Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

It may well be supposed that if the Moors were thus influenced by the sight of Christian art, the Christians would be not less so by the sight of theirs. I fully expected when I went first to Spain that I should find evidences of this more or less everywhere; I soon found that I was entirely mistaken, and that, though they do exist, they are comparatively rare and very unimportant. This will be seen if I notice some of the most remarkable of the examples.

(1.) In Toledo Cathedral the triforium of the choir is decidedly Moresque in its design, though it is Gothic in all its details, and has carvings of heads, and of the ordinary dog-tooth enrichment. It consists of a trefoiled arcade; in the spandrels between the arches of this there are circles with heads in them; and above these, triangular openings pierced through the wall; the mouldings of all these openings interpenetrate, and the whole arcade has the air of intricate ingenuity so usual in Moorish work. It might not be called Moresque in England, but in Toledo there can, I think, be no question that it is the result of Moorish influence on the Christian artist. So also in the triforium of the inner aisle of the same Cathedral the cusping of the arcades begins with the point of the cusp on the capital, so as to produce the effect of a horseshoe arch: and though it is true that this form of cusping is found extensively in French buildings in the country between Le Puy and Bourges, here, in the neighbourhood of the universal horseshoe cusping of the Moorish arches, it is difficult to suppose that the origin of this work is not Moorish also. The same may be said with equal truth of the triforium at the east end of Avila Cathedral.

(2.) The towers of the Christian churches in Toledo, at Illescas, at Calatayud, at Zaragoza, and at Tarazona, all appear to me to be completely Moresque. Those in Toledo make no disguise about it, the pointed arches of their window openings not even affecting to be Gothic in their mode of construction. So also in some of the churches of Toledo much of the work is completely Moresque. The church of Sta. Leocadia is a remarkable example of the mixture of Romanesque and Moresque ideas in the same building.

(3.) In many buildings some small portion of Moorish ornament is introduced by the Christian workman evidently as a curiosity, and as it were to show that he knew how to do it, but did not choose to do much of it. Among these are, (a) the traceries in the thirteenth-century cloister at Tarragona,[423] where the Moresque character is combined with the Christian symbol; (b) the interlacing traceries of the circular windows in the lantern of San Pedro, Huesca;[424] (c) the carving of a Moorish interlacing pattern on the keystone of a vault at Lérida; (d) the filling in of the windows of the Cloister at Tarazona with the most elaborate pierced traceries;[425] (e) the traceries of the clerestory of the aisle of the chevet of Toledo Cathedral; (f) and similar semi-Moresque traceries inserted in Gothic windows at Lugo, and many other places, where everything else is purely Gothic.

(4.) The introduction of coupled groining ribs, as in the vault of the Templars’ Church at Segovia, and in that of the Chapter-house at Salamanca. The Moorish architects seem always to have been extremely fond of coupled ribs. We see them in several of the vaults in the church or mosque called Cristo de la Luz;[426] and the principal timbers of the wooden roofs of the synagogue “del Transito” are similarly coupled. It is an arrangement utterly unknown, so far as I remember, in Gothic work, and there can be no doubt that in these examples it is Moresque. The vault of the Chapter-house at Salamanca, which also has parallel vaulting ribs, produces, as will be seen[427] in the centre, the sort of star-shaped compartment of which the Moorish architects were always so fond.

(5.) The Moorish battlement is used extensively on walls throughout Spain. It is weathered on all sides to a point, and covers only the battlements, and not the spaces between them.[428]

(6.) The Moorish system of plastering was considerably used, not only at Toledo, but also to a late period on the Alcazar and on houses and towers at Segovia. Here, however, though the system of design and the mode of execution are altogether Moorish, the details of the patterns cut in the plaster are generally Christian.

(7.) The Moorish carpentry is very peculiar, and is constantly introduced in late Gothic work. Most of my readers have probably seen the ingenious puzzles which the Moors contrived with interlacing ribs in their ceilings at the Alhambra, illustrated with so much completeness by Mr. Owen Jones; these patterns are constantly used in Gothic buildings for door-framing; and examples of this kind of work may be seen frequently, and especially in towns—like Valencia and Barcelona—on the eastern coast.

These evidences of Moorish influence upon Christian art in Spain are, it will at once be seen, rather insignificant, and serve on the whole to prove the fact, that Christian art was nearly as pure here as it was anywhere. This is precisely, I think, what might have been expected. For where a semi-religious war was for ages going on between two nations, and where art was, as it almost always is—God be praised—more or less religious in its origin and object, nothing can be imagined less probable than that their national styles of art should be much mixed one with the other. It is probable, on the contrary, that each would have a certain amount of pride in this practical way of protesting against his enemy’s heresies, so that art was likely to assume a religious air even greater and deeper than it did elsewhere.

The mention of the religious element in art leads naturally to the consideration of that art which most objectively ministered to the teaching of religious truths and history—the art of Painting. The admirable and interesting work of Mr. Stirling[429] begins just where I leave off, and almost treats the painters before Velasquez, Murillo, and Joánes as though they had never existed. But in truth I suppose it is necessary that the whole subject should be studied from the beginning; and though we can never hope for such a mine of information about mediæval Spanish painters as Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle have given us about their Italian contemporaries, it is not, I think, unreasonable to suppose that a good deal of information might still be obtained. I regret very much that in all my Spanish journeys my time has been so fully occupied with purely architectural work that I have never been able to pay so much attention as they seemed to deserve to the early paintings that I saw. Yet the works of Borgoña at Avila, the paintings round the cloister and choir-screen at Leon, the painted Retablos at Barcelona, Toledo, and elsewhere, seemed to me to be often very full of beauty both of drawing and colour. Their number is very great, and most of them are still in the very places for which they were originally painted. Their character appears to me to be utterly different from that to which we are accustomed as marking Spanish painting. Almost all our ideas are formed, as it seems to me, on the work of a school of painters who, adopting religious art as their special vocation, and shutting themselves out almost entirely from any representation of any other kind of subject, contrived unfortunately to take the gloomy side of religion, and to paint as though an officer of the Holy Office was ever at their elbow. How contrary this spirit to that of the earlier men, who, so far as I have seen, painted just as naturally religious men, cheerful, hearty, and unaffected by the souring influence of the Inquisition, might be expected to paint! Their work appears to me to give them an intermediate place between the tenderly delicate treatment of the early Italian masters, and the intensely realistic and consequently very mundane style of the early German painters; but it is always bright, cheerful, and agreeable both in manner and choice of subject. The names of but a few of these early men are preserved, and unfortunately next to nothing beyond their names. Among them are Ramon Torrente of Zaragoza, who died in 1323; Guillem Fort, his pupil; Juan Cesilles of Barcelona, who at the end of the fourteenth century contracted for the painting of the Reredos at Reus, and some of whose handiwork may not impossibly remain among the Retablos still preserved in the cloister chapels of Barcelona Cathedral; Gherardo d’Jacobo Starna (or Starnina), born at Florence in 1354, who before the end of the fourteenth century spent several years painting in Spain; Dello, also of Florence, and a friend of Paolo Uccello, who died somewhere about 1466-70;[430] Rogel, a Fleming, who painted a chapel at Miraflores in A.D. 1445; Jorge Ingles (probably an Englishman), who was painting in Spain circa A.D. 1450; Antonio Rincon,[431] who was born at Guadalajara in 1446, studied under Ghirlandaio for a time, and, subsequently residing at Toledo, painted in A.D. 1483 the walls of the old sacristy, and died circa 1500, with the reputation of being the painter who had most contributed to the overthrow of the mediæval style; finally, Juan de Borgoña, who may be mentioned as one of the latest and greatest of the earlier school, and almost the only one of them whose known works are still to be seen. His great work appears to have been a series of paintings round the cloister of Toledo Cathedral, which have all been destroyed; besides which he executed other works in the sacristy, chapter-house, and Mozarabic chapel there, and in the Cathedral at Avila. The feature which strikes one the most in these early works is the strange way in which sculpture and painting are combined in the same work. The great Retablos which give so grand an effect to Spanish altars are frequently adorned with paintings in some parts and sculptured subjects in others. The frames to the pictures are generally elaborate architectural compositions of pinnacles and canopies, and consequently the art is altogether rather decorative than pictorial in its effect. Sometimes, when the altar is small, and the Retablo close to the eye, this is not so much the case, and I have seen many of the pictures in these positions look so thoroughly well as to give a very high impression of the men who produced them. They are almost all painted on panel, and, as might be expected, on gold grounds. Old wall-paintings are comparatively rare: I have seen no important series save that which I have described at Leon, and of the later of these some at least appeared to me to be extremely Florentine in their character.