Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

by George Edmund Street

The cloisters are not good in their detail, but yet are very pleasant; they are full of orange-trees, flowers, and fountains. One of these is in a projecting bay at the north-east internal angle, and is old; another by its side has a little St. George and the Dragon, with the horse’s tail formed by a jet of water; and a third, and more modern, plays in the centre among the flowers. In addition, there are some geese cooped up in one corner, who look as if their livers were being sacrificed in order to provide patés for the canons; and finally a troop of hungry, melancholy cats, who are always howling and prowling about the cloisters and church, and who often contrive to get into the choir-stalls just before service, whence they are forthwith chased about by the choristers and such of the clergy as are in their places in good time! These cloisters are said to have been completed in A.D. 1448,[292] and I have no doubt this date is correct. On the exterior they are bounded on three sides by streets, and the apsidal ends of the chapels do not show, the wall being straight and unbroken. The cloister is lofty and has panelled buttresses between the windows, of which latter the arches only remain, the traceries having been entirely destroyed. The view from hence of the church is one of the best that can be obtained, the octagonal transept towers being the most marked features. The floor is full of gravestones, on which the calling of the person commemorated is indicated by a slight carving in relief of the implements of his trade.

The chapel of Sta. Lucia, at the south-west angle of the cloister, is probably a relic of the first church; it has a very fine round-headed doorway with its arch-mouldings covered with delicate architectural carving, and a lancet window under its very flat-pitched gable. The roof inside is a pointed waggon-vault. The door from the cloister into the south transept is of about the same date; it has three shafts in the jamb (one of them fluted), very deep capitals and abaci covered with carving of foliage, and an archivolt covered with chevron patterns of a flat and very unusual character. The label is large and carved with very stiff foliage. The foliage here is to a slight extent copied from the acanthus, but much of it is derived from some other leaf—I believe from the prickly pear.

When the fabric has been passed in review much still remains to be seen within its walls. A large number of the altars, particularly those of the cloister chapels, were furnished in the fifteenth century with Retablos of wood richly carved, and then painted with subjects: these are always placed across the apse, leaving a space behind the altar, to which access was obtained by doors on either side of it. Perhaps then as now the priest attached to the altar kept his vestments in the chapel in which he ministered, and these spaces may thus have been utilized. Usually, now-a-days, in Spanish churches, for some ten or twenty minutes before the offices are sung in the choir, priests may be seen unlocking the gates of their chapels, vesting themselves, and then going one by one to their stalls in the choir, and there waiting till, on the clock striking the hour, the service commences. The paintings in the old Retablos are sadly defaced and damaged; but many of them have evidently had much value and interest. They are usually rather of Flemish than of Italian character, generally well and quaintly drawn, and with those striking contrasts of colour on gold grounds, of which this early school was so fond. The doors on either side of the altar have generally a whole-length figure of a saint painted on them.

Across the outer archway of all these chapels is an iron grille; very many of these are mediæval; and in the cloister in particular there is a very considerable variety in their treatment, and often great delicacy of execution. I have before noticed the excellence of the smiths’ work in the Spanish churches. Yet though their work is of the latest age of Gothic, it is never marked by that nauseous redundance of ornament in which so many of the most active metal-workers of the present day seem to revel. Hence it is always worthy of study. The doors in these screens are generally double, and shut behind some sort of ogee-arched crocketed head, and sometimes there are crocketed pinnacles and buttresses on either side. The locks are often, of course, specially elaborate; and the illustration which I give of one of them will serve to show their general character. In all the screens here the lower part is very simple, consisting generally of nothing but vertical bars, through which one can see without difficulty to the altars which they guard. The ornament is reserved for open traceried crestings, with bent and sharply-cut crockets, for traceried rails, and for the locks and fastenings.

The woodwork of the choir-fittings is of very late date,[293] but good of its kind. The stall-divisions are richly traceried under the elbow, and the misereres carved with foliage. Behind the stalls, and under the old canopies, is a series of Renaissance panels, covered with paintings of the arms of the Knights of the Golden Fleece.[294] The canopies above are very delicate, and of the same character as the stalls. The carved oak pulpit is corbelled out at the east end of the north range of stalls, and is approached by a staircase outside the arcaded stone parclose, which still remains north and south of the choir. This staircase, with its arched doorway between pinnacles at the bottom, its traceried handrail fringed at the top with fantastic ironwork, and its door cunningly and beautifully made of open ironwork, is quite worth notice.

The Bishop’s throne, second only in height and elaboration to that of Exeter, occupies its proper place at the east end of the southern side of the choir, with one stall for a chaplain beyond it. It will be remembered that in most Spanish cathedrals it is placed where the door from the nave into the choir ought to be: here, however, the old arrangement has never been altered.

The principal altar has a very Gothic Retablo, covered with gilding till it looks like gingerbread. I imagine it to be modern. It has curtains on either side, with angels standing on the columns which carry the rods. The iron screen across, in front of the altar, and round the apse, is none of it old.