Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

San Francesco has been much more mutilated than San Miguel, but seems to be a work of about the same age; it is said to have been built in A.D. 1246.[72] There is a large open market-place, busy with venders of vegetables, in front of the building and a small enclosed courtyard between the two seemed to be the receptacle for all the market filth. The west front has a small sort of cloister in front of the doors, with a tiled lean-to roof above it. Over this roof rises the west front, a strange combination with a western gable, and a great bell-gable rising out of its southern slope. The west window appears to have been a fine cusped circular opening, under a pointed arch, the spandrel between the two being filled with circles similar to the traceries in the steeple of San Miguel. Entering the church, I found its broad aisleless nave completely Paganized, but still retaining the low fifteenth-century gallery for the Coro over the two western bays. At the east bay of the nave are small transeptal chapels, and the chancel arch, and two smaller arches open into the chancel and two chancel aisles. The whole arrangement is thoroughly Italian,[73] but the detail of the arches, which are well moulded and adorned with a chevron, is northern. The chancel is apsidal, but its groining is so late, and its east end so far hidden by a Pagan Retablo, that it was impossible to discover whether any traces of the original work remained.

I saw several other churches, but their old features are in all cases of the very latest Gothic or else Pagan, so as to be hardly worthy of record. Sta. Clara appears to be desecrated: it has windows just like those of San Pablo, Burgos, and buttresses to the apse managed in the same way as at San Miguel. It has also a large flamboyant door of poor style. Near it is another church, which has an apse with buttresses and pinnacles at the angles, and from the even and undisturbed look of its masonry I concluded that it never had any windows. This church has a poor tower, but generally the churches here have enormous bell-gable turrets of the most flaunting Renaissance device, which are common throughout a great part of Spain. They have generally several bells hung in openings in the wall, and are often nearly the whole width of the front, and finished with cornices and broken pediments in the most approved fashion of the worst style of Renaissance.

Everywhere, save in the long main street, Palencia was as triste a place as I have seen. The streets were emptied, probably by the heat of the day, and, save a curious crowd of boys who pursued me relentlessly all round San Miguel, I saw few signs of life. Much of the old wall round the city remains, and walking round the north-eastern part of this, I came to a picturesque angle, where is an old walled-up gateway with pointed arch, round towers on either side, and deep machicolations above, which may well have been built before the Cid rode into Palencia for his marriage with Doña Ximena. The town walls are lofty and massive, and crested with what is, I believe, a Moorish battlement. Its peculiarity consists in the battlements and spaces between them being equal, and the former being capped with a stone weathered on all four sides nearly to a point.

On the way to the railway station we saw two churches, both having some portions of fair fifteenth-century work; and then passing the old wall, found ourselves on the melancholy open plain that surrounds the city. Under the hot sun, and after the harvest has all been gathered in, the country looks wretched and arid in the extreme. Not a tree is to be seen, nor a blade of grass; but first a sandy plain of two or three miles, and then rocky and sandy hills, all bleached to much the same colourless tint, rose in long lines against the deep-blue sky. On the other side of the city the river was hardly more attractive; it was wellnigh dry, though it is true there were some trees near its banks which to some extent redeemed the aridness of the soil out of which they grew. As I neared the station I found the whole city assembled to greet the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier, who were to stop for a few minutes to enjoy azucarillos and sweetmeats. Officers of all grades, the bishop and his clergy, and smart people in abundance were there; and as soon as the train arrived there was lusty cheering, and great firing of rockets. After a fight with the mob for a passage to the train, we secured seats, and were soon off. There are some parts of the road which seemed more interesting than most of the country we had been passing. The river runs here and there under steepish bluffs, and occasionally considerable vineyards give—what is so much wanted—some variety of colour to the landscape. I suppose one ought to be cautious in describing such a country after seeing it in September; for I can well imagine that in the spring, when the whole land is covered with great crops of corn, the impression it produces may be very different.

At Valladolid we were delayed a long time whilst the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier, saluted again with rockets, and escorted by cavalry, took their departure from the station to pass the night at the Captain-General’s. As far as a stranger can see and hear the truth, the Royal family seem to be very popular in Spain, and none of them more so than the Duke and Duchess; and the good people of Valladolid did their best, by illuminations, cheering, and decoration of their houses with coloured cloth, to welcome their coming, and speed their parting the next day.[74]

In the evening I strolled out into the town, and presently found myself in the Great Plaza, an imposing square surrounded on three sides by houses on arcades, and having on the fourth side the Town-hall. This was brilliantly illuminated by a number of enormous wax-candles in great sconces flaring in the air, whilst a good military band played waltzes, and the people—soldiers and civilians, men, women, and children—danced merrily and vigorously in groups all about. Presently crossing the Plaza from this noisy scene, I stumbled over a bundle on the ground, and found it to be a couple of labourers who, having been at work at the pavement, had made a bed of sand, covered themselves over with a blanket, and had gone to sleep by the side of their tools for the night, indifferent to all the noise and excitement of the place!

Valladolid is a city of which I have very pleasant general recollections, but of which nevertheless the architecture is nowhere of very great interest. It has the misfortune to have a cathedral built by Herrera, only one or two early works, several gorgeous examples of the richest late-pointed work, and a multitude of examples of the works of Berruguete, Herrera, and their followers. But the streets are picturesque and busy, and have that unmistakably foreign aspect which is always so pleasant to the traveller.

I need say but little of the Cathedral. Its design is said to be the greatest work of Herrera (A.D. 1585); but a small portion only of it has been completed. The complete plan is given by Ponz.[75] It was to have been cruciform, with four towers at the angles, four bays of nave, and four of choir, with aisles to both. The stalls of the Coro were intended to be in the choir behind the altar. There is a large cloister on the north side of the nave. The nave of four bays, with its aisles and chapels on either side of them, is all that is completed; and, large as it is, the parts are all so colossal that there is not the impression of size that there ought to be. The piers are some 60 feet from centre to centre north and south, and 45 feet east and west; they carry bold arches, above which runs a great cornice surmounted by a white (plastered and panelled) groined ceiling, which contrasts violently with the dark sombre grey of the stonework below. These vaults are of red tile; and if the plaster were altogether taken off, the vault covered with mosaic, and the mouldings of the cornices carefully removed, the interior would really be fine and impressive. Nothing, however, could ever cure the hideous unsightliness of the exterior. Herrera’s west front was revised by Churriguera in the eighteenth century, and cannot therefore be fairly criticised; but the side elevation remains as Herrera designed it, and is really valuable as a warning. Flying buttresses were of course an abomination; so in their place he erected enormous solid buttresses above the aisles to resist the thrust of the nave vault. They are shapeless blocks of masonry projecting about forty feet from the clerestory wall, and finished with a horrid concave line at the top. However, it is only right to give Herrera his due, and to say, that after all he only did what Wren did at St. Paul’s, but had the courage and the honesty to let his deeds be seen, instead of spending a vast sum, like Wren, in concealing them. And again it is plain that he thought much more of the internal effect of his church than of the external;—how unlike ourselves, who but too often, if we can attract men to our new churches by a smart spire or a picturesque exterior, seem to forget that we must make the interior noble, winning, solemn, and instructive too, if we would keep them there!

A few fragments of the old cathedral remain to the north-east of the present church, but I could not obtain access to them; and I think nothing now exists but a wall pierced with one or two fourteenth-century windows.

Sta. Maria l’Antigua—the most attractive church, to my mind, in Valladolid—is close to the cathedral. It is so valuable an example, and illustrates so well some peculiarities of Spanish architecture, that I give an illustration of its ground-plan.[76] It is of the common parallel-triapsal arrangement, and has a fine western steeple, and a cloister along the north wall. This kind of cloister is of not unfrequent occurrence: I have already noticed one in the convent at Las Huelgas; and there are two or three churches at Segovia in which also it is introduced. It would seem to be an arrangement expressly adopted to suit a tropical climate, and its effect is always very good.