewhere. In Cataluña, on the other hand, there was a most marked impulse given by a Mallorcan artist at the latter part of the fourteenth century; and to the influence of his school we owe some of, I suppose, the most important mediæval churches to be seen in any part of Europe. Their value consists mainly in the success with which they meet the problem of placing an enormous congregation on the floor in front of one altar, and within sight and hearing of the preacher. The vastest attempt which we have made in this direction sinks into something quite below insignificance when compared with such churches as Gerona Cathedral, Sta. Maria del Mar, Barcelona, or the Collegiata at Manresa. The nave of the former would hold some two thousand three hundred worshippers, that of the next hard upon three thousand, and that of the third about two thousand. Their internal effect is magnificent in the extreme; and if, in their present state, their external effect is not so fine, it must be remembered, first of all, that they have all been much mutilated, and, in the next place, that their architects had evidently mastered the first great necessity in church-building—the successful treatment of the interior. In these days it is impossible to say this too strongly: men build churches everywhere in England, as though they were only to be looked at, not worshipped in; and forget, in fact, that the sole use of art in connexion with religion is the exaltation of the solemnity of the ritual, and the oblation of our best before the altar, and not the mere pleasing of men’s eyes with the sweet sights of spires rising among trees, or gables and traceried windows standing out amid the uninteresting fabrics of nineteenth-century streets!