Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain Part 6

Everywhere here the b.u.t.tresses are finished with pinnacles, always planned in the same way, each group being planned on a square, counterchanged over the one below: they are of several stages in height, furnished throughout with crocketed finials on all sides, and at last with a single tall pinnacle. Nothing can be more wearisome than this kind of pinnacled b.u.t.tress, but the later Spanish authorities were very fond of it, and repeated it everywhere. The dome, or Cimborio, is altogether Pagan in its design and detail outside, and on the inside is so plastered with an _olla_ of pink cherubs, rays of light, and gilt scallopsh.e.l.ls of monstrous size, and the like, as to be utterly contemptible in its effect. It is, moreover, too small, and too little separated from the rest of the vaulting, to look really well. The church throughout is finished with hipped roofs in place of gables: but the parapets in front of these are all Renaissance, and marked at intervals by the favourite urns in which Renaissance architects still generally and most unfortunately indulge.

The cathedral was first used for service in A.D. 1560, when on all sides Renaissance buildings were being erected, and perhaps it would be more just to Juan Gil de Hontanon to look upon him as striving to the last to maintain the cause of Christian art against the inroads of the enemy, and failing in his detail not for want of will, but because it was simply impossible to resist the tide which had set in before he died.

Much, too, of the church must, no doubt, be attributed to other men; Juan de Alava, Rodrigo Gil de Hontanon, Martin Ruiz, and Juan de Ribero Rada, having been masters of the works after Juan Gil, and the church not having been completed until more than a century after its commencement.[97]

It will have been noticed that the old steeple is spoken of by the Junta of Architects as a work of so much importance as to make it advisable to change the position of the new cathedral, rather than interfere with it.

I do not quite understand this, for the greater part of it is now entirely of late Renaissance detail,[98] though some large crocketed pinnacles still exist at the angles of the highest stage. The lower part is very plain, but the upper stage of the square tower has a rich bal.u.s.trade, and windows and pilasters, and above it is an octagonal stage with pinnacles at the angles, and this in its turn is surmounted by a dome, with a lantern at the top. The outline is certainly fine, and its great height and ma.s.s make it a conspicuous object for a very long distance from Salamanca.

The mixed character of the detail in this church is well seen in the great doorway. Its jambs are richly moulded and carved, but the mouldings are all planned on a line receding but little from the face of the wall, so that the general effect is flat, and wanting in shadow. The main arch is a bold simple trefoil, but the label above it is carried on in an ogee line, and the arches below over two sculptured subjects, and over two door-openings under them, are elliptical. So, too, in the sculpture on the bas-reliefs over the door-openings, we have the richest luxuriance of the latest school of Spanish Gothic, with its beasts, its crisp foliage, and its wild love of heraldic achievements, and, mixed with all this, naked cherubs, clouds, and representations of Roman architecture.

In conclusion, I am bound to say of this great church that, whilst its exterior fails in almost every single particular, its interior, thanks to compliance with certain broad rules of Gothic building, is beyond question very grand and impressive. To the vast size and height of the columns this is mainly owing, for though they are cut up with endless little mouldings ingeniously "stopped," one does not observe their pettinesses, and the arches which they carry are bolder and more important than might have been expected.

Some of the side chapels have altars both at the east and the west; and where the old altars remain they have carved in stone an imitation of an altar frontal. They represent worked super-frontals with fringes, and frontals with fringed orphreys at either end: and I saw one altar with a painted imitation of embroidery all over it. A chapel on the south side of the nave has an altar entirely covered with glazed tiles, the walls around it being similarly inlaid.

Close to the cathedral is one of the University buildings, with a central dome and two dome-capped towers to the west of it, and near these again is another domed church, and in the distance this group is very remarkable and stately-looking.

I wandered all over Salamanca looking for old churches, and could find few of any interest.[99] The finest are all but Renaissance in their character and detail, and seem to have owed much to the influence of Hontanon. The convents and colleges, where not ruined, are grand in scale, yet they produce none of the effect which our Oxford buildings do: but, on the other hand, they are built of a much better stone, and of a rich, warm, yellow tint. The good people here are smartening up the entrance to the town with flower-gardens, seats, and acacias, and are certainly putting their best feet forward, though there is nothing else even approaching to smartness in the place. A walk round the old walls is a melancholy amus.e.m.e.nt. They are, in part, being levelled; still I saw two or three pointed gateways, which seemed to be of early date, but very simple. I saw also some convents in a dilapidated state, and indeed everywhere the state of these is very bad, and I never saw so many waste places or half-ruined buildings. A good deal of this is no doubt owing to the operations of the French during the Peninsular War, but something certainly to the natives, who are busier in pulling down than building up; or at any rate, when they do the latter, they combine it with the former; for in some repairs of one of the University buildings I found the men re-using old wrought stones from some fifteenth-century building.

A bull-fight had just been celebrated here, and the princ.i.p.al square in the city, the "Plaza Mayor," one of the best I have seen in Spain, had been fitted up for the occasion as an arena, with seats sloping up from the ground to the first floor windows of the houses all round it. (There was a regular arena, but it was being demolished, to give place, I presume, to one on a grander scale.) Another Plaza close to it is the princ.i.p.al market-place, and affords good opportunities for the study of the costumes of the peasantry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 9.

ZAMORA. p. 94.

THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE DOURO.]

I was fortunate in happening to light upon one very curious church here--that of San Marcos. The engraving of the plan[100] will show how very cleverly its architect managed to combine the scheme of a circular church with the usual Spanish triapsidal arrangement. The apses are vaulted with semi-domes, whilst the rest of the church is covered with wooden roofs, and these all lean towards the central square, which has a hipped roof. The arches are all pointed, and there are rudely carved capitals to the columns. A simple corbel-table is carried along under the eaves, and there are one or two slits--they are not more--for light. This little church is close to the town walls, and the absence of windows gives it the look of a part of a fortress. The plan seems to me to be admirably suggestive: we are too much in the habit of working perpetually in certain grooves which have been cut for us by our forefathers, and most men now-a-days would be afraid to plan a little church like this, even if the idea of it came into their heads. Yet it struck me as being really an extremely useful and economical construction, and such a scheme might with ease be fitted specially for a cemetery chapel in place of one of the vulgar erections with which we are now everywhere indulged.

The church of San Martin has a fine early doorway, in which I first saw a very peculiar order of decoration, which I saw again at Zamora, and of which no doubt more examples exist in this district. My ill.u.s.tration will explain its design, one member of the archivolt of which is like a succession of curled pieces of wood put side by side and perfectly square in section. The effect of light and shade in such work is rather good, but it is nevertheless rather too bizarre to be quite pleasing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Archivolt. San Martin.]

Another little church--that of San Matteo--has a rather fine, though rude, Romanesque doorway, with a b.u.t.tress on each side, and a corbel-table above. But besides these I saw no remains of early work in Salamanca.

From Salamanca an uninteresting road leads to Zamora: occasionally there are considerable woods, and in other parts of the road the fields were well covered with vines. For two or three hours the domes of Salamanca are in sight, backed, as every view in Spain seems to be, by a fine line of distant mountains. No old churches are pa.s.sed on the road, unless I except a large convent, now desecrated and nearly destroyed, but which seemed by the glimpse I caught of it to have old parts.

The entrance to Zamora is very striking: the city crowns the long back of a rock, falling steeply on the south to the Douro, and on the north to another valley. At the extreme end of this hill is the cathedral, as far away from the bulk of the people as it can be, but, for all that, very picturesquely and finely perched. Below the cathedral is a scarped rock, and to the left the n.o.ble river flows round a wooded point, and then out of sight under a long line of green vine-covered hills. All this view is taken in from the end of an old bridge, carried on sixteen or seventeen pointed arches, across which, near the southern end, is built a picturesque and tall gate-tower. The long line of houses occupies the top of the rock, and then opposite the bridge the street descends by a steep-stepped hill, and the houses cl.u.s.ter round the water-side.

The want of water in most Spanish landscapes is so great, that I was never tired of the views here, where it is so abundant. One of the best, perhaps, is that from just below the cathedral, looking past the picturesque bridge across the cattle-peopled plains to a long line of hills which bounds the horizon, with the dead-level line with which so many of the Spanish table-lands finish above the banks of their rivers.

Of the history of Zamora Cathedral I know but little. Here, as elsewhere at the same time, a Frenchman, Bernardo, a Benedictine, was bishop from A.D. 1125 to 1149, having been appointed through the influence of, and consecrated by, his namesake, the French Archbishop of Toledo.[101]

Davila says that the cathedral was built by a subsequent bishop, Don Estevan, "by order and at the cost of the Emperor Don Alonso VII., as is proved by some lines which were in this church." These lines give the date of 1174 as that of the completion of the work,[102] and it tallies fairly with the general character of much of the building; for, though it is true that everywhere the main arches are pointed, much of the detail is undoubtedly such as to suggest as early a date as that here given.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 10.

ZAMORA CATHEDRAL. p. 92.

INTERIOR OF NAVE, LOOKING EAST]

This cathedral is on a small scale, and the most important portion of the ground-plan--the choir--having been rebuilt, it has lost much of its interest. It consists now of a nave and aisles of four bays, shallow transepts, with a dome over the crossing, a short choir with an apse of seven sides, and two choir aisles with square east ends. At the west end are chapels added beyond the church, that in the centre being of considerable length, and groined with the common intersecting ribs.[103]

At the west end of the north aisle is an unusually large and fine Romanesque steeple--the finest example of the kind I have seen in Spain--and erected, no doubt, during the time of one of the French bishops already referred to.

The nave piers are very bold and vigorous in design; they are planned with triple shafts on each face of a square core, and have square caps and bases. The arches are very simple, but pointed. The ma.s.siveness of the piers is very remarkable, for though the clear width of the nave is only about twenty-three feet, the columns are not less than seven feet across. The nave is groined in square, the aisles in oblong compartments. There are no groining ribs in the aisles, though the vaults are quadripart.i.te, and in the transepts there are pointed waggon roofs. The central dome is carried on pendentives, similar to those in the old cathedral at Salamanca. It has an arcaded and pierced stage above the pendentives, and then a dome or vault, divided into sixteen compartments by ribs of bold section, the filling in between which is a succession of small cylindrical vaults, so that the construction inside looks rather complicated. It is, moreover, so defaced by whitewash and plaster as to produce a much less fine effect than the dome at Salamanca; but, on the other hand, there can be but little doubt, I think, that it is the earlier of the two by some years. The exterior of the dome, though much decayed and mutilated, is still very n.o.ble in its design and effect. It will be seen that in many respects it is singularly like that at Salamanca. The circular angle turrets, the dormers on the cardinal sides, are similar in idea, though ruder and heavier here than there: here, too, the outline of the dome is more thoroughly domical. All the courses of stone in the dome seem to have been scalloped at the edges. The arches of the windows and arcades are all semi-circular, and the angles of the dome have a sort of sharp fringe of ornament, in which we see the very earliest kind of suggestion of a crocket: it is very simple, and extremely effective. Unfortunately this extremely interesting work is not only very much decayed, but also rent throughout with cracks, and I much fear that ere long it may cease to exist. The loss of such an example would be one of the greatest misfortunes for the student of Christian art in Spain, and for rarity and peculiarity I am not speaking too strongly when I say that we in England have no monument of the middle ages which is one whit more precious. It is to be hoped that the authorities of the church will do their best to preserve it from further decay as far as possible, and to repair it in the most tenderly conservative spirit.

The aisles have very broad ma.s.sive b.u.t.tresses, and the corbel-tables which crown the wall are carried round them also. There were simple round-arched, shafted windows in each bay, and the clerestory was finished like the aisle with a corbel-table.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 11.

ZAMORA CATHEDRAL p. 94.

EXTERIOR FROM THE SOUTH-WEST.]

The south transept facade is, after the lantern, the most interesting part of the church. Its general character is extremely peculiar, and unlike any other work I have seen in Spain. There are plain b.u.t.tresses at the angles, and the s.p.a.ce between them is divided into three compartments by fluted pilasters, which rise as far as the corbel-table (continued at the same level as the eaves-cornice), and carry three pointed arches which are fitted to the original flat-pitched gable, the centre arch being the widest and highest. The centre compartment has a doorway with three shafts in each jamb, and four orders in the arch all alike, and resembling the door in San Martin, at Salamanca, ill.u.s.trated at p. 91. The effect of light and shade in this ornamentation is very great; and, executed as it is with comparatively little labour, I rather wonder not to have seen more of the same work elsewhere. Two small recessed arches occupy the side compartments of the facade on either side of the doorway: that on the right hand has its archivolt carved with extreme delicacy with a small leaf repeated frequently; and both have within their arches sculptures of figures. The bases of all the columns are fluted, and the capitals are all carved rather rudely, and have heavy abaci. Over the side arches are square sunk compartments enclosing circular ornaments carved with a succession of hollow flutings sinking back to the centre. In fact, these strange ornaments--which at first sight look almost like modern insertions--are precisely like models of the dome with its arched groining s.p.a.ces between the ribs.

Above the doorway is a row of five arches recessed in the wall,[104] and under the central arch in the gable is a blocked-up window-opening.

I was unable to gain admission to the interior of the steeple. On the outside it rises in a succession of nearly equal stages, of which the upper three have, in the common Lombard fas.h.i.+on, windows of one, two, and three lights respectively.

It remains to say a few words as to the fittings of the church. The Coro here occupies the two eastern bays of the nave, and is fitted with very rich late stalls and canopies, which are quite magnificent in their effect. The backs of the stalls are carved with figures, and those over the lower range of stalls throughout with half-length figures of Old Testament worthies, most of which have inscribed scrolls, with legends referring to our Lord, in their hands. These texts have been printed by Dr. Neale in the 'Ecclesiologist,' and they afford so valuable an example of the right mode of selecting inscriptions, that, with his consent, I give a copy of his account.[105] The figures are rather in the style afterwards so much employed by Berruguete, large scale bas-reliefs of single figures--always an awkward kind of sculpture in the hands even of the very best artist. The traceries and crockets of this stall-work are very elaborate, crisp, and good of their kind. There is a continuous horizontal canopy above the upper stalls, each division of which is filled with purely secular sculptures of beasts and animals.

The metal Rejas are of the same age as the stalls; and there is a fine ancient lectern for the choir, of enormous size, in the centre of the Coro, and two others of more modern date. The western screen is old--of the fifteenth century--and has the rare feature of two doorways, leaving the centre unpierced for the altar in the nave, and the bishop's throne on its eastern side, towards the Coro. By the time this work was done, it was very generally settled that the bishop's place was here, in the centre of the western end of the Coro; but I have seen no other screen in which the entrance has still been retained at the west in connexion with this arrangement of the stalls. There is an old metal screen or Reja under the eastern arch of the crossing, which is of the same age as the choir fittings, and has two iron pulpits projecting from its western face. These pulpits are lined with wood, and stand on stone bases; the staircases to them are of wood, carved on the Gospel side with figures of the Evangelists and St. Laurence, and on the Epistle side with St.

John, St. Peter, and other Epistolers. Each pulpit has a desk on a little crane projecting from the column by its side.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Choir Lectern, Zamora Cathedral.]

The cloisters on the north side of the cathedral, and the bishop's palace on the south, are all completely modernized; but just under the old town walls, to the north of the Cathedral Plaza, is the small Romanesque church of San Isidoro. It has a square-ended chancel of two bays, and a nave of three, the latter lighted by very small windows--mere slits in the masonry--the former by shafted windows with a deep external splay to the openings, which are also very narrow. There are two of these windows at the east end, and there is a corbel-table under the eaves. This church was not intended for groining.

The long, narrow, and winding street which leads along the thin crest of the hill to the centre of the city, pa.s.ses on the way the very interesting little church of La Magdalena. This is a Romanesque church, divided into nave, chancel, and apsidal sanctuary, in the way we so often see in works of similar date in England. The chancel has a pointed waggon-vault, the apse is groined with ribs, whilst the nave has now a modern (and probably always had a) flat wooden roof. The south doorway is placed very nearly in the centre of the south wall of the nave. It is a very grand example of the most ornate late Romanesque work, with twisted and moulded shafts, and a profusion of carving in the capitals and archivolts. Over this door is a circular window with dog-tooth in the label, and a quatrefoil piercing in the centre; and on each side, in the other bays, are round-arched windows of two lights. There is a very considerable likeness between the plan of this church and that of San Juan at Lerida.[106] In both, the overwhelming size and grandeur of the doorway as compared with that of the building, combined with its central position, produces at first the impression that it is the western, and not the southern, facade one is looking at. This is a defect; yet perhaps more so to the eyes of an Englishman, who now as of old prefers creeping through little holes[107] in the wall into his finest churches, than to those of any one used to the n.o.ble doorways of the Continent.

The interior of La Magdalena is more interesting than the exterior; for, in addition to the good early detail of the arches across the chancel, it has at the east end of the nave some very fine and very peculiar monuments. Two of these are high tombs, with lofty canopies over them, occupying the s.p.a.ce between the side walls of the nave and the jambs of the chancel arch. These canopies are square-topped, with round arches on the two disengaged sides, and carried upon large shafts standing detached on the floor. The detail of the canopies is as plain as possible; but the capitals are carved with very pure and vigorous conventional foliage, and the shafts are twisted; the moulding on those of the northernmost of the two monuments being reversed in mid-height, so as to produce a large and simple chevron. The mouldings of the shaft are carefully stopped below the necking, and above the base. The effect of this monument, filling in as it does the angle at the end of the nave, is extremely good; its rather large detail and general proportions giving it the effect of being an integral part of the fabric rather than, as monuments usually are, a subsequent addition.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Monument, la Magdalena.]

To the west of the monument already mentioned, against the north wall, is another of about the same age--probably the early part of the thirteenth century--and even more curious in its design. It has three shafts in front carrying the canopy; and this is composed of two divisions of canopy-work, very similar to those so often seen in French sculpture over figures and subjects in doorways; under each are a pair of monsters--wyverns, or some such nondescripts--fighting. The capitals are similarly carved, and the abaci have conventional foliage. The tomb under the canopy has a plain coffin-shaped stone with a cross on it; but against the wall are, below, a figure lying in a bed carved on a bold block of stone projecting from the wall; and, above this, the soul of the departed being carried up by angels. The whole design and character of this monument are so unlike any other work that I know, that I give a native artist the credit of them. Yet the character of the detail seems to me to show an acquaintance with the French and Italian architecture of the day.

La Magdalena is said to have been a church founded by the Knights Templars, but on the suppression of their order in A.D. 1312 to have become the property of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.

[Ill.u.s.tration: San Vicente. Zamora.]

San Miguel, near the picturesque market-place in the centre of the city, has a fine south door. The archivolts are bold, but quite plain, and square in section. Each order is carried on three shafts, and the boldness of the effect is very striking. On the other side of the Plaza the tall tower of San Vicente rises well up against the sky. It has a fine west doorway, and rises above the roof in three stages, lighted respectively by windows of one, two, and three lights. It is finished with a simple corbel-table, above which is a modern roof. The whole of the detail here is fine, simple, early-pointed, very pure and good. The church seems to be almost entirely modernized.

In the lower and eastern part of the city there are also one or two interesting churches. San Leonardo has a square tower engaged against the north side of the west front, very plain below, but with a belfry-stage of two pointed windows, moulded angles, simple corbel-table, and a low square slated spire--the slates cut to pattern, like scales. The fine west door of this church is round-arched, and on either side of it are great brackets sculptured with a lion and a bear.

Sta. Maria de la Horta is a church of the same cla.s.s as La Magdalena. It has a western tower, a nave of three bays of quadripart.i.te groining carried on very bold piers and shafts in the side walls, a chancel, and apsidal sanctuary. The apse has a semi-dome, with a pointed archway in front of it. The chancel has a round waggon-vault, and the arch between it and the nave is semi-circular. The vaulting of the nave is extremely domical in its section. The light is admitted by small windows in the upper part of the walls, and above the abaci of the groining shafts, which are continued round the building as a string-course. The west doorway is round-arched, with chevron, and a sort of sh.e.l.l or flower-ornament in its arch-mouldings. The tower is of the prevailing type: in the stage above the roof there is a window of one light; in the next there are two lights; and above this the steeple has been destroyed, and a modern roof added. The walls outside are finished with a fine and bold thirteenth-century eaves-cornice.

I think one may see here the local influence exercised by the fine Romanesque tower of the cathedral, which, in its division into equal stages, with an increasing number of openings, has been followed in all these other steeples.

A walk over the bridge takes one to the ruins of a rather fine church close to its further end. This has an apse of seven sides, with good windows of two lights, with a trefoiled circle in the head; above this is a string-course with trefoiled arcading under it, and above this a second tier of windows. The whole is of good early middle-pointed character.[108]

The walls here, as in so many of the Spanish towns, are fairly perfect, and are thickly studded with the usual array of round towers throughout their length. The bridge already mentioned is probably a work of the thirteenth century. The arches are perfectly plain and pointed, springing from about the water-level. The piers between the arches project boldly; and over each is a small arch pierced through the bridge, which gives a good deal of additional effect to the design. The grand length of this bridge, with its long line of pointed arches reflected in the lazily-flowing Douro, and backed by the towers and walls of the city, is extremely striking. Neither of the gateways on it is really old; but nevertheless they add much to its picturesqueness.

The only old domestic building of any note that I saw in Zamora was a very late Gothic house in the Plaza de los Momos. The entrance doorway has the enormous and exaggerated arch-stones so common in the later Catalan buildings, but not often seen in this part of Spain. It has above it a label, which is stepped up in the centre to enclose a great coat-of-arms, with its supporters. On either side of this are two windows which, with the coat-of-arms in the centre, make a panel of the same width as the door below. The other princ.i.p.al windows are on a line with these, and all of them of thoroughly debased design. They are of two round-headed lights enclosed within a label-moulding, which finishes in an ogee trefoil; and this again within another label-moulding, either square or ogee in the head. The vagaries of these later Gothic architects in Spain are certainly far from pleasant; yet odd as its detail is, the plain ma.s.ses of unbroken wall in the lower part of this front give it a kind of dignity which is seldom seen in modern work. The practice of making all the living-rooms on the first-floor of course conduces largely to this happy result.

I was unable, unfortunately, to spare time when I was at Zamora to go over to Toro to see the fine Collegiata there. M. Villa Amil has given a drawing of the domed lantern over the Crossing. In plan it is similar to the domes at Salamanca and Zamora as to the angle pinnacles, but not as to the gabled windows between them. But it appears to have lost its ancient roof; and I cannot understand, from the drawing, how the domical roof, which it was no doubt built to receive, can now possibly exist.[109] It seems pretty clear that this example is of rather later date than that at Salamanca; and we have therefore in Zamora, Salamanca, and Toro a very good sequence of Gothic domes, all upon much the same plan, and most worthy of careful study. A more complete acquaintance with this part of Spain might be expected to reveal some other examples of the same extremely interesting kind of work.