the height of 160 feet, the height of the central nave. Its length is 404 feet, its width 204. The whole is lit up by 750 glorious stained windows, whose effect is best seized just before sunset. Broad patches of ruby, amethyst, emerald, topaz, and sapphire lie upon the pillars and flags, and above the light seems to strike through irridescent flashes of jewels. How fresh and full imagination must have been in those grand ages of art to have devised such permanent triumphs of colours, such witchery of hue upon such majesty of form, the greatness of the one tempered by the delightful loveliness of the other. The patient uplifted glance will at length be rewarded by learning to decipher from such a distance the legend of these matchless windows, which are wonderfully vivid scenes from the New Testament. A Spanish painter, who has devoted his life to the study of his beloved Toledo, tells me that when you penetrate up to these far-off heights, you will find the scenes in finish and detail and drawing as perfect as paintings, some of the German and Flemish school, some of the richer and suaver Italian. The principal artists were Dolfin, Alberto de Holanda, Maestro Christobal, Juan de Campos, Luis, Pedro Francès, and Vasco Troya. Dolfin’s work, begun in 1418, was continued after his death by Nicolás de Vergara, assisted by his two sons.
The principal façade on the west side is composed of three doors, diversely named del Infierno or de la Torre; del Perdon, and de Escribanos or del Juicio. The middle door is the Pardon, the largest and richest of the three. It forms a magnificent arch, covered with Gothic ornaments and figures, and is divided in two smaller arches by a column on which rests the figure of Christ, while above are twelve statues of the apostles. In the centre of the arch a fine bas-relief represents the Virgin in the act of bestowing the chasuble on St Ildefonso, who is kneeling at her feet. It is an imposing specimen of Renaissance work. Amador de los Rios complains that there is too much of the stiffness of Dürer in the studied attitudes, while Antonio Ponz remarks that the statues and the folds have that excellence and largeness of treatment so often lacking even in the best Renaissance work. The two other doors on either side are smaller and of equal size. They are formed of a single, undivided arch, delicately sculptured, rich in figures of angels and patriarchs in mediæval costume, which belong to a later date than the principal work. Seven steps lead down to the church, and above the arch of the Torre is a painting of the Resurrection of some merit, and above the Escribanos is a long inscription commemorating the taking of Granada by the Catholic sovereigns, Cardinal Mendoza being then archbishop of the Cathedral, and the expulsion of the Jews from the kingdoms of Castille, Aragon, and Sicily. Over the Pardon is a splendid rose window, with glazed arcade beneath. The façade was restored, and not too well, by Durango, a Toledan artist, during the last century. The little square towers that separate the doors are chiselled like jewels, but the effect of the whole is perhaps effaced by the more insistent beauty of the great tower.
The south door, Los Leones, is a particularly beautiful piece of Gothic work, of finished elegance and profusion of detail. Ponz describes the statues and ornaments as the most perfect of their kind. The portal forms a deep recess richly sculptured, full of delicate fancy in figure and leafage. The Assumption is by Salvatierra of the last century, inferior to the rest of the façade, and below it are two bas-reliefs with charming little figures representing scenes from the Old Testament. The six columns of the atrium, on which are seated six carved lions, give its name to the door. Each lion holds a shield. On the centre shields are repeated in bas-relief the eternal legend of Our Lady and St Ildefonso, while the four others show sculptural crosses and eagles. The bronze doors, attributed by Ponz to Berreguete, because they recall the work of his master, Michael Angelo, were wrought by Francisco Villalpando and Ruy Diaz del Corral in 1559, the carving having been done by the famous sculptor, Aleas Copin. Their great artistic work is sufficiently indicated by Ponz’s error in attributing them to the magnificent genius of Berreguete. As a fact, many masters were engaged upon these bronze gates: Velasco, Troyas, Lebin, Cantala, the two Copins as well as Villalpando, and Diaz del Corral, the payment divided between all being 68,672 maravedis. It would seem that the supreme excellence of artistic achievement in those days was due to the modesty of remuneration, if we are to judge by the results of exorbitant payment to-day.
In his accurate (if for the general reader perhaps somewhat technical) pages on the interior, Street says: “The original scheme of the church is only to be seen now in the choir and its aisles. These are arranged in three gradations of height—the choir being upwards of a hundred feet, the aisle round it about sixty feet, and the outer aisle about thirty-five feet in height. The outer wall of the aisle is pierced with arches for the small chapels between the buttresses. The intermediate aisle has in its outer wall a triforium, formed by an arcade of cusped arches, and above this quite close to the point of the vault, a rose window in each bay. It is in this triforium that the first evidence of any knowledge on the part of the architect of Moorish architecture strikes the eye. The cusping of the arcade is not enclosed within an arch, and takes a distinctly horse-shoe outline, the lowest cusp near to the cap spreading inwards at the base. Now it would be impossible to imagine any circumstances which could afford better evidence of the foreign origin of the first design than this slight concession to the customs of the place in a slightly later portion of the works. An architect who came from France, bent on designing nothing but a French church, would be very likely, after a few years’ residence in Toledo, somewhat to change in his views, and to attempt something in which the Moorish work, which he was in the habit of seeing, would have its influence. The detail of this triforium is, notwithstanding, all pure and good. The foliage of the capitals is partly conventional, and in part a stiff imitation of natural foliage, somewhat after the fashion of the work in the Chapter House at Southwell; the abaci are all square; there is a profusion of nail-head used in the labels; and well-carved heads are placed in each of the spandrels of the arcade. The circular windows above the triforium are filled in with cusping of various patterns. The main arches of the innermost arcade (between the choir and its aisle) are of course much higher than the others. The space above them is occupied by an arcaded triforium reaching to the springing of the main vault. This arcade consists of a series of trefoil-headed arches on detached shafts, with sculptured figures, more than life-size, standing in each division; in the spandrels above the arches are heads looking out from moulded circular openings, and above these again, small pointed arches are pierced, which have labels enriched with the nail-head ornament. The effect of the whole of this upper part of the design is unlike that of northern work, though the detail is all pure and good. The clerestory occupies the height of the vault and consists of a row of lancets (there are five in the widest bay, and three in each of the five bays of the apse) rising gradually to the centre, with a small circular opening above them. The vaulting-ribs in the central division of the apse are chevroned and increased in number, this being the only portion of the early work in which any, beyond transverse and diagonal ribs, are introduced. There is a weakness and want of purpose about the treatment of this highest portion of the wall that seems to make it probable that the work, when it reached this height, had passed out of the hands of the original architect. In the nave the original design (if it was ever completed) has been altered. There is now no trace of the original clerestory and triforium which are still seen in the choir, and in their place the outer aisle has fourteenth century windows of six lights with geometrical tracery, and the clerestory of the nave and transepts great windows, also of six lights, with very elaborate traceries. They have transomes (which in some degree preserve the recollection of the old structural divisions) at the level of the springing of the groining. The groining throughout the greater part of the church seems to be of the original thirteenth century work, with ribs finely moulded, and vaulting cells slightly domical in section. The capitals of the columns are all set in the direction of the arches and ribs they carry, and their abaci and bases are all square in plan.”
Street is of the opinion, based upon the singular purity of this vigorous specimen of Gothic of the thirteenth century, that the architect must have been French, or at least a Spaniard who had lived for years in France, and studied the best French churches. The architect, we learn, was Pedro Perez, whose name we gather from the Latin epitaph:
Aqui: jacet: Petrus Petri: magister
Eclesia: Sete: Marie: Toletani: fama:
Per exemplum: pro more: huic: bona:
Crescit: qui presens: templem: construxit:
Et hic quies cit: quod: quia: tan: mire:
Fecit: vili: sentiat: ire: ante: Dei:
Vultum: pro: quo: nil: restat: inultum:
Et sibi: sis: merce: qui solus: cuncta:
Coherce: obiit: X dias de Novembris:
Era: de m: et CCCXXVIII. (A.D. 1290).
Street suggests that Petrus Petro may more probably have meant the French Pierre, son of Pierre, than the Spanish translation of Pedro Perez, but putting one uncertainty against another, the Toledans are perfectly right to hold out for their dubious compatriot, Pedro Perez.
