Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain Part 8

The walls throughout the church were built of rubble, faced with wrought stone inside and out, and some of the failures in the work are attributable, no doubt, to the want of strength and bond of this kind of walling.

The dimensions of the various parts are about as follows:-- Total internal length 300 feet.

" width of nave and aisles 83 feet.

Height to springing of main arches 25 feet 6 inches.

" floor of triforium 46 feet.

" centre of groining about 100 feet.

These dimensions, though not to be compared to those of many of the French churches, are still very n.o.ble, and would place this among the finest of our own buildings in respect of height; but, like all Spanish, and most French churches, the length is not very grand.

The various views of the exterior are fine, but everywhere the height of the clerestory appears to be rather excessive. This is seen even at the west end, where a little management might easily have prevented it. But the two steeples standing beyond the aisles leave a narrow vertical chasm between their side walls and those of the clerestory, which is brought out, without any break in its outline by means of b.u.t.tresses, quite to the west front. The lower part of these steeples is perfectly plain; each has a sort of double belfry stage, and they are both finished with low spires--that on the south pierced with open traceries, and that on the north simply crocketed; both of them are somewhat ungainly, of very late date, and not sufficiently lofty or important for the church to which they are attached.

The grand feature of the west front is the beautiful porch which extends all across, forming three grand archways, corresponding with the nave and aisles, with smaller and extremely pointed arches between them.

These arches are all supported on cl.u.s.tered shafts, standing away between four and five feet from the main wall, in which the doorways are set. Statues are set on corbels round the detached shafts, and again in the jambs of all the doorways, and the tympana and archivolts of the latter are everywhere crowded with sculpture. An open parapet is carried all across the front above the porch, and above this the west end is pierced with a row of four windows corresponding with the triforium, and again, above, by a very large and simple wheel-window. The finish of the west front is completely modernized, with a seventeenth-century gable between two pinnacles.

The sculpture of the western doors well deserves description and ill.u.s.tration. It is charming work, of precisely the same character as the best French work of the latter half of the thirteenth century, and there is a profusion of it.

The central west door has in the tympanum our Lord seated, with angels, and St. John and the Blessed Virgin worshipping on either side. Below is the Last Judgment, the side of the Blessed being as pretty and interesting as anything I have seen. A youth sits at a small organ playing sweet songs to those who go to Paradise; and a king, going jauntily, and as if of right, towards St. Peter, is met by a grave person, who evidently tells him that he must depart to the other and sadder side. The three orders of the arch are filled with the resurrection of the dead, angels taking some, and devils others, as they rise from their graves,--the whole mixed very indiscriminately. On the central shaft is a statue of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord, now with wretched taste dressed up and enclosed in a gla.s.s case, to the great damage of the whole doorway.

The north-west doorway has its tympanum divided in three horizontal lines. The lower compartment has the Salutation, the Nativity, an Angel, and the Shepherds; the middle the Magi adoring our Lord in the Blessed Virgin's arms, and the Flight into Egypt; and the upper, the Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents. The arch of this door is elliptic, and the s.p.a.ce between it and the tympanum is filled with figures of angels with crowns and censers, playing an organ and other instruments, and singing from books. The meaning of the sculpture in the archivolt was not clear to me, and seemed to refer to some legend.

The south-west doorway has the tympanum divided as the last, and in the lower compartment the death of the Blessed Virgin; next to this our Lord and the Blessed Virgin seated; and above, angels putting a crown on her head. The archivolt here is adorned with one order of sitting figures of saints and two of angels.

The east end is more striking than the west. It retains almost all its old features intact, save that the roof is now very flat, and covered with pantiles, whereas it is probable that at first it was of a steep pitch. It stands up well above the sort of boulevard which pa.s.ses under its east end, and when seen from a little further off, the steeples of the western end group well with it, and, to some extent, compensate for the loss of the old roofing line.

The south transept had been entirely taken down when I was at Leon, and the sculpture of its three doorways was lying on the floor of the church. It is of the same fine character as that of the western doors; the central door has a figure of our Lord with the emblems of the Evangelists on either side, and beyond them the Evangelists themselves writing at desks. Below this are the twelve Apostles seated, and the several orders of the archivolt are carved with figures of angels holding candles, sculptures of vine and other leaves, and crowned figures playing on musical instruments. The south-west door of the transept has no sculpture of figures, but the favourite diapers of fleur-de-lys and castles, and lions and castles, and an order of foliage arranged in the French fashion, _a crochet_. The south-east door has in its tympanum the death of the Blessed Virgin, with angels in the archivolt holding candles. The gable of this transept seems to have been very much altered by some Renaissance architect before it was taken down.

The north transept has two doorways, only one of which is now open. This has a figure of our Lord seated within a vesica, supported by angels, and the archivolt has figures of saints with books. The jambs have--like all the other door-jambs--statues under canopies, and below them the common diaper of lions and castles. The closed north-west door of this transept now forms a reredos for an altar; it has no sculpture of figures.

The north transept doorway opens into a groined aisle which occupies the s.p.a.ce between the transept and the cloister. This aisle is very dark, and opens at its eastern end into the chapel of Santiago, a fine late building of the age of Ferdinand and Isabella, running north and south, and showing its side elevation in the general view of the east end to the north of the choir.

The cloister is so mutilated as to have well-nigh lost all its architectural value. The entrance to the porch in front of the north transept is, however, in its old state; it is a fine doorway, richly and delicately carved with small subjects enclosed in quatrefoils. The original groining shafts, which still remain, show that the whole cloister was built early in the fourteenth century; the traceries, however, have all been destroyed; and the groining, the outer walls, and b.u.t.tresses altered with vast trouble and cost, into a very poor and weak kind of Renaissance. But if the cloister has lost much of its architectural interest, it is still full of value from another point of view, containing as it does one of the finest series of ill.u.s.trations of the New Testament that I have ever seen, remaining in each bay of the cloister all the way round. These subjects begin to the east of the doorway to the north transept, and are continued round in regular order till they finish on its western side. I have not been able to learn anything as to the history of these works. If they are Spanish, they prove the existence of a school of painters of rare excellence here, for they are all more or less admirable in their drawing, in the expression of the faces, and in the honesty and simplicity with which they tell their story. The colours, too, where they are still visible, are pure and good, and the whole looked to me like the work of some good Florentine artist of about the middle of the fifteenth century. It would not be a little curious to find the King or Bishop of Leon not only sending to France for his architect, but to Tuscany for his wall-painter, and, if it be the fact, it would show how firm must have been the resolve to make this church as perfect as possible in every respect, and how little dependence was then placed on native talent.

The subjects represented are the following, each painting filling the whole of the upper part of the wall in each bay of the cloister:--

1. The Birth of the Blessed Virgin.

2. Her Marriage.

3. The Annunciation.

4, 5, 6. Destroyed.

7. Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents, and Herod giving orders for it.

8, 9. Destroyed.

10. The Blessed Virgin Mary seated with our Lord, angels above, and three figures with nimbi sitting and adoring, others with musical instruments.

11. The Baptism of our Lord.

12. Destroyed.

13. An a.s.s and its foal, Jerusalem in the background, and indistinct groups of figures.

14. Our Lord riding into Jerusalem. The city has circular towers all round, and churches with two western octagonal steeples.

15. The Last Supper.

16. Our Lord washing the Disciples' feet; some figures on the right carrying water-jars are drawn with extreme grace.

17. Destroyed.

18. The Betrayal.

19. Our Lord bound and stripped, and, 20. Scourged. (These two subjects are very finely treated.) 21. Brought to the Place of Judgment: desks with open books on them in front.

22. Buffeted and spit upon.

23. Judged: Pilate washing his hands.

24. Bearing the Cross. (This subject is painted round and over a monument on which is the date XXIII. October, A.D. MCCCCXL.; so that it must be of later date than this.) 25. Nailed to the Cross: the Cross on the ground.

26. The Descent from the Cross.

27, 28. The Descent into h.e.l.l.

29. The Incredulity of St. Thomas, and the appearance of our Lord on the way to Emmaus.

30. The Ascension.

31. The Descent of the Holy Ghost.

It will be noticed that the Crucifixion is most remarkably omitted from this series. There is no place on the wall for it, and it occurred to me as possible that there may have been a crucifix in the centre of the cloister, round which all these paintings were, so to speak, grouped.[119]

There are several fine monuments in these cloisters, some of them corbelled out from the wall, and some with rec.u.mbent effigies under arches in it. One of the latter is so fine in its way as to deserve special notice. The arch is of two orders, each sculptured with figures of angels worshipping and censing our Lord, who is seated in the tympanum of the arch holding a book and giving His blessing. Below, on a high tomb, is the effigy rec.u.mbent; and behind it, below the tympanum, two angels bearing up the soul of the departed. The sculpture is admirable for its breadth and simplicity of treatment; and the monument generally is noticeable for the extent to which sculpture, and sculpture only, has been depended on, the strictly architectural features being few and completely subordinate.

The cloister is surrounded by buildings, some of which only are ancient.

On the north side are the chapel of San Juan de Regla, another chapel, and the Chapter-house. The latter has one of those foolish Spanish conceits, a doorway planned obliquely to the wall in which it is set.[120]

In the church itself there are several very fine monuments. The most elaborate is that of Ordono II., the original founder of the old cathedral, which occupies the eastern bay of the apse, with its back to the high altar. This is sometimes spoken of as if it were a contemporary work. It is, however, obviously a work of the fourteenth century, and recalls to mind some of the finest monuments in our own churches. The effigy of the king, laid on a sloping stone, so that it looks out from the monumental arch, is singularly n.o.ble, very simple, of great size and uncommon dignity. The general design of this fine monument will be seen in my view of the aisle round the choir.

Another monument in the north transept has a semicircular arch carved alternately with bosses of foliage and censing angels; and within this a succession of cusps, the spandrels of which have also angels. The tympanum has a representation of the Crucifixion;[121] and below this, in an oblong panel just over the rec.u.mbent figure, is a representation of the service at a funeral. The side of the high tomb has also an interesting sculpture representing a figure giving a dole of bread to a crowd of poor and maimed people, whilst others bring him large baskets full of bread on their backs. The date in the inscription on this monument is Era 1280, _i.e._ A.D. 1242.

In a corresponding position in the west wall of the south transept is another monument of a bishop, recessed behind three divisions of the arcade which surrounds the walls of the church. The effigy is rather colossal, and has a lion at the head, and another under the feet. Over the effigy is a group of figures saying the burial office; and above, in panels within arches, are, (1) St. Martin dividing his Cloak, (2) the Scourging of our Lord, and (3) the Crucifixion. The soffeits of the arcade are diapered, and there were three subjects below the figure of the bishop, but they are now nearly destroyed.

The arches round the Capilla mayor were walled up, and those on either side of the monument of Ordono II., already described, still retain the paintings with which they were all once adorned. They are of the same cla.s.s as those in the cloister, and one of them, a large Ecce h.o.m.o, is certainly a very fine work. Unfortunately the figure of our Lord in the centre has been very badly repainted, but the troop of soldiers and Jews reviling Him on either side is full of life and expression.

The choir occupies the two eastern bays of the nave, and its woodwork is fine, though of late fifteenth-century date. There are large figures in bas-relief, carved in the panels behind the stalls. There is a western door from the nave into the Coro; and in part on this account, and in part from its considerable scale, the nave has less than usual of the air of uselessness which the Spanish arrangement of the Coro produces.

I have already incidentally mentioned that the windows are full of fine stained gla.s.s. It is all of the richest possible colour, and most of it of about the same date as the church. Modern critics would, no doubt, object to some of the drawing for its rudeness and want of accuracy. Yet to me this work seemed to be a most emphatic proof--if any were needed--that we who talk so much about drawing are altogether wrong in our sense of the office which stained gla.s.s has to fulfil in our buildings. We talk glibly about good drawing, and forget altogether the much greater importance of good colour. At Leon the drawing is forgotten altogether, and I defy any one to be otherwise than charmed with the glories of the effect created solely by the colour. At present in England our gla.s.s is all but invariably bad--nay, contemptible--in colour; whilst the so-called good drawing is usually a miserable attempt to reproduce some sentimentality of a German painter. Two schools might well be studied a little more than they are; the one should be this early school of rich colourists, and the other the beautiful works of the sixteenth and seventeenth century French gla.s.s-painters, where there is good drawing enough for any one, and generally great beauty and simplicity of colour. Finally, two practices might be suggested to our stained-gla.s.s painters,--one, that they should only use good, and therefore costly gla.s.s; and the other, that they should limit their palettes to a few pure and simple colours, instead of confusing our eyes with every possible tint of badly-chosen and cheaply-made gla.s.s.

If we want religious pictures in our churches--as we do most surely--let us go to painters for them, and, with the money now in great part thrown away on stained gla.s.s, we might then have some works of art in our churches of which we might have more chance of feeling proud, and for which our successors would perhaps thank us more than they will for our gla.s.s.[122]

I have detained my readers only too long, I fear, upon this cathedral, but it is too full of interest of all kinds to allow of shorter notice, and is, in its way, the finest church of which Spain can boast; at the same time the work is all so thoroughly French as to destroy, to some degree, the interest which we should otherwise feel in it.

The other great architectural attraction of Leon is the church of San Isidoro "el Real." This is altogether earlier than, and has therefore an interest entirely different from, that of the cathedral.

Gil Gonzalez Davila says that the church was founded in A.D. 1030,[123]

by Ferdinand I., the Great. An inscription in the floor of the church gives the name of its architect;[124] and from the mention of Alonso VI., who came to the throne in A.D. 1065, and his mother Sancha, who died in A.D. 1067, the date of his death must have been between these two periods.[125] In A.D. 1063 King Ferdinand--Alfonso's father--and Queen Sancha had very richly endowed the church, in the presence of various bishops, who had come together to celebrate the translation of the remains of San Isidoro.[126] Finally Davila, in his History of the Cathedral at Avila, gives the date of the consecration of the church, from a deed in the archives there, as A.D. 1149.[127]

From these statements it would seem that the church was fit for the reception of the body of San Isidoro in A.D. 1065, and had then three altars; and yet that in A.D. 1149 it was consecrated, though indeed Ponz speaks of an inscription in the cloister which mentions the _dedication_ of the church in A.D. 1063.[128]

San Isidoro was one of the most popularly venerated saints in Spain, and many are the miracles said to have been wrought by him. One of them is not a little suggestive of plans for church-building, not a whit behind the cleverest schemes of the present day. It is said that in a time when much sickness prevailed, the body of the saint was taken out in procession to a village near Leon, Trobajo del Camino, the bearers of the body barefooted, and all singing hymns, in order to charm away the disease from the people. Suddenly the weight became so great that it was impossible to move or lift the saint, even by the aid of a strong body of men: and many complained not a little of the Canons for bringing the body out on such an errand, whilst the King, who was at Benavente, was so incensed, that he insisted, as the saint would not move, that they should build a church over him for his protection; and at last came the Queen, grieving bitterly appealing to "her beloved spouse" San Isidoro, and saying, "Turn, O blessed confessor! turn again to the monastery of Leon, which my forefathers, out of their devotion, built for you;" and then the saint, moved by her prayer, allowed himself to be borne back upon the shoulders of four children, who brought him back to Leon amid the rejoicings of the people: and these, moved by the miracle, at once built a chapel on the spot which the saint had marked out for the purpose by his pertinacious refusal to move until the King had ordered it to be built, and until the Queen had shown how deep was her interest in the work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Interior of S. Isidoro.]

But I must not dwell longer on what is merely legendary, but return to this church of San Isidoro at Leon. It is cruciform in plan,[129] with apsidal chapels on the eastern side of the transepts. The nave and aisles are of six bays in length, and there is a tower detached to the west. There is a chapel dedicated to Sta. Catalina (now called El Panteon) at the north-west end of the church, and a choir of the sixteenth century takes the place of the original apse. The whole of the nave is vaulted with a waggon-vault, with transverse ribs under it in each bay; and this vault is continued on without break to the chancel arch, there being no lantern at the crossing. The arches into the transepts have a fringe of cusping on their under sides, which has a very Moorish air, and the transepts are vaulted with waggon-vaults, but at a lower level than the nave. The chapels to the east of the transept are roofed with semi-domes. The nave has bold columns, with richly sculptured capitals, stilted semi-circular arches, and a clerestory of considerable height, with large windows of rich character.

The whole interior of the church has been picked out in white and brown washes to such an extent, that at first sight its effect is positively repulsive: nevertheless, its detail is very fine. The capitals are all richly sculptured, generally with foliage arranged after the model of the Corinthian capital; but some of them _histories_ with figures of men and beasts; and I noticed one only with pairs of birds looking at each other. The western part of the church is abominably modernized, but the alterations in the fabric evidently commenced at a very early period, for in the south aisle one of the groining-shafts is carried up exactly in front of what appears to be one of the original aisle windows. I confess myself quite at a loss to account for this, unless it be by the a.s.sumption that the church, consecrated in A.D. 1149, was commenced on the same type as S. Sernin, Toulouse--copied, as we shall see further on, at Santiago--and that before the consecration the original triforium had been altered into a clerestory by the alteration of the aisle-roofs and the introduction of quadripart.i.te vaulting in them at a lower level, thus necessitating the introduction of the groining-shaft in front of a window. The difficulty did not occur to me forcibly when I was on the spot, and I am unable to say, therefore, how far a thoroughly close examination of the work would clear it up. It might of course be said that such an alteration proves that the church was of two periods; and such an opinion would be to some extent supported by reference to the certainly early character of the south door, which might have been executed before A.D. 1063. But I am, on the whole, disposed rather to regard the chapel of Sta. Catalina as the original church, and to a.s.sume that the remainder of the building was built between A.D. 1063 and A.D.

1149, and that the awkward arrangement to which I have just referred was, in fact, the result of some accident or change of plan. This supposition would reconcile more satisfactorily all the difficulties of the case than any other, and would tally well with what I have been able to learn as to the history of the church. The body of San Isidoro was sent for rather suddenly, and brought from Seville, and the King had but short time for the preparation of the building for its reception.

Two years later the body of San Vicente was brought from Avila, and no doubt the popularity of the two saints soon made it necessary to enlarge the church. Then it might well happen that the old church was left in its integrity, and the new building added to the east, but with its north wall in a line with the north wall of the old one, so as to allow of the cloister being built along their sides, and without at all disturbing the early church or its relics. The relative position of the churches makes it probable, in short, that the large church was added to the small one, and not that the latter was a chapel added to the former.