PALENCIA--VALLADOLID.
It was after a day of hard work at Miraflores, Las Huelgas, and Burgos,
taking last looks and notes, that we drove to the railway station _en
route_ for Palencia. Castile does not improve on acquaintance, and, so
far as I could judge in the hurried views obtained from the
railway-carriage, we missed nothing by moving apace. The railroad
follows the broad valley of the Arlanzon, bounded on either side by
hills of moderate height, occasionally capped with sharp cones and
peaks, but everywhere of an invariable whitish-grey colour, which soon
wearies the eye unspeakably. The few villages seen from the valley
seemed generally to occupy the slopes of the hills, and to have large,
shapeless, and unattractive churches. Indeed, it is not possible to go
very far in Spain without feeling either that Spanish architects seldom
cared for the external effect of their buildings, or that whatever they
did has been ruthlessly spoilt in later days. Even in a city like Burgos
this is the case, and of course it is even more so in villages and
smaller towns.
The Spanish railways are, on the whole, well managed. They are usually
only single lines, and there is no attempt made to go very fast.
Perhaps, too, any one who has travelled along Spanish roads, deep with a
five months’ accumulation of dust, and at the pace popular with
diligence proprietors, comes to the consideration of the merits and
management of a railway in a frame of mind which is not altogether
impartial. The luxury even of a second-rate railway is then felt to the
utmost, and there is not much desire, even if there is need, for
grumbling. It was dark when we arrived at Palencia, and, getting a boy
to carry the baggage, we walked off under his directions in search of
the Posada de las Frutas. The title was not promising. But Palencia, a
cathedral city, and the principal town between Valladolid and Santander,
has nothing in the way of an inn better than a Posada, and it was to the
best of its class that we had been recommended. The first look was not
encouraging, but the people welcomed us cheerfully, and going across
the covered entrance way, took us up to a room which was fairly clean
and furnished with the remains of eight smart chairs, six of them
hopelessly smashed, and the other two so weak in their legs and spines
that it was necessary to use them in the most wary and cautious manner!
However, the beds were clean, and the bread and grapes--here as
everywhere at this season in Spain--so delicious, that, even had the
cookery been worse than it was, we might have managed very well. Later
in the evening, when I came back from a short ramble through the town, I
found the open entrance-court and passage uneven with the bodies of a
troop of muleteers, each of whom seemed to have a skinful of wine in his
charge and a rough kind of bed laid on the stones; and if I may judge by
the way in which they snored as I picked my way among them to my room,
they had no occasion to envy me my occupation of the room of state.
I spent a day in Palencia, and found it almost more than its
architectural treasures required. I went there with some idea that I
should find a very fine cathedral, still retaining all its old furniture
of the fourteenth century, and soon discovered that I had been somewhat
misinformed. I hoped too, at any rate, if I found no first-rate work, to
find something which was peculiar to the district in its artistic
character; but in this also I was doomed to be disappointed.
The city is divided into two parts by a very long winding street running
entirely across it from north to south. The houses on either side are
supported on stone columns (some of them very lofty), so that the
general effect is much that of one of the old arcaded Italian cities.
The cathedral, dedicated to S. Antholin, stands in a desolate-looking
open space on the edge of the hill which slopes down to the river
Carrion on the west side of the city. Cean Bermudez says that it was
commenced in A.D. 1321,[62] and completed in the beginning of the
sixteenth century.[63] An inscription on the door from the cloister to
the church has the date A.D. 1535, and the enclosure of the choir is of
A.D. 1534. These dates appear to be fairly correct; but the work having
been so long in progress, it may, I think, be assumed that the
ground-plan only is of the earliest date, and that the greater part of
the architectural detail belongs more probably to the fifteenth than to
the fourteenth century. This is quite consistent with the evidence
afforded by the building, for the detail of the design is of very poor
character throughout, and the window tracery is generally of inferior
and rather late flamboyant style. The triforium is well developed,
having large traceried openings; and the church is groined throughout.
In the eastern part of the chevet the window tracery has an early
character, but the mouldings belie this effect; and, if I may judge by
them, none of it is earlier than circa A.D. 1350-1370. The plan of the
chevet is probably old, but all its details, save those of the piers
between the chapels, have been modernized. The thin spandrels of the
vaulting in the apse of the choir are pierced with cusped circles, a
device occasionally seen in French churches.
It will be seen, therefore, that there is little to praise here, save
the grand scale upon which the work has been done. The nave is 36 feet 8
inches from centre to centre of the columns, whilst each aisle is no
less than 31 feet 2 inches. The relative proportions are bad, but owing
to the arrangement of the Coro in the nave there is not much opportunity
of seeing this, and the internal view of the aisles, owing to their
width and to the very massive character of the nave columns, is
extremely fine. The nave is of five bays in length, the two eastern bays
being occupied by the Coro. There is an altar against the western screen
of the Coro, in front of which are some steps leading down to a well,
said to be that of St. Antholin, the tutelar saint. The whole of the
stalls are old, and fine of their kind; they are mainly the work of El
Maestro Centellas, a Valencian, who contracted to execute them about the
year 1410,[64] but they are not in their old place, for in A.D.
1518-1519 Pedro de Guadalupe agreed to move them from the old choir into
the new choir for the sum of fifteen hundred maravedis, and to execute
twenty additional stalls for the sum of two thousand maravedis each.[65]
At the same time the Retablo was moved forward and enlarged to fit its
new position by one Pedro Manso, at a cost of two hundred ducats; whilst
Juan de Valmeseda executed the statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St.
John, and the Crucifixion for it for one hundred ducats.[66]
These facts are of great interest, proving as they do that the stalls
stood from the year 1410 to 1518 in their proper place in the choir, and
were then moved to their present position in the nave precisely in the
same way that we have already seen the old arrangement changed at Burgos
at about the same period. This peculiar Spanish arrangement of the Coro
in the nave, and separated from the altar, we may now, I think, assume
was not known or thought of until this comparatively late date in this
part of Spain, though now it is universal throughout the country. The
design of the stalls is somewhat like that of late Flemish work, but
peculiar in many respects: the forward slope of the stall elbows, the
rich traceries behind the lower stalls--very varied in their design--and
the upper stalls, are all worthy of notice. I did not observe any
distinction in the style of the work answering to the dates at which
Maestro Centellas and Pedro de Guadalupe were employed, and I think,
therefore, that the latter must have copied rather closely the work of
the former. Probably, however the Prie-Dieu desk in front of the
bishop’s stall is of the later date, as also the desks which have been
widened in front of the upper row of stalls; and possibly Pedro de
Guadalupe executed the twenty stalls on each side of the choir forming
the easternmost block.
[Illustration: Prie-Dieu.]
The eastern part of the church has been worse treated even than the
nave, all the old arrangements having been ruthlessly altered. The apse,
shut in by screens, covered with a low groined gallery, and used as a
mere chapel,[67] is dark, dismal, and undignified. The bay west of the
apse is open from north to south, but walled in on the west with the
wall behind the high altar. West of this are two bays walled in at the
sides, and then we come to the transept, which is open, save the rails
marking the passage from the Coro to the choir. The whole arrangement is
so confused, unintelligible, and contrary to the obvious intentions of
the first designers of the fabric, that it hardly needed documentary
evidence to prove that it had no kind of ancient authority. There is no
lantern or Cimborio at the crossing. The metal screens[68] across the
choir are of no special interest, but those round the apse and opening
into one or two of the chapels of the chevet are better, and well
illustrate the designs of most of the fifteenth-century iron screens in
Spain. They are met with in all directions, for there was no country in
the middle ages which made so free a use of iron. They have most of the
faults of German ironwork of the same age, the smiths having apparently
forgotten the right use of their hammers, and, like Birmingham smiths of
the present day, having tried to do what was necessary with thin plates
of iron twisted about fantastically here and there, but very much more
easily wrought, and proportionably less effective, than the work of the
English smiths of a couple of hundred years earlier.
The whole of the floor of the eastern part of the church has been
lowered, in some places as much as three feet, in order to obtain a
level procession path all round the aisles.
On the south side of the nave are the cloisters, which are large, with
lofty arched openings, but they have been despoiled of their traceries.
Their style is poor third-pointed, and in their present state they are
thoroughly uninteresting.[69] To the west of them is the
Chapter-house, a large groined room, opening, not, as is usual, from the
cloister, but from an outer lobby. The sacristy, on the south side of
the choir, contains a few objects of interest, the best being a fine
gilt monstrance, covered with crockets and pinnacles, but not earlier
than circa A.D. 1500.[70]
[Illustration: PALENCIA AND VALLADOLID:--Ground Plans of San Miguel
Sta Maria and San Benito
Plate III.
Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.]
The sacristan thought much more of a great plated temple, six or eight
feet in height, raised on a stage, and travelling on wheels worked by a
couple of men concealed within the platform and its hangings, which is
used for processions throughout the town on Corpus Christi day.
I saw only two Gothic churches out of many which I looked into in
Palencia--those of San Miguel and San Francesco.
San Miguel is both the earliest and best church in the city, and
deserves most careful study. I give an illustration of its ground-plan
on Plate III. The portion east of the crossing appeared to me of the end
of the twelfth century, and the rest of the church a few years later.
The plan is one of a not uncommon type, and suggestive either of Italian
or German influence in the mind of its designer. The regular planning of
the whole work, the bold dimensions of the groining shafts, and the good
character of the mouldings and windows, corbel-tables and buttresses,
all deserve special notice. The apse is groined in four compartments, so
that a rib and buttress occur in its centre,[71] and the ribs here are
square and plain in section, whilst those throughout the nave are well
moulded. The bosses at the intersection of the groining ribs in the nave
are sculptured: that on the east bay having St. Michael and the Dragon,
whilst the next bay but one has an Agnus Dei. There is a peculiarity in
the finish of the buttresses of the apse, which I noticed also at San
Juan and San Pablo at Burgos. In all of them the face of the buttress is
carried up to the eaves-cornice, which is returned round them, instead
of being carried on to their centre, as is usual: so that at San Miguel,
in place of the apse at the cornice-line having four sides only, it has
four long and three shorter sides, the latter above the buttresses. All
the work in the chancel appears to be of earlier date than that in the
nave, and its western arch is segmental, and of poor character.
[Illustration: Steeple of San Miguel.]
The windows here are plain, round-arched lancets, but those in the
clerestory of the nave are two-light windows, with a plain circle in the
head, and richly moulded. The most striking architectural feature on the
outside is the western steeple, which well deserves illustration, being
full of peculiarity and vigour. The belfry-windows are singularly
varied, for they are of three lights on the west, of two very wide
lights on the south, and of two narrow lights on the east side. The
tracery in all consists of uncusped circles, packed together in the same
fashion as in the clerestory of Burgos Cathedral. The west window is of
two lights, with simple piercings in the tympanum, and between it and
the west doorway are a number of corbels all across the west front,
which seem to prove that there was a pent-house roof across the whole of
it. This must have largely added to the picturesqueness of the
building, whilst at the same time it must, in such a climate, have been
a most wise expedient for sheltering the doorway from the heat. The west
doorway is a really fine work, but terribly mutilated. It has six series
of subjects, in as many lines of archivolt moulding, the innermost order
containing angels only: the second, figures with books or instruments of
music: the third, angels again: the fourth, the Resurrection (with the
Last Judgment, occupying the centre of this and the next order): the
fifth and sixth, subjects from the life of our Lord, beginning with the
Annunciation on the left. The outside moulding consists of a bold
bowtell, with another arranged in continuous cusping in front of it, as
in some of our own transitional work. The lower stage of the tower has a
groined gallery, in which are the stalls, lectern, and organ.
It is much to be lamented that the finish of the steeple is not
original, for we should then have had a complete example of a fine
parish church, which must have been building from circa A.D. 1190 to
circa A.D. 1250; but an early building unaltered on the exterior is a
treat for which one generally sighs in vain in Spain.
San Francesco has been much more mutilated than San Miguel, but seems to
be a work of about the same age; it is said to have been built in A.D.
1246.[72] There is a large open market-place, busy with venders of
vegetables, in front of the building and a small enclosed courtyard
between the two seemed to be the receptacle for all the market filth.
The west front has a small sort of cloister in front of the doors, with
a tiled lean-to roof above it. Over this roof rises the west front, a
strange combination with a western gable, and a great bell-gable rising
out of its southern slope. The west window appears to have been a fine
cusped circular opening, under a pointed arch, the spandrel between the
two being filled with circles similar to the traceries in the steeple of
San Miguel. Entering the church, I found its broad aisleless nave
completely Paganized, but still retaining the low fifteenth-century
gallery for the Coro over the two western bays. At the east bay of the
nave are small transeptal chapels, and the chancel arch, and two smaller
arches open into the chancel and two chancel aisles. The whole
arrangement is thoroughly Italian,[73] but the detail of the arches,
which are well moulded and adorned with a chevron, is northern. The
chancel is apsidal, but its groining is so late, and its east end so far
hidden by a Pagan Retablo, that it was impossible to discover whether
any traces of the original work remained.
I saw several other churches, but their old features are in all cases of
the very latest Gothic or else Pagan, so as to be hardly worthy of
record. Sta. Clara appears to be desecrated: it has windows just like
those of San Pablo, Burgos, and buttresses to the apse managed in the
same way as at San Miguel. It has also a large flamboyant door of poor
style. Near it is another church, which has an apse with buttresses and
pinnacles at the angles, and from the even and undisturbed look of its
masonry I concluded that it never had any windows. This church has a
poor tower, but generally the churches here have enormous bell-gable
turrets of the most flaunting Renaissance device, which are common
throughout a great part of Spain. They have generally several bells hung
in openings in the wall, and are often nearly the whole width of the
front, and finished with cornices and broken pediments in the most
approved fashion of the worst style of Renaissance.
Everywhere, save in the long main street, Palencia was as _triste_ a
place as I have seen. The streets were emptied, probably by the heat of
the day, and, save a curious crowd of boys who pursued me relentlessly
all round San Miguel, I saw few signs of life. Much of the old wall
round the city remains, and walking round the north-eastern part of
this, I came to a picturesque angle, where is an old walled-up gateway
with pointed arch, round towers on either side, and deep machicolations
above, which may well have been built before the Cid rode into Palencia
for his marriage with Doña Ximena. The town walls are lofty and massive,
and crested with what is, I believe, a Moorish battlement. Its
peculiarity consists in the battlements and spaces between them being
equal, and the former being capped with a stone weathered on all four
sides nearly to a point.
On the way to the railway station we saw two churches, both having some
portions of fair fifteenth-century work; and then passing the old wall,
found ourselves on the melancholy open plain that surrounds the city.
Under the hot sun, and after the harvest has all been gathered in, the
country looks wretched and arid in the extreme. Not a tree is to be
seen, nor a blade of grass; but first a sandy plain of two or three
miles, and then rocky and sandy hills, all bleached to much the same
colourless tint, rose in long lines against the deep-blue sky. On the
other side of the city the river was hardly more attractive; it was
wellnigh dry, though it is true there were some trees near its banks
which to some extent redeemed the aridness of the soil out of which they
grew. As I neared the station I found the whole city assembled to greet
the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier, who were to stop for a few minutes
to enjoy _azucarillos_ and sweetmeats. Officers of all grades, the
bishop and his clergy, and smart people in abundance were there; and as
soon as the train arrived there was lusty cheering, and great firing of
rockets. After a fight with the mob for a passage to the train, we
secured seats, and were soon off. There are some parts of the road which
seemed more interesting than most of the country we had been passing.
The river runs here and there under steepish bluffs, and occasionally
considerable vineyards give--what is so much wanted--some variety of
colour to the landscape. I suppose one ought to be cautious in
describing such a country after seeing it in September; for I can well
imagine that in the spring, when the whole land is covered with great
crops of corn, the impression it produces may be very different.
At Valladolid we were delayed a long time whilst the Duke and Duchess of
Montpensier, saluted again with rockets, and escorted by cavalry, took
their departure from the station to pass the night at the
Captain-General’s. As far as a stranger can see and hear the truth, the
Royal family seem to be very popular in Spain, and none of them more so
than the Duke and Duchess; and the good people of Valladolid did their
best, by illuminations, cheering, and decoration of their houses with
coloured cloth, to welcome their coming, and speed their parting the
next day.[74]
In the evening I strolled out into the town, and presently found myself
in the Great Plaza, an imposing square surrounded on three sides by
houses on arcades, and having on the fourth side the Town-hall. This was
brilliantly illuminated by a number of enormous wax-candles in great
sconces flaring in the air, whilst a good military band played waltzes,
and the people--soldiers and civilians, men, women, and children--danced
merrily and vigorously in groups all about. Presently crossing the Plaza
from this noisy scene, I stumbled over a bundle on the ground, and
found it to be a couple of labourers who, having been at work at the
pavement, had made a bed of sand, covered themselves over with a
blanket, and had gone to sleep by the side of their tools for the night,
indifferent to all the noise and excitement of the place!
Valladolid is a city of which I have very pleasant general
recollections, but of which nevertheless the architecture is nowhere of
very great interest. It has the misfortune to have a cathedral built by
Herrera, only one or two early works, several gorgeous examples of the
richest late-pointed work, and a multitude of examples of the works of
Berruguete, Herrera, and their followers. But the streets are
picturesque and busy, and have that unmistakably foreign aspect which is
always so pleasant to the traveller.
I need say but little of the Cathedral. Its design is said to be the
greatest work of Herrera (A.D. 1585); but a small portion only of it has
been completed. The complete plan is given by Ponz.[75] It was to have
been cruciform, with four towers at the angles, four bays of nave, and
four of choir, with aisles to both. The stalls of the Coro were intended
to be in the choir behind the altar. There is a large cloister on the
north side of the nave. The nave of four bays, with its aisles and
chapels on either side of them, is all that is completed; and, large as
it is, the parts are all so colossal that there is not the impression of
size that there ought to be. The piers are some 60 feet from centre to
centre north and south, and 45 feet east and west; they carry bold
arches, above which runs a great cornice surmounted by a white
(plastered and panelled) groined ceiling, which contrasts violently with
the dark sombre grey of the stonework below. These vaults are of red
tile; and if the plaster were altogether taken off, the vault covered
with mosaic, and the mouldings of the cornices carefully removed, the
interior would really be fine and impressive. Nothing, however, could
ever cure the hideous unsightliness of the exterior. Herrera’s west
front was revised by Churriguera in the eighteenth century, and cannot
therefore be fairly criticised; but the side elevation remains as
Herrera designed it, and is really valuable as a warning. Flying
buttresses were of course an abomination; so in their place he erected
enormous solid buttresses above the aisles to resist the thrust of the
nave vault. They are shapeless blocks of masonry projecting about forty
feet from the clerestory wall, and finished with a horrid concave line
at the top. However, it is only right to give Herrera his due, and to
say, that after all he only did what Wren did at St. Paul’s, but had the
courage and the honesty to let his deeds be seen, instead of spending a
vast sum, like Wren, in concealing them. And again it is plain that he
thought much more of the internal effect of his church than of the
external;--how unlike ourselves, who but too often, if we can attract
men to our new churches by a smart spire or a picturesque exterior, seem
to forget that we must make the interior noble, winning, solemn, and
instructive too, if we would keep them there!
A few fragments of the old cathedral remain to the north-east of the
present church, but I could not obtain access to them; and I think
nothing now exists but a wall pierced with one or two fourteenth-century
windows.
Sta. Maria l’Antigua--the most attractive church, to my mind, in
Valladolid--is close to the cathedral. It is so valuable an example, and
illustrates so well some peculiarities of Spanish architecture, that I
give an illustration of its ground-plan.[76] It is of the common
parallel-triapsal arrangement, and has a fine western steeple, and a
cloister along the north wall. This kind of cloister is of not
unfrequent occurrence: I have already noticed one in the convent at Las
Huelgas; and there are two or three churches at Segovia in which also it
is introduced. It would seem to be an arrangement expressly adopted to
suit a tropical climate, and its effect is always very good.
[Illustration: Cloister. L’Antigua, Valladolid.]
The cloister here is walled up, and considerably defaced on the north
side; and on the south, if one ever existed, it has been entirely
destroyed. That on the north side is of three bays in length, the
western bay having four arches, and the others five. The arches are
semi-circular, with labels enriched with dog-tooth ornament, and the
shafts which carry them are moulded and wrought in imitation of the
coupled columns of early Italian artists. Simple buttresses separate the
bays, and there is a corbel-table under the eaves. A bold round-arched
doorway opened at the west into this cloister.
The interior of this church is fine. It is groined throughout; and most
of the groining has longitudinal (but not transverse) ridge-ribs,
considerably arched in each bay, to suit the domical section of the
vaults. The western bay has the usual late gallery for the Coro
supported on a debased arch, and with open tracery in its front, and the
stalls and organ still remain in it. The main columns are cylindrical in
plan, and each surrounded by eight attached shafts. The transepts are
not at all defined in the ground-plan, but are groined at the same level
as the nave. The abaci of the capitals are either square or octagonal in
plan. The groining has bold and well-moulded transverse arches, and
diagonal ribs of an ordinary thirteenth-century section. In the apse of
seven bays the vaults, for the greater part of their height, are no
thicker than the moulding of their ribs, and are pierced with cusped
circles in their spandrels, just above the line of the springing of the
windows, in the same manner as at Palencia Cathedral. The clerestory
seems to have been lighted with simple lancets, of which one only
remains on the south of the nave. Of the old furniture still existing I
noticed a good Retablo, partly carved and partly painted, in a chapel on
the south side of the choir, and another in the baptistery opening into
the south transept.[77] The steeple is the most remarkable feature of
the exterior, and from its great height gives, in company with the
similar steeple of San Martin, much effect to many views of the city,
which, with these exceptions, has nothing to break its monotony. It
rises three stages above the roof, the lower stage having an arcaded
window of two lights on each face, the middle one of three lights, and
the upper, again, one of two lights. The arches are all semi-circular,
and are carried upon shafts. There are string-courses under each window,
and the abaci are also carried round the steeple as string-courses of
inferior scale. There are nook-shafts at the angles, with caps and bases
between each of the horizontal string-courses. The upper string-course
and the eaves-cornices are carved with a dog-tooth ornament, and the
others with a billet mould. The steeple is finished with a low square
spire, covered with tiles, some green and some red, and each tile made
of a pointed shape, so as to form a series of scallops. This steeple is
of the same date as the cloister and lower part of the church--probably
circa A.D. 1180-1200; but the east end of the church is evidently a work
of later date, being much more advanced in style, and corresponding
exactly in some respects with the upper part of the transepts and
clerestory of Burgos Cathedral. The windows have three engaged
jamb-shafts, with square capitals. The tracery has soffeit-cusping, and
there is a peculiarity here which is seen also in the clerestory at
Burgos. The arches of the lights and the circle above them are only
chamfered on one side, and their fillets do not mitre at the junction;
it looks, consequently, as though the circle were merely put in loosely
on the back of the arched heads to the lights, without being in any way
connected with them. I need not say that the effect is not good: it has
the appearance of being the work of men who did not quite understand
what they were about; and, though I know of no example of the same thing
in England or France, it is not uncommonly seen in the thirteenth and
fourteenth century works of the Italian architects. It is, however,
impossible to charge the architect of this apse with the indifference
to, or ignorance of, other examples of the same age which marked the
Italians, for in every other respect his work is as good as possible of
its kind. The pinnacles marking the junction of the apse with the choir
are very fine. They are hexagonal below, but, with admirable effect, are
covered with circular stone spires, enriched by delicate crockets of the
same fashion as those at Burgos, illustrated at p. 28, and the springing
of the spirelet is marked by small pinnacles. The external roofs have
been altered in accordance with the invariable custom, and at the east
end they now partially obscure the old pierced parapets which fill the
spaces between the pinnacles of the apse. The south transept had a
rose-window, which is now blocked up, and the open parapet of the choir
was continued round it. This side of the church is now much built
against, and concealed by houses, the north side being quite open. I
ought not to forget that there is a good sacristy at the north-east
angle of the church, and of the same date as the choir.
Sagrador y Vitores[78] says that this church was founded by Don Pedro
Ansurez and Doña Eylo his wife, in the latter part of the eleventh
century, and rebuilt by King Don Alonso XI. I confess I cannot reconcile
these dates (for which no authorities are given) with the existing
building. The earlier portions of the work hardly seem to be so early in
date as the eleventh century; and the later alterations are so identical
in character with work of which we know the age in the thirteenth
century, that it is almost impossible they should belong to the time of
Alonso XI. (A.D. 1350-1369). The reign of Alonso IX. (A.D. 1230-44)
would have been a more likely date.
The church of San Martin, near Sta. Maria, has been rebuilt, with the
exception only of its steeple, which is a fine example, very similar to
that of Sta. Maria, though, no doubt, of rather later date. The arches
here are pointed, in place of round, as they are in the other example;
the two upper stages are arranged just as they are there, and the lower
stage has a two-light window, with its tracery contrived in a similar
way to the apse windows of that church. San Martin is said to have been
founded in A.D. 1148,[79] and the earliest part of the steeple may
probably be of this age, though I do not think it can have been
completed earlier than about A.D. 1250.
Both these steeples bear unmistakable marks of Lombard influence. The
absence of buttresses, the repetition of very nearly similar stages one
over the other, and the multitude of horizontal string-courses, are all
features of constant occurrence in Italy; and it will be sufficient to
mention such an example as the steeple of Lucca Cathedral, as, among
others, illustrating this similarity very remarkably.
There is not, so far as I could see or learn, any other work of early
date in Valladolid; but, on the other hand, the city is rich in works of
the latest Gothic, some of which are exceedingly sumptuous, and among
the finest of their kind; and they are so characteristic of Spanish
art--albeit they are undoubtedly derived from German sources--that it
would be unpardonable to pass them by without notice. At the same time
it is luxury of ornamentation, profusion of labour, marvellous manual
skill and dexterity, rather than real art, which we see displayed in all
the works of this school; and, attractive as these often are to the
uneducated eye, they are almost offensive to one who has learnt ever so
little to look for true art first and above all in all works of
architecture, and to regard mere excellence of workmanship as of
altogether secondary importance.
The most remarkable of these works are the churches of San Pablo, San
Benito, La Magdalena, and the colleges of San Gregorio and Sta. Cruz,
which last is now converted into a museum. Their dates are all known
very exactly, and the following facts relating to them may as well be
recorded.
San Pablo was commenced by Cardinal Don Juan Torquemada, and completed
in A.D. 1463.[80] It is said by some to be the work of Juan and Simon de
Colonia, but I can find no proof of this statement, though I think that
the elaborate façade may possibly be the work of the artists Gil de
Siloe or Diego de la Cruz, who wrought under Juan de Colonia and his son
at the monuments and Retablo in the convent at Miraflores.
The first stone of the college of San Gregorio was laid in A.D. 1488,
and it was finished in A.D. 1496.[81] The architect is said to have been
Macías Carpintero of Medina del Campo; but as he cut his own throat in
1490,[82] some other architect or sculptor must have completed the work.
The monastery of San Benito was founded by King Don Juan, who obtained a
Bull from Pope Clement VII., on Dec. 28, 1389, for the purpose. But the
existing church was erected more than a century later, by Juan de
Arandia (probably a Biscayan architect), who began his work in A.D.
1499. He agreed to execute the nave and one aisle for 1,460,000
maravedis, and afterwards the other aisle for 500,000. The Retablo and
the stalls were the work of Berruguete, between A.D. 1526 and 1532, and
are now preserved in the museum.
The college of Sta. Cruz was founded in A.D. 1480, and completed in
A.D. 1492, and was designed by Enrique de Egas[83], son of Anequin de
Egas of Brussels.
The church of La Magdalena appears, by extracts from the archives of the
Marquis de Resilla, to have been planned by Rodrigo Gil, of Salamanca.
By a contract, dated June 14, 1576, he undertook the erection of the
Capilla mayor and sacristy for 4,000,000 maravedis, whilst the “master
of the works,” Francisco del Rio, by an agreement of October 11, 1570,
agreed to build the tower and body of the church according to Rodrigo
Gil’s plan, for 6400 ducats.
Having given these details of their history, I must now say a few words
about the buildings themselves.
Going from the great Plaza de la Constitucion down a narrow street to
the north, we soon came out on another large irregular open place,
frequented chiefly by second-hand clothesmen, whose wares would be
deemed bad even in Houndsditch, and whose wont it seems to be to induce
their customers to make complete changes of their apparel behind scanty
screenworks of cloths. At the angle of the further side of this Plaza is
the grand church and convent of San Benito. The monks are, of course,
all gone, as they are everywhere in Catholic Spain, and the convent is
turned into a barrack; the church is left open, but unused, and the more
valuable portions of its furniture, its stalls and Retablos, have been
carried away for exhibition in another religious house, now used as a
museum! Valladolid seems to have been a city of religious houses; and
when the revolution, following on civil wars, made so clean a sweep of
religious orders, that not only does one see no monks, but even Sisters
of Mercy are scarcely ever met[84], there was nothing, I suppose, to be
done but to convert these buildings to the first miserable purpose that
suggested itself; and we ought perhaps to be thankful when we find a
church like San Benito simply desolate and unused, and not converted to
some purely secular use.
The ground-plan of the church is given on Plate III. At the west end
are the remains of a tower, which seems never to have been completed,
and which, though of vast size, is so poor, tame, and bald in detail,
that it could hardly have produced a successful effect if it had been
finished. The whole design of the exterior of the church is extremely
uninteresting; but the interior is much more impressive, being fine,
lofty, and groined, and lighted chiefly by large clerestory windows,
aided by others high up in the aisle-walls. The groining is all very
domical in section, and rather rich in ribs; and the grand scale of the
whole work, and the simplicity of the piers--cylinders with eight
engaged shafts round them--contribute to produce something of the effect
of a building of earlier date. The bases of the columns are of enormous
height from the floor, and their caps are generally carved with stiff
foliage. Several altars, monuments, and chapels have been inserted
between the buttresses of the north wall; and there is one old tomb on
the north side of the high altar, with a sculpture of the Crucifixion.
The buttresses on the exterior all rise out of a continuous weathered
basement, and there is no variety in their design in any part.
The ritual arrangements deserve a few words of description. There are
six steps up from the nave to the altar, and there is an ambon on each
side of them entered from the altar side. There is a stalled western
gallery, with an organ on its south side, of late mediæval design, but
apparently an insertion, and not erected at the same time as the Coro.
Beside the gallery Coro, there is a second Coro on the floor, with
screens round it on the north, south, and west sides, which are
evidently not original, being mere brick walls. A metal screen extends
all across the nave and aisles at the east of the Coro; and there are
gates, not only in these, but also in the screen on the west side of the
Coro, which, it will be remembered, is an unusual arrangement at this
late date. The large organ is on the north side of the Coro, and of the
same date as the woodwork of the stalls. The good people of Valladolid,
who seem to feel inordinately proud of all that Berruguete did, have
carried off the stalls to the museum. They are much praised by Mr. Ford,
but for what reason I endeavoured in vain to discover. Their sculpture
appeared to me to be contemptible, and mainly noticeable for woolly
dumplings in place of draperies, and for the way in which the figures
are sculptured, standing insecurely on their feet, dwarfed in stature,
altogether inexpressive in their faces, out of drawing, and wholly
deficient in energy or life. There were also three great Retablos to the
principal altars at the ends of the aisles. The Renaissance frames of
these are mostly _in situ_, but the sculptures have all been taken, with
the stalls, to the museum, where they cumber the little chapel in the
most uncouth fashion. I never saw such contemptible work; yet Mr. Ford
calls this work[85] “the _chef-d’œuvre_ of Berruguete, circa
1526-1532.” I can only say that the architecture is bad, the sculpture
is bad, and the detail is bad; that all three are bad of their kind, and
that their kind is the worst possible.[86] It is in truth the ugliest
specimen of the imbecility and conceit which usually characterize
inferior Renaissance work that I ever saw. The whole of the figures are
strained and distorted in the most violent way, and fenced in by columns
which look like bedposts, with entablatures planned in all sorts of new
and original ways and angles. I have no patience with such work, and it
is inconceivable how a man who has once done anything which, from almost
every point of view, is so demonstrably bad, can have preserved any
reputation whatever, even among his own people. It is a curious
illustration, however, of the singular extent to which both Gothic and
Renaissance were being wrought at the same time in Spain; for at the
time he did this work, in which not a trace of Gothic feeling or skill
remained, other men at Salamanca, Zaragoza, and elsewhere, were still
building in late Gothic, and some buildings were still more than half
Gothic which were not erected for at least fifty years later.
A short walk from San Benito leads to another Plaza, on one of which is
the west front of San Pablo, whilst the great convent of San Gregorio is
on its south side.
I could not find any means of getting into San Pablo, and am uncertain
whether it is in use or desecrated. Its façade is a repetition, on a
large scale, of work like that of Juan and Simon de Colonia--who are
said to have been the architects employed--in the chapel monuments at
Miraflores. Armorial bearings have much more than their due prominence,
mouldings are attenuated, every bit of wall is covered with carving or
tracery, and such tricks are played with arches of all shapes, that,
though they are ingenious, they are hardly worth describing. The western
doorway is fringed with kneeling angels for crockets, and there are
large and small statues of saints against the wall on either side of it.
Above is the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, with St. John the Baptist
on one side, and the kneeling founder on the other, flanked by angels
carrying armorial achievements. Above, in the centre, is our Lord
seated, St. Peter and St. Paul on either side, and the four Evangelists
seated at desks, and instructed by angels. Every vacant space seems to
have a couple of angels holding coats-of-arms, so that it is impossible
not to feel that the sculptor and the founder must have had some idea of
heaven as peopled by none with less than a proper number of quarterings
on their shields, or without claim to the possession of _Sangre Azul_. I
must not forget to say of this work that, though its scheme is
displeasing and Retablo-like, its execution is wonderful, and the merit
of the detail of many parts of it very great.
The façade of San Gregorio is a long lofty wall, pierced with small
ogee-headed windows, and finished with a quaint, carved, and pinnacled
parapet; in the centre is the entrance gateway, corresponding pretty
much in its detail with the front of San Pablo, but even more extremely
heraldic in its decorations. The doorway is a square opening under a
segmental arch, with an ogee-trefoiled canopy above. Full-length statues
of hairy unclad savages on either side may have a meaning which I failed
to discover; to me they looked simply uncouth and rude. The canopy over
the doorway runs up and forms a great heraldic tree, with an enormous
coat-of-arms and supporters in the centre. The finish at the top is one
of those open-work conceits of interlacing pierced cusping, which looks
like nothing better than a collection of twigs.
The sculpture on this doorway is altogether inferior in its character to
that of the doorway of San Pablo. The convent is now, I believe, a
barrack, and the sentry refused me admission; but I saw a picturesque
court open in the centre, with the usual galleries round it, supported
on columns, the wooden ceiling of the passage being painted.
The church of la Magdalena does not look so late in date as the
documentary evidence seems to prove that it is; but it is late enough to
be most uninteresting. The west front is the _ne plus ultra_ of heraldic
absurdity, being entirely occupied with an enormous coat-of-arms and its
adjuncts.
Close to the east end of this church is a Moorish archway of brick, a
picturesque and rather graceful work. It owes not a little of its effect
to the shape of the bricks, which are 7 in. wide by 11 in. long by 1½
in. thick, and to the enormous quantity of mortar used, the joints being
not less than an inch wide.[87] The ruggedness and picturesque effect of
work done in this way is much greater than that of the smooth, neat
walls--badly built of necessity where there is not much mortar used--of
our modern buildings.
The Museum is housed in the old college of Sta. Cruz, close to the
University, and near to the Cathedral. It is a building of a class whose
name is legion in these parts. It encloses a central court surrounded by
cloisters, above which there are open arcades all round on each of the
three floors, traceried balustrades occupying the spaces between their
columns, and the rooms being all entered from these cloister-like open
passages. With good detail such an arrangement might easily be made very
attractive; but I saw no example in any but the very latest style of
Gothic. The contents of the Museum are most uninteresting. There are
three paintings said to be by Rubens, but they seemed to me to have been
much damaged; and the rest of the pictures are unmixed rubbish. There is
a large collection of figures and subjects from sculptured Retablos, all
of which are extravagant and strained in their attitudes to the most
painful degree. I have already referred to some of Berruguete’s work
preserved here, and the rest is mostly of about the same low degree of
merit.
The Library, which appeared to have many valuable books, is a large
room, well kept and well filled, with a librarian very ready to show it
to strangers.
The University is a cold work of Herrera--the coldest of Spanish
architects. Mr. Ford mentions an old gateway in it; but I could not find
it.
I spent one day only in Valladolid; but this is ample for seeing all its
architectural features. It is one of those cities which was too rich and
prosperous during an age of much work and little taste, and where,
though Berruguete and Herrera may be studied by those who think such
labour desirable, very little mediæval architecture of any real value
is to be seen. Yet as a modern city it is in parts gay and attractive,
being after Madrid the most important city of the North of Spain. Its
suburbs are less cheerful, for here one lights constantly on some
desecrated church or ruined building, which recalls to mind the vast
difference between the Valladolid of to-day--a mere provincial town--and
the Valladolid of two centuries ago, for a short time the capital of
Spain.