Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

Another example of the same class, which in its original state must have been finer than San Millan, is to be seen in the church of San Martin. Here the cloister was carried not only along the sides, but across the west front also, with a bold projecting west porch, breaking its lines, and giving great character and dignity to the whole scheme. The west doorway of the porch has statues in its jambs, and the detail seems to me to be all genuine thirteenth century work. The illustration of one of the cloister capitals will, I think, prove this; for though the old favourite device of couples of birds is repeated here, the lines are all extremely fine and graceful, and the carving of the abacus of an advanced kind. This church is, unfortunately, very much modernized throughout. It seems to have had three parallel apses at the east end, and transepts, against which the side cloisters of the nave were stopped. There is a modern lantern over the old crossing, and a tower to the west of it rising from out of the centre of the nave, which seems to be in part old. There were northern and southern as well as western doors, and openings in the cloister opposite each of them.

San Roman, a desecrated church near the palace of the civil governor, has a short nave, chancel, and apse, with a tower on the south side of the chancel. The walls are very lofty, and are all finished with corbel-tables at the eaves. The apse has three round-headed windows, and there is a noble north door, similar in design to those of San Millan, and with the abaci and labels richly carved. The west end has a small doorway, and a circular window over it, the former certainly, and the latter probably, not original. The lower stage only of the tower remains. This church must be of about the same age as San Millan.

San Facundo is similar in plan to San Roman, and of the same date. The detail of the apse is precisely the same as that of San Millan. There is a large west door, modernized, and an open cloister seems to have been added at a later date to the side of the church, and is now walled up. This church is desecrated, and converted into a Museum of Paintings.

Santa Trinidad has a fine apse, and this is again of the San Millan pattern. It has carved stringcourses at the springing of the windows, and again just over their arches, and there are three-quarter engaged wall-shafts between the windows, and a richly sculptured eaves-cornice and corbel-table.

San Nicolas, close to Santa Trinidad, has two apses, each lighted with a single window, engaged wall-shafts, and the usual carved labels, abaci, and corbel-tables. The tower is on the north side, rises one stage above the roof, and is lighted with two round-arched belfry windows. A small apse was added rather later than the original fabric to the east of this tower, and before its erection the plan must have been almost the same as that of San Roman, but reversed. About a hundred yards from San Nicolas is another church which is almost an exact repetition of San Roman.

San Luine (?), in the Plazuela de Capuchinos, is of just the same class as the rest, with nave, chancel, and apse, and a second apse east of the tower on the south side. There are no side windows here, and only a single light at the east end.

Another church, in the Plaza de Isabel II., is of the same plan as the last, with a modernized tower. The carving on the string-courses here is of the same kind of natural foliage that I have described at San Millan.

Near the aqueduct are two churches. One of them, S. Antholin (I think), has a tower at the north-east of the nave; its two upper stages have on each face two round-arched shafted windows, and the angles are treated in a precisely similar way to those of San Esteban, having bold splays with engaged shafts in their centres. Another church close to this is modernized, but retains its old tower, with the angles treated in the same way.

The church of San Juan has remains of an external cloister on one side.

The last church of this long, and I fear very dry, catalogue, is that of San Miguel, which stands in the Plaza near the cathedral. It has four bays of nave, shallow transepts, and a very short choir, which is, I think, apsidal, but almost concealed by a pagan Retablo. The whole is of late fifteenth-century date, and must, I think, be the work of the same hand as the cathedral. Some figures at the west end, representing St. Michael and the Annunciation, have evidently been taken from some older building, and built into the walls here. There is a very beautiful triptych in the north transept, with a Descent from the Cross in the centre, which ought to be looked at. It is a fine work of, I suppose, the latter part of the sixteenth century.[194]