Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain Part 19

On the south side of the nave there is a Chapter-house, which is said by Ponz[261] to be the work of Pedro Compte, and to have been built at the cost of Bishop D. Vidal Blaues, in A.D. 1358. If this statement is correct, it follows that there were two architects of this name, the second having erected the Lonja de la Sedia, to which I shall have presently to refer, in A.D. 1482. The tracery of the windows, and the details generally of the Chapter-house, is so geometrical and good, that it is probable that the date given by Ponz may be depended upon. It is a square room nearly sixty feet in diameter, and groined in stone. The vault is similar to those which I first saw at Burgos, having arches thrown across the angles to bring it to an octagon, and the triangular compartments in the angles having their vaults below the main vault. It is lighted by small windows very high up in the walls on the cardinal sides, and these are circular and spherical triangles in outline, filled with geometrical tracery. On the south side is a very elaborate arcaded reredos and altar, and on the west a pulpit corbelled out from the wall.

The design and detail of the whole are extremely fine, and I regret that I was able to make but a very hurried examination of it, and no sketches; meeting here, almost for the first time in Spain, with a sacristan who refused to allow me to do more than look, the fact being that it was his time for dinner and siesta!

In the old sacristy to the east of this room are still preserved two embroidered altar frontals, said to have been brought from our own old St. Paul's by two merchants, Andres and Pedro de Medina, just about the time of the Reformation.[262] They are therefore of especial interest to an Englishman. They are very large works, strained on frames, and were, I believe, hangings rather than altar frontals, as they are evidently continuations one of the other. The field is of gold, diapered, and upon this a succession of subjects is embroidered. On one cloth are (beginning at the left) (1) our Lord bearing his Cross; (2) being nailed to the Cross; (3) crucified, with the thieves on either side; (4) descending from the Cross; (5) entombed. The next cloth has (1) the descent into h.e.l.l; (2) the Maries going to the sepulchre; (3) the Maries at the tomb, the angel, and (4) the Resurrection. The effect of the whole work is like that of a brilliant German painting, and the figures are full of action and spirit, and have a great deal of expression in their faces. The diapered ground is made with gold thread, laid down in vertical lines, and then diapered with diagonal lines of fine bullion st.i.tched down over it to form the diaper. The gold is generally manufactured in a double twist, and borders and edgings are all done with a very bold twisted gold cord. The faces are all wrought in silk, and some of the dresses are of silk, lined all over with gold. The old border at the edge exists on one only of the frontals. The size of each is 3 ft. 1 in. by 10 ft. 2 in., and the date, as nearly as I can judge, must be about A.D. 1450. There is also preserved here a missal which once belonged to Westminster Abbey.

I could find no other church of any interest. There are several which have some old remains, but they are generally so damaged and decayed, that it is impossible to make anything of them. One I saw desecrated and occupied by the military, and was unable to enter; and there is another in a street leading out of the Calle de Caballeros, which has a very fine round-arched doorway, with three shafts in the jambs, and good thirteenth-century mouldings in the arch, and which is evidently of the same age as the south door of the cathedral. The capitals have each two wyverns fighting, and the abaci are well carved. The church, however, was desecrated, and no one knew how I could gain admission to it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Puerta de Serranos. Valencia.]

The walls and gates are of more interest. They are lofty, and generally well preserved. The two finest gates are the Puerta de Serranos, and that del Cuarte. The former, said by Ford[263] to have been built in A.D. 1349, is a n.o.ble erection. Two grand polygonal towers flank the entrance archway, which is recessed in the centre. Above this the wall is covered with tracery panelling, and then a great projecting gallery or platform, supported on enormous corbels, is carried all round the three exposed sides of the gateway. The towers are carried up a considerable height above this gallery, and it is probable that there was originally a wooden construction over it, of the kind which M.

Viollet le Duc, in his treatise on military architecture, has shown to have been commonly adopted in fortifications of this age. The Puerta del Cuarte is of the same description, and has two circular flanking towers, but is less imposing, and is said to have been built in A.D. 1444. Both gateways are completely open at the back, enormous open arches, one above the other, rendering them useless for attack against the city; and the corbelled-out pa.s.sages at the top are not continued across the back.

The domestic remains here are of some importance. One feature of rather frequent occurrence is the window of two or three lights, divided by detached shafts. The earlier examples have simple trefoil heads, and sculptured capitals to the columns. In the later examples there are mouldings round the cusped head, and the abaci and capitals are carved: but it is a very curious fact, that wherever I saw any old towns on the coast of the Mediterranean, there I always saw some specimens of this later kind of window, with detail and carving so identical in character, that I was almost driven to the conclusion that they were all executed in the same place, and sent about the country to be fixed! Nevertheless, they are always very pretty, so that one ought not to grumble if they do occur a little too often. The shafts are generally of marble, and often coupled one behind the other.

The Arabs had a name for this cla.s.s of windows, and as we have not, and want one, it may be as well to mention it. They are called _ajimez_, literally windows by which the sun enters. The Arabs seem to have supplied many of the architectural terms in use in Spain, and probably we owe them in this case not only the name, but the design also. Among other Arab words still in common use, I may mention Alcazar, Alcala, Tapia, and many more are given in vocabularies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ajimez Window. Valencia.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 33

VALENCIA. p. 270.

THE CASA LONJA.]

One of the earliest of these _ajimez_ windows is in a house on the east side of the cathedral; and a fine example of later date is in an old house in the Calle de Caballeros, the internal court and staircase of which are also picturesque, though hardly mediaeval. All the houses here seem to be built on the same plan, with the stables and offices on the ground floor, arranged round an internal court, an open stone staircase to the first floor, and the living-rooms above. The fronts towards the streets are generally rather gloomy and forbidding-looking, but the courts are always picturesque. The finest domestic building in the city is the Casa Lonja, or Exchange, which was commenced on the 7th November, 1482, the year in which the works at the cathedral were completed by Pedro Compte. There is no doubt, I believe, that he was the architect; and on March 19, 1498, he was appointed perpetual Alcaide of the Lonja, with a salary of thirty pounds ("libras") a year. He was also "Maestro Mayor" of the city, and was employed in several works of engineering on the rivers and streams of the district.[264] The main front of the Lonja is still very nearly as he left it, a fine specimen of late Spanish pointed work. The detail is of the same kind as, but simpler than, the contemporary works at Valladolid and Burgos, and there is a less determined display of heraldic achievements; though the great doorway, and the window on either side of it which open into the great hall, and which are so curiously grouped together by means of labels and string-courses, have some coats of arms and supporters rather irregularly placed in their side panels. The great parapet of the end, and the singular finish of the battlements, are very worthy of note, and give great richness to the whole building. The princ.i.p.al doorway leads into a fine groined hall, 130 feet long by 75 feet wide, divided into a quasi nave and aisles of five bays by eight columns, sculptured and spirally twisted. The portion of the building to the left of the centre is divided into three chambers in height, the upper and lower rooms being low, the central room lofty and well proportioned. The lower rooms have plain square windows; the next stage, windows of much loftier proportions, and with their square heads ornamented with a rich fringe of cusping. There are pointed discharging arches over them. The upper stage of this wing is extremely rich, the window-openings being pierced in a sort of continuous arcading, the pinnacles of which run up to and finish in the parapet. This parapet is enriched with circular medallions enclosing heads, a common Italian device, betokening here the hand of a man whose work was verging upon that of the Renaissance school. At the back is a garden, the windows and archways opening on which are of the same age as the front.

Valencia, though not containing any building of remarkable interest, is nevertheless well worth a visit: it is a busy city, full of picturesque colour and people. The _manta_ or rug worn by the peasants throughout Spain is here seen in perfection: it is of rich and very oriental colour, and charms the eye at every turn. I went into a shop and looked at a number of them, and there were none which were not thoroughly good in their colour; and, worn as they are by the sunburnt peasants, hanging loosely on one shoulder, they contrast splendidly with their white linen jackets and trousers, and swarthy skins. The river is, at any rate in the autumn, the broad dry bed only of a river, with here and there a puddle just deep enough for washerwomen. The water is all carried off to irrigate the fertile country around, and troops of cavalry and artillery, with their guns all drawn by fine mules, were hard at work exercising where it ought to have been. On the side of the river opposite to the city are some rather nice public gardens, with fine walks and drives planted with n.o.ble trees. A drive which begins here extends all the way to Grao, the port of Valencia, some two or three miles off. In the afternoon it seems to be always thronged with _tartanas_, carriages, and equestrians on their way to and from the sea: and each _tartana_ is full generally of a lively cargo of priests and peasants, men, women, and children, all laughing, cheerful, and picturesque. I went to Grao to embark on the steamer for Barcelona.

There is nothing to see there save the usual accompaniments of a sea-port, and the provision for a large and fas.h.i.+onable population of bathers from Madrid during the summer months. For their convenience small and very rude huts are put up on the beach, and left there to be destroyed by the winter storms. Not much is sacrificed, as they are of the very rudest description, and evidently devised for the use of people who go to Grao to be amused and to bathe, and not merely to show themselves off as fine ladies and gentlemen.

At Valencia the national love for the _mantilla_, which in courtly Madrid seems to be now half out of fas.h.i.+on, finds vent in the positive prohibition at one of the churches for any woman to enter who wears a bonnet in place of it!

CHAPTER XIII.

TARRAGONA.

No one should go from Valencia to Barcelona without paying a visit to Tarragona. It is even now easy of access, and before long will be still more accessible by means of the railway which is being made between the two towns. I travelled from Barcelona to Tarragona and back again by diligence, and both journeys, unfortunately, were made for the most part by night, so that I am unable to speak very positively about the scenery upon the road. But both on leaving Barcelona and again before I reached Tarragona the road was very beautiful, and I have no doubt it would reward any one who could contrive to give up more time and daylight to it than I could. There is but one town of any importance on the road--Villafranca de Panades,--and here I caught a glimpse of an old church, which seemed to be of the fourteenth-century Catalan type, and fully to deserve examination.

The approach to Tarragona is very lovely. The old city stands on the steep slope of a hill, crowned by the stately mediaeval cathedral, and surrounded on all sides by walls, which are still very perfect and in some parts unusually lofty and imposing. Below and beyond the walls to the left, as you approach, is the mean and modern town which covers a low promontory, and is now the centre of all the trade and business of the city. A broad street, in which are the princ.i.p.al inns, divides the two halves of the city, on the upper side of which the whole architectural interest is centred. The views on all sides are beautiful.

Looking back to the east one sees hill after hill, ending in point after point, which jut out into the sea one beyond the other, and, combining with the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean, produce the most charming picture. To the south, looking over the modern town, mole, and harbour, is the sea; whilst to the west the eye wanders, well content, over a rich green expanse of level land, studded all along its breadth with rich growth of trees, till the view is bounded by the hills which rise beyond the old town of Reus, now an active and enterprising centre of manufacturing industry.

I ought, no doubt, to fill many pages here with an account of the Roman antiquities, which are numerous and important, Tarragona having been one of the most important Roman stations in Spain. But they have been often described, and the time at my disposal allowed only of a hurried glance at them, unless I chose to neglect in their favour the--to me--much more interesting Christian remains, which I need hardly say I was not prepared to do. The city walls are, I believe, to a considerable extent Roman. There are remains--though but slight--of an amphitheatre; the magnificent aqueduct, some little distance from the city, is one of the finest in Europe; and, finally, there is a museum full of Roman antiquities, which seem well to deserve due examination. But I was obliged to neglect all these, giving them the most cursory inspection, as I found in the cathedral ample occupation for every minute of my time.

This is certainly one of the most n.o.ble and interesting churches I have seen in Spain. It is one of a cla.s.s of which I have seen others upon a somewhat smaller scale (as _e.g._ the cathedrals at Lerida and Tudela), and which appears to me, after much study of old buildings in most parts of Europe, to afford one of the finest types, from every point of view, that it is possible to find. It produces in a very marked degree an extremely impressive internal effect, without being on an exaggerated scale, and combines in the happiest fas.h.i.+on the greatest solidity of construction with a lavish display of ornament in some parts, to which it is hard to find a parallel. Unfortunately the doc.u.mentary evidence that I have been able to find as to the age of the various portions of this church is not so complete as I could wish. A very elaborate and painstaking history of the city is in course of publication; but when I was there[265] the first volume only of this had been published, and this was confined entirely to the Roman antiquities contained in the Museum and other collections. The volume of Espana Sagrada, which relates to Tarragona, contains but few doc.u.ments of any value, and I have been unable to put my hands upon any other which contains any at all. Yet there cannot be much doubt that a see whose history is so important, and whose rank is so high,[266] must have in its archives a vast store of information, out of which might be gathered all the material facts as to the foundation of, and additions to, the church.

A few notices of the building of the cathedral have, however, come under my eye, and of these the most important are the following:--In A.D.

1089[267] Pope Urban II. addressed an epistle to the faithful, recommending them to aid in every way in the restoration of the church, which had then just been recovered from the hands of the Moors. Not long after this, in A.D. 1131, Pope Innocent II. issued a Bull, wherein he recommended the suffragan churches to contribute to the cost of rebuilding the cathedral.[268] More than a century after this, works were again in progress, for in the necrology of the cathedral, on 11th March, 1256, mention is made of "Frater Bernardus, magister operis hujus ecclesiae;" whilst again, in 1298, Maestro Bartolome is mentioned as the sculptor who wrought nine statues of the apostles for the western facade, the remainder having been executed by Maestro Jayme Castayls in 1375.

Comparing this cathedral with that of Lerida, of which the date is tolerably well ascertained, it is difficult to p.r.o.nounce decidedly which is the oldest, except that the eastern apse here, which is very peculiar in its character, has every appearance of being a work of the middle of the twelfth century, at the latest, and earlier by far, therefore, than the foundation of the church of Lerida, which was not commenced until A.D. 1203, and which was finished and consecrated in A.D. 1278. I believe, indeed, that the eastern part of this cathedral may most probably have been commenced about A.D. 1131, in consequence of the Bull of Innocent II., though the greater portion of the fabric (including the nave and its aisles and the cloister) seems to me to have been executed at the end of the twelfth and during the first half of the thirteenth century; and it is very possible, therefore, that the Brother Bernardus, who died in 1256, may have been the architect of the larger part of the existing fabric, both of the church and its cloister.

The original plan of the cathedral was very simple. It had a nave and aisles, transepts, with apsidal chapels to the east of them, a raised lantern or Cimborio over the Crossing, and three parallel apses east of it. On the north-east side of the church--an unusual position, selected probably in obedience to some local necessity--is a large cloister of the same age as the church, with a Chapter-house on its southern side.

The piers throughout are cl.u.s.tered in a very fine and ma.s.sive style, and of a section which is often repeated in early Spanish Gothic; each arch being carried on two coupled half-columns, and the groining-shafts being placed in a nook in the angle between each of these pairs of columns.

The nave piers are no less than 11 ft. 9 in. in diameter, the clear width of the nave being about 40 ft. 8 in., and the span of the arches east and west about 20 ft. The bases are finely moulded, and have foliage carved on the angle between their circular and square members.

The capitals and abaci are carved generally with a most luxuriant exuberance of conventional foliage, whilst the broad solid unmoulded and unchamfered sections of the arches which rise above them seem to protest gravely against any forgetfulness of solidity and ma.s.siveness as the greatest elements at the disposal of the architect. The groining of the nave and its aisles is all quadripart.i.te, as also is that of the transepts, save at the extreme end of the northern transept, which is covered with a pointed waggon-roof. The choir has two bays of cross-vaulting on its western portion and a semi-dome over the apse--a form of roofing which is repeated over the other early apses; that of the north transept having been rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and vaulted in the usual manner. It is probable that the cross-vaults in the choir were not originally contemplated, as they are carried on small shafts raised on the capitals of the main groining-shafts, which may perhaps have been intended to carry a waggon-vault. The roof of the apse is considerably lower than that of the choir, and a small rose window is pierced in the spandrel between the two. The arch in front of the semi-dome of the apse is--like all the other main arches--pointed, though those which open into the smaller apses are semi-circular. The latter, being in the lower part of the wall, were, no doubt, completed at an early date; whilst the former, being on the level of the groining, would not be finished until much later. The apse is lighted with three windows in the lower part of the wall, which are richly shafted inside, and by seven small and perfectly plain round-arched windows, pierced in the lower part of the semi-dome with very singular effect. On the exterior all these windows are remarkable for a very wide splay from the face of the wall to the gla.s.s--a feature of early work in England, and usually preceding the common use of gla.s.s. The walls are carried up a considerable height above the springing of the dome, in order to resist its thrust, and are finished at the top with a rich projecting corbel-table, from which, at regular intervals, five divisions are brought still further forward, looking much like machicoulis, and yet evidently introduced only for the sake of effect, as there is no access to them. These projections are square in plan, carried on very large corbels, and the cornice under the eaves has a course of square stones set diagonally--a kind of enrichment very common in brickwork, and which I saw in the early church of San Pedro at Gerona. The great depth of this cornice is very imposing. The stone roof above it abuts against a gable-wall, carried by the arch on its western side; but owing to the destruction of the original finish of the staircase turrets, and the erection of a steeple in the angle between the choir and the transept, the general view has to some extent lost its original stern Romanesque character.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Apse of Choir.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Newel Staircase.]

The exterior of the other apses on the south has the same appearance of age. The wall of one of them has been raised several feet at a later date, but the other is still altogether in its original state. Both are, of course, very low and insignificant as compared with the choir. The whole detail of the great eastern apse appeared to me to have much more the air of having been the work of an Italian than of a French architect. The masonry is in extremely large square blocks, many of the window-heads being cut out of one block of stone, and in this part of the church I found a large number of masons' marks on the face of the stones. These tally, like most of those I have seen in Spain, very closely with those which are found in our own buildings, and indeed with those which are used by our own masons at the present day: it is, however, comparatively rare to find them on the outer face of the stones.[269] The stones marked in this way are tooled on the face, and I observed that stones worked by the same man were marked indifferently with perpendicular and diagonal tooling lines. On the south side of the choir, just at its junction with the princ.i.p.al apse, is a staircase which leads to the roof: this is carried up in a large square turret, and is of remarkable construction. The newel is 1 ft. 6 in. in diameter, and worked in stones, each of about 2 ft. 3 in. in height. Each of these has three corbels, with sockets for the steps, which are thus supported by the newel and yet independent of it. The aisles on either side of the choir seem to have been intended to form the lower stage of steeples. On the south side the Romanesque tower seems to have been built no higher than the height of the side walls of the church; but subsequently--circa A.D. 1300-1350--it was carried up as an octagonal steeple, with b.u.t.tresses against the canted sides of the lower stage over the angles of the square base, finished with crocketed pinnacles. This tower occupies the angle between the choir and transept, and I suppose that traces would be found of a corresponding tower on the opposite side, somewhat in the way so commonly met with in all the German Romanesque churches. Unfortunately the north choir aisle was altered if not rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and I was unable to examine the walls above it, where the evidence of the existence of a second tower would have to be sought. The roof of the apse on the east side of the south transept presents an admirable example of a semi-dome, with the masonry arranged in the usual fas.h.i.+on in regular horizontal courses, and the moulding of the abacus of the arch in front of it carried round it as a string-course at its springing.

The rest of the church is of rather later date than the east end. It is all just of that transitional period in which, whilst the pointed arch was used where great strength was required, the round arch was nevertheless retained for the smaller openings in the walls. But the capitals throughout the church are sculptured so magnificently, and in so well-developed a style, that it is impossible to regard the work anywhere, except at the extreme eastern end, as one in which a Romanesque influence was paramount. We have, indeed, here one of those cases in which almost all the character of the work has been stamped on it by the hands of the sculptor rather than of the architect; for I believe that, had it presented us with a series of plain Romanesque capitals, we should have felt no difficulty about cla.s.sing the whole work as essentially Romanesque in style, whereas now the effect is rather that of a glorious Pointed church, the exuberance of whose sculpture is kept in subordination by the stern simplicity of the bold unmoulded arches, the ma.s.sive section of the piers, and the regularity of the outline and firmness of shadow which the deep square abacus everywhere enforces. Here, then, I thought I saw one of those openings which are now and then almost accidentally given us for the infusion of new vigour and greater spirit into our own works. It is no copying of a Spanish work that I should wish to see attempted, but only a deliberate determination on the part of the builder of some one building in England to emulate the grand solidity of this old Spanish church; and if he feels that this is by itself too rude and unpolished for an overcivilized age like ours, then let him take a lesson from the same old Spanish work, and show the extent of his refinement in the subtle delicacy of the sculpture with which he adorns it. We have few if any such churches in England. Our transitional examples are neither very numerous nor very fine; and it is in Germany and in Spain--so far as my experience goes--that we find the finest examples of this n.o.ble period.

In neither of these countries was the progress of architectural development so rapid as it was in England and in the north of France, and consequently such churches as the cathedrals of Tarragona, Lerida, and Tudela were rising in Spain at the same time as the more advanced and scientific, but perhaps less forcible and solemnly grand cathedrals of Salisbury, Lincoln, and Wells were being built in England.

I hardly know when I have been much more struck than I was with the view of the interior of the transept, of which I give an engraving. For though the picturesque furniture of later times, the screens and pulpits, the organs and other furniture, are in great contrast with the glorious solidity of the old work, the combination of this with them makes a singularly beautiful picture.

The nave of the cathedral at Tarragona has been a good deal altered by the introduction of large fourteenth-century clerestory windows of three lights. There is not and there never was a triforium, and the clerestory throughout was, I have no doubt, the same in design that it still is in the transepts, lighted by a simple round-headed window in each bay. The groining has transverse arches or ribs of very large size, diagonal ribs formed with a bold roll moulding only, and no wall ribs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No 34.

TARRAGONA CATHEDRAL. p. 280.

VIEW ACROSS TRANSEPTS.]

The lantern over the Crossing still remains to be described. It is octagonal in plan, segmental arches being thrown across the angles of the square base to support its diagonal sides. The groining springs from immediately above the apex of the main arches, and the light is admitted by windows alternately of three and four lights. Its interior is very fine. The ribs of its eight-celled vault are very bold, and the dog-tooth enrichment is freely used round all the arches and along the string-courses. The diagonal or canted sides of the lantern are carried on pointed arches, the s.p.a.ce below which is filled in with pendentives, with the stones arranged in courses radiating from the centre. Such a form of pendentive is rarely seen in works of this age. The details of this lantern are all rather rude, and its height is not great, as it rises only some twenty-five feet above the roofs. The outside has at each angle a b.u.t.tress, with an engaged shaft in front of it, and the windows are all set within simple enclosing arches. Their tracery is that of ordinary first-pointed windows, the three-light windows having lancet lights, with the centre light longer than the others, and the four-light windows having the two centre lights longest. The old outside roof is destroyed; but the finish of the lanterns of Lerida and of the old cathedral of Salamanca seems to make it pretty certain that it was intended to have a pyramidal or domical stone roof. Access is now gained to the top of the lantern by means of a pa.s.sage boldly carried on an arch which is thrown from the belfry window of the south-east steeple to the side of the lantern. I ought to have mentioned that the upper stage of this steeple is groined, and that the bells are hung in the window openings; but this is not their original place, the jambs having been cut away to make room for them. Its upper stage seems to have been finished with a pinnacle at each angle, and a gable over each window rising through the parapet--a somewhat similar design to that of the great tower at Lerida, and to that of the Micalete at Valencia, both of which ought, therefore, to be compared with this, and with which it is probably contemporary.

The roofs are covered throughout with pantiles; but these are evidently not the old covering, being put on very carelessly and interfering with the design of the stonework. The position of the windows in the central lantern proves that in the beginning of the thirteenth century the roofs must have been very flat, and the probability is, therefore, that they were all covered with flat-pitched stone roofs, similar to those of Toledo and Avila.

Few of the original windows remain save those already noticed in the eastern apses. At the west end of the aisles there are circular windows, without tracery and with very bold mouldings enriched with two or three orders of dog-tooth ornament. The windows in the aisles of the nave have all been destroyed by the addition of chapels against the side-walls, whilst the clerestory has been filled for the most part with early geometrical tracery windows in place of the lancets, with which it was, no doubt, originally lighted.

The doorways are numerous and somewhat remarkable for their position.

There are three at the west end, whereof those to the aisles are of the date of the earliest part of the fabric, whilst the great central western doorway, being an addition of the fourteenth century, will be described further on. The tympanum of the western door of the north aisle is sculptured with the Adoration of the Magi, the figures all in niches and carved in small and very delicate style. The door of the south aisle is similar in style, but simpler and without sculpture. The other doors are, as will be seen on reference to the plan, placed in a most unusual position in the north and south choir aisles. It is rare in churches of this plan to find any doorway east of the transept, and where the aisles or chapels are so short this seems to be a very good rule. Here the access to the church is so near the altars of these aisles as to produce a bad effect. The north door was evidently so placed because it was necessary to put the cloisters in a most unusual position, to the north-east of the church, and I suppose we must a.s.sume that the south door was put in a corresponding position for no better reason than that it might match the other.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 35

TARRAGONA. p. 283.

INTERIOR OF CLOISTER.]

The door from the cloister into the church is the finest in the church.

It is a round-arched doorway, with four engaged shafts in each jamb, and a central shaft, which is remarkable for the grand depth and size of its sculptured capital and base. All the capitals are very delicately wrought, and with an evident knowledge of Byzantine art; and that of the centre shaft has a subject sculptured on each face, of which the three which are visible are: (1) The Procession of the Kings; (2) their Wors.h.i.+p of our Lord; and (3) the Nativity. The fourth side is concealed by the modern door-frame, the doorway not having had a door at all originally. A deep plain lintel forms the head of the door, and above this the tympanum is filled with that often-repeated scheme, our Lord in a vesica-shaped aureole, surrounded by the emblems of the Evangelists, each of which has a book, as also has our Lord, who holds His in the left hand, whilst He gives His blessing with the right hand. The small spandrel between the round arch of this door and the pointed arch of the vault above, is filled with a circle containing the monogram, [Ill.u.s.tration: monogram] supported by two angels. On the same (south) side of the cloister is the entrance to the Chapter-house, which follows the invariable type of Chapter doorways, having a central doorway with a window on either side of it. One of the groining-ribs is brought boldly down between the doorway and one of the window openings, a peculiarity which should be compared with the similar arrangement of the Chapter-house at Vernela.[270] The detail is precisely the same as that of the rest of the cloister, the arches all being semi-circular, and the side openings being of two lights, with coupled shafts in place of monials. In the east wall of the cloister, and close to the Chapter-house, is another fine doorway of the same early style. Its door was painted very richly with angels holding coats-of-arms; but this delicate work is now almost all defaced. This s.p.a.cious cloister is one of the most conspicuous of the earlier portions of the cathedral. A public thoroughfare does now, and probably did always, bound the cathedral close to its southern wall, so that there was no room for the cloister in the usual position to the south of the church. But it is very rare, I think, to find the Chapter-house built as it is here, opening out of the southern alley of the cloister, in place of the eastern. Its character is unusually good, even in this country of fine cloisters. Each bay has three round-arched openings divided by coupled shafts, and above these two large circles pierced in the wall. The arches and circular windows are richly moulded, and adorned largely with delicate dog-tooth enrichments. Some of the circular windows above the arcades still retain--what all, I suppose, once had--their filling in, which was of very delicate interlacing work, pierced in a thin slab of stone, and evidently Moorish in its origin, though, at the same time, the work probably of Christian hands, as in some of them, the figure of the Cross is very beautifully introduced.[271]

It is so rare to find any such influence as this exerted, that these traceries have an artificial interest. Yet they are in themselves very charmingly designed, and serve admirably to break the too-powerful rays of the sun. Indeed, nothing in its way can be much prettier than the effect of the shadows of these delicate piercings thrown sharply on the pavement by the brilliant sunlight. The groining is carried by triple engaged shafts, and its thrust resisted by b.u.t.tresses, with an engaged shaft on their outer face. The groining is simple quadripart.i.te, and the ribs are well moulded; many of the capitals are carved with great vigour, and some of their abaci are covered also with stories admirably rendered. Take, for instance, this story of the Cat and the Rats, which I sketched on one of the abaci of the southern walk of the cloister. It is full of a spirit and humour which are thoroughly foreign to the conventional traditions of our present school of workmen. Give one, now-a-days, such a story to ill.u.s.trate, and the result would probably be simply absurd, whilst in the hands of this natural Tarragonese artist the whole thing is instinct with life and humour, to as great an extent now as it was when his brother workmen first gathered round him and laughed their approval of the speedy retribution which met the silly rats when they forgot to tie the limbs of their enemy. I ought to have sketched the capitals which were under this abacus, for they were sculptured with c.o.c.ks fighting, with their wings and heads so ingeniously arranged as to conform to the ordinary outlines of the early thirteenth-century foliage capital. It is rarely that so much fine and original sculpture of various kinds is to be found in one such church as this; and I recommend those who follow my footsteps here to go prepared to devote some little time to the accurate delineation and careful study of it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sculptured Abacus in Cloister.]