Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

The south transept façade is, after the lantern, the most interesting part of the church. Its general character is extremely peculiar, and unlike any other work I have seen in Spain. There are plain buttresses at the angles, and the space between them is divided into three compartments by fluted pilasters, which rise as far as the corbel-table (continued at the same level as the eaves-cornice), and carry three pointed arches which are fitted to the original flat-pitched gable, the centre arch being the widest and highest. The centre compartment has a doorway with three shafts in each jamb, and four orders in the arch all alike, and resembling the door in San Martin, at Salamanca, illustrated at p. 91. The effect of light and shade in this ornamentation is very great; and, executed as it is with comparatively little labour, I rather wonder not to have seen more of the same work elsewhere. Two small recessed arches occupy the side compartments of the façade on either side of the doorway: that on the right hand has its archivolt carved with extreme delicacy with a small leaf repeated frequently; and both have within their arches sculptures of figures. The bases of all the columns are fluted, and the capitals are all carved rather rudely, and have heavy abaci. Over the side arches are square sunk compartments enclosing circular ornaments carved with a succession of hollow flutings sinking back to the centre. In fact, these strange ornaments—which at first sight look almost like modern insertions—are precisely like models of the dome with its arched groining spaces between the ribs. Above the doorway is a row of five arches recessed in the wall,[104] and under the central arch in the gable is a blocked-up window-opening.

I was unable to gain admission to the interior of the steeple. On the outside it rises in a succession of nearly equal stages, of which the upper three have, in the common Lombard fashion, windows of one, two, and three lights respectively.

It remains to say a few words as to the fittings of the church. The Coro here occupies the two eastern bays of the nave, and is fitted with very rich late stalls and canopies, which are quite magnificent in their effect. The backs of the stalls are carved with figures, and those over the lower range of stalls throughout with half-length figures of Old Testament worthies, most of which have inscribed scrolls, with legends referring to our Lord, in their hands. These texts have been printed by Dr. Neale in the ‘Ecclesiologist,’ and they afford so valuable an example of the right mode of selecting inscriptions, that, with his consent, I give a copy of his account.[105] The figures are rather in the style afterwards so much employed by Berruguete, large scale bas-reliefs of single figures—always an awkward kind of sculpture in the hands even of the very best artist. The traceries and crockets of this stall-work are very elaborate, crisp, and good of their kind. There is a continuous horizontal canopy above the upper stalls, each division of which is filled with purely secular sculptures of beasts and animals. The metal Rejas are of the same age as the stalls; and there is a fine ancient lectern for the choir, of enormous size, in the centre of the Coro, and two others of more modern date. The western screen is old—of the fifteenth century—and has the rare feature of two doorways, leaving the centre unpierced for the altar in the nave, and the bishop’s throne on its eastern side, towards the Coro. By the time this work was done, it was very generally settled that the bishop’s place was here, in the centre of the western end of the Coro; but I have seen no other screen in which the entrance has still been retained at the west in connexion with this arrangement of the stalls. There is an old metal screen or Reja under the eastern arch of the crossing, which is of the same age as the choir fittings, and has two iron pulpits projecting from its western face. These pulpits are lined with wood, and stand on stone bases; the staircases to them are of wood, carved on the Gospel side with figures of the Evangelists and St. Laurence, and on the Epistle side with St. John, St. Peter, and other Epistolers. Each pulpit has a desk on a little crane projecting from the column by its side.

The cloisters on the north side of the cathedral, and the bishop’s palace on the south, are all completely modernized; but just under the old town walls, to the north of the Cathedral Plaza, is the small Romanesque church of San Isidoro. It has a square-ended chancel of two bays, and a nave of three, the latter lighted by very small windows—mere slits in the masonry—the former by shafted windows with a deep external splay to the openings, which are also very narrow. There are two of these windows at the east end, and there is a corbel-table under the eaves. This church was not intended for groining.

The long, narrow, and winding street which leads along the thin crest of the hill to the centre of the city, passes on the way the very interesting little church of La Magdalena. This is a Romanesque church, divided into nave, chancel, and apsidal sanctuary, in the way we so often see in works of similar date in England. The chancel has a pointed waggon-vault, the apse is groined with ribs, whilst the nave has now a modern (and probably always had a) flat wooden roof. The south doorway is placed very nearly in the centre of the south wall of the nave. It is a very grand example of the most ornate late Romanesque work, with twisted and moulded shafts, and a profusion of carving in the capitals and archivolts. Over this door is a circular window with dog-tooth in the label, and a quatrefoil piercing in the centre; and on each side, in the other bays, are round-arched windows of two lights. There is a very considerable likeness between the plan of this church and that of San Juan at Lérida.[106] In both, the overwhelming size and grandeur of the doorway as compared with that of the building, combined with its central position, produces at first the impression that it is the western, and not the southern, façade one is looking at. This is a defect; yet perhaps more so to the eyes of an Englishman, who now as of old prefers creeping through little holes[107] in the wall into his finest churches, than to those of any one used to the noble doorways of the Continent. The interior of La Magdalena is more interesting than the exterior; for, in addition to the good early detail of the arches across the chancel, it has at the east end of the nave some very fine and very peculiar monuments. Two of these are high tombs, with lofty canopies over them, occupying the space between the side walls of the nave and the jambs of the chancel arch. These canopies are square-topped, with round arches on the two disengaged sides, and carried upon large shafts standing detached on the floor. The detail of the canopies is as plain as possible; but the capitals are carved with very pure and vigorous conventional foliage, and the shafts are twisted; the moulding on those of the northernmost of the two monuments being reversed in mid-height, so as to produce a large and simple chevron. The mouldings of the shaft are carefully stopped below the necking, and above the base. The effect of this monument, filling in as it does the angle at the end of the nave, is extremely good; its rather large detail and general proportions giving it the effect of being an integral part of the fabric rather than, as monuments usually are, a subsequent addition.

To the west of the monument already mentioned, against the north wall, is another of about the same age—probably the early part of the thirteenth century—and even more curious in its design. It has three shafts in front carrying the canopy; and this is composed of two divisions of canopy-work, very similar to those so often seen in French sculpture over figures and subjects in doorways; under each are a pair of monsters—wyverns, or some such nondescripts—fighting. The capitals are similarly carved, and the abaci have conventional foliage. The tomb under the canopy has a plain coffin-shaped stone with a cross on it; but against the wall are, below, a figure lying in a bed carved on a bold block of stone projecting from the wall; and, above this, the soul of the departed being carried up by angels. The whole design and character of this monument are so unlike any other work that I know, that I give a native artist the credit of them. Yet the character of the detail seems to me to show an acquaintance with the French and Italian architecture of the day.

La Magdalena is said to have been a church founded by the Knights Templars, but on the suppression of their order in A.D. 1312 to have become the property of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.