Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain Part 28

From Tudela I availed myself of a special train on the railway to Pamplona, which ran solely for the purpose of carrying the pa.s.sengers of a diligence from Madrid, and in which the station-master obligingly gave me a seat. On the road we pa.s.sed the towns of Olite and Tafalla, the view of the former of which gave so much promise that I returned there in order to examine its remains properly.

Tafalla and Olite were of old called the Flowers of Navarre. Olite now is dreary, desolate, and ruinous; and though Tafalla looks a little more thriving, it too has lost all its former claim to the t.i.tle of a flower!

In Olite there are the extensive remains of a very fine castle, which was built as a palace by the kings of Navarre, and two interesting parish churches, Sta. Maria and San Pedro. Sta. Maria consists of a wide nave of four bays in length, and a small apse at the east end. On the west side is a small cloister in front of the princ.i.p.al entrance, which gives great picturesqueness to the whole work. The cloister is a work of the fifteenth century, an irregular square in plan, and arcaded with a good simple open arcade. The east side has been destroyed, in order to allow of the grand western doorway of the church being seen. This is protected by a penthouse roof, supported on two tall columns, which have taken the place of the old arcade. The church was built within the walls of the castle, but the cloister seems to have been thrown out beyond their line on the town side. There is a tower on the south of the nave, finished with a gabled roof, and pierced with some good early-pointed openings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TUDELA: Ground Plan of Cathedral: Plate XXIV.

W. West, Lithr.

Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.]

The west front is a very elaborate work of the fourteenth century. It has a central doorway, and a row of niches with figures on each side of it, above a stringcourse, which is on the same level as the springing of the doorway. The tympanum of the door has sculptures of the Blessed Virgin Mary and our Lord under a canopy in the centre; on the (proper) right, the Baptism, the Flight into Egypt, and the Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents; and on the left, the Presentation, the Annunciation, and the Nativity. The carving of the archivolt is rich, mainly of foliage, but with two or three figures under niches introduced capriciously in its midst. The jambs, too, are covered with carvings of subjects arranged in the oddest way; _e.g._ there are in succession an Agnus Dei, an Annunciation, the Creation of Eve, Adam tilling the ground, wyverns, an elephant and castle, the Fall, a pelican vulming its breast with a goat standing on its hind-legs and looking on; and so on with subjects which seem to exhibit nothing but the odd conceits of the workman, and to be arranged in no kind of order. The carving is all of that crisp, sharp, clever kind, so seldom seen in England, but so common in the fourteenth-century buildings of Germany, and in which some of the Spanish sculptors were unsurpa.s.sed by all save perhaps their own successors in the latest period of Gothic art, whose works I have already described at Burgos, Miraflores, and Valladolid. There are extensive traces of old painting on the stonework of this doorway; and I noticed that the detached shafts (of which there are four in each jamb) were covered with a trailing branch of ivy, with green leaves and red stems.

The interior of Sta. Maria is not very interesting, though its scale is good, the groined nave being 36 feet wide by 108 feet in length. The groining-shafts are commendably bold and dignified. There is the usual late western gallery, and a modern chapel and large irregular porch on the south side.

Sta. Maria stands, as I have said, partly within the walls of the ancient castle or palace. This was dismantled in the course of the Peninsular war, but is still an imposing ruin, with a vast extent of enclosing wall, out of which rise several fine towers. These are generally very simple, but lofty, and capped with projecting machicoulis. I give an ill.u.s.tration of one in which the finish is unlike any that I remember to have seen.[395] The window here is a good example of a traceried domestic window, a straight stone transome being carried across under the tracery, so as to make the window-opening square-headed.

Two grand towers on the eastern face of the castle are octangular in plan, and one of them rises in three stages, each slightly within the other, and each finished with fine corbelled machicoulis.

The gateways have extremely small and low pointed arches, looking like little holes in the great walls. Some of the walls are finished with the common Arab type of battlement, the coping of which is weathered to a point. The keep is a large pile, with square towers at the angles; and near it is a large hall with battlemented side-walls, which has the air of being the earliest part of the castle, but into which I was unable to gain admission.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Castle, and Church of San Pedro, Olite.]

At the other extremity of the town (or village as it ought rather to be called) is the church of San Pedro. This forms an important feature in the picturesque view of the place, owing to its fine and peculiar tower and spire. This is built against the south side of the church, is quite plain until it rises above the roof, and then has two stages each pierced with windows; above this a pierced overhanging parapet, carried upon very bold corbels, and then a low octagonal stage, each side surmounted by a crocketed gable, and the whole finished with a spire, the entasis of which is very distinctly marked. An original design, such as this is, deserves ill.u.s.tration. The height of the spire bears, it will be seen, but a small proportion to that of the tower, as is often to be observed in the case of good steeples; but the most unusual feature is the enormous parapet, and taking into account the position of the church just at the extreme angle of the town, it may be supposed to have been built with some view to military requirements. The greater part of the steeple is a work I suppose of the fourteenth century--much later than the church, which, saving modern additions, is a fine work of quite the beginning of the thirteenth century, if not earlier. The west doorway is round-arched, having three shafts in each jamb, with sculptured capitals, and an arch of six orders alternately carved and moulded. The tympanum is sculptured with our Lord and two censing angels, and below are subjects from the life of St. Peter: (1) His commission; (2) His walking on the sea; (3) His trial; and (4) His crucifixion. Above the doorway is a stringcourse carved in the fourteenth century, and in the gable a wheel window within a pointed enclosing-arch. The plan of the nave and aisles is of the same kind as that of the church at Tudela, though on a smaller scale. A curious difference in the design is the carrying up of the aisle groining almost to the same level as that of the nave, whilst the transverse arches across the aisle are at a much lower level, and have fine pointed and circular windows pierced in the walls between the arches and the groining. The eastern part of the church is all modern and very bad.

Olite is a very squalid and miserable place; but a few hours may be well spent here; and the castle in particular, which has been very badly treated within a few years, ought to be carefully examined and drawn before it is too late. I was there on a hot day in June,--so hot as to make it difficult to work,--and yet on the summit of the hills, lying to the south-south-west of the town, a good deal of snow was lying, and in the evening, as the sun went down, the cautious Spaniards put on their great cloth cloaks, and stole about m.u.f.fled up to the eyes as though it were mid-winter.

From Olite to Tafalla there was once, or was once intended to be, a continuous subterraneous communication. The distance must be some three or four miles, so that the story would appear to be rather improbable.

The intention of Charles III. of Navarre to make such a communication between the great palace he was building at Tafalla and the already existing castle of Olite, is mentioned by Cean Bermudez under the date of 1419; but he gives no authority for his statement.

I was unable to stop at Tafalla: it is a more important place than Olite, and has two churches, both apparently of the latest Gothic, with square-ended transepts, and windowless apsidal choirs like those of the late Burgalese churches.

After leaving Tafalla the country becomes at every step wilder and more beautiful. The hills rise grandly on either side, and are bare and rocky. The railway pa.s.ses under an aqueduct, which in height, length, and simple grandeur of design, is worthy to be ranked among the finest European aqueducts. It was built at the end of the last century by D.

Ventura Rodriguez. The only old church I saw on this part of the road was close to Las Campanas station. Its west front had a good doorway, and above this a great arch rising almost to the point of the gable, with a circular window pierced within it. The same design is repeated in one of the churches of Pamplona.

The towers and walls of Pamplona are seen for some time before they are reached. The railway follows the winding of a pretty stream, and the city stands well elevated above it. The situation is indeed very charming, the whole character of the country being thoroughly mountainous, and the city standing on an elevated knoll rising out of an ample and prosperous-looking valley surrounded by fine hills.

The views from the cathedral and walls are very beautiful, and as the town is large and rather handsomely laid out with a grand arcaded Plaza in the centre, it gives a very favourable impression of Spain to those who make it their first resting-place on a Spanish tour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No 51

PAMPLONA CATHEDRAL

EXTERIOR FROM THE NORTH-EAST.]

The cathedral stands on the outside of the city and close to the walls.

It was commenced in A.D. 1397 by Charles III. of Navarre, who pulled down almost[396] the whole of the old church (built circa A.D. 1100).

The planning of this church is both ingenious and novel. Its chevet is entirely devised upon a system of equilateral triangles, and, as will be seen by reference to my plan,[397] the apse has only two canted sides, having a column in the centre behind the altar; and though it is perfectly true that this two-sided apse is in itself not a very graceful scheme, it is at the same time equally true that the combination of the chapels with the central apse is very ingenious and clever. The distortion of the chapel next to the transept is very objectionable, and seems to be without reason or necessity. There are transepts and a nave and aisles of six bays in length, with side chapels along the greater part of the aisles. The extreme shortness of the constructional choir makes it certain that the church was planned for the modern Spanish arrangement of the Coro, which now occupies two bays of the nave, leaving one bay between its eastern Reja and the Crossing. The Reja of the Capilla mayor is under the eastern arch of the Crossing, so that the low rails marking the pa.s.sage from the Coro to the Capilla mayor are very long. The detail of all the architecture is characteristic of the late date at which the church was built. The columns are large, but composed of a succession of insignificant mouldings, so as to produce but little effect of bold light and shade: those in the choir are cylindrical, with cl.u.s.ters of mouldings supporting, and continued on as, the groining ribs, and they all lack that definiteness of arrangement and plan which is one of the surest tests of the difference between good and bad Gothic architecture generally, as it is between the work of men of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries almost everywhere.

The internal effect of the cathedral is certainly very fine. The peculiar scheme of the apse allows of the erection of a Retablo of unusual height with less interference with the architectural features than is common; and the whole design has the merit which I have so often had to accord to the latest school of Gothic artists in Spain, of having been schemed with an evident intention of meeting and providing for the necessities of the climate; and one consequence of this is that almost all the windows are left as they were originally designed, and have not been blocked up in order to diminish the glare. The clerestory windows throughout are small, those in the transepts are only small roses, and owing to the steep slope of the aisle roofs there is a great s.p.a.ce between these openings and the main arcades. The three eastern bays of the nave have geometrical traceries, whilst in the western bays and the choir they are flamboyant in character; but I do not imagine that this slight difference in character betokens any real difference in their age. They all, in short, have somewhat of late middle-pointed character, though their actual date and their detail would make us cla.s.s them rather with works of the third-pointed style.

The stalls in the Coro are of Renaissance character, but founded closely on the older models; and the Reja, to the east of them, is of wrought iron, old, but with a Renaissance cresting. The Reja in front of the Capilla mayor is much finer; it is of wrought iron, and is made, as is so usual, with vertical bars, set rather close together, and alternately plain and twisted. What the lower part lacks in ornament the cresting more than atones for; it is unusually ornate, consisting of interlacing ogee arches with crocketed pinnacles between them, all very elaborately hammered up. The horizontal bars and rails are also all covered with traceries in relief, and at regular intervals on these there are small figures under canopies. The whole stands upon a moulded and panelled base of stone. The total height of this screen is not less than thirty feet, of which the cresting is about a third.

Of the other furniture I may mention some of the gla.s.s in the clerestory, which is fine; and the old Retablos. Two of these in the south chapel of the chevet are especially worthy of notice. One of them has a crucifix (with the figure draped in modern drapery) which has the feet half plated with silver, and behind it are twelve prophets in rows of four over each other, and all of them with inscriptions referring to the Crucifixion--such as the texts beginning "Foderunt ma.n.u.s," "Vere languores nostros ipse tulit," "Post ebdomadas s.e.xaginta dies occidetur," "Quid sicut plage iste," &c.

The western front is a poor Pagan work utterly out of keeping with the remainder of the fabric, and erected in the last century from the designs of D. Ventura Rodriguez. The rest of the exterior is Gothic, but not at all striking. It was once well garnished with crocketed pinnacles above its flying b.u.t.tresses, but they have now for the most part disappeared. The roofs are flat and tiled, and hipped back in an ungainly fashion even at the transepts. The north transept door has an unusually fine example of a latch-handle or closing ring: the handle has writhing serpents round it, and the plate is perforated all over with rich flamboyant traceries.

This cathedral is fortunate in retaining many of its old dependent buildings in a very perfect state, but unfortunately I have spent only one day in Pamplona, and I did not see by any means all that is to be seen. For Cean Bermudez[398] says that some portions of the first cathedral, founded in A.D. 1100, still remain; particularly the small cloister and some of the buildings attached to it. This was the last cathedral in Spain that observed the rule of St. Augustine, and the canons always lived in common; the refectory, said to be of the thirteenth century, the kitchen and offices, all still remain. Of about the same age as the cathedral are the beautiful cloisters on its south side, and the Chapter-house to the east of the cloister. It is said, indeed, that a part of this cloister had been built some seventy years before the fall of the old cathedral rendered it necessary to rebuild it from the ground, and the style of much of the work encourages one to believe the statement. It is certainly a very charming work in every way: it is a square in plan, each side having six traceried windows towards the centre court, and a small chapel breaks out into this at the south-west angle. The windows are all of four lights, filled with geometrical traceries, with crocketed labels to some and canopies to others, and delicate b.u.t.tresses and pinnacles dividing the bays. The low wall below the open windows is covered with small figures in niches, and the walls above the windows with panelling, as is also the parapet of the modern upper cloister. The general conception is very ornate, and at the same time very delicate and light in its proportions; and it is rendered very interesting by the number of rich doorways, monuments, and sculptures with which the walls are everywhere enriched. The door called "Of our Lady of the Refuge" opens from the transept to the cloister; its front is in the cloister, of which it occupies the north-western bay. In its tympanum is a sculpture of the burial of the Blessed Virgin, whose statue, with the figure of our Lord in her arms, occupies the post of honour against the central pier. The reveals of the jambs are filled with little niches and canopies in which are figures and subjects; and below the bases, in a band of quatrefoils, are on the one side the Acts of Mercy; on the other, figures playing on instruments. Angels in the archivolt bear a scroll on which is inscribed--"Quae est ista que ascendit de deserto deliciis affluens, innixa super dilectum suum?

a.s.sumpta est Maria in clum." Against the east wall of the cloister is a sculpture of the Adoration of the Magi, and next to this the grand triple opening to the Chapter-house--a richly moulded door with a two-light window on either side. In the southern alley are a fine tomb of a bishop, the door of the Sala Preciosa adorned with a series of bas-reliefs from the life of the Blessed Virgin, and another door with the Last Supper and the Entry into Jerusalem; and close to the latter, but in the western wall, is a doorway with the Crucifixion, and the Maries going to the Sepulchre. Between these sculptured doorways the walls are all arcaded with tracery panels corresponding to the windows; and as all the mouldings are rich and delicate in their design, and the proportions of the cloister very lofty, it will be seen that I cannot be very far wrong in considering this to be, on the whole, one of the most effective and striking cloisters of its age. The projecting chapel on the south-west angle is exceedingly delicate in its construction, and is screened from the cloister with iron _grilles_. A quaintly trimmed box-garden occupies the cloister-court to the no small improvement of its effect.

On the eastern side is the Chapter-house; a very remarkable work of probably the same age as the cloister, though of a simpler, bolder, and much more grand kind of design. It is square in plan, but the vault is octagonal, the angles of the square being arched and covered with small subordinate vaults below the springing of the main vault. b.u.t.tresses are placed outside to resist the thrust of each of the eight princ.i.p.al ribs of the octagonal vault; and these b.u.t.tresses, being all placed in the same direction as the ribs, abut against the square outline of the building in the most singular and, at first sight, unintelligible manner. They are carried up straight from the ground nearly to the eaves, where they are weathered back and finished with square crocketed pinnacles; whilst between them an open arcade is carried all round just below the eaves. On the exterior this Chapter-house seems to be so far removed from the east end of the church as to have hardly any connection with it; they are separated by houses built up close to their walls, and present consequently a not very imposing effect from the exterior; and standing, as the Chapter-house does, just on the edge of the city walls, it is strange that it has fared so well in the many attacks that have been made on Pamplona. The interior is remarkable only for the grand scale and proportions of the vault with which it is covered.

There are several other old churches here which deserve notice, though none are on a very fine or grand scale. That of San Saturnino--the first Bishop of Pamplona--is remarkable chiefly for the very unusual planning of its eastern end, which has three unequal sides, out of which three unequal polygonal chapels open.[399] My impression is that there was never any altar under the great apse, but that the high altar stood in the central chapel, at its east end. The Coro is, and probably was always intended to be, in the western gallery, the under side of which is groined, and any arrangement of stalls on the floor of such a church would be obviously inconvenient and out of place. Two towers are built against the eastern bay of the nave. The window tracery is of good geometrical middle-pointed character, and the mouldings and other details all seem to prove that the church was built about the middle of the fourteenth century. The south doorway has the rare feature at this period of capitals _histories_; on the left hand are the Annunciation, the Salutation, the Nativity, and the Flight into Egypt; and on the right our Lord bearing His Cross, the Descent from the Cross, the Resurrection, and the Descent into h.e.l.l. The Crucifixion forms the finial of the canopy over the doorway, and three or four other subjects are concealed by the modern framework round the door. There seems to be no reason why the idea of such a plan as this should not be adopted again: the termination of the nave by a kind of apsis, from one side of which the chancel projects, is extremely good, and perhaps, on the whole, the best way of effecting the change from the grand span of so broad a nave to the moderate dimensions (just half those of the nave) of the chancel. Such a church would probably hold about six hundred worshippers, all in sight of the altar, and might, with advantage to its proportions, be lengthened by the addition of another bay; and, simple as all its parts would be, it would be a relief to eyes wearied by the flimsy weakness of our modern Gothic work to look upon anything which could not possibly be constructed without solid walls, ma.s.sive b.u.t.tresses, and some degree of constructive skill.

The church of San Nicolas is of Romanesque date, but much altered and added to at later periods. It consists of a nave and aisles of three bays, a Crossing, and a short eastern polygonal apse. The nave aisles retain their original waggon vaults, with transverse ribs at intervals; but the other vaults are all quadripart.i.te. The clerestory of the nave, too, consists of broad unpierced lancets, which are probably coeval with the arcades below them.

The exterior of this church is very much obscured by modern additions and excrescences, but still retains some features of much interest.

There is a fine early western door, and above this a rose window filled with rich geometrical tracery, over which is a very boldly projecting pointed arch, which abuts against a tower on the north and against a ma.s.sive b.u.t.tress on the south. The walls appear to have been finished at the eaves with very bold machicoulis. At a much later date than that of the church a lofty open cloister, with plain pointed arches, was added on the western and northern sides.

On either side of the apse of this church, in front of the Retablo and altar, are what look like two tabernacles for the reservation of the Sacrament: but I had no opportunity of learning the object of this double arrangement.

The views from the walls of Pamplona are eminently lovely; I remember looking across to the east, over the flat which stretches away from them to where the mountains begin to rise boldly beyond; and, as my eyes wandered on, I began to turn my thoughts eagerly homewards, and much as I had enjoyed the Spanish journey which ended at Pamplona, there was perhaps no part of it which I enjoyed more than this, where I was ungrateful enough to Spain to allow everything to be seasoned by the near prospect of home.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAMPLONA:--Ground Plans of the Cathedral:--and of San Saturnino: Plate XXV.

Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.]

CHAPTER XX.

GENERAL SUMMARY.

IT is time, now that I have described so many Spanish Gothic buildings in detail, to undertake a somewhat more general cla.s.sification of them, both in regard to their history and their style. Hitherto I have spoken of each building by itself, only endeavouring to give so clear and concise an account of each as was necessary in order that their general character might be understood. But this kind of account would be incomplete and almost useless without a more generalizing and more systematic summary of the whole. And to this I propose to devote this chapter.

There are, indeed, few parts of Europe in which it is more easy to detect the influence of History upon Art than it is in Spain. I dismiss from consideration the period of the Visigothic rule, which lasted from A.D. 417 to 717; for though it is possible that some works of this age still exist, as _e.g._ part of the walls of Toledo, and the metal votive crowns of Guarrazar, they do not really come within the scope of my subject, inasmuch as there is no kind of evidence that they exercised any influence over the architecture of the Christian parts of the country after the Moorish interregnum.

From the first invasion by the Moors in A.D. 711 down to their expulsion from Granada in A.D. 1492, their whole history is mixed up with that of the Christians; and, as might be expected, so great was the detestation in which the two races held each other, that neither of them borrowed to any great extent from the art of the other, and accordingly we see two streams of art flowing as it were side by side at the same time, and often in the same district,--a circ.u.mstance, as I need hardly say, almost, if not quite, unknown at the same period in any other part of Europe. The Mosque at Cordoba in the ninth century, the Alcazar and Giralda at Seville in thirteenth, the Court of Lions in the Alhambra in the fourteenth, some of the houses in Toledo in the fifteenth century, are examples of what the Moors were building during the very period of the Middle Ages in which all the buildings which I have described and ill.u.s.trated were being erected; the only exception to be made to this general statement being, that when the Christians vanquished the Moors they usually continued to allow them to build somewhat in their own fashion,--as, for example, they did in Toledo,--whilst on the other hand, the Moors seem never to have imitated this example, though they were of course utterly unable to suppress all evidence in their work of any knowledge of Gothic buildings.

The reason of this was, no doubt, that throughout this period any contrast drawn between the Moors and Christians in regard to civilization would generally, if not always, have been in favour of the former. They were accomplished both in art and science: their architectural works would have been impossible except to a very refined people, and their scientific attainments are evidenced even to the present day by the system of artificial irrigation which they everywhere introduced, and which even now remains almost unaltered and unimproved.

The Christians, on the contrary, were warlike and hardy, and in the midst of constant wars had but scant time for the pursuit of art; and finally, when they had re-established their supremacy, they wisely allowed the Moors to remain under their rule when they would, and employed them to some extent on the works in which they could not fail to see that they excelled.

Again, the subdivision of the country into several kingdoms, administered under varying laws, owing no common allegiance to any central authority, and inhabited by people of various origin, might well be expected to leave considerable marks on the style of the buildings; though, at the same time, the antipathy which the inhabitants of all of them felt for the Moors rendered this cause less operative than it would otherwise have been. Some portions of the country had never been conquered by the Saracens: such were the regions of the Pyrenees lying betwixt Aragon and Navarre, the Asturias, Biscay, and the northern portion of Galicia.[400] And though it was by degrees that the other states freed themselves from their conquerors, it happened fortunately that the Christian successes generally synchronized as nearly as possible with that great development of Christian art which at the time covered all parts of Europe with the n.o.blest examples of Pointed Architecture. Toledo was recovered by the Christians in A.D. 1085, Tarragona in 1089, Zaragoza in 1118, Lerida in 1149, Valencia in 1239, Seville in 1248, whilst Segovia, Leon, Burgos, Zamora, and Santiago suffered more or less from occasional irruptions of the Moors down to the beginning of the eleventh century, but from that date were practically free from molestation. By the middle of the fifteenth century the number of states into which the country had been divided was reduced to four, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and the Moorish kingdom of Granada. Of these Aragon and Castile are the two of which I have seen the most, and, I may venture to add, those in which the History of Gothic Architecture in Spain is properly to be studied. For though it is true that Seville was recovered in the thirteenth century, and Cordoba about the same time, it is equally so that most of their buildings are Moorish or modern, the Gothic cathedral in the former not having been commenced until A.D. 1401, and the Moorish mosque in the latter still doing service as the Christian cathedral; and generally throughout the South of Spain, so far as I can learn, there are but few early Gothic buildings to be seen; whilst the late examples of the style were designed by the same architects, and in precisely the same style, as those which were erected in the parts of Spain which I have visited.

Of these two great divisions of the country, Aragon included the province of that name, together with Cataluna and Valencia; and owing to the great political freedom which the Catalans in particular enjoyed at an early period, to the vast amount of trade with Italy, the Mediterranean, and the East carried on along its extensive seaboard, and to its large foreign possessions--which included the Balearic Isles, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia--the kingdom of Aragon possessed great wealth and power, and has left magnificent architectural remains.

The kingdom of Castile in course of time came to include, in addition to the two Castiles, Leon, Biscay, the Asturias, Galicia, Estremadura, Murcia, and Andalusia: and here there was not only a larger Spanish territory, but one peopled by a much more varied population than that of Aragon, and which naturally, I think, left a less distinct architectural impress than we see in the other.