one of the most beautiful portraits El Greco ever painted. But all your admiration is claimed by Berruguete’s monument before the altar. As the work of an old and dying man, it confounds minute and modern talent. It has the virility, the freshness, the superb strength of youth; it has the serenity, the stillness, the awful majesty of death. Mount the steps beside this marble tomb, and you will look on such a picture of death in all its restful sublimity as the hand, the imagination of man have rarely seized. Nothing like that old man’s head under the mitre has Berruguete himself ever done. It is the supreme attainment of genius on the eve of eternal night, the culmination of a magnificent art, when the great strong hand is about to lay down the chisel forever, and gathers in a supreme moment all that is best in a life’s work, to give it a noble ending. You should examine all the splendid details, the large gracious statues at either corner, the shields, the eagles, the urns and masterly mouldings, before looking at the dead cardinal’s visage, for after that you will have no mind left for any emotion but awe. Here so cheap a thing as praise melts into stupefied silence. The aged sculptor began this monument in 1559 and finished it in 1561, the year of his death, and it was his sons who received the payment due to him, 993,764 maravedis. It seems extraordinary that anyone should dare to put a price on such work, or even offer vulgar coin for it. There are things that lie without the radius of commerce and competition, and this is surely one of them. One is almost content to think that Berruguete was never actually paid for such an inspiration, but dropped into immortality before the revolting 993,764 maravedis unworthily touched a hand so honoured.
CHAPTER XI
Bridges and Gates of Toledo
I HAVE said there are but two bridges guarding the wide sweep of the Tagus round Toledo, the Puente de Alcántara and the Puente de San Martin. These bridges are unimaginably picturesque and fine. The first you enter from the railway station, with an excellent view of the double line of walls, broken by towers built upon the rugged rocks. No more superb and impressive scene is to be found elsewhere than that the old city makes behind this castellated bridge. The bridge in its actual state was built by Alfonso X., on the ruins of the Moorish bridge, of which Rasis el Moro wrote: “It was such a rich and marvellous work and so subtly wrought, that never man with truth could believe there was any other such fine work in Spain.” The Moors in 866 constructed this in turn upon the ruins of the old Roman bridge, of which some traces still remain, and which the Goths repaired in 687, and it was destroyed in 1257. Since Alfonso’s time, the vicissitudes of Spanish history have wrought damage enough to this noble monument. In 1380 Tenorio restored it, and in 1484 the interior arch was repaired at the town’s cost by Andrès Manrique, in 1575 the entrance from the city was repaired, in 1721 the outer towers had to be restored, and in 1786, as well as in 1836, the entire bridge was submitted to general repairs. These alterations are all carefully noted by various inscriptions. In Philip II.’s reign was placed under the statue of St Ildefonso by Berruguete—
S. Ildefonso Divo Tutelari Tolet, D.D.,
Anno Dom. mdlxxv., Philippo II., Hisp. Rege.
A longer one of that period was: Año DCLXXIIII. Wamba Rey godo restauró los muros des esta cuidad y los ofreció en versos latinos a Dios y los santos patrones de ella: los Moros los quitaron y pusieron letreros arabigos de blasfemias y errores—el rey D. Felipe II. con zelo de religion y de conservas las memorias de los reyes pasados, mandó, a Jo. Gutierrez Tello, Corregidor de la cuidad los quitase y pusiere como antes estaten los santos patrones con los versos del Rey Wamba. Ano de MDLXX.[21]
Another tells us of a great deluge that lasted for five months, from August to December, and carried off portions of the bridge, which was rebuilt by Alef, son of Mohamed Alameri, Mayor of Toledo, in the time of Almanzor. On one of the inner vaults are sculptured the arms of the Catholic Kings, Isabella and Fernando, and the inevitable relief of St Ildefonso receiving the chasuble from Our Lady. The entrance arch was constructed under Felipe V. instead of the Moorish tower that stood there. These restorations are insignificant. What one notes is the general impression, which is magnificent.
The bridge of San Martin is early thirteenth century work, built in 1203 after a terrible inundation that carried off the old bridge, which was probably a little lower down, where the Baño de la Cava, as this broken tower and the broken pillar opposite would indicate. In the Civil War of Pedro the Cruel and Henry of Trastamare, the principal arch was cut in two, and the Archbishop Tenorio had to restore the whole bridge almost in order to repair the damage. One of the legends of Toledo relates to this restoration. The architect to whom Tenorio confided the work miscalculated, and while the woodwork and scaffolding still enveloped the central arch, he discovered to his horror that the instant these supports were removed the bridge would fall. This would mean nothing less than ruin and disgrace, and the unfortunate architect confided his despair to his wife. Without a word, at the dead of night, she went down to the bridge and set the scaffolding on fire. Nobody saw her, and the accident was believed in and deplored. While the arch was being rebuilt, this time happily with the error rectified, the woman, finding the burden of remorse greater than she could bear, went to the Archbishop and told her tale. Tenorio was so delighted with her ingeniousness that he congratulated her fortunate husband and ordered her figure to be sculptured on the keystone of the central arch. Señor Parro doubts if the little figure on the north side is that of a woman, and after careful examination is inclined to believe that it is meant for a bishop, probably Tenorio himself. One would prefer to believe in the woman, of course, as legends are always pretty and graceful, but facts are facts, and if the headgear be really a mutilated mitre and not a woman’s cap?