Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

The monastery of San Benito was founded by King Don Juan, who obtained a Bull from Pope Clement VII., on Dec. 28, 1389, for the purpose. But the existing church was erected more than a century later, by Juan de Arandia (probably a Biscayan architect), who began his work in A.D. 1499. He agreed to execute the nave and one aisle for 1,460,000 maravedis, and afterwards the other aisle for 500,000. The Retablo and the stalls were the work of Berruguete, between A.D. 1526 and 1532, and are now preserved in the museum.

The college of Sta. Cruz was founded in A.D. 1480, and completed in A.D. 1492, and was designed by Enrique de Egas[83], son of Anequin de Egas of Brussels.

The church of La Magdalena appears, by extracts from the archives of the Marquis de Resilla, to have been planned by Rodrigo Gil, of Salamanca. By a contract, dated June 14, 1576, he undertook the erection of the Capilla mayor and sacristy for 4,000,000 maravedis, whilst the “master of the works,” Francisco del Rio, by an agreement of October 11, 1570, agreed to build the tower and body of the church according to Rodrigo Gil’s plan, for 6400 ducats.

Having given these details of their history, I must now say a few words about the buildings themselves.

Going from the great Plaza de la Constitucion down a narrow street to the north, we soon came out on another large irregular open place, frequented chiefly by second-hand clothesmen, whose wares would be deemed bad even in Houndsditch, and whose wont it seems to be to induce their customers to make complete changes of their apparel behind scanty screenworks of cloths. At the angle of the further side of this Plaza is the grand church and convent of San Benito. The monks are, of course, all gone, as they are everywhere in Catholic Spain, and the convent is turned into a barrack; the church is left open, but unused, and the more valuable portions of its furniture, its stalls and Retablos, have been carried away for exhibition in another religious house, now used as a museum! Valladolid seems to have been a city of religious houses; and when the revolution, following on civil wars, made so clean a sweep of religious orders, that not only does one see no monks, but even Sisters of Mercy are scarcely ever met[84], there was nothing, I suppose, to be done but to convert these buildings to the first miserable purpose that suggested itself; and we ought perhaps to be thankful when we find a church like San Benito simply desolate and unused, and not converted to some purely secular use.

The ground-plan of the church is given on [Plate III.] At the west end are the remains of a tower, which seems never to have been completed, and which, though of vast size, is so poor, tame, and bald in detail, that it could hardly have produced a successful effect if it had been finished. The whole design of the exterior of the church is extremely uninteresting; but the interior is much more impressive, being fine, lofty, and groined, and lighted chiefly by large clerestory windows, aided by others high up in the aisle-walls. The groining is all very domical in section, and rather rich in ribs; and the grand scale of the whole work, and the simplicity of the piers—cylinders with eight engaged shafts round them—contribute to produce something of the effect of a building of earlier date. The bases of the columns are of enormous height from the floor, and their caps are generally carved with stiff foliage. Several altars, monuments, and chapels have been inserted between the buttresses of the north wall; and there is one old tomb on the north side of the high altar, with a sculpture of the Crucifixion. The buttresses on the exterior all rise out of a continuous weathered basement, and there is no variety in their design in any part.

The ritual arrangements deserve a few words of description. There are six steps up from the nave to the altar, and there is an ambon on each side of them entered from the altar side. There is a stalled western gallery, with an organ on its south side, of late mediæval design, but apparently an insertion, and not erected at the same time as the Coro. Beside the gallery Coro, there is a second Coro on the floor, with screens round it on the north, south, and west sides, which are evidently not original, being mere brick walls. A metal screen extends all across the nave and aisles at the east of the Coro; and there are gates, not only in these, but also in the screen on the west side of the Coro, which, it will be remembered, is an unusual arrangement at this late date. The large organ is on the north side of the Coro, and of the same date as the woodwork of the stalls. The good people of Valladolid, who seem to feel inordinately proud of all that Berruguete did, have carried off the stalls to the museum. They are much praised by Mr. Ford, but for what reason I endeavoured in vain to discover. Their sculpture appeared to me to be contemptible, and mainly noticeable for woolly dumplings in place of draperies, and for the way in which the figures are sculptured, standing insecurely on their feet, dwarfed in stature, altogether inexpressive in their faces, out of drawing, and wholly deficient in energy or life. There were also three great Retablos to the principal altars at the ends of the aisles. The Renaissance frames of these are mostly in situ, but the sculptures have all been taken, with the stalls, to the museum, where they cumber the little chapel in the most uncouth fashion. I never saw such contemptible work; yet Mr. Ford calls this work[85] “the chef-d’œuvre of Berruguete, circa 1526-1532.” I can only say that the architecture is bad, the sculpture is bad, and the detail is bad; that all three are bad of their kind, and that their kind is the worst possible.[86] It is in truth the ugliest specimen of the imbecility and conceit which usually characterize inferior Renaissance work that I ever saw. The whole of the figures are strained and distorted in the most violent way, and fenced in by columns which look like bedposts, with entablatures planned in all sorts of new and original ways and angles. I have no patience with such work, and it is inconceivable how a man who has once done anything which, from almost every point of view, is so demonstrably bad, can have preserved any reputation whatever, even among his own people. It is a curious illustration, however, of the singular extent to which both Gothic and Renaissance were being wrought at the same time in Spain; for at the time he did this work, in which not a trace of Gothic feeling or skill remained, other men at Salamanca, Zaragoza, and elsewhere, were still building in late Gothic, and some buildings were still more than half Gothic which were not erected for at least fifty years later.

A short walk from San Benito leads to another Plaza, on one of which is the west front of San Pablo, whilst the great convent of San Gregorio is on its south side.

I could not find any means of getting into San Pablo, and am uncertain whether it is in use or desecrated. Its façade is a repetition, on a large scale, of work like that of Juan and Simon de Colonia—who are said to have been the architects employed—in the chapel monuments at Miraflores. Armorial bearings have much more than their due prominence, mouldings are attenuated, every bit of wall is covered with carving or tracery, and such tricks are played with arches of all shapes, that, though they are ingenious, they are hardly worth describing. The western doorway is fringed with kneeling angels for crockets, and there are large and small statues of saints against the wall on either side of it. Above is the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, with St. John the Baptist on one side, and the kneeling founder on the other, flanked by angels carrying armorial achievements. Above, in the centre, is our Lord seated, St. Peter and St. Paul on either side, and the four Evangelists seated at desks, and instructed by angels. Every vacant space seems to have a couple of angels holding coats-of-arms, so that it is impossible not to feel that the sculptor and the founder must have had some idea of heaven as peopled by none with less than a proper number of quarterings on their shields, or without claim to the possession of Sangre Azul. I must not forget to say of this work that, though its scheme is displeasing and Retablo-like, its execution is wonderful, and the merit of the detail of many parts of it very great.

The façade of San Gregorio is a long lofty wall, pierced with small ogee-headed windows, and finished with a quaint, carved, and pinnacled parapet; in the centre is the entrance gateway, corresponding pretty much in its detail with the front of San Pablo, but even more extremely heraldic in its decorations. The doorway is a square opening under a segmental arch, with an ogee-trefoiled canopy above. Full-length statues of hairy unclad savages on either side may have a meaning which I failed to discover; to me they looked simply uncouth and rude. The canopy over the doorway runs up and forms a great heraldic tree, with an enormous coat-of-arms and supporters in the centre. The finish at the top is one of those open-work conceits of interlacing pierced cusping, which looks like nothing better than a collection of twigs.