El Greco’s portraits have none of the defects of his large compositions. The best perhaps is the admirable portrait of Cardinal Tavera in the Hospital de Afuera. This is in the full sense of the word a masterpiece. No blemish to irritate, no deliberate eccentricity to recall his wrong-headed theory that in painting colour alone is of importance and drawing of no value whatever. Here is a square of canvas of sober and solid worth, which might be the work of any of the best Italian masters for suavity and restraint, and has no fraternity whatever with the extraordinary St John the Baptist so near it, and so preposterously offensive. The other superb portraits by El Greco that Toledo holds are those of Antonio Covarrubias and Juan de Alava in the Provincial Museum at San Juan de los Reyes. The rest are chiefly at Madrid, and hold no inferior place in that glorious assembly. They stand out, individual, insistent, and seem to assure you with all the eloquence of so violent and marked a personality as El Greco’s, that in spite of the general Venetian tone that so vividly recalls Titian and Tintoretto, with whom proximity invites contrast, it is no imitator who has painted these magnificent portraits of lean Castillian gentlemen, with their austere pride of regard, their air of imperturbable breeding and beautiful hands. They are the work of one of the world’s masters, who himself created a school to which we owe Velasquez.
CHAPTER VIII
San Juan de los Reyes, Santa Marta la Blanca, El Transito
RELIGION and revolt are the chief features in Toledo’s story. When her sons were not quarrelling within or warring without, they were building churches and convents, and none more famous than San Juan de los Reyes, built in fulfilment of a vow by the Catholic kings after the victory of Toro, gained over the Portuguese sympathisers with the Beltraneja, Henry’s luckless heiress. The architect was Juan Guas, master builder of the Cathedral, and the church was finished in 1476, and given over by Isabel to the order of St Francis, magnificently endowed. It stands high above the bridge of San Martin and the Puerta del Cambron, the portico facing north and the lovely cloisters south. Writing of it, Señor Amador de los Rios in his Toledo Pintoresca, says: “This sumptuous monument belongs to the class of architecture known as gotica-gentil, and is indubitably one of the most famous of Toledo. Raised at the most flourishing period of the Castillian monarchy, it awakens before the vision of the enthusiastic traveller, memories of lofty and difficult enterprises, happily concluded by our elders, so that the vandalism of the present century stands sharply out with all its rubbish, and still more the envy of a neighbouring nation, that, while it was in the act of flinging the most unjust charges at the Spanish people, destroyed with steel and fire the most precious jewels of its art. I refer to the burning of San Juan de los Reyes by the French on their invasion. It would seem false that the armies of the Marshals, whose culture and value nobody may dare doubt, could display such rage against a few edifices, whose only wrong in their estimation was that they were erected by the victors of Cirinola and Pavia; false would it seem that Napoleon’s soldiers came to Spain to react the scenes of Attila and Genserico. But for our misfortune it is only too true.” One cannot blame the Spaniards for their bitterness towards the French. No invading nation ever behaved more shamelessly, comported itself with a more inexcusable barbarity than the French in the Peninsula. But on the other hand, the Spaniards themselves in reality care so little about the beautiful things they have inherited from bygone times, are so calamitously indifferent to their own historic glories, that we may well hesitate to credit the French with all the ruin we see about us in Spain. An archaeological body was appointed for the maintenance of public monuments, and see for yourself in Toledo and elsewhere what these gentlemen have been able to achieve. It is not money alone that is lacking, but competence and the great important instinct that it matters. The canons, those hopeless autocrats of ruined Toledo, who stand so deliberately on the brink of oblivion and the dark abyss of ignorance, have covered the beautiful bronze doors of the cathedral Puerta del Reloj with a hideous wooden screen. When I asked one of them the meaning of this disfigurement, he blandly assured me that it was to ward off draughts in winter, when the big stone forest is mighty cold. And so the lovely works of Zurreño and Dominguez might just as well have been riddled with French shot for all the pleasure they are permitted to give us to-day. So with everything in the hands of these terrible canons, who care for nothing on earth but their ease and their leisure. The famous archiepiscopal library which the Republic had wisely made state property, was given back to the canons by Alfonso XII., on the distinct understanding that it should remain open to the public. But the canons locked the doors, and whenever you ask to see it, you are informed that the librarian has the keys and is away at Madrid, where he expects to remain another fortnight. During the month I stayed at Toledo, to collect material for this volume, I was sent from one canon to another, all of whom “deeply sympathised,” but assured me in dull, indifferent tones that it was impossible for me to see the library. The Penetenciario was at Madrid. And for anything the canons cared, he might stay away six months, and keep the library keys with him all that time. I asked one canon what the rest did, if in the absence of their singular librarian, there happened to present itself a rare necessity for the chapter to open this hermetically sealed door. He smiled deprecatingly, but did not enlighten me. Not requiring information themselves, the search for it is a form of insanity not to be encouraged in others. And Señor Amador de los Rios and all other Spanish writers lament, and justly, the French invasion, but forget to note their own cruel inertia, the disastrous results of indifference and indolence.
There is nothing remarkable about the exterior of San Juan de los Reyes. Alonso de Covarrubias completed the portico in 1610. The effect of the rusty chains, the famous chains of the Christians of Granada round the walls, is hideous. The Spaniards are extremely moved by the sight of this queer ornament, one wonders why, and Amador de los Rios nearly weeps with rage because some of them have been removed. He solaces himself with drawing an elaborate picture of the awed and reverential attitude of emotional foreigners gazing upon them. The sculpture outside is very rough. Many will find the interior of this renowned edifice a distinct disappointment. One misses the mystery, the charm of aisled perspectives. There are here no long reaches of shadow and brilliant variations of light. The effect is bold, free, ample, but curiously short. The altar recess is shallow, the nave is broad and open, ending in a semi-circle and six lateral arches. The body of the church is divided by two light pillars, richly decorated. The beauty of the church consists in the extraordinary magnificence of its sculpture. Pillars and walls are extravagantly overlaid with the richest Gothic ornamentation, and the impression is rather bewildering than beautiful. It seems a bold thing to say of one of the most admired and renowned monuments of Toledo, that it is ugly from excess of sculptural splendour. It is too wide, too short, too solid and heavy, too open, above all too florid. I can think of no fitter comparison than a stout, low-sized, middle-aged woman, excessively bejewelled, carrying gracelessly garments too heavy and too gorgeous. It lacks the elusive charm of shadow, the subtlety of simplicity. San Juan de los Reyes is a church to visit and to wonder at, but not a place to muse in. You will admire the octagonal vault, the pinnacles, the gallery running out of the clerestory in front of the south window, pierced parapet and highly-wrought choir; you will marvel at the statues, the foliage, the rich Gothic fancies, the shields, all the magnificent elaboration of detail, the rarest to be found anywhere, and still will all this leave you cold and unimpressed. It is like an admirably finished poem, that appeals to the head and leaves the heart untouched.
From immemorial time the principal entrance has been covered with plaster, which only permits us to see the great Gothic window in the centre. The workmanship of the interior of the church leads us to infer that this entrance was more in keeping with the whole than the present façade of Covarrubias, which is decadent Gothic, constructed many years later, and only finished in the reign of Philip III. The length of this single nave is 200 feet, its width in the transept is over 70, and in the body of the church 43. There are seven chapels, four on one side and three on the other, all insignificant. The tomb of Don Pedro de Ayala, bishop of the Canaries, is a fine specimen of renaissance sculpture. The cupola rests on four admirably wrought pillars, its form is octagon, with an ogival dome and a window in each face. Nothing could be richer or more effective than the elaborately decorated sides of the transept. Such a splendid prodigality of Gothic sculpture was surely never lavished on so small a space. To give anything like a detailed account of it would require an art and a knowledge nothing less stupendous than the imagination that devised such work. The retablo, painted by Francis of Antwerp in the sixteenth century, that Ponz praised so enthusiastically, disappeared in the time of the fatal French occupation, when the church was the stables of Napoleon’s soldiers, and along with it the life-sized portraits of the founders, Fernando and Isabel. Hardly any of the old stainglass remains, to which fact is due the glaring effect of crude light upon the white stone. But this light permits you to examine at ease the superlative magnificence of the transept sides and the sculptured pillars. Everywhere the initials F and I, with the yoke and the arrows of both sovereigns. Letters and inscriptions are exquisitely finished, and nothing could be more graceful than the general effect of arches and capitals. The high broad nave forms a Latin cross, composed of apse, transept and the body of the church, all the most prodigious and exuberant specimen of florid renaissance. The choir is situated over a low, broad, painted vault. The pillars that support the four domes of the naves are richly sculptured and adorned with statues, and a fine frieze runs above the chapels on either side, with a window above each arch divided by graceful Gothic pillars. The inscriptions are many, and surprisingly clear and beautiful in finish. Here is one of the most elaborate in Gothic letters:
