Cathedrals of Spain

by John A. Gade

On March 25, 1525, the corner stone was laid of the new Cathedral of Santa Maria de la Encarnacion. It was planned on a much more elaborate scale than the previous mosque, which, however, continued to be independently used as a Christian church until the middle of the seventeenth century and was not demolished till the beginning of the eighteenth, to make room for the new sagrario, or parish church, of Santa Maria de la O.

The old mosque was of the usual type of Moslem{247} house of prayer, its eleven aisles subdivided by a forest of columns and resembling in general aspect the far greater mosque of Cordova. Prior to the actual commencement of the new Cathedral, though not to its design, the Royal Chapel was erected, between the years 1506 and 1517, and when the Cathedral was built, it became its southern, lateral termination and by far the most magnificent and interesting portion of the interior. It was planned and executed by the original designer of the church, and even after this was finished, the Royal Chapel remained, like the chapel of Saint Ferdinand of Seville, an independent church with its own Chapter and clergy and independent services.

About a dozen master-builders, almost all working under foreign influence, are known as the architects of the great Spanish cathedrals. They seem generally to have worked more or less in conjunction with each other, several being employed on the same building, or called in turn to advise in one place or superintend in another. Sometimes a whole body of them reported together, or several of them were jointly consulted by a cathedral chapter.

The original conception of the Cathedral of Granada was the work of Enrique de Egas of Brussels, who, when he was commissioned by the new Chapter to plan a fitting memorial to the final triumph of Christianity over Islam in Spain, was among the most celebrated builders of his day. He had already succeeded his father as Maestro Mayor of the Cathedral of Toledo when, just before his death, in 1534, he executed the Royal Chapel of Granada Cathedral, as well as built the hospital of Santa Cruz in the same{248} city. The Colegio de Santa Cruz at Valladolid was also his work, and he had been summoned with other leading architects to decide the best mode of procedure in Seville Cathedral after the disastrous collapse of its dome. At times he was giving advice in both Saragossa and Salamanca. Enrique de Egas' designs were accepted in 1523. He had hardly proceeded further in two years than to lay out the general plan of the Cathedral, when, either through misunderstanding or some controversy, he was supplanted in his office by the equally celebrated Diego de Siloé. Like Egas, his activity was not confined to Granada, but extended to Seville and Malaga.

In the year 1561, two years before Siloé's death, the building was sufficiently completed to be opened for public worship, and consequently on August 17th of that year it was solemnly consecrated. The foundations and lower portion of the northern tower were executed about this time by Siloé's successor, Juan de Maeda. The tower was completed and partially taken down again during the following twenty years by Ambrosio de Vico. Then follows the main portion of the exterior work, especially the west façade (of the first half of the seventeenth century), by the celebrated, not to say notorious, Alfonso de Cano, and José Granados. The decoration of the interior, the addition of chapels and the building of the sagrario were continued through the latter part of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries.

Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid

CATHEDRAL OF GRANADA
The exterior cornices of the Royal Chapel

The building operations thus extended over a period of two hundred and fifty years. Alfonso de Cano's reputation was of various kinds; the son of a carpenter and a native of Granada, as soon as his talents {249}were recognized, he was apprenticed to the great Montañes. To judge from contemporaneous accounts, he must have been as hot-headed and quarrelsome as the Florentine goldsmith of similar talents and versatility. He was always ready to exchange the paint-brush or chisel for his good sword, and there was scarcely a day during the years of his connection with the Cathedral in which he was not enjoying a hot controversy with the Chapter. His favor with the weak monarch and the powerful ruling Conde-Duc was so great that they had the audacity to appoint him a prebendary of the Chapter after he had been forced to fly from justice in Valladolid on a charge of murder, as well as for having beaten his wife on his return from a meeting of the ecclesiastical body. The Chapter deprived him of his office as soon as they dared, which was six years after his appointment.

Egas' original plan, like the work he actually carried out in the Royal Chapel, was undoubtedly for a Gothic edifice, as this style was understood and executed in Spain. From the fact that the original Gothic intention was abandoned for a Spanish Renaissance church, many authorities give the date of its commencement as 1529, when Diego de Siloé's Renaissance work was under way. In the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, the great turning-point had come. Italian influences were beginning to predominate over earlier styles and the last exquisite flames of the Gothic fire were slowly dying out to give place to the heavy Renaissance structure of ecclesiastical inspiration. Spaniards who had returned fresh from Italian soil and tutelage evolved with their ornate sense and characteristic{250} love for magnificence, the style, or rather decorative treatment, which marks the first stage of Spanish Renaissance architecture called "Estilo Plateresco." This is a happy name for it, its derivation being from "plata," or silver plate, and indicating that architects were attempting to decorate the huge superficial spaces on their churches with the same intricacy and sparkle as the silversmiths were hammering on their ornaments. There was evolved the same lace-like quality, the same sparkling light and shade. Wonderful results were indeed obtained by the stone-cutters of the sixteenth century.