Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

Another monument in the north transept has a semicircular arch carved alternately with bosses of foliage and censing angels; and within this a succession of cusps, the spandrels of which have also angels. The tympanum has a representation of the Crucifixion;[121] and below this, in an oblong panel just over the recumbent figure, is a representation of the service at a funeral. The side of the high tomb has also an interesting sculpture representing a figure giving a dole of bread to a crowd of poor and maimed people, whilst others bring him large baskets full of bread on their backs. The date in the inscription on this monument is Era 1280, i.e. A.D. 1242.

In a corresponding position in the west wall of the south transept is another monument of a bishop, recessed behind three divisions of the arcade which surrounds the walls of the church. The effigy is rather colossal, and has a lion at the head, and another under the feet. Over the effigy is a group of figures saying the burial office; and above, in panels within arches, are, (1) St. Martin dividing his Cloak, (2) the Scourging of our Lord, and (3) the Crucifixion. The soffeits of the arcade are diapered, and there were three subjects below the figure of the bishop, but they are now nearly destroyed.

The arches round the Capilla mayor were walled up, and those on either side of the monument of Ordoño II., already described, still retain the paintings with which they were all once adorned. They are of the same class as those in the cloister, and one of them, a large Ecce Homo, is certainly a very fine work. Unfortunately the figure of our Lord in the centre has been very badly repainted, but the troop of soldiers and Jews reviling Him on either side is full of life and expression.

The choir occupies the two eastern bays of the nave, and its woodwork is fine, though of late fifteenth-century date. There are large figures in bas-relief, carved in the panels behind the stalls. There is a western door from the nave into the Coro; and in part on this account, and in part from its considerable scale, the nave has less than usual of the air of uselessness which the Spanish arrangement of the Coro produces.

I have already incidentally mentioned that the windows are full of fine stained glass. It is all of the richest possible colour, and most of it of about the same date as the church. Modern critics would, no doubt, object to some of the drawing for its rudeness and want of accuracy. Yet to me this work seemed to be a most emphatic proof—if any were needed—that we who talk so much about drawing are altogether wrong in our sense of the office which stained glass has to fulfil in our buildings. We talk glibly about good drawing, and forget altogether the much greater importance of good colour. At Leon the drawing is forgotten altogether, and I defy any one to be otherwise than charmed with the glories of the effect created solely by the colour. At present in England our glass is all but invariably bad—nay, contemptible—in colour; whilst the so-called good drawing is usually a miserable attempt to reproduce some sentimentality of a German painter. Two schools might well be studied a little more than they are; the one should be this early school of rich colourists, and the other the beautiful works of the sixteenth and seventeenth century French glass-painters, where there is good drawing enough for any one, and generally great beauty and simplicity of colour. Finally, two practices might be suggested to our stained-glass painters,—one, that they should only use good, and therefore costly glass; and the other, that they should limit their palettes to a few pure and simple colours, instead of confusing our eyes with every possible tint of badly-chosen and cheaply-made glass.

If we want religious pictures in our churches—as we do most surely—let us go to painters for them, and, with the money now in great part thrown away on stained glass, we might then have some works of art in our churches of which we might have more chance of feeling proud, and for which our successors would perhaps thank us more than they will for our glass.[122]

I have detained my readers only too long, I fear, upon this cathedral, but it is too full of interest of all kinds to allow of shorter notice, and is, in its way, the finest church of which Spain can boast; at the same time the work is all so thoroughly French as to destroy, to some degree, the interest which we should otherwise feel in it.

The other great architectural attraction of Leon is the church of San Isidoro “el Real.” This is altogether earlier than, and has therefore an interest entirely different from, that of the cathedral.

Gil Gonzalez Dávila says that the church was founded in A.D. 1030,[123] by Ferdinand I., the Great. An inscription in the floor of the church gives the name of its architect;[124] and from the mention of Alonso VI., who came to the throne in A.D. 1065, and his mother Sancha, who died in A.D. 1067, the date of his death must have been between these two periods.[125] In A.D. 1063 King Ferdinand—Alfonso’s father—and Queen Sancha had very richly endowed the church, in the presence of various bishops, who had come together to celebrate the translation of the remains of San Isidoro.[126] Finally Dávila, in his History of the Cathedral at Avila, gives the date of the consecration of the church, from a deed in the archives there, as A.D. 1149.[127]

From these statements it would seem that the church was fit for the reception of the body of San Isidoro in A.D. 1065, and had then three altars; and yet that in A.D. 1149 it was consecrated, though indeed Ponz speaks of an inscription in the cloister which mentions the dedication of the church in A.D. 1063.[128]