structures in Spain, a crowning glory to the heavenly shrine. It is at
once a mountain of patience and a burst of Spanish pomp and pride. It is
the labor of giants, daringly executed and lavishly decorated. "The work
of angels," said Philip II. Nothing less could have called forth such an
exclamation from those acrimonious lips and jaded eyes. The men who
designed and erected it were the best known in Spain. There was Philip,
the Burgundian sculptor with exquisite and indefatigable chisel, who had
come to Spain in the train of the Emperor. Vallejo, one of the famous
council that sat at Salamanca, had with Castanela erected the triumphal
arch which appeased Charles's wrath kindled against the citizens of
Burgos, and is even to-day, after the Cathedral, the city's most
familiar landmark. In the year 1567, twenty-eight years after the
falling of the first lantern, the new one towered completed in its
place. It was a magnificent attempt at a blending, or rather a
reconciliation, of the Renaissance and the Gothic. There is the
character of one and the form of the other. Gothic trefoil arches and
traceries are carried by classical columns. Renaissance balustrades and
panels intermingle with crockets and bosses, and Florentine panels and
statues with Gothic canopies. They are so interwoven that the careful
student of architecture feels himself in a nightmare of styles and
different centuries. It was of course an undertaking doomed to failure.
The outline is octagonal. 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.
Théophile Gautier's description of it is interesting as an expression of
the effect it produced on a man of artistic emotions rather than trained
architectural feeling: "En levant la tête," he says, "on aperçoit une
espèce de dôme formé par l'intérieur de la tour,--c'est un groupe de
sculpture, d'arabesques, de statues, de colonettes, de nervures, de
lancettes, de pendentifs, a vous donner le vertige. On regarderait deux
ans qu'on n'aurait pas tout vu. C'est touffu comme un chou, fenestré
comme une truelle à poisson; c'est gigantesque comme une pyramide et
délicat comme une boucle d'oreille de femme, et l'on ne peut comprendre
qu'un semblable filigrane puisse se soutenir en l'air depuis des
siècles."
[Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS
Lantern over crossing]
The work immediately around and underneath this gigantic effort is
really the earliest part of the church, for, as was usual, the portion
indispensable for services was begun first. The transepts, the abutting
vaults, the southern and possibly the northern entrance fronts,
undoubtedly all belong to the work carried so rapidly forward by Bishop
Maurice's contagious enthusiasm. The work of the transepts is very
similar to that in the nave, but, in the former, one obtains really a
much finer view of the receding bays north and south than in the nave
with its choir obstruction. The huge rose of the south transept, placed
directly under the arch of the vaulting, is a splendid specimen of a
Gothic wheel. Its tracery is composed of a series of colonettes
radiating from centre to circumference, every two of which form, as it
were, a separate window tracery of central mullion, two arches and upper
rose. The other windows of the transepts are, barring their later
alterations, typically thirteenth-century Gothic, high and narrow with
colonettes in their jambs. While the glazing of the great southern rose
is a perfect burst of glory, that of the northern transept arm is later
and very mediocre.
There is a little chapel opening to the east out of the northern
transept arm which is full of interest from the fact that it belongs to
the original, early thirteenth-century structure. Probably there was a
corresponding one in the southern arm, with groining equally remarkable.
The northern transept arm is filled by the great Renaissance "golden
staircase" leading to the Puerta de la Coroneria, now always closed. It
must have been a magnificent spectacle to see the purple and scarlet
robes of priest and prelate sweep down the divided arms of the stair
uniting in the broad flight at the bottom. Such an occasion was the
marriage in 1268 of the Infante Ferdinand, son of Alfonso the Wise, to
Blanche of France, a niece of Saint Louis. The learned monarch ever had
a lavish hand, and he spared no expense to dazzle his distinguished
guests, among whom were the King of Aragon and Philip, heir to the
French throne. Ferdinand was first armed chevalier by his father, and
the marriage was then celebrated in the Cathedral of Burgos with greater
pomp and magnificence than had ever before been seen in Spain.
The gilt metal railing is as exquisite in workmanship as in design,
carried out by Diego de Siloé, who was the architect of the Cathedral in
the beginning of the sixteenth century. There is also a lovely door in
the eastern wall of the southern transept, now leading to the great
cloisters. The portal itself is early work of the fourteenth century,
with the Baptism of Christ in the tympanum, the Annunciation and David
and Isaiah in the panels, all of early energy and vitality, as full of
feeling as simplicity. And the extraordinary detail of the wooden doors
themselves, executed a century and a half later by order of the
quizzical-looking old Bishop of Acuna, now peacefully sleeping in the
chapel of Santa Anna, is as beautiful an example of wood-carving as we
have left us from this period. If Ghiberti's door was the front gate of
paradise, this was certainly worthy to be a back gate, and well worth
entering, should the front be found closed.
The choir occupies at present as much as one half the length of nave
from crossing to western front, or the length of three bays. With its
massive Corinthian colonnade, masonry enclosure and rejas rising to the
height of the triforium, it is a veritable church within a church. The
stalls, mostly Philip of Burgundy's work from about the year 1500,
surround the old tomb of the Cathedral's noble founder. As usual, the
carvings are elaborate scenes from Bible history and saintly
lore,--over the upper stalls, principally from the old Testament, and
above the lower, from the New.
A very remarkable family of German architects have left their indelible
stamp upon Burgos Cathedral. In 1435 a prominent Hebrew of the tribe of
Levi died as Bishop of the See, and was succeeded by his son, Alfonso de
Cartagena. Alfonso not only followed in his father's footsteps, but
became one of the most renowned churchmen in Spain during the early
years of Ferdinand of Aragon. And he looks it too, as he lies to-day
near the entrance to his old palace, in fine Flemish lace, mitre covered
with pearls, and sparkling, jewelled crozier. As Chancellor of Spain,
Alfonso was sent to the Council of Basle, and thereafter, like his
predecessor Maurice, he returned to Burgos, bringing with him visions of
church-building such as he had never dreamed of before and the architect
Juan de Colonia.
The Plateresque style was rapidly developing towards the effulgence so
in harmony with Spanish taste. Interwoven and fused with the work Juan
was familiar with from his native country, he and his sons, Simon and
Diego, encouraged and royally assisted by Alfonso and his successor, D.
Luis of Acuna, set about to erect some of the most striking and
wonderful portions of Burgos Cathedral,--the towers of the façade, the
first lantern and the Chapel of the Constable.
The Chapel of Don Pedro Fernandez de Velasco, Count of Haro and
Constable of Castile, was not erected with pious intent, but to the
immortal fame of the Constable and his wife. In the centre of the
chapel-church on a low base lie the Count and Countess. The white
Carrara of the figures is strangely vivid against the dark marble on
which they rest, and all is colored by the sunlight striking down
through the stained glass. It is very regal. 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 plan of the chapel is an irregular hexagon. It should have been
octagonal, but the western sides have not been carried through and end
in a broad-armed vestibule, which by rights should be the radial chapel
upon the extreme eastern axis of the whole church. Above the vaulting
early German pendentives are inserted in the three faulty and five true
angles in order to bring the plan into the octagonal vaulting form. The
builder seems almost to have made himself difficulties that he might
solve them by a tour-de-force. A huge star-fish closes the vault. The
recumbent statues face an altar. The remaining sides are subdivided by
typically Plateresque band-courses and immense coats-of-arms of the Haro
and Mendoza families. The upper surfacing is broken by a clerestory with
exquisite, old stained glass. It is melancholy to see tombs of such
splendid execution crushed by meaningless, empty display, out of all
scale, vulgar, gesticulating, and theatrical, especially so when one
notices with what extraordinary mechanical skill much of the detail has
been carved. It thrusts itself on your notice even up to the vaulting
ribs, which the architect, not satisfied to have meet, actually crossed
before they descend upon the capitals below.
[Illustration: Photo by J. Lacoste, Madrid
CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS
The Golden Staircase]
The reja closing the chapel off from the apse is among the finest of the
Renaissance, the masterpiece of Cristobal Andino, wrought in the year
1523. Curiously enough, the supporters of the shield above might have
been modeled by Burne-Jones instead of the mediæval smith.
The interior could not always have been as light and cheerful as at
present, for probably all the windows were more or less filled with
stained glass from the workshops of the many "vidrieros" for which
Burgos was so renowned that even other cathedral cities awarded her the
contracts for their glazing. The foreign masters of Burgos were
accustomed to see their arches and sculpture mellowed and illumined by
rainbow lights from above, and surely here too it was of primary
importance.
After the horrible powder explosion of 1813, when the French soldiers
blew up the old fortress, making the whole city tremble and totter, the
agonized servants of the church found the marble pavements strewn with
the glorious sixteenth-century crystals that had been shattered above.
They were religiously collected and, where possible, reinserted in new
fields.
Chapels stud the ground around the old edifice. The Cloisters, a couple
of chapels north of the chevet and small portions here and there, rose
with the transepts and the original thirteenth-century structure, but
all the others were erected by the piety or pride of later ages or have
been transformed by succeeding generations. Their vaulting illustrates
every period of French and German Gothic as well as Plateresque art,
while their names are taken from a favorite saint or biblical episode or
the illustrious founders. The fifteenth century was especially sedulous,
building chapels as a rich covering for the splendid Renaissance tombs
of its spiritual and temporal lords. They are carved with the admirable
skill and genius emanating once more from Italy. The Castilian Constable
and his spouse, Bishop Alfonso de Cartagena (in the Capilla de la
Visitacion), Bishop Antonia de Velasco, the eminent historian-archbishop
(in the Sacristia Nueva), are splendid marbles of the classic revival.
They must all have been portraits: for instance Bishop Gonzalvo de
Lerma, who sleeps peacefully in the Chapel of the Presentacion; his fat,
pursed lips and baggy eyelids are firmly closed, and his soft, double
chin reposes in two neat folds upon the jeweled surplice. So, too,
Fernando de Villegas, who lies in the north transept and whose scholarly
face still seems to shine with the inner light which prompted him to
give his people the great Florentine's Divine Comedy.
The poetry and romance that cling to these illustrious dead are equally
present as you pass through the lovely Gothic portal into the cloisters
which fill the southeastern angle of the church and stand by the figures
of the great Burgalese that lie back of the old Gothic railings in many
niches of the arcades. To judge from the inscriptions they would, if
they could speak, be able to tell us of every phase in their city's
religious and political struggles, from the age of Henry II down to the
decay of Burgos. Saints, bishops, princes, warriors, and architects lie
beneath the beautiful, double-storied arcade. Here lies Pedro Sanchez,
the architect, Don Gonzalo of Burgos, and Diego de Santander, and here
stand the effigies of Saint Ferdinand and Beatrice of Suabia. The very
first church had a cloister to the west of the transept, now altered
into chapels. For some reason, early in the fourteenth century, the
present cloister was built east of the south transept and with as lovely
Gothic arches as are to be found in Spain. We read of great church and
state processions, marching under its vaults in 1324, so then it must
have been practically completed. Later on the second story was added,
much richer and more ornate than the lower. 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. A careful scrutiny of all the details shows
in what a virile age this work was executed. The groining ribs are of
fine outline, the key blocks are starred, the foliage is spirited both
in capitals and in the cusps of the many arches, the details are
carefully molded and distributed, and the early statues in the internal
angles and in places against the groining ribs are of rich treatment,
strong feeling, and in attitude equal to some of the best French Gothic
of the same period. The door that leads out of the cloisters into the
old sacristy with the Descent from the Cross in its tympanum is truly a
beautiful piece of this Gothic work.
While these cloisters lie to the east, the broad terraces leading to the
glorious, southern transept entrance are flanked to the west by the
Archbishop's Palace, whose bare sides, gaudy Renaissance doorway and
monstrous episcopal arms, repeated at various stages, hide the entire
southwestern angle of the church.
Between the cloisters and the Archbishop's Palace at the end of the
broad terraces, rises the masonry facing the southern transept arm. It
belongs, together with that of the northern, to the oldest portions of
the early fabric erected while Maurice was bishop and a certain
"Enrique" architect, and shows admirable thirteenth-century work. The
Sarmentos family, great in the annals of this century, owned the ground
immediately surrounding this transept arm. As a reward for theirconcession of it
to the church, the southern portal was baptized the
"Puerta del Sarmental," and they were honored with burial ground within
the church's holy precincts. It cannot be much changed, but stands
to-day in its original loveliness.
[Illustration: Photo by A. Vadillo
CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS
The Chapel of the Constable]
A statue of the benign-looking founder of the church stands between the
two doors, which on the outer sides are flanked by Moses, Aaron, Saint
Peter and Saint Paul, and the two saints so beloved by Spaniards, Saint
James and Saint Philip. The archivolts surrounding the tympanum are
filled by a heavenly host of angels, all busied with celestial
occupations, playing instruments, swinging censers, carrying candelabra,
or flapping their wings. Both statues and moldings are of character and
outline similar to French work of this best period, nevertheless of a
certain distinctly Spanish feeling. The literary company of the tympanum
is full of movement and simple charm. In the lowest plane are the twelve
Apostles, all, with the exception of two who are conversing, occupied
with expounding the Gospels; in the centre is Christ, reading to four
Evangelists who surround him as lion, bull, eagle and angel; finally,
highest up, two monks writing with feverish haste in wide-open folios,
while an angel lightens their labor with the perfume from a swinging
censer.
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.
The northern doorway, almost as rich in names as in sculpture, is as
fine as the southern, so far below it on the hillside. It is called the
Doorway of the Apostles from the twelve still splendidly preserved
statues, six of which flank it on each side. It is also named the Door
of the Coroneria, but to the Burgalese it is known simply as the Puerta
Alta, or the "high door." The door proper with its frame is a later
makeshift for the original, thirteenth-century one. On a base-course in
the form of an arcade with almost all its columns likewise gone, stand
in monumental size the Twelve Apostles. The drapery is handled
differently on each figure, but with equal excellence; the faces, so
full of expression and character, stand out against great halos and
represent the apostles of all ages. Similar in treatment to the southern
door, the archivolts here are filled with a series of fine statues.
There are angels in the two inner arches and in the outer, and the naked
figures of the just are rising from their sepulchres in the most
astonishing attitudes. The tympanum is also practically a counterpart of
the southern one, only here in its centre the predominating figure of
the Saviour is set between the Virgin and Saint John.
As the Puerta Alta is so high above the church pavement, and ingress
would in daily use have proved difficult, the great door of the
Pellejeria was cut in the northeastern arm of the transept at the end of
the furriers' street, and down a series of moss-grown, cobblestone
planes the Burgalese could gain entrance to their church from this side.
The great framework of architecture which encases it is so astonishingly
different from the work above and around it that one can scarcely
believe it possible that they belong to one and the same building. It is
a tremendous piece of Plateresque carving, as exquisite as it is out of
place, erected through the munificence of the Archbishop Don Juan
Rodriguez de Fonseca in 1514 by the architect Francisco de Colonia. It
might have stood in Florence, and most of it might have been set against
a Tuscan church at the height of the Renaissance. There is everywhere an
overabundance of luxurious detail and rich carving. Between the
entablatures and columns stand favorite saints. The Virgin and Child are
adored by a very well-fed, fat-jowled bishop and musical angels. In one
of the panels the sword is about to descend on the neck of the kneeling
Saint John. In another, some unfortunate person has been squeezed into a
hot cauldron too small for his naked body, while bellows are applied to
the fagots underneath it and hot tar is poured on his head. While the
whole work is thoroughly Renaissance, there is here and there a curious
Gothic feeling to it, from which the carvers, surrounded and inspired by
so much of the earlier art, seem to have been unable to free themselves.
This appears in the figure ornamentation in the archivolts around the
circular-headed opening, the angel heads that cut it as it were into
cusps and the treatment and feeling of some of the figures in the larger
panels.
The exterior of Santa Maria is very remarkable. It is a wonderful
history of late Gothic and early Renaissance carving. The only clearing
whence any freedom of view and perspective may be had is to the west, in
front of the late fifteenth-century spires, but wherever one stands,
whether in the narrow alleys to the southeast, or above, or below in the
sloping city, the three great masses that rise above the cathedral roof,
of spires, cimborio, and the Constable's Lantern, dominate majestically
all around them. If one stands at the northeast, above the terraces
that descend to the Pellejeria door, each of the three successive series
of spires that rise one above the other far to the westward might be the
steeple of its own mighty church. The two nearest are composed of an
infinite number of finely crocketed turrets, tied together by a sober,
Renaissance bulk; that furthest off shoots its twin spires in Gothic
nervousness airily and unchecked into the sky, showing the blue of the
heavens through its flimsy fabric. Between them, tying the huge bulk
together, stretch the buttresses, the sinews and muscles of the
organism, far less marked and apparent, however, than is ordinarily the
case. At various stages above and around, crowning and banding towers,
chapels, apse, naves, and transepts, run the many balconies. 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 stonytrunks 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.
[Illustration: Photo by A. Vadillo
CATHEDRAL OF BURGOS
The spires above the house-tops]