Charles Rudy

“ My love for Spain is unbounded. As great as is my love for the people, so great also is my depreciation for those who have wronged her, being her sons. Who are they? They know that best themselves.
Spain's architecture is both agreeable and disagreeable, but it is all of it peculiarly Spanish. A foreigner, dropping as by accident across the Pyrenees from France, can do nothing better than criticize all architectural monuments he meets with in a five days' journey across Spain with a Cook's ticket in his pocketbook. It is natural he should do so. ”

“ Penetrating into the interior of the building, preferably by the lateral doors of the western front, the tourist is overcome by a feeling of awe and amazement at the bold construction of aisles and nave, as slender as is the frost pattern on a spotless pane. The full value of the windows, which are gorgeous from the outside, is only obtained from the interior of the temple; those of the clerestory reach from the sharp ogival vaulting to the height of the triforium, which in its turn is backed by another row of painted windows ”

“ If Toledo is the nation's architectural museum, the city's cathedral, the huge imposing Gothic structure, is, beyond a doubt, an incomparable art museum. Centuries of sculptors carved marble and berroqueña; armies of artisans wrought marvels in cloths, metals, precious stones, glass, and wood, and a host of painters, both foreign and national, from Goya and Ribera to the Greco and Rubens, painted religious compositions for the sacristy and chapels. ”

“ Shadows play among the reliefs, lending them strength and vigour; the alminar tower stands forth prominently against the sky and contrasts delightfully with the cupola raised on the apse or on the croisée.
Among the finest examples of Mudejar art, must be counted the brilliantly coloured ceilings, such as are to be seen in Alcalá, Toledo, and elsewhere. These artesonados, without being Moorish, are, nevertheless, of a pronounced Oriental taste. A geometrical pattern is carved on the wood of the ceiling and brilliantly painted. ”

“ In Spain, Byzantine pillars fought against Lombard shafts, and Gothic pinnacles rose haughtily beside the horseshoe arch and the arc brisé. In Spain Christianity grappled with the Islam faith and sent it bleeding back to the wilds of Africa; in Spain the polygon, circle, and square struggled for supremacy and lost their personality in the complex blending of the one with the other, and minarets, cupolas, and spires combined in bizarre fantasy and richness of decoration to serve the ambitions of mighty prelates, fanatic kings, and death-fearing noblemen. ”

“ What vicissitudes had not the country seen—and how many art waves had swept over the peninsula!
Gothic is traceable throughout the building: here it is flamboyant, there rayonnant. Here the gold and red of Mudejar ceilings are exquisitely represented, as in the chapter-room; there Moorish influence in azulejos (multicoloured glazed tiles) and in decorative designs is to be seen, such as in the horseshoe arches of the triforium in the chapel of the high altar. ”

“ Beyond the seas an immense territory, hundreds of times larger than the natal solar, or mother country, stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific; at home, a stillborn nation lay in an arid meadow beside a solemn church, a frivolous, selfish throne, and a mute and gloomy brick-built convent.
The Spanish Armada sailed to England never to return, and Philip II. built the Escorial, a melancholy pantheon for the kings of the Iberian peninsula. ”

“ BURGOS CATHEDRAL
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The central door is surmounted by a plateresque-Renaissance pediment imbedded in an ogival arch (of all things!) ; the side doors are crowned by a simple window.
Vastly superior in all respects to the lower body are the upper stories, of which the first is begun by a pinnacled balustrade running from tower to tower; in the centre, between the two towers, there is an immense rosace of a magnificent design and embellished by means of an ogival arch in delicate relief; the windows of the tower, as well as in the superior bodies, are pure ogival. ”

“ Magnificence rather than beauty is the characteristic note of the new cathedral. The primitive part—pure ogival with but little mixture—contrasts with the eastern end, which is covered over with the most glaring grotesque decoration; most of the chapels are spoiled by the same shocking profusion of super-ornamentation; the otherwise majestic cupola, the high altar, and the choir—all suffer from the same defect. ”

“ Besides, nowhere was the independent spirit of the noblemen more accentuated than in Galicia; nowhere were the prelates so rebellious as in Santiago, the Sacred City, and none attained a greater height of personal power and wealth than Diego Galmirez, the first archbishop of Santiago, and one of the most striking and interesting personalities of Spanish history in the twelfth century, to whom Santiago owes much of her glory, and Spain not little of her future history. ”

“ Many are the cathedrals in Spain pertaining to this great school, but not one of them can compare with that of Leon in the way the essential principle was felt and expressed. They are all beautiful in their complex and hybrid style, but none of them can claim to be Gothic in the way they are built. For wealth, power, and luxury in details is generally the lesson Spanish cathedrals teach, but they do not give their lancets and shafts, their vertical lines and pointed arches, the chance to impress the visitor or true believer with those sentiments so peculiar to the great ogival style. ”

“ The large and ungainly choir spoils the general view of the nave, whereas the continuation of the aisles, broad and light to the very apse, where, facing each aisle, there is a handsome rose window which throws a flood of coloured light into the building, cannot be too highly praised. ”

“ The difference between Italian and Iberian is therefore very marked. Even the landscapes in each country prove it beyond a doubt. In Italy they are composed of soft rolling lines; the colours are varied,—green, red, and blue; the soil is damp and fruitful. In Spain, on the contrary, everything is dry, arid, and savage; blue is the sky, red the brick houses, and grayish golden the soil; the inhabitants are as savage as the country, and the proverbial "ma é piu bello" of the Italian does not bother the former in the slightest. ”

“ Like the cathedral of Palencia, it lacks a western front; the apse is semicircular, strengthened by heavy leaning buttresses; the upper, towerless rim of this same body is decorated with an ogival festoon set off by means of the primitive pinnacles of the top of the buttresses. The northern (Renaissance or plateresque) front is, though beautiful and severe in itself, a calamity when compared with the Romanesque edifice, as is also the new and horrid clock-tower. ”

“ Taken all in all, the whole building often resembles a castle or fortress rather than a temple, in harmony with the austere, arid landscape, and the fierce, passionate, and idolatrous character of the clanspeople or inhabitants of the different regions.
The principal entrance is usually small in comparison to the height and great mass of the building. The pointed arch—or series of arches—which crowns the portal, is timid in its structure, or, in other words, is but slightly pointed or not at all.
The interior aspect of the church is totally different. ”

“ On the contrary, there is barely a city in Spain with more religious edifices of all kinds, and the greater part of them of far more architectural merit than the cathedral itself. The astonishing number of convents is remarkable; many of them date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and are, consequently, Romanesque with a good deal of Byzantine taste about them, or else they belong to the period of Transition. Taken all in all, they are really the only architectural attractions to be discovered in the city to-day. ”

“ The beautiful, the really beautiful lantern, situated above the croisée, with its turrets, its niches, its thirty odd windows, and its elegant cupola, is an architectural body that wins the admiration of all who behold it, either from within the church or from without, and which, strictly Byzantine in conception (though rendered peculiarly Spanish by the addition of certain elements which pertain rather to Gothic military art than to church architecture) , is unique—to the author's knowledge—in all Europe. ”

“ Nothing is, however, less true. The noblemen and monarchs of Galicia, Leon, and Oviedo—later of Castile, Navarra, and Aragon—were so many petty lords who, fighting continually among themselves, ruled over fragments of the defeated Visigothic kingdom. At times they called in the Arab enemy—to whom in the early centuries they paid a yearly tribute—to help them against the encroachments of their brother Christians. Consequently they lacked that spirit of patriotism and of national ambition which might have justified their claims to be called monarchs or rulers of Spain. ”

“ The Spaniard, psychologically speaking, is no artist; it is doubtful if illiterate and uneducated people are, and the average inhabitant of Spain forms no exception to this rule. His artistic talents are exclusively limited to music, for which he has an excessively fine ear. But beauty in the plastic arts and architecture leave him cold and indifferent; he is influenced by mass, weight, and quantity rather than by elegance or lightness, and consequently it is the same to him whether a cathedral be Gothic or{37} Romanesque, as long as it be dedicated to the deity of his choice. ”

“ What is more, tradition does not weigh heavily on its brow, and depress its inhabitants, as is the case in Lugo and Tuy and Santiago. The movement on the wharves, the continual coming and going of vessels of all sizes, commerce, industry, and other delights of modern civilization do not give the citizens leisure to ponder over the city's two thousand years, nor to preoccupy themselves about art problems. Moreover, the tourist who has come to Spain to visit Toledo and Sevilla hurries off inland, gladly leaving Corunna's streets to sailors and to merchants. ”

“ That same day—'twas in the fifteenth century—Boabdil el Chico surrendered the keys of Granada, and the Arabs fled, obeying the retreating star's call.
To-day they are waiting in the north of Africa for Sohail to move once again to the north: when she does so, they will rise again as a single man, and regain their passionately loved Alhambra, their beautiful kingdom of Andalusia.{23}
Tradition is fond of showing us a nucleus of fervent Christian patriots obliged by the invading Arab hordes to retire to the north-western corner of the Iberian peninsula. ”

“ In studying the evolutionary history of architecture in Spain, we must praise the tyranny of the Church which spent the millions of dollars of the poor in erecting such marvels as the cathedral of Toledo, etc., and we must ignore the sweating farmer, the terror-stricken Jew, the accused heretic, the disgraced courtier, the seafaring conquistador, who gave up their all to buy a few months' life, the respite of an hour. ”

“ The unusual height of the choir mars the ensemble of the interior; the stalls are lavishly carved, but do not inspire the same feeling of wonderful beauty as do those of Leon and Toledo, for instance; the reja or grille which separates the choir from the transept is one of the finest pieces of work in the cathedral, and, though massive, it is simple and elegant.
The retablo of the high altar, richly gilt,{185} is of the Renaissance period; the statues and groups which fill the niches are marvellously drawn and full of life. ”

“ The popular belief in Galicia is that in this crypt the cathedral reflects itself, towers and all, as it would in the limpid surface of a lake. Hardly; and yet the crypt is a nude copy of the ground floor above, with the corresponding naves and aisles and apsidal chapels. The height of the crypt is surprising, the architectural construction is pure Romanesque,—more so than that of the building itself,—and just beneath the high altar the shrine of St. James is situated where it was found in the ninth century. ”

“ Christian Spain, at the time of the death of the pious warrior-king San Fernando, was roughly divided into an eastern and a western half, into the kingdom of Castile (and Leon) and that of Aragon. The fusion of these two halves by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabel, two hundred years later, marks the date of the birth of Spain as a nation.
It is true, nevertheless, that the people had little or no voice in the arrangement of matters. They were indifferent to what their crowned rulers were doing, and ignorant of the growing power, wealth, and learning of the prelates. ”

“ Never was a city founded in a more picturesque spot. It almost resembles Göschenen in Switzerland, with the difference that whereas in the last named village a white-washed church rears its spire skyward, in Cuenca a large cathedral, rich in decorative accessories, and yet sombre and severe in its wealth, occupies the most prominent place in the town.
Of the origin of the city nothing is known. In the tenth and the eleventh centuries Conca{343} was an impregnable Arab fortress. ”

“ Doubtless there are many people who consider the building a marvel of beauty. As a specimen of Juan de Herrero's severe and majestic style, it is second to no other building excepting only that great masterwork, the Escorial, and perhaps parts of the Pillar at Saragosse. But as an art monument, where beauty and not Greco-Roman effects are sought, it is a failure.
The original plan of the building was a rectangle, 411 feet long by 204 wide, divided in its length by a nave and two aisles, and in its width by a broad transept situated exactly half-way between the apse and the foot of the church. ”

“ The reader's and tourist's attention has been called to the salient artistic points of a Spanish cathedral. They must be examined one by one, and they will be admired; the view of the ensemble will puzzle and amaze him, yet it will be wise for him not to criticize harshly the lack of unity of style. Frequently the choir stalls are ogival, the retablo Renaissance, the rejas plateresque, and the general decoration of columns, etc., of the most lavish grotesque. ”

“ Be that as it may, the fact is that the cathedral of Avila, seen from the east, west, or north, is a fortress building, a huge, unwieldy and anti-artistic composition of Romanesque, Gothic, and other elements. The western front, with its heavy tower to the north, and the lack of such to the south, appears more gloomy than ever on account of the obscure colour of the stone; the façade above the portal is of one of the most peculiar of artistic conceptions ever imagined ”

“ In the thirteenth century the monastical Church of San Emeterio was raised to a collegiate and in 1775 to a bishopric.
The same unimportance, from an art point of view, attaches itself to the cathedral{190} church. No one visits the city for the sake of the heavy, clumsy, and exceedingly irregularly built temple which stands on the highest part of the town. On the contrary, the great attraction is the fine beach of the Sardinero which lies to the west of the industrial town, and is, in summer, the Brighton of Spain. ”

“ Unluckily, but little attention has been{65} paid out of Spain to Mudejar art, and it is but little known. Even Spanish critics do not agree as to the national significance of this art, and it is a great pity, as unfortunately the country can point to no other art phenomena and claim them to be Spanish. How can it, when the nation had not as yet been born, and, once born, was to die almost simultaneously, like a moth that flies blindly and headlong into an intense flame? ”