SCULPTURED CAPITALS
Favourite subjects--Plain capitals in English cathedrals--The
foliage--The trumpet pattern--Capitals in the gallery--New
elements--The arcades at Vézelay--Original but not realistic--The
zenith of ornamental sculpture--Lay schools--Art becomes a dead
language--The abacas--Norman sculpture in England--The palace of
Gelmirez--St. Joseph’s Day--The crypt church--Its form and
architecture--Sculpture of its capitals--Stone flowers--Celtic
dances--The Capilla de Gelmirez--Sculptured scenes from daily
life--The Sala capitular
The capital of every shaft introduced into the design of the _Pórtico de
Gloria_ is, as we have already remarked, exquisitely sculptured. We have
tried to describe some of the more noticeable ones, but there are also
interesting subjects depicted on many of the smaller and less prominent
capitals. On the capital of a pillar attached to the eastern wall of the
narthex, near the statue of Esther, we find little monsters, winged
dragons with horses’ feet. Others again have exuberant foliage, amongst
which there sometimes appears the profile of a beautiful female head. A
favourite subject is a couple of harpies with women’s heads (a band
across the forehead and flowing hair), the bodies are those of birds
varying in size and type. On a capital opposite the southern or “Pagan”
arch is depicted a poor unfortunate mortal with a tormenting monster on
either side of him; one of these is engaged in pulling out his tongue
with a long pair of tongs, and the other is trying to strangle him with
a rope, one end of which he has strung round the victim’s neck. Though
the theme of the _Pórtico_ may not be the Last Judgment, it must, I
think, be admitted that these creatures have a very infernal appearance.
On another capital are depicted two hideous harpies with equine heads,
and serpents’ tails which coil round their carrion-like feet. These
horrid animals glare down upon the spectator with the most fiendish
expression imaginable.
In some of our finest cathedrals the capitals are often very little
carved, or not carved at all. At Winchester we
[Illustration: WINDOW IN THE PALACE OF GELMIREZ]
[Illustration: ARCHWAYS IN THE PALACE OF GELMIREZ]
[Illustration: SCULPTURED CAPITALS IN THE CHAPEL BENEATH THE CATHEDRAL
OF SANTIAGO]
find in the north transept (1079-93 A.D.) the so-called cushion capital,
which Parker describes as a “plain cubicle mass with the lower angles
rounded off, forming a sort of rude cushion shape.” There are plain
capitals in the arcade of Canterbury, and in the crypt, but these last
were evidently intended to be sculptured after they had been put into
place, for some are finished and others are half-finished. At
Westminster too we also find plain capitals, but it is evident that the
artist who superintended the sculpture of Santiago Cathedral meant to
have every one sculptured. As Lopez Ferreiro has remarked, it is very
rare to find a church with such a variety of carved capitals. Counting
those of the windows and side chapels, there are nearly a thousand, all
completed with the most perfect work and finish. In the interior of the
cathedral the capitals are almost all of the best granite, but they look
like sculptured marble; some of the figures in them have eyes of jet.
The foliage of many is as fine and delicate as lace work. “No epoch of
architecture,” wrote Viollet le Duc, “has produced such a variety of
capitals as the twelfth century.” The sculptors truly seem to have
looked upon their work as a labour of love and devotion.
Lopez Ferreiro believes that the capitals of Santiago Cathedral were
completed before the close of the eleventh century, and therefore before
the epoch at which the French capitals attained to their fullest
perfection.[165] Some of them certainly were, but I am a little
sceptical about the best ones. Those which resemble the early capitals
with rude volutes, such as one sees in the White Tower, London (1081
A.D.), might well date from the eleventh century, and those in the
_Puerta de los Platerias_ may be of the same date. But this question is
worthy of more careful study than has yet been devoted to it. Some of
the capitals of the _Pórtico de Gloria_ are very Byzantine in their
execution, as are those of the _Puerta de los Platerias_. Here we see
interlacings, a sort of basket work ornamented with dots like pearl
_passementérie_ and the trumpet pattern, which are certainly indicative
of the sculpture of the Eastern Empire. There is a great deal of this
work in Ireland, and for a long time patriotic Irish archæologists clung
to the belief that these twistings and plaitings and spirals were of
purely Celtic origin and typical of Celtic art,[166] but that idea is
now exploded. “There is no doubt,” writes Miss Stoke,[167] “that in the
history of Christian art in Ireland we see two currents meeting, one
Byzantine the other Latin,” and she then points out that similar
designs, “like regularly plaited twigs,” are to be found in the church
of St. Clement in Rome, which dates from 650 A.D.; where these twigs are
plaited together (a case rare in Ireland) they are intended as a symbol
of the Holy Trinity, the Three in One, as the inscription
_Unitas--Trinitas_ found with it in France indicates.
To any one who is fond of beautiful sculpture a walk round the gallery
which encircles the cathedral of Santiago is nothing short of a delight.
The arches of windows through which we look down into the naves are
supported by carved capitals of the most perfect workmanship; there are
many hundreds of them, and there are not two alike.
Frenchmen claim that all this beautiful work was done under the
supervision of monks from Cluny; if not, indeed, by them, they argue
that the same class of finely sculptured foliage is to be found at
Toulouse and elsewhere in Southern France. Yet, according to Viollet le
Duc, it was after 1130 that the monks of Cluny began to turn to Nature
for fresh ideas. They then sought for new elements, and these they found
in the vegetation of their own fields, and it occurred to them that,
instead of arranging canthus leaves stiffly and conventionally, like
those on the friezes and capitals of Syria, each sculptor should be at
liberty to gather such foliage as grew in his own neighbourhood, and
arrange it as his own taste should dictate. It was towards 1160 that
these monks completed their arcades at Vézelay, and displayed their
capitals sculptured with an elegant suppleness that nothing has ever
equalled. The general form of these capitals, like those at Santiago,
was Roman, but the grouping and adjustment of the flowers of the fields
are managed with such grace and skill that the cleverest of modern
sculptors would find it hard to compete with them.
As at Vézelay, so at Santiago, there is such varied grouping of the
foliage as could only have been arrived at by each individual sculptor
drawing his inspiration from the tender sprays themselves and working
out his own fancy. Towards the close of the twelfth century the mass of
traditional
[Illustration: SCULPTURE IN THE REFECTORY OF THE PALACE OF GELMIREZ,
SANTIAGO
PHOTOS. BY VARELA]
ornamentation such as interlacings, and billets, began to disappear and
their place was filled by local vegetation. There is plenty of this new
decorative sculpture in the choir of _Notre Dame de Paris_, which was
begun in 1163 and finished before 1190, the work of the lay-school,
_l’Isle de France_. The sculptors went out into the fields to search for
the leaves and buds that would best suit their purpose. Every man wished
his block of stone to become a capital whose beauty distinguished it
from all the rest.[168] The work of this period is wonderfully original,
but it is far from being realistic.
The general composition of the Paris capitals resembles that of those of
Santiago Cathedral, but is not nearly so beautiful. The foliage, too,
that grew in the neighbourhood of Paris, and was adapted by the
sculptors there, is quite different from the foliage of the Santiago
capitals, which seem to have been copied from the cabbages which form
the staple food of the Gallegan peasants. These cabbages shoot up with
long thick stems more than a yard above ground before they spread out
their long, curling leaves, and more nearly resemble wild bracken than
English cabbages. The fact that the leaves on the Santiago capitals seem
to be full of sap and lifelike, must likewise be due to the sculptor’s
keen observation and study of the original plant as it grew in its
native soil. Viollet le Duc says that it was in _Notre Dame de Paris_
that this stone vegetation first unfolded its leaves, and that other
sculptors of northern France took thence their ideas; but it was not
till some years later that they learned to represent the leaves as they
grew. It needed consummate art to form, out of many parts, one combined
whole which should resemble an individual and real plant or animal; even
the imaginary and fantastic animals that twelfth-century artists
represented as creeping out from between the foliage looked real and
lifelike. The zenith of ornamental sculpture, in the opinion of Viollet
le Duc, was reached at that moment when Roman tradition had disappeared,
and when the search after reality had not yet imposed its exigencies
upon the sculptor. This was the most brilliant period of the French
school, and it lasted for about twenty-five years, between 1199 and
1215. The new school spread its influence into every province of France
and even into foreign countries, but at the same time the work of each
province preserved a certain individuality of its own. In Bourgogne
there was a tendency even to exaggerate nature.
When the lay schools were formed, when art had come forth from the
monasteries and taken its place in the family and in the workshop of the
artisan, the members of each corporation were free to do as they pleased
with their blocks of marble or stone, they had no written rules to
follow; the father taught his son, and the master explained his method
to his disciple or apprentice. It seems to have been their first care to
break with the past, and to study nature in the woods and fields in
search of fresh inspiration. “Alas,” cries Viollet le Duc, “that in Art
progress should lead us to a zenith and then force us to descend!”
Sculpture falls at last through her very zeal for reality.
The capitals of Santiago like those in France were sculptured before the
mason lifted them to their place. Each workman was responsible for the
work of his own capital, and we often find the name of the proud
sculptor cut into the stone.
But how did such perfect sculpture spring up in this remote town of
Galicia, contemporaneously with, if not earlier than, the best French
work? “Pour former l’artiste,” says the writer we have been quoting, “il
est besoin d’un public appréciateur, pénétrable au langage de l’art;
pour former le public, il faut un art comprehensible, en harmonie âvec
les idées du moment.” And what sort of a public had Santiago in those
days. Was it not one of the most brilliant of the world’s intellectual
centres? All this exquisite sculpture was produced during Galicia’s
second Golden Age. In the Middle Ages there was a far stronger tie
between the artist and the public than there is in our day. “Le moyen
age n’aurait pas fait un si grand nombre de sculpteurs pour plaire a’
une coterie, l’art s’était democratisé autant qu’il pent l’être.” In our
day art speaks only to the few, the chosen and the cultivated few, with
money in their pockets. It is a dead language to four-fifths of the
world, not because the people have rejected it, but because it has
neglected the people.
One of the glories of the lay schools of the thirteenth century, remarks
Viollet le Duc, is the way in which they helped to spread art among the
people. From the moment that you begin to teach the people that art is
only for a caste, a select few, you cannot continue to spread it abroad.
You cannot command taste. Art is a tree which can only spread and grow
when it is given fair play. “Le régime féodal n’avait ni Acadèmies ni
conseils de batiments civils, ni comités protecteurs des Arts.” In the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries
[Illustration: SCULPTURE IN THE CHAPEL BENEATH SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL]
[Illustration: SCULPTURE IN THE CHAPEL BENEATH SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE CHAPEL BENEATH SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL
PHOTOS. BY VARELA]
there were no prizes, no medals to strive for, but art lived and
flourished everywhere.
Many of the capitals in Santiago Cathedral are decorated with groups of
animals, birds, harpies, dragons, in endless variety, while a few,
especially those in the gallery above the apse, are true to the old
Byzantine design of plaits and bands and dots; some again of the later
style have pods full of peas or beans instead of foliage, and in others
the foliage is curling daintily at the tip like ostrich feathers. The
scalloped capital, the most common of all in England in the first half
of the twelfth century, is not to be found in Santiago. The abacas is
always square in Galicia; as far as I remember, it is also square in
French Gothic capitals as well as in Norman, but in English Gothic it is
generally round.[169] In England, too, there has been much discussion as
to how the use of this sculpture was first introduced. Sir Gilbert Scott
thought he could trace it from Byzantium through the south of France;
and Parker attributes its introduction into England to the Crusaders in
the latter half of the twelfth century, but Viollet le Duc scoffs at the
idea. “Soldiers,” he says, “do not usually find a place for art in their
knapsacks.” “We have seen,” writes Parker, “by the testimony of Gervase,
that the chisel was not used in the “Glorious choir of Conrad” at
Canterbury, which was built between 1096 and 1130, and an examination of
the old work proves the exactness of the statement; all the sculptured
ornament on the old work is shallow, and such as could well be executed
with an axe, which is not a bad tool in the hands of a skilful workman,
and is still commonly used in many parts of England and France.... The
chisel is only required for deep-cutting, and especially under-cutting,
and that we do not find on any buildings of ascertained date before
1120.” Parker speaks of some very rich Norman sculpture on the capitals
of the little old church of Shobdon in Herefordshire, built about 1150
by Oliver de Merlemond: the founder went on a pilgrimage to the shrine
of St. James of Compostella in Spain while this church was being built.
Parker thinks he must have brought home with him some drawings, or a
remembrance of what he had seen on his way through France, and applied
this knowledge to the new building. He adds, “It would be a curious
matter of research to ascertain where he found it.” It is much more
likely, in my opinion, that he got his ideas from the sculpture of St.
James, _i.e._ Santiago, though I do not remember seeing anything exactly
like the illustration given in Parker’s book. The sculpture of the
Santiago[170] capitals bears close inspection, like those of St. Sernin,
in France, but at the same time it is of a kind that looks well from a
distance, which is not the case with those of St. Sernin.
Mateo did not erect the _Pórtico de Gloria_ until after he had completed
the so-called “Palace of Gelmirez” adjoining the cathedral, and also the
little church which has been erroneously called “_la Catedral Vieja_”
(the old cathedral). In both of these there is contemporary sculpture of
great interest and merit. Underneath the principal entrance to the
cathedral, and below the flight of steps by which the principal entrance
is reached, there is another entrance in the western wall, that of the
little church, or crypt, beneath the _Pórtico de Gloria_, which is now
called the chapel of St. Joseph. An eighteenth-century circular arch,
broken by a coat of arms, forms the head of the doorway, on either side
of which, on pedestals, stand the figures of two knights in armour work
of the fifteenth century. As soon as we have entered we perceive that
the little church and the portico above are the work of the same
architect, and, consequently, of the same period.
On St. Joseph’s Day this little church stands open from early morning
till late at night, and on the Eve of St. Joseph’s Day it is also open;
but throughout the rest of the year travellers invariably find it
closed. Even now it is very seldom visited by travellers as in the days
of Street, who discovered its existence by a mere accident.
On entering the door the visitor confronts a relief figure, somewhat
under life size, of St. James the Less, the garments of which are highly
coloured, red and blue. St. James holds in his hand a scroll on which
his name is written. In front of the statue is a very ancient baptismal
font with a thick stem. Sanchez calls this statue Byzantine, but some
think it to be Mateo’s work. Opposite the entrance, at the end of a
modern passage, about three yards in length, is a stout clustered pier
(A) from which spring three arches, one to the north, one to the south,
and one to the east; the first two give entrance as it were to twin
naves leading to the high altar, the third arch joins the clustered pier
(A) to another and yet more robust clustered pier (B), an elephantine
one, in fact, which in its turn also throws out three arches to north,
south, and east. A third and smaller clustered pier (C) is joined to the
second (B) by the last mentioned arch. An aisle running round the third
clustered pier forms a
[Illustration: SCULPTURED CAPITALS EXACTLY BENEATH THE CENTRAL ARCH OF
THE PORTICO DE GLORIA IN SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL
PHOTO. BY VARELA]
[Illustration: THE PALACE OF GELMIREZ, SANTIAGO
PHOTO. BY VARELA]
circular apse in which are the chief altar, and an altar to the Virgin
and to St. James on either side.
The form of the little church is that of a Latin cross; but the three
stout piers, A, B, and C, taking up so much room that, being planted in
a line with one another in the centre, they prevent the church from
having any central nave; they give it instead a couple of twin naves,
and make it look like two churches. Street remarked with regard to this
church that its arrangement was very peculiar. The fact of the matter
is, that Mateo had to build strong and lasting foundations for his
_portico_ to rest on; and the crypt church had to be adapted to them as
best it might. From the clustered pier (C) springs the arches which form
a vaulting to the aisle which encircles it, tores spring out over the
aisle like branches from a weeping ash. The inner side of the arches are
decorated with sculpture from the hand of Mateo, as also are the
capitals of the shafts which adorn the clustered piers. The capitals
round the central pier (B) are marvellously beautiful, and those round
the outer walls of the edifice are every one of them worthy of careful
inspection. It is so dark that without good artificial light the work
cannot be satisfactorily examined, and even with a good light a couple
of hours are required to see all properly.
The vaulting of the inner sides of the arches has large rosettes to join
the tores together, but the most remarkable of all the rosettes are
those which line the inner side of the arches over the twin naves. Never
have I seen such a variety of stone flowers in so small a space. The
accompanying photograph taken by limelight will give my readers only a
slight idea of these wonderful rows of flowers plucked from the stalks,
but the pen here is helpless. We have nothing like this in England; our
ball-flower, our four-leaved flower, our trefoil are hideous in
comparison. The photograph, though it only shows a part of one wall,
shows twelve flowers, every one different, every one perfected with
scrupulous care.
Now let us turn to the capitals; the variety of foliage they represent
is simply endless. They are remarkable for the energy, the vigour of
their design. Here on a side capital is a man up in a vine, cutting down
the grapes with a crescent-shaped sickle: there are the real vine-leaves
of Galicia, and the sickle in the man’s hand is the very one still used
by the Gallegan peasants. On another side of the same capital are two
persons with large bunches of grapes at their feet. On another is a man
grasping a wild beast by the throat; the man’s head, which has gone,
should form a corner of the capital. But perhaps the most interesting
capital of all is that with the two maidens gracefully dancing with
raised arms an old Spanish dance. Some have thought this represented the
daughter of Herodias, and that subject has been depicted on a capital;
there is one in the Toulouse Museum,[171] but others believe it to be a
scene taken from the life of the day. That very kind of dancing still
takes place on the village greens of Galicia.
In a niche over the chief altar is a very old stone image, supposed to
have belonged to the original church built over the body of St. James.
The two slender marble shafts to the left and right of the niche have
capitals with Byzantine sculpture; their style is simple and elegant,
and quite distinct from any of the other work. On either side of these
plain shafts are a couple of shafts covered with carving in spiral
bands; ugly modern capitals replace their original ones, but the
pedestals are intact and worthy of note. Some think these four shafts
are among the earliest sculptures in Galicia, and date from the end of
the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century. The frontal of the altar
is covered with a geometrical design, a kind of diaper pattern; some of
its original red and gold colouring is still preserved. The design
consists of a red braid with dots (pearls and a gold border arranged
geometrically on a white background), and joined by stone rosettes with
gold centres. It has been suggested that this altar is a sculptured
sarcophagus adapted, but it is rather too deep for a sarcophagus.
The so-called Palace of Gelmirez was not built till the end of the
twelfth century, or perhaps the beginning of the thirteenth, but the
style of its architecture is the same as that of Mateo’s school. It is
built on to the cathedral to the right of the western façade. We entered
it, by special permit, by way of the modern archiepiscopal library, and
descended to the _capilla de Gelmirez_. The banded imposts on which the
arches and early Gothic vaulting of this chapel rest are ornamented with
remarkable sculpture, quite different from any we have noticed in the
cathedral. Musicians with various quaint instruments are represented as
singing the praises of the Most High: angels, birds, and rosettes adorn
the groined vaults. In the adjoining refectory, separated from the
chapel by a huge pier, the sculptures represent scenes from the everyday
life of Santiago in the twelfth century. Here a Gallegan lady is seated
at dinner with a young girl on either side of her: a servant stands
close by with a dish of eatables in her hand. We see people carrying all
manner of viands, bread, fruits, etc. As Sanchez has remarked, this must
be the refectory, it could be nothing else with so many eatables about.
All the faces wear a look of placid contentment, which centuries have
not been able to obliterate. The musical instruments we see in the
capilla are supposed to be representations of the ones that were used by
the minstrels of the twelfth century. They are quite different from
those of the four-and-twenty elders in the _Pórtico de Gloria_.
There has been some dispute as to the original plan of the archbishop’s
palace, and an architect of my acquaintance is devoting a good deal of
study to the subject. With him I went upstairs to look through the
windows of the notary’s office at the now sealed up old windows of one
of the original lateral façades. These windows are in the Romanesque
style, very like those in the transept of Winchester Cathedral, which
are also eleventh-century work, only that the latter have two windows
under each arch. The arches here are double, the inner arch resting on
slender shafts. It is a simple and at the same time a noble style of
window. We then went down into the basement to look at the long vaulted
room below the capilla--probably an old Sala Capitular--and numerous
bits of stone ornament, archwayed passages, all dating from the eleventh
century. It was down here that Gelmirez established his mint, by the
special permission of Alfonso VI. (1107)[172] in order that money might
be forthcoming to meet the expense of completing the cathedral.