John A. Gade

“ The audacious construction of Leon, which one wonders at from the square outside, becomes well-nigh incredible when seen from the nave. How is it possible that glass can support such a weight of stone? If Burgos was bold, this is insane. It looks as unstable as a house of cards, ready for a collapse at the first gentle breeze. Can fields of glass sustain three hundred feet of thrusts and such weights of stone? It is a culmination of the daring of Spanish Gothic. ”

“ THE best view of the spires of Burgos is from the ruined walls of the Castillo high above the city. From these crumbling ramparts, pierced and gouged by a thousand years of assault and finally rent asunder by the powder of the Napoleonic armies, you look directly down upon the mistress of the city and the sad and ardent plain. A stubbly growth, more like cocoa matting than grass, covers the unroofed floor beneath your feet. From this Castle, Ferdinand Gonzales ruled Castile, and here the Cid led Doña Zimena, and Edward I of England Eleanor of Castile, to the altar. ”

“ The vaulting and its development, the concentration of the thrust upon the piers and far-leaping flying buttresses are unquestionably on such a scale and of such character as to place it among the mightiest, if not the most pure and well-developed Gothic edifices. It is like a giant that knows not the strength of his limbs nor the possibilities in his mighty frame.
You do not feel the great height of the nave, owing to the immensity of all dimensions and the great circumference of the supporting piers. The nave and the double side aisles on each side are all of seven bays. ”

“ Some churches are strangely secular in their restlessness of feeling, while others breathe an atmosphere full of poetry, exaltation and the infinite peace of the Gospels. Seville's religion is for the humble and simple as much as for the grandee. It is not only the great cathedral church of the archbishop and bishop, the eleven dignitaries, forty canons, twenty prebendaries, twenty minor canons, twenty veinteneros, twenty chaplains and the host of a choir, but the beloved home of the poor, miserable, starving sons and daughters of Santa Maria de la Sede. ”

“ The artists range from Juan Sanches de Castro, "the morning star of Andalusia," in 1454, to Francisco Goya, the last of the great Spanish painters.
It is colossal, incongruous, mysterious, and elusive. It breathes the spirit of the middle ages with all their piety and loyalty to church and crown, and their unparalleled ardor in building religious temples. Gazing at it, you feel the same religious fervor that flung the arches of Amiens and Chartres high into the northern air and rounded the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore under Lombardy's azure vault. ”

“ In barren deserts, on parched and lonely plains, amid hovels crumbling to decay, still stand the monuments of Spain's greatness. But if nowhere else in the world can one find such glorious works of art surrounded by such squalor, let us draw from the past the promise of a revival in Spain of all that constitutes the true greatness of a nation. In the fourth century, Bishop Hosius of Cordova was, from every point of view, the first living churchman—Cordova itself became, under the Ammeyad Caliphs in the tenth century, the most civilized, the most learned, and the loveliest capital in Europe. ”

“ But San Salvador remains still unshaken in her strength,—a fortress within a cathedral, a splendid mailed arm with its closed fist of iron reaching through the outer bastions and threatening the plains. It is a bold cry of Christian defiance to enemies without. If ever there was an embodiment in architecture of the church militant, it is in the Cathedral of Avila. Approaching it by San Pedro, you look in vain for the church, for the great spire that loomed up from the distant hills and was pointed out as the holy edifice. ”

“ The moldings of all the openings interpenetrate, and the whole arcade has the air of intricate ingenuity so usual in Moorish work. Again, in the triforium of the inner aisle we find Moorish influence,—the cusping of the arcade is not enclosed within an arch but takes a distinct horseshoe outline, the lowest cusp near the cap spreading inward at the base. We see Moorish tiles, we find Moorish cupolas as in the Mozarabic chapel, and Moorish doorways, as the exquisite one leading into the Sala Capitular,—here and there and everywhere, we suddenly come upon details betraying the Arab intimacy. ”

“ It is sculpture, rich in effect, faithful in detail and of strong expression, admirably placed in relation to the masonry it ornaments. It has none of the whimsical irrelevancy to surroundings characterizing so much of the work to follow, nor its hasty execution. It is not meaningless carving added indefinitely and senselessly repeated, but every bit of it embellishes the position it occupies. Above the portal the stonework is broken and crowned by an exquisite, early rose window and the later, disproportionately high parapet of angels and free-standing quatrefoiled arches and ramps. ”

“ Leon may be called French,—yes, unquestionably{94} so, but that is no detraction or denial of her native "gentileza." She may be the very embodiment of French planning, her general dimensions like those of Bourges; her portals certainly recall those of Chartres, and the planning of her apsidal chapels, her bases, arches, and groining ribs, remind one of Amiens and Rheims; but nevertheless this exotic flower blooms as gloriously in a Spanish desert as those that sprang up amid the vineyards or in the Garden of France.
Leon is almost as old as the history of Spain. ”

“ The interior is built of a clear gray stone on which sparing employment of color in certain places is most effective. Thus in the bosses of the vaulting ribs throughout, in the capitals of the piers of nave and transept, in the very elaborate fan-vaulting of the Capilla Mayor, and in the soffits of nave-clerestory, the blue and gold contrasts finely with the cold gray surfaces. Renaissance medallions decorate the spandrels of the nave, but those of the side aisles bear the coats-of-arms of the Cathedral and the City of Salamanca. A differently designed fan-vaulting spreads over every chapel. ”

“ The ornamentation of the lower wall surfaces is in contrast to the superstructure, barren or meaningless. On the plain masonry of the lower walls of the Constable's Chapel stretch gigantic coats-of-arms. Knights support their heads as well as the arms of the nobles interred within. Life-sized roaring lions stand valiantly beside their wheels like immortally faithful mariners. Above, an exquisitely carved, German Gothic balustrade acts as a base for the double clerestory. The angle pinnacles are surrounded by the Fathers of the Church and crowned by angels holding aloft the symbol of the Cross. ”

“ With this we find interwoven in places the sparkling, jewel-like intricacy and play of light and shade so natural to the Moorish artisan, and the sombre, overpowering solemnity of the warlike Spanish cavalier.
It is necessary for a people at all times to find expression for its æsthetic life. Architecture, like literature, reflects the sentiments and tendencies of a nation's mind. As truly as Don Quixote, Don Juan, or the Cid express them, so do the stories told by Toledo, Leon, or Burgos. ”

“ The third and fourth bays of the nave contained the choir.
As one enters the church, there is a consciousness of joy and order. The stone surfaces are just sufficiently{181} warmed and mellowed by the glorious light from above. The piers are very massive and semicircular in plan; the foliage at their heads underneath the vaulting is so delicate and unpronounced that it scarcely counts as capitals. The walls of the chapels in the outer aisles, as well as round the ambulatory, are penetrated by narrow, round-headed windows, as timid and attenuated as those of an early Romanesque edifice ”

“ At every corner, one runs into some detail of historical or artistic interest,—history and architecture here wander hand in hand.
Huge, wooden doors, closely studded with scallop nails as big as a man's fist, proud escutcheons of noble races lost to all save Spain's history; charming glimpses of interior courtyards and gardens glittering fresh in their emerald coloring, and sweet with the scent of orange blossoms; Gothic crenelations, Renaissance ironwork and railing, and Moorish capitals and ornamentation, all pell-mell, the styles of six centuries often appearing in the same building. ”

“ The angles are marked by bold crockets. Above, crowning the apex, perches the cock, gayly facing whatever part of the heavens the wind blows from. There is an everlasting triumph in it all, reminding one not a little of that won at a later date in Santa Maria del Fiore. Salamanca holds the religious triumph of a militant age; Florence, the sacred glory of an artistic one. The lofty aspiration, boldly hewn in the Spanish fortress, is no less admirable than the constructive genius rounded in Brunelleschi's dome. ”

“ Above the pendentives, forming the transition of the octagon, comes a double frieze of armorial bearings (those of Burgos and Charles V) and inscriptions, and a double clerestory, separated and supported by classical balustraded passages; the window splays and heads are a complete mass of carving and decorations. The vaulting itself contains within its bold ribs and segments an infinite variety of stars, as if one should see the panes of heaven covered with frosty patterns of a clear winter morning. ”

“ Burgos Cathedral is built upon a hillside, her walls hewn out of and climbing the sides of the mountain, {37}making it necessary either from north or south to approach her through long flights of stairs. What she loses in freedom and access, she certainly gains in picturesqueness. She is flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of the city, scaling its heights like a great mother and drawing after her the surrounding houses which nestle to her sides. ”

“ Rounding the church to the south, we find the view obstructed by the cloisters and sacristy; only the façade of the transept, ascended from the lower ground by a flight of steps, remains visible. The southern doorway is quite denuded, and even its buttresses rise without as much as a corbel to soften their lines. When one has, however, dodged through the tortuous, narrow, malodorous streets and come out opposite the apse and northern flank, the whole bulk{187} of the logical organic body of the church becomes visible with its larger squat and higher lofty domes towering into the blue. ”

“ The open-work parapets which crown the roofs; the graceful lanterns of the eight winding stairs that ascend in the corners to the vaults and galleries; the flying buttresses that spring lightly from aisle to nave, as the jets of a cascade from cliff to cliff; the slender pinnacles that cap them; the proportions of the arms of the transept and of the buttresses supporting the side walls ”

“ The end of the style in the two countries is totally different—one expiring in a mass of glass and tracery, the other, in a meaningless jumble of ornamentation, of cusped and broken and elliptical arches and carving incredible in its delicacy. One can scarcely believe it to be stone. The Spanish, though not wild in its extravagance, yet lacks all sense of restraint. The front is composed of a screenwork of three huge arches, within which three portals leading to the aisles form the main composition, the whole crowned by a series of crocketed pinnacles. ”

“ Even the furniture carries out the tremendous boldness and grandeur of the edifice. Bells, choir books, candles, altar chests, are all on the same grandiose scale. It has true majesty in its simplicity{213} of direct, honest appeal, and a proud unconsciousness, because it is free from the artificiality which is invariably vulgar. The truly beautiful woman needs none of the devices of art. The shafts and vaults and string courses in Seville's Cathedral need little ornamentation to bring out their beauty; they are in fact as effective as the elaborate carving of Salamanca and Segovia. ”

“ Seville ranks high among the churches of Spain in the beauty of its carving. The stone screen that forms the rear of the retablo is filled with admirable Gothic terra-cotta statues, saints, virgins, bishops, martyrs and prelates executed with a little of the curious rigidity of the Dutch School still awaiting its Renaissance emancipation, but with faces full of holy devotion. ”

“ Standing by itself is the ancient and severe church, where many a knight-templar kept his last vigil before turning his back on the plains of Castile, and apart sleeps the monastery where Torquemada was once prior. They all crumble golden brown against the horizon.
Many a bloody fray or revolution upset the city during the middle ages. The minority of Alfonso XI witnessed one of the worst. The revolt which broke out in so many of the Spanish cities against the Emperor Charles V, proved most fatal to the Cathedral of Segovia. ”

“ The Constable is clad in full Florentine armor, his hands clasping his sword and his mantle about his shoulders. The carving of the flesh and the veining, and especially the strong knuckles of the hands, are astonishing. The fat cushions of the forefinger and thumb seem to swell and the muscles to contract in their grip on the cross of the hilt. The robe of his spouse, Doña Mencia de Mendoza, is richly studded with pearls, her hand clasps a rosary, while, on the folds of her skirt, her little dog lies peacefully curled up. ”

“ The oldest masonry, with its delicate tracery of four arches and three trefoiled roses to each arcade, seems to have been virtually eaten away by time. New leaves and moldings are being set to-day to replace the old. The pure white, native stone, so easy to carve into spirited crockets and vigorous strings similar to the old, stands out beside the sooty, time-worn blocks, as the fresh sweetness of a child's cheek laid against the weather-beaten furrows of the grand-parent. ”

“ Taken as a whole, the façade is bald and void of charm. It is neither good nor especially faulty, of a certain strength, but without interest or merit. It is logically subdivided by five pronounced buttresses marking the nave, side aisles and outer row of chapels. Their relative heights and the lines of their roofing are clearly defined. To the north, a rather insignificant turret terminates the façade, while to the south rises the lofty tower, three hundred and forty-five feet above the whole mountain of masonry, the most conspicuous landmark in the landscape of Segovia. ”

“ The world-empire of which Ferdinand had dreamed, and which his grandson almost possessed, placed untold wealth and the art of every kingdom at the disposal of Spain.
Granada Cathedral has a strange exterior, meaningless except in certain portions, which are essentially Spanish. To the Granadines it is as marvelous as Saint Peter's to the Romans. Its view is obstructed on all sides by a maze of crumbling walls, yellow hovels, and shop fronts shockingly modern and out of keeping. It is all very, very provincial. ”

“ They are Renaissance in form, but also Gothic in detail and feeling. Like the masts of a great harbor, an innumerable forest of carved and stony trunks rise from every angle, buttress, turret, and pier. In among them, facing their carved trunks and crowning their tops, peeping out from the myriads of stony branches, stands a heavenly legion of saints and martyrs. Crowned and celestial kings and angels people this petrified forest of such picturesque and exuberant beauty. ”

“ In and out of these many entrances the populace{210} stream, to worship, to whisper, to gossip, to rest, to bargain, to beg, and to make love. The whole drama of life in its conglomerate population goes on within the walls of the Cathedral. It is the most frequented thoroughfare, where the people enter as often with a song on their lips as with a prayer. The great edifice with all the ceremonial of its religious services is woven into their life, as is the sound of the guitars and castanets that echo within its portals and courtyards. ”