Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

THE architectural history of Barcelona is much more complete, whilst its buildings are more numerous, than those of any of our own old cities, of which it is in some sort the rival. The power which the Barcelonese wielded in the middle ages was very great. They carried on the greater part of the trade of Spain with Italy, France, and the East; they were singularly free, powerful, and warlike; and, finally, they seem to have devoted no small portion of the wealth they earned in trade to the erection of buildings, which even now testify alike to the prosperity of their city, and to the noble acknowledgment they made for it.

The architecture of Cataluña had many peculiarities, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when most of the great buildings of Barcelona were being erected, they were so marked as to justify me, I think, in calling the style as completely and exclusively national or provincial, as, to take a contemporary English example, was our own Norfolk middle-pointed. The examination of them will, therefore, have much more value and interest than that of even grander buildings erected in a style transplanted from another country, such as we see at Burgos and Toledo; and beside this, there was one great problem which I may venture to say that the Catalan architects satisfactorily solved—the erection of churches of enormous and almost unequalled internal width—which is just that which seems to be looming before us as the work which we English architects must ere long grapple with, if we wish to serve the cause of the Church thoroughly in our great towns.

For a manufacturing town, this, the Manchester of Spain, is singularly agreeable and unlike its prototype. The mills are for the most part scattered all over the surrounding country, which rises in pleasant undulations to the foot of the hills some four or five miles inland from the sea, and beyond which the country is always beautiful and wild, and sometimes—as in the savage and world-renowned rocks of Montserrat—quite sublime in its character. On my first journey I arrived at Barcelona by a steamer from Valencia. The views of the coast were generally extremely beautiful, until shortly before our arrival, as we passed the low level land through which the Llobregat finds its way to the sea; beyond this the great rock and fortress of Monjuic rise boldly in front, and rounding its base into the harbour, the tall octagonal towers and turrets of the cathedral and other churches came in sight. Little, however, is seen of the sea from the city, the fortifications of Monjuic on the one side, and the harbour and new colony of Barcelonette which occupies a point jutting out beyond it seaward on the other, completely shutting it out. One result of this is that, whilst nothing is seen of the sea, so, too, the seafaring people seem to confine themselves to Barcelonette, and not to show themselves in the thronged streets of the city. Another fortress, a little inland on the east, places Barcelona under a cross fire, and prevents its growth in that direction; but wherever possible it seems to be spreading rapidly, and every external sign of extreme prosperity is to be seen. The streets are generally narrow, tortuous, and picturesque, with the one noble exception of the Rambla, a very broad promenade running from the sea quite across the city, which has a road on either side, and a broad promenade planted with trees down the centre. Here in the early morning one goes to buy smart nosegays of the Catalan flower-girls from the country, and in the evening to stroll in a dense mob of loungers enjoying the cold air which sweeps down from the hills, and atones for all the sufferings inflicted by the torrid midday sun.

It will be best, in describing the buildings here, to begin with those of the earliest date, though they are of comparatively unimportant character, and in part fragments only of old buildings preserved in the midst of great works undertaken at a later date. The Benedictine convent of San Pablo del Campo, said to have been founded in the tenth century by Wilfred II., Count of Barcelona,[278] was restored by Guiberto Guitardo and his wife about 1117, and in 1127 was incorporated with the convent of San Cucufate del Vallés.[279] The church is very interesting. It is small and cruciform, with three parallel apses, an octagonal vault on pendentives over the Crossing, and a short nave, which, as well as the transepts, is covered with a waggon-vault. The apses are vaulted with semi-domes. The west end is the only perfect part of the exterior, and deserves illustration. The work is all of a very solid and rude description, though I am almost afraid to give it credit for being so old as is said. The circular window is, however, an interpolation; and if this were removed, and another small window like the others inserted in its place, the whole design would no doubt have an air of extreme antiquity. The ground-plan is a typal one here, and prevails more or less in all the early churches from Cataluña to Galicia. One or two others of the same description seem to have a fair amount of evidence of the date of their consecration, and it is at any rate unlikely that a church built in A.D. 914 would require rebuilding in about a hundred years, which must have been the case here, if we assume that we have not still before us the original church. On the south side of the nave there was a cloister added, probably in the course of the eleventh century, and there is some difference in the character of its design and workmanship, and that of the church and its west front. This cloister is very small, having on each side four arches, divided by a buttress in the centre of each side. The openings are cusped some with three and some with five heavy foliations, plain on the outside, but both moulded and carved on the inside face. The cusping is not at all Gothic in its character, being stilted in a very Eastern fashion, nor is it constructed like Gothic work, the stones being laid over each other, and cut out in the form of cusps, but not constructed anywhere with stones radiating on the principle of an arch. The shafts between the openings are coupled one behind the other, and have well-carved capitals. A fourteenth-century doorway, with a cross for the finial of its label, opens from the north wall of the cloister into the nave; and in the east wall is an extremely good entrance to the Chapter-house of the same date, and showing the usual arrangement of a doorway with a two-light traceried opening on either side. There are also some old monumental arches in the walls.

This church, which forms so important a feature in the early architectural history of Cataluña, is near the western end of the city, and its west front and cloister are enclosed within the walls of a small barrack; but as Spanish officers and soldiers are always glad to lionize a stranger, there is no difficulty in the way of seeing them. A simple early-pointed doorway, under a very flat tympanum, has been added to the north transept, and there is some evidence of the small apse near it having been arcaded on the outside. The pendentive under the dome is similar in its construction to those under the dome of the curious church of Ainay, at Lyons. Above them there is a string-course, and then the vault, which rises to a point in the centre, and is not a complete octagon, the cardinal sides being much wider than the others. The west doorway has in its tympanum our Lord, St. Peter, and St. Paul; over the arch are the angel of St. Matthew and eagle of St. John, and above, a hand with a cruciform nimbus, giving the benediction.

San Pedro de las Puellas, on the other side of the city, was rebuilt in A.D. 980, by Suniario Count of Barcelona, and his wife Richeldi, and was consecrated with great pomp in A.D. 983.[280] This church has been wofully treated, but it is still possible to make out the original scheme. It was a cruciform church of the same general plan as San Pablo, with a circular dome at the Crossing, and a waggon-vault to the south transept, the nave, and the western part of the chancel. The other parts were altered at a later date. Very bold detached columns with rich capitals carry the arches under the dome, and another remaining against the south wall of the nave suggests that there were probably cross arches or ribs below its waggon-vault. The sculpture of the capitals is very peculiar; it is quite unlike the ordinary Romanesque or Byzantine sculpture, and is very much more like the work sometimes seen in Eastern buildings. It is a type of capital first seen here, but reproduced constantly afterwards all along the southern coast, and not, so far as I know, seen at all in the interior of Spain.

There is no mark of a chapel on the east side of the south transept, and, as the apse has been rebuilt, it is impossible to say what the original plan of the head of the church was.

In the Collegiata of Sta. Ana, we have the next stage in the development of Catalan architecture. This is said to have been built in A.D. 1146,[281] and is also a cruciform church, with a central raised lantern, barrel vaults in the transepts, and two bays of quadripartite vaulting in the nave. The nave probably dates from about the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century, being lighted with simple lancet-windows, and having bold buttresses. When I visited this church the chancel was boarded up for repairs, and I am unable to say certainly whether the east end is old, but it appeared to me to have been modernized. The exterior of the lantern is very peculiar; above the roof it is square in plan, but with eight buttresses around it, radiating from the centre, and evidently intended to be carried up so as to form the angles of an octagonal central lantern, of which, however, only the lowest stage remains. The present finish of the lantern is a steep tiled roof, which springs from just above the point at which the angles of the square base are cut off; and on the western slope of this roof a steep flight of stone steps leads to the very summit. The object of this arrangement is quite unintelligible. At the west end of the church, and set curiously askew to it, is a cloister of the fourteenth century, with a Chapter-room on its east side, opening to the cloister with a round-arched doorway, on either side of which is a good early middle-pointed two-light window, making the group so invariably found in old Chapter-house entrances. The west doorway of the church is severely simple, with a square opening and plain tympanum, under a pointed arch. Along the north side of the cloister is a fine ruin of a hall of the thirteenth century, the construction of which is very characteristic and peculiar. It is of two stages in height. Segmental arches across the lower rooms carry the floor beams, which are placed longitudinally, and over them in the upper room bold pointed arches are thrown to carry the roof. The roof was of very flat pitch, and consisted of a series of purlines resting on corbels built into the wall over the stone arches, upon which were laid the common rafters. I shall have to illustrate a similar roof which still remains in the church of Sta. Agata, so that I need not say more on the subject now than that this type is an exceedingly effective one, and occurs repeatedly in the Barcelonese buildings. The cloister of Sta. Ana is of two stages in height, and very light, graceful, and Spanish in its character. The columns are quatrefoil in section, and the capitals are later works of the same eastern character as those already described in San Pedro, and have square abaci. There is, perhaps, scarcely sufficient appearance of solidity and permanence in such extremely light shafts, seeing that they have to support a double tier of arcades all round the cloister; but nevertheless the whole effect of the work is very beautiful. The old well with its stone lintel remains, and some fine orange-trees still adorn the cloister court.

The other early works here are doorways and fragments now incorporated in other and later works, so that we need no longer delay our inspection of the cathedral, which is, as it ought to be, the pride of the city. The ground-plan which I give[282] will best explain the general arrangements of this remarkable church. Its scale is by no means great, yet the arrangement of the various parts is so good, the skill in the admission of light so subtle, and the height and width of the nave so noble, that an impression is always conveyed to the mind that its size is far greater than it really is. Of course such praise is not intelligible to those who believe with some enthusiasts that the greatest triumph of architectural skill is to make a building look smaller than it really is—a triumph which the admirers of St. Peter’s, at Rome, always claim loudly for it—but most unsophisticated men will probably prefer with me the opposite achievement, often, indeed, met with in Gothic buildings, but seldom more successfully than here.