The architecture is superb; the richest specimen of florid ogival with twenty-four vaults, windows cut and chiselled with the fine perfection of the sonnet, pillars delicate enough and daintily wrought for some vision of dreamland, with once fifty-six statues of Franciscan monks between (the number now is sadly diminished, and some of the statues that have not been rashly replaced are in a state of most lamentable mutilation), and charming friezes. The whole effect is that of an exquisite harmony, a harmony that not even the profane and degrading hand of the modern restorer has been able to obliterate. Vulgarised certainly, since vulgarity is, alas! the fatal, the inevitable price we must pay for modern comforts and improvements, for the refining process of our material progress and the pleasures of civilisation.
The cloisters are composed of four double galleries, supported on twenty-four vaults between the upper and lower cloisters and a flat roof above. The pillars, like those of the church, are miraculously sculptured; not a space an inch big, without its Gothic fancy of animal and leaf, its finely-wrought crowd in flowing fold, grotesque and lovely forms and multiplied foliage of every kind. The pillars spread like palms above to sustain the arches that divide the vaults, with an indescribable grace of effect. Inscriptions vary the legend of frieze and ornament. Gothic windows between frail arches look into the airy and delightful gardens, where green southern growths have the curled droop of plumes and the very grass seems to smile through the golden wave along its green. If only the restorers had spared the white-wash. If only this joyous little poem of Gothic architecture were less vulgarly, remorselessly white; less, as Murray’s guide-book aptly remarks, like the frosted top of wedding-cake.
In a corner, fastened into the wall, is a fragment
of stucco arabesque from the ancient palace of King Rodrigo, restored by the Moors, afterwards given by Maria de Molino, the widow of Sancho el Bravo, to Gonzalo de Ruiz, Count of Orgaz. I have never seen a more beautiful specimen of azulejo. This vanished palace of King Rodrigo is one of the few the Moors deemed worthy of preservation. Very little of the Visigothic remains, for the Moors had no fancy to profit by what they found after their conquest, and what has been left us is rude and unimportant enough to make their sparing use of Visigothic inspiration no matter of regret. The capitals of the Cristo de la Luz, the arcades of San Roman, and some fragments of the patio of Santa Cruz, are the most notable examples, and are only of significance as a slight indication of the transitional period between two great civilisations, the Roman and Saracen. All over Toledo, in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the Moorish note in architecture prevailed, and, except Granada and Cordova, no other town of Spain possesses so much of the work of the Moors, is so strongly stamped with their individuality. This is due to the fact that even after the Christian Conquest most of the workmen employed were Moors, for the tolerance between Moors and Christians in Toledo under both rules seems to have been admirable. They fraternised here on both sides, whether Khalif or Castillian sovereign wielded the sceptre, hence the undisputed preponderance of mudejar architecture in the hieratic city of the Goths.