The pavement of the sanctuary is modern, as also the high-altar, but both are generously good in design. These furnishings are mainly of Italian marbles, hung about with tapestries, which, if not of superlative excellence, are at least effective.
Modern mural paintings with backgrounds in gold decorate the abside chapels.
There are many attributes of picturesque quality scattered throughout the city: its unique trade customs, its shipping, its donkeys, and, above any of these, its women themselves picturesque and beautiful. All these will give the artist many lively suggestions.
Not many of the class, however, frequent this Biscayan city; which is a loss to art and to themselves. A plea is herein made that its attractions be better known by those who have become ennuied by the "resorts."
V
ST. JEAN DE BAZAS
At the time the grand cathedrals of the north of France were taking on their completed form, a reflex was making itself felt here in the South. Both at Bayonne and Bazas were growing into being two beautiful churches which partook of many of the attributes of Gothic art in its most approved form.
St. Jean de Bazas is supposedly of a tenth-century foundation, but its real beginnings, so far as its later approved form is concerned, came only in 1233. From which time onward it came quickly to its completion, or at least to its dedication.
It was three centuries before its west front was completed, and when so done—in the sixteenth century—it stood out, as it does to-day, a splendid example of a façade, completely covered with statues of such proportions and excellence that it is justly accounted the richest in the south of France.
It quite equals, in general effect, such well-peopled fronts as Amiens or Reims; though here the numbers are not so great, and, manifestly, not of as great an excellence.
This small but well-proportioned church has no transepts, but the columnar supports of its vaulting presume an effect of length which only Gothic in its purest forms suggests.