MEDINA DEL CAMPO--AVILA.
In going by the railroad from Valladolid to Madrid the decayed old town
of Medina del Campo is passed, and few travellers can have failed to be
struck by the size and magnificence of the great castle, under whose
walls they are hurried along--the Castle “de la Mota,” founded in 1440,
and built under the direction of Fernando de Carreño, as master of the
works.[166]
The castle founded at this time evidently took the place of one of much
earlier date; for at some distance from its walls there still remain
great fragments of old concrete walls lying about, mis-shapen, decayed,
and unintelligible; whilst the greater part of the existing castle is a
uniform and simple work entirely executed in brick, incorporating and
retaining, however, in one or two parts, portions of the walls of the
earlier building. The outline is a very irregular square, with round
towers at all its angles rising out of the sloping base of the walls,
and overlooking the moat which surrounds the whole. Within these outer
walls rise the lofty walls of the castle, flanked by occasional square
towers, and with an unusually lofty keep at one angle. The entrance is
protected with much care, the gateways always opening at right angles to
each other, so as to give the best possible chance of easy defence.
Entering by the gateway in the centre of the principal front, across the
now destroyed bridge, the path turned round the walls of the keep, and
then through a small gate by its side into the great inner courtyard,
the shape of which is very irregular, and the buildings opening into
which are almost all destroyed. There seems to be no direct mode of
getting into the keep save by climbing up the face of the wall some
twenty feet from the ground; and to this I was unequal, though it was
evident, from the well-worn holes in the brick-work, that some of the
natives are not so. Possibly there may have been an entrance from below,
for the whole of the walls surrounding the castle, and looking out
upon the moat, are honeycombed with long vaulted galleries at various
levels, along which I tramped for a long time, looking in vain for an
outlet towards the keep. The architectural detail here is all of the
simplest possible kind; the arches are pointed, but square in section,
and only remarkable for the great depth of their archivolts, which gives
them an air of strength very fitting to such a building. The bricks are
generally a foot long, eight inches wide, and an inch and three-eighths
thick, and the mortar-joints are generally an inch and three-quarters
wide. Little as such a work affords for mere technical description, I
have seldom seen one of its kind altogether more magnificent. The great
height of the walls, the simplicity of the whole detail, and the bold
vigour of the outline sufficiently account for this.
[Illustration: No. 20.
MEDINA DEL CAMPO. p. 160.
THE CASTLE.]
Medina del Campo is the dullest and saddest of towns now, though three
hundred years ago it seems to have been one of the most important places
in the district. Nor is there much to detain the ecclesiologist or
architect. The principal church--S. Antholin--seems to have been founded
in the sixteenth century. An inscription round the chancel gives the
date of its erection as A.D. 1503,[167] and the church was probably
built at the same time. The plan consists of nave and aisles of three
bays in length, and a chancel of one bay. The nave and aisles cover an
area of about ninety feet each way, the dimensions being, as they
usually are here, very considerable. The columns are really clusters of
groining-ribs banded together with a very small cap at the springing,
and then branching out into complicated vaulting-bays, most of which are
varied in pattern. The Coro is near the west end of the nave, and about
equal in length to one of its bays, nearly two bays between its Reja and
the Capilla mayor being left for the people; its fittings are all of
Renaissance character, and there is a very picturesque organ above it,
on the south, bristling with projecting trumpet-pipes, and altogether
very well designed. The columns are lofty, and the church is lighted by
small round-headed windows of one or two lights placed as high as
possible from the floor; there is one light in each southern bay, and
two in each on the north side; evidently therefore the whole work is
carefully devised for a hot country; and it is an undoubted success in
spite of the extremely late character of all its detail. Twenty years
only after the foundation of the chancel, and just about the time that
Segovia Cathedral was being commenced, a chapel was added on the north
side of the altar, covered with a dome, and thoroughly Pagan in almost
all its details.
There are three pulpits in this church--one on each side of the chancel,
and one in the nave; and low rails keep the passageway from the Coro to
the Capilla mayor.
There is a good painting of the Deposition in the sacristy of S.
Antholin; and a still more interesting work is the Retablo of a small
altar against the eastern column of the nave. This has the Mass of St.
Gregory carved and painted, with other paintings of much merit. That of
the Pietà recalls Francia, and the figure of the Blessed Virgin in an
Annunciation is full of tender grace and sweetness. It is strange how
completely the Inquisition altered the whole character of Spanish art,
and deprived it at once and for ever apparently of all power of
regarding religion from its bright and tender side!
An uninteresting country is passed between Medina and Avila. This old
city is indeed very finely situated; and if it be approached from
Madrid, seems to be a real capital of the mountains, with ranges of
hills on all sides. It lies, in fact, on the northern side of the
Sierra, and just at the margin of the great corn-growing plains which
extend thence without interruption to Leon and Palencia. Of the many
fortified towns I have seen in Spain it is, I think, the most complete.
The walls are still almost perfect all round the city; they are
perfectly plain, but of great height, and are garnished with bold
circular towers not far apart; and for the gateways two of these towers
are placed near together, carried up higher than the rest, and connected
by a bold arch thrown from one to the other. There are in all no less
than eighty-six towers in the circuit of the walls, and ten gateways;
and so great is their height[168] that nothing whatever is seen of the
town behind them, and they follow all the undulations of the hill on
which they stand with a stern, repulsive, savage look which seems almost
to belong to a city of the dead rather than to a fairly lively little
city of the present day.
The space within the walls was very confined, and no doubt it was found
impossible for any new religious foundations to be established within
their boundaries. Several of the great churches, and among these some of
the most important--as San Vicente, San Pedro, and San Tomás--were
therefore built outside the walls; and the Cathedral itself, cramped by
its close neighbourhood to them, was built out boldly with its apse
projecting beyond the face of the walls, and making an additional
circular tower larger and bolder than any of the others.
[Illustration: Puerta de San Vicente.]
The walls of Avila were commenced in A.D. 1090, eight hundred men having
been employed on them daily in that year;[169] among them were many
directors who came from Leon and Biscay, and all of them wrought under
Casandro, a master of geometry and a Roman, and Florin de Pituenga, a
French master; so at least we learn from the contemporary history
attributed to D. Pelayo, Bishop of Oviedo. The walls were finished in
1099.
In 1091 the Cathedral of San Salvador was commenced by an architect
named Alvar Garcia, a native of Estella, in Navarre;[170] the work was
completed in sixteen years, as many as nineteen hundred men, according
to the authority already quoted, having been employed on the works. D.
P. Risco[171] throws considerable doubt on the veracity of D. Pelayo;
and his figures certainly seem to be on too grand a scale to be at all
probable.
I doubt very much whether any part of the existing Cathedral is of the
age of the church whose erection is recorded by Don Pelayo, except
perhaps the external walls of the apse. Its general character is
thoroughly that of the end of the twelfth or early part of the
thirteenth century, with considerable alterations and additions at later
periods; and we may safely assume that the chevet, commenced in A.D.
1091, was continued westward very slowly and gradually during the
following hundred years or more. The ground-plan will show the very
singular disposition of the plan; in which the chevet, with its double
aisle and semi-circular chapels in the thickness of the walls, is, I
think, among the most striking works of the kind in Spain.[172] The
external wall of the apse is a semi-circle divided into bays by
buttresses of slight projection alternating with engaged shafts. The
chapels do not therefore show at all in the external view; and indeed
all that does appear here is a projecting tower of vast size pierced
with a few very small windows--mere slits in the wall--and flanked on
either side by the wall and towers of the town. It is finished at the
top by a corbel-table and lofty battlemented parapet; and behind this
again, leaving a passage five feet and a half in width, is a second and
higher battlemented wall, from within which one looks down upon the
aisle-roof of the chevet, and into the triforium and clerestory windows
of the central apse. From below very little of the apse and flying
buttresses which support it are seen; and one is more struck perhaps by
the strange unlikeness to any other east-end one has ever seen, than by
any real beauty in the work itself; though at the same time it is
pleasant to see that not even so difficult a problem as that of a
windowless fortified chevet presented any serious difficulty to these
old architects.
[Illustration: No. 21
AVILA CATHEDRAL p. 164.
INTERIOR OF AISLE ROUND THE APSE.]
[Illustration: East End, Avila Cathedral.]
Assuming as I do that the external wall of the apse is as old as the end
of the eleventh century, I think it nevertheless quite impossible that
the chapels within it, in their present state, should be of the same
early date. In general plan it is true that they are similar to those
round the chevet of the abbey at Veruela,[173] the eastern chapels in
the transepts being apsidal in both cases, and similarly planned in
connection with those of the apse. The church of Veruela was completed
by about the middle of the twelfth century, and is beyond all question
earlier in style than the interior of Avila. The great beauty of the
latter arises from the narrow, recessed aisle round the apse, the
groining of which is carried on lofty and slender shafts, whilst the
columns round the apse itself consist of a bold single column with three
detached shafts on the side next the aisle. The groining throughout
is extremely good, and, in the chapels, is carried on clustered shafts.
A careful examination of the groining of the choir shows clearly how
much the design of the church was altered during its progress, though it
is certainly not an illustration of the advantage of such a course. The
lines of the groining on the plan explain that it is planned with hardly
any reference to the structure below: some of the groining shafts not
being over the piers, and everything having been sacrificed by the
architect of the triforium and clerestory in order to make all their
bays equal in width both in the apse and in the side walls. East of the
Crossing there is a narrow quadripartite bay of vaulting, then a
sexpartite bay, and then those of the apse, and each of the three bays
of the choir is thus made about equal to those of the apse, though the
arches below are quite unequal. Externally all of them are supported by
regularly arranged flying-buttresses, some of which must, I think, be
supported on the cross-arches of the aisle in front of the chapels. The
triforium is round-arched, of two horseshoe-headed lights divided by a
shafted monial; and the clerestory is of round-headed broadish windows,
with jamb-shafts and richly-chevroned arches. The flying-buttresses are
all double, the lower arch abutting against the triforium, and the upper
against the wall above the clerestory windows; and all appear to me to
have been added after the original erection of the clerestory. The
parapet here, as well as in the aisles, is battlemented, the battlements
being finished with pyramidal copings of the common Moorish type. I
should have observed that the passage round the town walls is connected
with that round the aisle walls, and that the two levels of battlements
in the latter are connected by occasional flights of stone steps.
The transepts have the same triforium in their eastern walls as the
choir; and here, too, the same kind of construction was ventured on, the
groining shafts not being over the clustered column which divides the
arches of the aisles round the chevet. When this was done the intention
was evidently to erect one bay of sexpartite vaulting next the Crossing,
and then a quadripartite bay beyond it. At present both bays are
similar--quadripartite--and the clerestory is filled with large
traceried windows.
The remainder of the church was so much altered in the fourteenth
century, that its whole character is now of that period. The north
transept façade has in its lower stage two windows of two lights, the
traceries of which are precisely similar to those of our own early
geometrical style, and there is a very fine rose window above them. This
rose is of sixteen divisions, each containing two plain pierced circular
openings, but the dividing lines between them being marked, give the
whole tracery that effect of radiation from the centre which is so
important a feature in the designs of many wheel-windows. All the
windows in this façade are richly moulded, and there are well-developed
buttresses at its angles, but, unhappily, the gable has been entirely
destroyed, and the present termination of the wall is a straight line of
brickwork below the eaves of the hipped roof. The question of the
original pitch of the roof--always so interesting--is therefore left
uncertain and undecided. The clerestory throughout is filled with
enormous six-light traceried windows, with transomes, and the double
flying buttresses between them are very large, and are finished at the
top with a line of traceries below their copings, and with crocketed
pinnacles in front. There are two towers at the ends of the aisles,
which do not open into them, but only into the nave. The south-west
tower has never been completed, but the north-west steeple is a very
fine work of the same age as the clerestory of the nave. It has bold
buttresses, and a belfry stage lighted by two windows on each side, with
tall crocketed pediments above them, and below the battlemented parapet
a line of rich sunk tracery. The angles--internal as well as
external--are carved with a ball enrichment, which at a distance
produces the same effect as our English ball-flower ornament; and, like
it, gives an air of richness to the whole work. The buttresses finish
above the parapet with crocketed pinnacles, and the parapet with a
pointed coping, which somewhat recalls the outline of the Moorish
battlement. The whole effect of the steeple, transept, and nave is
certainly very noble, and they are marked by an entire absence of any of
those foreign peculiarities which usually strike an English eye. The
whole might, in fact, be English work of the fourteenth century. The
north door of the nave is of grand dimensions, having six statues in
niches in each jamb, and others against the buttresses on either side.
The tympanum is sculptured with our Lord in an aureole in the centre,
the Betrayal and the Last Supper below, angels censing on either side,
and the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin above. The orders of the
archivolt are filled with figures, some representing the resurrection of
the dead, and others figures of kings and saints worshipping the central
figure of our Lord. The door-opening has the peculiarity of having an
elliptical or three-centred arch. This feature I noticed also in doors
evidently of about the same age at Burgos and at Leon, and it is just
one of those evidences which go surely to prove that the several works
are all designed by the same architect. The resemblance of the mouldings
in the jamb of this doorway to those in the western end of Leon
Cathedral is very close, and all these doors have an order of very
similar foliage between the several sculptured or storied orders of the
archivolt. I do not think the work here is quite as good as that at
Leon, though the filling in of the tympanum with a well-marked vesica in
the centre, and four rows of subjects divided by well-defined horizontal
lines, is uncommonly good. A sort of shallow porch has been formed by
some later groining, which occupies the space between the buttresses on
either side of the doorway, and this is finished in front with a rich
open traceried parapet and pinnacles.
It was during the prelacy of Don Sancho III., Bishop of Avila from A.D.
1292 to 1353, that most of the later works of the cathedral were
executed, and his arms are sculptured upon the vault of the Crossing.
The character of all the work would agree perfectly with this date,
which is given by Gil Gonzalez Dávila[174] in his account of the church.
[Illustration: Roofing, Avila.]
A staircase in the south-west tower leads up into the roof of the
aisles, which now partly blocks up the too large clerestory; and passing
through this, and then over the roofs of the sacristies, we reach the
exterior of the chevet and the fortified eastern wall. Over the
sacristies is some original stone roofing, of an extremely good, and, so
far as I know, almost unique kind, with which it, seems very probable
that the whole of the roofs were originally covered. But it is now, as
well as all the others, protected by an additional timber roof covered
with tiles, and is not visible from the exterior. This roofing is all
laid to a very flat pitch with stones, which are alternately hollowed on
the surface for gutters, and placed about eight and a half inches apart,
and other square stones, which rest on the edges of the first, so as to
cover their joints. The stones are of course all of the same
length--two feet seven inches--and set over each other so as to form a
drip. The cornice at the eaves of this roof is very well managed, and
looks as if it were of the thirteenth century. Its construction reminded
me much of the stone guttering so frequently seen in the early Irish
buildings, and which, being so much less perishable than lead, has often
preserved them, where the common English construction would long ere
this have involved the whole building in ruin.
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF SAN SALVADOR AVILA--Ground Plan of Church
and Cloister &c. Plate 3
Published by John Murray. Albermarle St. 1865.]
The cloister on the south side of the nave is much decayed and
mutilated. It was built probably in the early part of the fourteenth
century, and has good traceried windows, generally of four lights, but
blocked up, and with all their cusping destroyed. On its east side is a
fine fifteenth century chapel, with an altar at the south end, and a
passage through its other end, screened off by an iron Reja, leading to
the priests’ rooms, and so round to the sacristies. The windows of this
chapel are covered with a rude ball ornament, constantly seen in works
of the fifteenth century.
I must not forget to notice the furniture of the interior of the
cathedral, some of which is very fine. The Retablo of the high altar is
very grand, having five sides, which follow the outline of the apse, and
it is of three stages in height. The lowest stage has the four
evangelists and the four doctors painted on its side panels, and SS.
Peter and Paul in the centre; the next has the Transfiguration in the
centre, and the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi,
and the Presentation in the Temple at the sides; and the upper stage the
Crucifixion in the centre, and the Agony, the Scourging, the
Resurrection, and the Descent into Hell at the sides. These paintings
were executed in A.D. 1508 by Santos Cruz, Pedro Berruguete, and Juan de
Borgoña: and some of them are not only valuable in the history of art,
but of great merit. The St. Matthew attended by an angel, who holds his
ink for him, is designed with great grace; and the Adoration of the
Magi, and some of the other subjects, are admirably designed and
painted. The drawing is rather sharp and angular, and has more the
character of German than of Italian art. The woodwork in which the
paintings are framed is richly carved and gilt, but in a jumble of
styles; the canopies over the pictures being Gothic, and the columns
which support them thoroughly Renaissance in style.[175]
The fittings of the Coro are all Renaissance, and there is a screen of
the same age across the nave on its western side. To the east is the
usual metal Reja, and low rails enclosing the passage from the Coro to
the Capilla mayor. A flight of seven steps in front of the altar, the
magnificent colour of its Retablo, and the contrast of the extremely
light choir and the almost windowless aisles and chapels round it, make
the pictorial effects here extremely fine; and they are heightened by a
good deal of stained glass, which, though of late date, has some fine
rich colour. It was executed at the end of the fifteenth century.
Fine as this cathedral is, I think, on the whole, I derived almost as
much pleasure from the church of San Vicente, built just outside the
walls, a little to the north of the cathedral. This is a very remarkable
work in many respects.
[Illustration: No. 22
SAN VICENTE, AVILA. p. 170.
NORTH-EAST VIEW]
The church--dedicated to the three martyrs, Vicente, Sabina, and
Cristeta, who are said to have suffered on the rock still visible in the
crypt below the eastern apse--is cruciform in plan,[176] with three
eastern apses, a central lantern, a nave and aisles of six bays in
length, two western steeples with a lofty porch between them, and a
great open cloister along the whole south side of the nave. The south
door is in the bay next but one to the transept, and there are staircase
turrets in the angles between the aisles and the transepts. The design
and detail of the eastern apses recall to mind the Segovian type of
apse. Their detail as well as their general design are, in fact, as
nearly as possible identical, and no doubt they are the work of the same
school of late Romanesque architects. They are very lofty, the ground
being so much below the floor of the church that the windows of a crypt
under the choir are pierced in the wall above the plinth. They have,
too, the usual engaged shafts between the windows, dividing each apse
into three vertical compartments, each pierced with a round-headed
window. These shafts are finished with finely carved capitals under the
eaves’ corbel-tables; and the stringcourses which occur below the
windows, on a level with their capitals, and again just over their
arches, are generally delicately carved, but sometimes moulded. The
central apse is higher than those on either side, and consequently none
of the horizontal lines are continuous round the three apses; and as the
eastern walls of the transepts have no openings, and no stringcourses or
enrichments of any kind between the ground and the eaves, there is a
certain air of disjointedness in the whole design which is not pleasing.
The transept façades are very simple: both are pierced with windows of
one light high up in the wall, and the northern transept is vigorously
treated with a grand system of buttressing, used as mediæval artists
alone apparently knew how! The buttresses are mere pilasters at the top,
and the eaves-cornices are carried round them and up the flat-pitched
gable-line in the way so commonly seen in Italian Gothic. But at
mid-height these pilasters are weathered out boldly, and run down to the
natural rock on which the church is built, and which here crops up above
the surface of the ground: a central buttress is added between the
others, and between the buttresses the whole wall is battered out with a
long succession of weatherings to the same thickness at the base as the
greatest projection of the buttresses. Probably the lower part of this
front has been added long after its first erection for the sake of
strength; and undoubtedly the somewhat similar system of buttressing
which is carried along the north wall of the nave is long subsequent in
date to the early church, to which it has been applied. The south
transept, owing to the rapid rise of the ground to the south, is much
less lofty than the other, and has between its buttresses three high
tombs.
The whole south side of the nave is screened, so to speak, by a very
singular lofty and open cloister, which extends from the west wall of
the transept to a point in advance of the west front. It is very wide,
and is entirely open to the south, having occasional piers, with two
clustered shafts between each. There is something at first sight about
the look of these clustered shafts which might lead one to suppose them
to be not later than the thirteenth century; and as the lofty arches are
semi-circular, this idea would be strengthened were it not that a
careful comparison of the detail with other known early detail proves
pretty clearly that they cannot be earlier than about the middle of the
fourteenth century. The material--granite--favours this view, for here,
just as in our own country, the early architects seem to have avoided
the use of granite as much as possible, even where, as at Avila, it lies
about everywhere ready for use. There is something so novel and singular
about this open loggia or cloister, that I could not help liking it
much, though it undoubtedly destroys the proportions, and conceals some
of the detail, of the old church in front of which it has been added.
The bays of the aisle are divided by pilaster-buttresses, and lighted
with round-headed windows which have external jamb-shafts.
The west end is, perhaps, the noblest portion of this very remarkable
church. There are two towers placed at the ends of the aisles. These are
buttressed at the angles, and arcaded with sunk panels of very
considerable height on the outer sides; they are groined with
quadripartite vaults, and do not open into the church, but only into the
bay between them, which, though it is a continuation of the full height
of the nave, is treated simply as a grand open porch, with a lofty
pointed arch in its outer (or western) wall, and a double doorway in its
eastern wall opening into the church. This porch is roofed with a vault
of eight cells, level with that of the nave, and extremely lofty and
impressive, therefore, from the exterior, and over the doorway a window
opens into the nave. The western, as well as the side arches, have bold
engaged shafts, and the groining is also carried on angle shafts. The
whole effect is fine, and the light and shade admirable and well
contrasted: but the charm of the whole work seemed to me to lie very
much in the contrast between the noble simplicity and solid massiveness
of the architecture generally, and the marvellous beauty and delicacy of
the enrichments of the western doorway, which is certainly one of the
very finest transitional works I have ever seen. It is, as will be seen
by the engraving, double, with round arches over each division, and the
whole enclosed under a larger round arch. Statues of saints are placed
in either jamb, and against the central pier in front of the shafts
which carry the archivolt, and the latter and the capitals are carved
with the most prodigal luxuriance of design and execution, and with a
delicacy of detail and a beauty of which an idea cannot be conveyed by
words. Sculptured subjects are introduced in the tympana of the smaller
arches, and a richly carved stringcourse is carried across under a
parapet which is placed over the doorway. The figures and carving are
all wrought in a very fine and delicate stone. The tympana are
sculptured on the left with the story of Dives and Lazarus, and on the
right with a death-bed scene, where angels carry up the soul to
Paradise. The detail of the foliage seemed to me to have a very
Italianizing character, being mostly founded on the acanthus-leaf. The
capitals are very delicate, but copied closely from Classic work, and
the figures are dignified in their pose, but their draperies are rather
thin and full of lines. Some of the shafts are twisted, and beasts of
various kinds are freely introduced with the foliage in the sculpture.
[Illustration: No 23.
SAN VICENTE, AVILA. p. 172.
INTERIOR OF WESTERN PORCH.]
To me the sight of such work as this is always somewhat disheartening.
For here in the twelfth century we find men executing work which, both
in design and execution, is so immeasurably in advance of anything that
we ever see done now, that it seems almost vain to hope for a revival of
the old spirit in our own days: vain it might be in any age to hope for
better work, but more than vain in this day, if the flimsy conceit and
impudent self-assertion which characterize so much modern (so-called)
Gothic is still to be tolerated! for evil as has been the influence of
the paralysis of art which affected England in the last century, it
often seems to me that the influence of thoughtless compliance with what
is popular, without the least study, the least art, or the least love
for their work on the part of some of the architects who pretend to
design Gothic buildings at the present day, may, without our knowing it,
land us in a worse result even than that which our immediate ancestors
arrived at. Here, however, at Avila, in this porch of San Vicente, let
us reverence rightly the art and skill of him who built, not only so
delicately and beautifully, but also so solidly and so well; let us try
to follow his example, knowing for certain that in this combination lies
the true merit of all the best architecture--Pagan or Christian--that
the world has ever seen.
The three stages of the western towers are, I think, respectively of the
twelfth, thirteenth, and fifteenth centuries. The second or intermediate
stage is arcaded, and has its angles planned with a shaft set in a broad
splay precisely in the mode we see so commonly adopted in the Segovian
towers.[177] The upper stage is finished with gables on each face, the
gable being fringed with a line of granite trefoils in not very good
taste. Gil Gonzales Dávila[178] says that the tower of this church was
built by alms in A.D. 1440. He refers, no doubt, to the upper stage, the
design of which agrees with this statement. I was not able to learn how
it had originally been roofed; but my impression is that it probably had
two stone gabled roofs intersecting each other.
In addition to the western door there is another fine entrance on the
south side of rather earlier date than the other, and now always in use
as the ordinary entrance to the church. Descending here by some steps
from the cloister, we find ourselves in the impressive interior, and are
at once struck by some features which are of rare occurrence in this
part of Spain. The columns are of very bold, perhaps heavy, design, and
rest on circular bases. Their front portion is carried up on a bold and
massive groining pier in front of the main wall; the arcades are
severely simple, the arches semi-circular, and the capitals richly
carved. A carved stringcourse is carried round the church above the
arches, and there is the very uncommon arrangement (in this country) of
a well-developed triforium; each bay here having a round-arched opening,
subdivided into two smaller openings, divided by a massive column with
sculptured capital. Another stringcourse divides the triforium and
clerestory, which has also round-arched windows of one light. The
vaulting, both in the nave and aisles, is quadripartite, the only
remarkable feature in it being the massive size of the ribs.
The three eastern apses are vaulted with waggon-vaults over their
western compartments, and semi-domes over the apses, and the transepts
are roofed with waggon-vaults. All the latter have cross arches or ribs
below them carried on engaged shafts, and the side walls of the chancel
and chancel-aisles are arcaded below the vaulting.
The central lantern is carried on piers, which have evidently been in
great part rebuilt at some time subsequent to the foundation of the
church. They carry pointed arches of granite, clumsily moulded, and have
rudely-carved capitals. Two piers on the south of the nave next the
Crossing, and one on the north, were either partly or altogether rebuilt
at the same time, and it looks very much as though the first lantern had
partly fallen, and then, two centuries after the original foundation of
the church, the existing one had been erected, for over the pointed
arches there still seem to be remains of the older round arches. The
lantern is rather loftier than is usual; it is vaulted with an
eight-ribbed dome, carried on arched pendentives, and is lighted by
small windows of two lights in its upper stage. Dávila[179] says that
this church was rebuilt in the time of Ferdinand “El Santo” (1252-1284),
who endowed it with certain rents for the purpose. But other authorities
say, with more show of probability, that the work undertaken in this
year was the repair of the church. The rebuilding at this date, which is
utterly inconsistent with the whole character of the church, agrees,
nevertheless, very well indeed with that of the lantern. Subsequently,
in A.D. 1440, according to Dávila,[180] the tower of the church was
built, and this statement probably refers to the upper stages of the
western steeples. The crypt under the choir, called Nra. Sra. de
Soterraña, is important only for its position: it is entered by a long
flight of steps from the east end of the north aisle, and extends under
the three eastern apses. It is mainly modernized, and the great
attraction seems to be the hole in which, as I understood, people who
wish to take a solemn oath put their hands whilst they swear.
There are no original ritual arrangements remaining here; but an iron
Reja is carried across the nave and aisles one bay to the west of the
crossing, and here probably was the old place for the Coro, as the
position of the shrine of San Vicente under one side of the lantern
would have made it impossible for the Coro to be placed nearer the east.
Some features still remain to be noticed, and the most important is the
tomb or shrine of the tutelars--San Vicente and his brethren. This is
picturesquely placed on one side of the space under the lantern, with
entire disregard to that desire for balance everywhere which so
painfully affects almost all of us now-a-days. It is a
thirteenth-century erection standing on detached shafts, within which
appears to be a tomb which is always kept covered with a silken pall.
Over this is a lofty canopy carried on four bold shafts at the angles,
and consisting of a deep square tester, above which is a lofty pyramidal
capping with its sides slightly concave and crockets at the angles. It
is rather difficult to convey an idea of this very remarkable work
without large and careful illustrations. The inner tomb or shrine is the
really important work, the outer canopy or tester being evidently a much
later addition.[181] The shrine has all the character of an early
pointed Italian Gothic work. Its canopy is carried on clusters of four
shafts twisted together, at each of the angles; between them, on each
side, are three coupled columns, and at the east and west ends are
single shafts. These carry trefoiled or many-cusped arches, the
spandrels of which are sculptured; and above this is a sort of shrine
with a sloping stone scalloped all over on either side, and a steep
diapered roof rising out of the centre. A series of subjects is carved
in panels all along the sides of the shrine, which seem to have
reference to three saints and martyrs--probably to San Vicente and his
companions. Figures of the Twelve Apostles are introduced, two and two,
at the angles, and other figures sitting and reading between the
subjects. A late iron screen between the columns of the outer baldachin
makes it rather difficult either to see or to sketch this interesting
work carefully. Its detail is all very peculiar, and in the twisted and
sculptured shafts, the strange form of some of the cusping, and the iron
ties with which it is undisguisedly held together, I thought I saw
evident traces of the influence of Italian art. I take the shrine to be
a work of the thirteenth century, though the baldachin is no doubt of
later date.
Near this shrine in the south aisle is some very fine rich and delicate
wrought-ironwork in a _grille_ round a side altar. It is possibly part
of the old choir-screen, and at any rate does not belong to the place in
which it is now preserved. The beauty of this work consists in the
delicacy of the thin strips of iron, which are bent into a succession of
circular lines ending in roses, and on an excessively small and delicate
scale. Some similar work is still to be seen in one of the windows of
the apse.
The arches on either side of the great western porch are filled in with
open trellis-work wood-screens, which show how good occasionally may be
the adaptation by Gothic hands of Moorish work. Here the lines of wood
cross each other at intervals, leaving, of course, a regular series or
diaper of open squares. The edges of all these are simply cut out in a
pattern, or notched, in a variety of forms, and the effect is extremely
good. The same kind of work is common in Moorish buildings, but I had
not seen it before so boldly used by Christians.
[Illustration: AVILA: San Vicente and MEDINA DEL CAMPO: S: Antholin:
Plate XI.
Published by John Murray, Albermarle Street 1865]
San Vicente stands outside the walls of Avila, close to one of the
principal gates, and near the north-east angle of the city. The church
of San Pedro is similarly placed at the south-east angle, and at the end
of a large open Plaza called the Mercado Grande. It is not a little
remarkable that so soon after the enclosure of the city within enormous
walls two of the most important of its churches should have been built
deliberately just outside them, and exposed to whatever risks their want
of defence entailed. In plan and general design San Pedro is very
similar indeed to San Vicente. It has a nave and aisles of five bays,
transepts of unusual projection, a central lantern, and three apsidal
projections to the east. The doors, too, are in the centre of the west
front, and in the next bay but one to the transept on both sides. The
detail is almost all of a simple and extremely massive kind of
Romanesque, round arches being used everywhere and uncarved capitals
with square abaci. The nave piers are of the commonly repeated section,
but very large in proportion to the weight they have to carry. There is
no triforium, and the clerestory windows are of moderate size, whilst
those in the aisles are very small, and placed as high as possible from
the floor. The groining generally is quadripartite, and some of the ribs
boldly moulded in a manner which suggests the possibility of this severe
Romanesque-looking work being in truth not earlier than circa 1250. The
transepts and the western portion of the apses are covered with
waggon-vaults, and the apses themselves with semi-domes. The lantern
over the Crossing is probably not earlier than A.D. 1350, the mark of
the junction with the old work just over the arches into the transepts
being still very plainly visible. The vaulting here is very peculiar.
Groined pendentives at the angles are introduced to bring the vault to
an octagon in plan, but the eight compartments are variously treated;
those on the cardinal sides having ordinary vaulting cells over the
windows, whilst those on the intermediate or diagonal sides are crossed
with four segments of a dome with the masonry arranged in horizontal
courses.
The west front has three circular windows, that in the centre having
wheel tracery; the north doorway has a richly-sculptured archivolt,
which is later in character than the general scheme of the church,
having an order of good dog-tooth enrichment, and the abacus is carved
with rosettes. There are staircases in the usual position in the angle
between the transepts and the aisles, and the apses are divided into
bays by engaged shafts with sculptured capitals. There is, in fact, not
very much to be said about this otherwise noble and remarkable church,
because it repeats to so great an extent most of the features of its
neighbour San Vicente. Yet its scale, character, and antiquity are all
such as would make us class it, if it were in England, among our most
remarkable examples of late Romanesque.
There are several other churches in Avila,[182] but the only one besides
those already mentioned of which I made any notes is that of the
Convent of San Tomás built between A.D. 1482 and 1493.[183] In a charter
of Ferdinand the Catholic, dated May 29, 1490, reference is made to this
monastery, together with those of Sta. Cruz, Segovia; San Juan de los
Reyes, Toledo; Sta. Engracia, Zaragoza; and other churches in Granada,
&c., all of them founded by that King and Queen Isabella. They founded
this convent on the petition of Confessor P. W. Tomás de Torquemada.
The convent has been closed for some years, but has just been purchased
by the Bishop of Avila, who is now repairing it throughout, with the
intention, I believe, of using it as a theological seminary. The detail
of the conventual buildings, which surround two cloisters, one of which
is of great size, is, as might be expected, of the latest kind of
Gothic, and extremely poor and uninteresting, whilst the design of the
church, as so often seems to be the case with these very late Spanish
churches, is full of interest. It has a nave of five bays with side
chapels between the buttresses, short transepts, and a very short square
chancel to the east of the Crossing; but the remarkable feature is, that
not only is there a large gallery filling the two western bays of the
nave and fitted up with seventy stalls with richly-carved canopies, the
old choir-book desk in the centre, and two ambons projecting from the
eastern parapet, but that there is also another gallery at the east end,
in which the high altar, with its fine carved and painted Retablo, is
placed. This eastern gallery has also gospel and epistle ambons
projecting from its front. Strange as the whole arrangement of this
interior is, it strikes me as almost more strange that it should not
have been one of constant occurrence in a country where at one period
the Coro was so constantly elevated in a western gallery. For there is a
sort of natural propriety, as it seems to me, in the elevation of an
altar, where folk care at all for the mysteries celebrated at it, to at
least as high a level as any part of the church used for service; and
undoubtedly the effect of the altar-service to those in the raised Coro
is much, if not altogether, marred where the altar is in its usual place
on the floor. Here the effect is certainly very fine, whether the altar
is looked at from the Coro or from the floor of the nave below it; and
from the former in particular, the strangeness of looking across the
deep-sunk well of the nave to the noble altar raised high above it at
the east is in every way most attractive. The detail of all the
architecture here is very uninteresting, though the many-ribbed vaulting
is certainly good, and the effect of the dark cavernous nave under the
western gallery is very fine in light and shade. Rarely as I trouble my
reader with any reference to Renaissance works, I must here in justice
say that the great tomb of Don Juan, the son of Ferdinand and Isabella,
which occupies the floor below the altar, is one of the most tender,
fine, and graceful works I have ever seen, and worthy of any school of
architecture. The recumbent effigy, in particular, is as dignified,
graceful, and religious as it well could be, and in no respect unworthy
of a good Gothic artist. It was executed by Micer Domenico Alexandra
Florentesi, who refers to it in a contract which he entered into with
Cardinal Ximenes in 1518; but it is said to have been completed as early
as A.D. 1498.[184] At present it is necessary to get an order to see it
from the Bishop, who has the key of the church; doubtless before long
this will not be necessary, but it is well to give the caution, as the
convent is some little distance beyond the town-walls, and the Bishop’s
palace is in the very centre of the city.
It will be felt, I think, that Avila is a city which ought on no account
to be left unseen in an architectural tour in Spain. Fortunately it is
now as easy of access as it was once difficult, for the railway from
Valladolid to Madrid, in order to cross the Sierra de Guadarrama, makes
a great détour by Avila, and thence on to the Escorial is carried on
through the mountain ranges with considerable exhibition of engineering
skill, and with great advantage to the traveller, as the views
throughout the whole distance are almost always extremely beautiful.
I did not stop on my road to see the Escorial: as far as the building is
concerned, it is enough I think to know that Herrera designed it, to be
satisfied that it will be cold, insipid, and formal in character. And
the glimpses I had of it as I passed amply justified this expectation.
It is, too, as utterly unsuited to its position on the mountain-side as
it well could be. On the other hand, I no doubt lost much in neglecting
to make the excursions to the various points of view which it is the
fashion for visitors to go to, though it seemed to me that the country
in the neighbourhood of La Granja, which one passes on the road from the
Escorial to Segovia, was more interesting than this, the mountains being
as high and much more finely wooded.