Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

From all points, too, this lantern groups admirably with the rest of the church. My sketch was taken from the west end of the nave roof, in order to show the detail of the work to a fair scale; but the best view on the whole is that from the south-east, where it groups with the fine exterior of the eastern apses, with their engaged columns and rich corbel-tables, and with a turret to the east of the transept, which has been carried up and finished rather prettily in the fourteenth century with a short spire, with spire-lights on each side of its hexagonal base.

The old corbel-tables under the eaves remain throughout the east end; but the wall has been raised above them with a line of pierced quatrefoils, over which the rough timbers of the roof project. No doubt here, as we shall find in some other examples, the original intention was to have a stone roof of rather flat pitch. The space between the eaves of the chancel and the lower windows of the lantern would admit of no more than this; and though there is a good deal of piquant effect in the line of dark pierced traceries under the eaves and the rough tiled roof above them, one cannot but regret very much the change from the original design in so important a part of the work. The eaves-cornices are carved with a very rich variety of billet moulding, and carried upon corbels, some of which are carved and some moulded. The walls generally have flat pilasters at short intervals, finishing under the eaves-cornices, and the principal apse has the common arrangement of three-quarter engaged shafts dividing it into three bays. The window-arches are boldly moulded and carved, but the lights are narrow, and those in the main apse are remarkable for the delicate intricacy of the contemporary iron grilles with which they are guarded—genuine laborious smith’s work, utterly unlike the poor modern efforts with which in these days men earn fame without using their hammers! The effect here of the intricate curved lines, relieved by the dark shadow of the window opening, is charming. It may fairly be doubted, I think, whether these windows were ever meant to be glazed. In the transept pointed relieving arches are built over the windows, and one of them is a good example of the joggling of the joints of stonework, not uncommonly seen in early flat arches, but the use of which is not very obvious in a high pointed arch. The smaller apses have only one window, and are lower in proportion to the principal apse than is usually the case.

There are some fine monuments in the south transept, all of them adorned with elaborate bas-reliefs of scriptural subjects. One, of the thirteenth century, has a tomb supported on lions, and a death-bed represented on its side; a little apsidal recess above is groined with a semi-dome, with ribs. Another has sculptures of the Crucifixion, the Entombment, the Maries going to the Sepulchre, and the “Noli me tangere;” and a third has another representation of a death-bed. The effigies are all slightly tilted outwards, and those in the east wall have their feet to the north. The most remarkable features in the decoration of the church are, however, the Retablo and the painting on the semi-dome above it. On the vault the Last Judgment is painted, our Lord being drawn much in the famous attitude of St. Michael in Orcagna’s fresco at Pisa, and without drapery. The Retablo is a work of the fourteenth century, of wood, and planned so as exactly to fit the curve of the apse wall. It is divided into five panels in height and eleven in width, so that there are fifty-five subjects, each surrounded by an architectural framework of delicate character. The subjects are all richly painted on a gold ground, and seemed to me to be well drawn. The coloured decoration of the whole is very effective, and owes much to the white ground of its traceries. Generally speaking, a Retablo is placed across the apse and cuts off its eastern portion, which thenceforward becomes a receptacle for all the untidiness of the church; and when so arranged, if it reaches the height common in Spain, it almost, and in some cases altogether, destroys the internal effect of the apse. Here, however, the exact fitting of the Retablo to the curve of the wall is free from this objection, and its effect is unusually good.

The cloister on the south side is almost all modernized, though one or two old doorways remain. That into the south transept has spiral shafts, with the spiral lines reversed at regular intervals. It has also some very good carving of foliage, with birds and naked figures, and on its jambs are some memorial inscriptions of A.D. 1190, 1192, and 1194. On the south side of the cloister is a richly decorated little chapel, which retains in one corner a very curious mediæval organ, with shutters. On the east side and close to the transept, what was no doubt the original Chapter-house still remains, though it is now called the Mozarabic chapel, and was formerly used for the Mozarabic ritual. At present the boy who had the keys said it was not used; but the proper books were all there. It is a very remarkable chamber, square in plan below, and brought to an octagon above by arches thrown across the angles, and finally roofed with a sort of dome, carried upon moulded and carved ribs of very intricate contrivance. The interlacing of these ribs gives the work somewhat the effect of being Moorish, and there can be little doubt, I think, that it owes its peculiarities in some degree to Moorish influence. It will be seen by reference to the plan, that the groining ribs are arranged in parallel pairs. The ribs go from the angles to the centre of the opposite side instead of from angle to angle, and the sixteen ribs form a star-shaped compartment in the centre. This coupling of ribs in parallel lines is a feature of Moorish work, and is seen in the curious mosque, the Cristo de la Luz, at Toledo, and in the somewhat Moorish vault of the Templars’ church at Segovia. But whether Moorish or not, it is a remarkable room, and deserves careful study. The diameter is but a little over twenty-six feet, and the light is admitted by small windows in the upper stage. I should be inclined to attribute this room and its vault to the architect of the lantern of the church, and I regret that the only part of the outside which I could see was so modernized as to render it impossible to ascertain the original design. I call this the Chapter-house, because I find that it opened originally into the cloister, with three arches, that in the centre a doorway, the others windows of two lights—the almost invariable arrangement of all Chapter-houses at this time.[95]

A considerable number of masons’ marks remain on the exterior of the early part of this church; and if they are the marks of the men who erected so complicated a piece of stonework as the vault of the Chapter-house, they well deserve to be preserved. Throughout this church, indeed, the masonry is unusually good, and, owing to the rich warm colour of the stone, the eastern apses, though they follow the common design of most of the Romanesque apses in this part of Spain, are more than usually good in their effect.

A flight of eighteen steps leads up from the old cathedral through the north transept into one of the southern chapels of the new cathedral, and I know few changes more remarkable than that from the modest simplicity, yet grandeur, of the early church, to the overbearing magnitude and somewhat flaunting character of the late one.

Salamanca seems to have tasted early of that prosperity which in the end ruined art in Spain; and it was possible, therefore, for the Bishop, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, to propose a scheme for replacing his modest old cathedral by one of the most sumptuous and ambitious in Spain, without attempting what was absurd or sure to fail. The whole discussion as to the planning of the church is told us in a series of documents published by Cean Bermudez, which are, I think, of sufficient interest to make them quite worth a place in the Appendix to this volume. I shall discuss in another chapter the light which they throw upon the architectural practice of the day, and here it will only be necessary to refer to such parts of them as affect the architectural history of the building.

In A.D. 1509 a Royal order was issued to Anton Egas, master of the works at Toledo Cathedral, to go to Salamanca to make a plan for the cathedral there. Egas seems to have delayed so long that it was necessary to send another order to him, and then at last, in May, 1510, he went. The same kind of command had been laid at the same time by the king on Alfonso Rodriguez, the master of the works at Seville, and after these two had considered the matter, they presented a joint plan, drawn on parchment, showing the heights and widths of the naves, the thickness of the walls, and so forth; but they were unable, they said, to agree as to the proportion of length to breadth in the Capilla mayor, and so they settled to meet in ten days at Toledo, and then to appoint an umpire. Nothing more seems to have been done by them, for in A.D. 1513 the Bishop and Chapter resolved to call together a Junta of architects to make another report; and Rodriguez being dead, they summoned Anton Egas of Toledo, Juan Gil de Hontañon. Juan de Badajoz of Leon, Alonso de Covarrubias of Toledo, Juan Tornero, Juan de Alava, Juan de Orozco, Rodrigo de Saravia, and Juan Campero, who all assembled in September, A.D. 1512, at Salamanca, and drew up their report. The detailed character of this report is very curious. It decides the dimensions of every part of the church, the thickness of the walls, the projection of the buttresses, and the exact position that it ought to occupy. The architects not only agreed in all their opinions, but testified to their truth by taking an oath “by God and St. Mary,” saying, each one, “So I swear, and amen.”