CHAPTER XX.

GENERAL SUMMARY.

IT is time, now that I have described so many Spanish Gothic buildings

in detail, to undertake a somewhat more general classification of them,

both in regard to their history and their style. Hitherto I have spoken

of each building by itself, only endeavouring to give so clear and

concise an account of each as was necessary in order that their general

character might be understood. But this kind of account would be

incomplete and almost useless without a more generalizing and more

systematic summary of the whole. And to this I propose to devote this

chapter.

There are, indeed, few parts of Europe in which it is more easy to

detect the influence of History upon Art than it is in Spain. I dismiss

from consideration the period of the Visigothic rule, which lasted from

A.D. 417 to 717; for though it is possible that some works of this age

still exist, as _e.g._ part of the walls of Toledo, and the metal votive

crowns of Guarrazar, they do not really come within the scope of my

subject, inasmuch as there is no kind of evidence that they exercised

any influence over the architecture of the Christian parts of the

country after the Moorish interregnum.

From the first invasion by the Moors in A.D. 711 down to their expulsion

from Granada in A.D. 1492, their whole history is mixed up with that of

the Christians; and, as might be expected, so great was the detestation

in which the two races held each other, that neither of them borrowed to

any great extent from the art of the other, and accordingly we see two

streams of art flowing as it were side by side at the same time, and

often in the same district,--a circumstance, as I need hardly say,

almost, if not quite, unknown at the same period in any other part of

Europe. The Mosque at Cordoba in the ninth century, the Alcazar and

Giralda at Seville in thirteenth, the Court of Lions in the Alhambra in

the fourteenth, some of the houses in Toledo in the fifteenth century,

are examples of what the Moors were building during the very period of

the Middle Ages in which all the buildings which I have described and

illustrated were being erected; the only exception to be made to this

general statement being, that when the Christians vanquished the Moors

they usually continued to allow them to build somewhat in their own

fashion,--as, for example, they did in Toledo,--whilst on the other

hand, the Moors seem never to have imitated this example, though they

were of course utterly unable to suppress all evidence in their work of

any knowledge of Gothic buildings.

The reason of this was, no doubt, that throughout this period any

contrast drawn between the Moors and Christians in regard to

civilization would generally, if not always, have been in favour of the

former. They were accomplished both in art and science: their

architectural works would have been impossible except to a very refined

people, and their scientific attainments are evidenced even to the

present day by the system of artificial irrigation which they everywhere

introduced, and which even now remains almost unaltered and unimproved.

The Christians, on the contrary, were warlike and hardy, and in the

midst of constant wars had but scant time for the pursuit of art; and

finally, when they had re-established their supremacy, they wisely

allowed the Moors to remain under their rule when they would, and

employed them to some extent on the works in which they could not fail

to see that they excelled.

Again, the subdivision of the country into several kingdoms,

administered under varying laws, owing no common allegiance to any

central authority, and inhabited by people of various origin, might well

be expected to leave considerable marks on the style of the buildings;

though, at the same time, the antipathy which the inhabitants of all of

them felt for the Moors rendered this cause less operative than it would

otherwise have been. Some portions of the country had never been

conquered by the Saracens: such were the regions of the Pyrenees lying

betwixt Aragon and Navarre, the Asturias, Biscay, and the northern

portion of Galicia.[400] And though it was by degrees that the other

states freed themselves from their conquerors, it happened fortunately

that the Christian successes generally synchronized as nearly as

possible with that great development of Christian art which at the time

covered all parts of Europe with the noblest examples of Pointed

Architecture. Toledo was recovered by the Christians in A.D. 1085,

Tarragona in 1089, Zaragoza in 1118, Lérida in 1149, Valencia in 1239,

Seville in 1248, whilst Segovia, Leon, Burgos, Zamora, and Santiago

suffered more or less from occasional irruptions of the Moors down to

the beginning of the eleventh century, but from that date were

practically free from molestation. By the middle of the fifteenth

century the number of states into which the country had been divided was

reduced to four, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and the Moorish kingdom of

Granada. Of these Aragon and Castile are the two of which I have seen

the most, and, I may venture to add, those in which the History of

Gothic Architecture in Spain is properly to be studied. For though it is

true that Seville was recovered in the thirteenth century, and Cordoba

about the same time, it is equally so that most of their buildings are

Moorish or modern, the Gothic cathedral in the former not having been

commenced until A.D. 1401, and the Moorish mosque in the latter still

doing service as the Christian cathedral; and generally throughout the

South of Spain, so far as I can learn, there are but few early Gothic

buildings to be seen; whilst the late examples of the style were

designed by the same architects, and in precisely the same style, as

those which were erected in the parts of Spain which I have visited.

Of these two great divisions of the country, Aragon included the

province of that name, together with Cataluña and Valencia; and owing to

the great political freedom which the Catalans in particular enjoyed at

an early period, to the vast amount of trade with Italy, the

Mediterranean, and the East carried on along its extensive seaboard, and

to its large foreign possessions--which included the Balearic Isles,

Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia--the kingdom of Aragon possessed great

wealth and power, and has left magnificent architectural remains.

The kingdom of Castile in course of time came to include, in addition to

the two Castiles, Leon, Biscay, the Asturias, Galicia, Estremadura,

Murcia, and Andalusia: and here there was not only a larger Spanish

territory, but one peopled by a much more varied population than that of

Aragon, and which naturally, I think, left a less distinct architectural

impress than we see in the other.

Each of these kingdoms of course inherited a certain number of buildings

erected under the rulers who had formerly held the country. It is

possible that some portion of the walls of Toledo were built by the

Goths; and at any rate we know by the fortunate discovery of the crowns

at Guarrazar,[401] that, whatever may have been the state of the people

in respect of other arts, that of working in precious metals was in an

advanced state.

The Moors who succeeded them undertook undoubtedly large works in many

parts of the country. They first built the Bridge of Alcantara across

the Tagus at Toledo, and enclosed several towns with strong walls, among

others Valencia and Talavera. They erected mosques and other public

buildings, and before the Christian conquests of the eleventh century

had no doubt imported much of a very advanced civilization into the

country which they ruled. The mosque “Cristo de la Luz,” at Toledo, is a

remarkable example of delicate skill in design and construction, and

certainly in advance of the coeval Christian works. The ingenuity of the

planning of the vaults is extreme, and though, at the same time, there

is to our eyes an error in trying to do so much in so very small a

space--nine vaulting compartments covered with varied vaults being

contrived in a chamber only 21 feet square--it is to be observed that

this is just one of the mistakes which arises from over-great education

and skill, and is in marked contrast to the kind of design which we see

in the simple, grave, but rude buildings which the less cultivated

Christians were erecting at the same period.

Of the early Christian buildings I think there can be but little doubt

that some at least still exist. There is no one year in Spanish history

which can be used as that of the Norman Conquest is in England. Here

people are accustomed to argue as though before and after A.D. 1066 two

entirely different styles existed, with few, if any, marks of imitation

of one from the other, though of course both must have had the same

common Roman origin. This cannot be said in Spain; and where we find

distinct and good evidence of the erection of churches in the ninth and

tenth centuries, and the buildings still standing, with every

architectural evidence of not being more modern than the eleventh

century, I see not why we should doubt their greater antiquity. For

looking to the solid way in which all these early works were built, it

seems to be extremely unlikely that they should have required rebuilding

so soon, or that, if they were rebuilt, not only should older stones

with inscriptions recording the dates be inserted in the new walls, but

also that no kind of evidence--documentary or other--should be

forthcoming as to their reconstruction.

Several inscriptions on foundation-stones are given by Cean

Bermudez,[402] and I regret never having been able to examine the

buildings in which they occur. One of the earliest of these, Sta. Cruz

de Cangas, is described as having a crypt; and a long inscription, with

the date 739, on a stone in it is given by Florez.[403] But I gather

from Mr. Ford that the church has now been modernized. Cean Bermudez

describes it as “strong, arched, and without ornament.” Another church

at Santiañes de Pravia has a labyrinthine inscription of A.D. 776,

recording its erection by the King Silo. This church was very small, but

had a Capilla mayor, two side chapels, a Crossing, and three naves; in

fact, was in plan completely and exactly what the Spanish churches of

the twelfth century were; and in this case it may, perhaps, be doubted

whether the inscription referred to the church described, and was not

taken from some older building. But the most interesting probably of

these early churches is that of Sta. Maria de Naranco, near Oviedo. This

is described and illustrated by Parcerisa,[404] and is undoubtedly a

most remarkable example, though unfortunately I can find no reliable

evidence as to its probably very early date. It seems to be planned with

a view to a congregation outside the church joining in the worship

within, there being galleries and open arches at the ends through which

the altar might be seen. I confess that the details which I have seen,

as well as the plans and views of this church, and of some portions of

Oviedo Cathedral, to which a similarly early date is ascribed, do not

give me the impression of work which is sufficiently distinct in style

to be pronounced, as the Spanish writers have it, “obra de Godos,” or

work of the Goths. Yet it is undoubtedly of early date, and probably, at

any rate, not later than the tenth or eleventh century. The detail is

Romanesque, and the modification of plan in such a building seems to

point to some special use for it rather than to some special age for its

erection. On the other hand, there is some reason to suppose that the

church at Santiago, which existed before the erection of the present

cathedral, was very similar in its plan;[405] and if so, it would seem

to fortify the claim for a very early date for Sta. Maria de Naranco.

I have thought it right to refer to these buildings on account of the

great age ascribed to some of them; but I have done so with some

hesitation, because I have not seen them myself, and it is impossible to

form any good opinion upon such questions as arise in connexion with

them without careful personal examination.

It is a relief, therefore, to turn now to more certain ground, and to

speak of churches which I have myself seen. I think the earliest of

these are the two old churches of San Pablo and San Pera, at Barcelona,

said to have been built in A.D. 914 and 983. I see no reason whatever to

doubt these dates; at least it is improbable that if San Pablo was built

in 914 it should have required rebuilding before the end of the next

century; and no one I suppose would suggest a later date for it than

this. In any case it is a valuable example. The ground-plan is

cruciform, with a central lantern and three eastern apses; and the roofs

are all covered with waggon vaulting and semi-domes. The plan is quite

worthy of very attentive consideration, since with more or less

modification of details it is that which more than any other may be said

to have been popular in Spain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The question as to the quarter from whence it was derived is one of the

greatest possible interest, and admits, I think, of but little doubt. It

must be remembered that in considering these questions there are no

Pyrenees. The towns on what is now the French side of the mountains were

not then French; and such places as S. Elne were not only really

Spanish, but so intimate was the connexion existing between them and

places at a greater distance (as _e.g._ Carcassonne), that for our

purpose they may fairly be considered as being in the same country. The

plan which we see in San Pablo del Campo is one which, having its origin

in the East, spread to the north of Italy, was adopted largely in

Provence, Auvergne, and Aquitaine, and was probably imported from thence

to Barcelona. The central lantern and the three eastern apses are rather

Byzantine than Romanesque in their origin; and though they are not

common in Italy, they are occasionally met with; whilst in the parts of

France just mentioned they are of frequent occurrence. The church which

I coupled with this--San Pedro de las Puellas, in the same city--was

consecrated in A.D. 983; it is also cruciform, but has no chapels east

of the transepts. Here, too, we have waggon-vaults, and a central dome.

The little church of San Daniel,[406] at Gerona, not much later probably

in date than those first mentioned, is mainly remarkable for the apsidal

north and south ends of its transepts. This common German arrangement is

most rarely seen in Spain, and deserves especial notice. Here it is

coupled with a central octagonal lantern, which has a very good effect.

It is repeated very nearly in the church at Tarrasa, and so far as the

apses at the end of the transept in the church of San Pedro, Gerona;

and there is considerable similarity between the latter and the

cathedral at Le Puy en Velay.

The succeeding century shows us the same type of plan becoming much more

popular, and developed again in such close imitation of some foreign

examples as to make it almost impossible to doubt its foreign origin. In

these buildings the nave has usually a waggon-vault, and this is

supported by half barrel-vaults in the aisles. There is no clerestory; a

central lantern rises to a moderate height; and three eastern apsidal

chapels open into the transepts, and are roofed with semi-domes. San

Pedro, Huesca--probably not later in date than A.D. 1096-1150--is a

remarkably good and early example of the class; and will be found to be

extremely similar to some of the churches built about the same time on

the other side of the Pyrenees. The plan of the steeple[407]--which is

hexagonal--deserves special record; and it may not be amiss to observe,

that at Tarbes, in the Pyrenees, the principal church not only has three

eastern apses, but also a central octagonal steeple; and the same type

is again repeated at San Pedro, Gerona--said to have been commenced in

A.D. 1117--though here there are two apses on each side of the principal

altar, and all the detail of the design is very Italian, or perhaps I

should rather say Provençal, in its character. If we compare some of

these churches with the earlier portions of the cathedral at

Carcassonne, we shall find them to be almost identical in character and

detail, and cannot avoid coming to the conclusion that they were all

designed by the same school of architects or masons. Carcassonne

Cathedral has a nave and aisles divided by columns formed of a square

block, with an engaged shaft on each face: the covering of the nave is a

waggon-vault with square ribs on its under side, and that of the aisles

is a quadrant. It is, in fact, almost identical with San Pedro at

Gerona. Go farther east, and in the church at Monistrol, between Le Puy

and S. Etienne, the same design precisely will be seen in a remote

French village far from Spain.

About this period a type of church varying but little from this became

extremely common in Aquitaine and Auvergne; and this again evidently

influenced at least one of the Spanish architects very much indeed: I

allude to such churches as those of Notre Dame du Port, Clermont

Ferrand, and S. Sernin at Toulouse--to name two only out of a large

number. In these the ground-plan has usually nave and aisles, transepts,

central lantern, and a chevet consisting of an apsidal choir with a

surrounding aisle, and chapels opening into it, with spaces between

each chapel. This plan, as I have already shown, is absolutely repeated

at Santiago with such close accuracy that one can hardly avoid calling

it merely a reproduction of S. Sernin at Toulouse.[408] It is the more

remarkable because for some reason the early Spanish architects almost

always avoided the erection of a regular chevet, and adhered strictly to

their first plan of separate apsidal chapels on the eastern side of the

transept. But whilst the early French chevet was only copied at

Santiago, the other features of the French churches to which it belonged

were copied not unfrequently--these are the waggon-vaulted nave,

supported by half waggon-vaults over the aisles, and the central

lantern. Gradually the design of these various parts was developed into

a sort of stereotyped regularity, the instances of which extend so far

across to the Peninsula as to be very surprising to those who have

noticed the remarkable way in which local peculiarities generally

confine themselves to the particular districts in which they originated.

In course of time the groining was varied, and in place of the round

barrel-vault, one of pointed section was adopted, and in place of it

again the usual quadripartite vault. The examples which I have

described, and which belong to this class, are--San Isidoro, Leon; San

Vicente and San Pedro, Avila; several churches in Segovia; the old

Cathedral at Salamanca; Lérida old Cathedral; Sta. Maria, Benevente; and

Santiago, la Coruña. Other churches of precisely similar character exist

at Valdedios, near Gijon; Villanueva and Villa Mayor, near Oña; San

Antolin de Bedon, between Ribadella and Llanes; Sandoval, on the river

Esla; San Juan de Amandi and Tarbes, on the French side of the Pyrenees.

Those in Segovia may be accepted as the best examples of their class,

and they are so closely alike in all their details as to lead naturally

to the belief that they were all executed at about the same period, and

by the same workmen. The sack of the city by the Moors in 1071, when it

is said that thirty churches were destroyed, seems to point to the

period at which most of these churches were probably erected to take the

place of those that had been destroyed; and it seems to be certain that

their leading features remained generally unaltered until about the end

of the twelfth, if not far into the succeeding century. Indeed it is

remarkable in Spain, just as it is in Germany, that the late Romanesque

style, having once been introduced, retained its position and _prestige_

longer than it did in France, and was only supplanted finally by designs

brought again from France in a later style, instead of developing into

it through the features of first-pointed, as was the case in England and

France.

In this general similarity there are several subordinate variations to

be observed. At Santiago, for instance, we see an almost absolute copy

of the great church of S. Sernin, Toulouse, erected soon after its

original had been completed. At Lugo it is clear, I think, that the

architect of the cathedral copied, not from any foreign work, but from

that at Santiago: he was probably neither acquainted with the church at

Toulouse, nor any of its class. At San Vicente, Avila, again, though we

see the Segovian eastern apses repeated with absolute accuracy, the

design of the church is modified in a most important manner by the

introduction of quadripartite vaulting in place of the waggon-vault, and

the piercing the wall above the nave arcades with a regular triforium

and clerestory. The same design was repeated with little alteration at

San Pedro, in the same city; and in both it seems to me that we may

detect some foreign influence, so rare was the introduction of the

clerestory in Spanish buildings of the same age. Sta. Maria, la Coruña,

again, though it evidently belongs to the same class as the cathedral at

Santiago, has certain peculiarities which identify it absolutely with

that variation which we see at Carcassonne and Monistrol:[409] for here

there are narrow aisles; and the three divisions of the church are all

covered with waggon-vaults, those at the sides resisting the thrust from

the centre, and, owing to their slight width, exerting but slight

pressure on the outer walls. The distinction between this design and one

in which the aisles are covered with quadrant-vaults is very marked; and

the erection of the cathedral at Santiago would not have been very

likely to lead to the design of such a church as this.

In all these churches the proportion of the length of the choir to that

of the nave is very small. Usually the apses are either simply added

against the eastern wall of the transept, or else, whilst the side apses

are built on this plan, the central apse is lengthened by the addition

of one bay between the Crossing and the apse. It is very important to

mark this plan, because, however it was introduced--whether in such

churches as that of the abbey of Veruela, where the conventual

arrangement of Citeaux was imported, or in those earlier churches of

which San Pedro, Gerona, may be taken as an example, in which from the

first no doubt the choir was transferred to the nave, and the central

apse treated only as a sanctuary--the result was the same on Spanish

architecture and Spanish ritual. The Church found herself in possession

of churches with short eastern apses and no choirs; and instead of

retaining the old arrangement of the choir, close to and in face of the

altar, she admitted her laity to the transept, divorced the choir from

the altar, and invented those church arrangements which puzzle

ecclesiologists so much. In our own country the same system to some

extent at first prevailed; but our architects took a different course;

they retained their choirs, prolonged them into the nave, and so

contrived without suffering the separation of the clergy from the altar

they serve, which we see in Spain.[410] In one great English church only

has the Spanish system been adopted, and this, strangely enough, in the

most complete fashion. Westminster Abbey, in fact, will enable any one

to understand exactly what the arrangement of a Spanish church is. Its

short choir, just large enough for a sumptuous and glorious altar, its

Crossing exactly fitted for the stalls of the clergy and choir, its nave

and transepts large enough to hold a magnificent crowd of worshippers,

are all mis-used just as they would be in Spain; whilst the modern

arrangements for the people--much more mistaken than they are

there--involve the possession of the greater part of the choir by the

laity, and the entire cutting off by very solid metal fences of all the

worshippers in the transepts from the altar before which they are

supposed to kneel, and the placing of the entire congregation between

the priest and the altar.[411]

This digression will be excused when it is remembered how universally

this tradition settled itself upon Spain, and how completely the

perseverance in Romanesque traditions has affected her ritual

arrangements, and with them her church architecture from the twelfth

century until the present day. The long choirs which were naturally

developed in England and France were never thought of there; the choir

was merely the “Capilla mayor”--the chapel for the high altar; and the

use of the nave as the people’s church was ignored or forgotten as much

as it was--very rightly--in some of our own old conventual churches,

where the choir was prolonged far down into the nave, and the space for

the people reduced to a bay or two only at its western end.

I must now bring this discussion to a close, and proceed with my

chronological summary; and here the Abbey Church at Veruela ought to be

mentioned, if regard be had to the date of its erection--circa A.D.

1146-1171--though I must say that I have not been able to discover that

it exercised any distinct influence upon Spanish buildings. It is in

truth a very close copy of a Burgundian church of the period, built by

French monks for an order only just established in Spain, under the

direction probably of a French architect, and in close compliance with

the rather strict architectural rules and restrictions which the

Cistercians imposed on all their branches and members.[412] The

character of the interior of this church is grand and simple, but at the

same time rather rude and austere; but the detail of much of the

exterior is full of delicacy; and the design of the chevet, with its

central clerestory, and the surrounding aisle roofed with a separate

lean-to roof, and the chapels projecting from it so subordinated as to

finish below its eaves, recalls to memory some of the best examples of

French Romanesque work.[413] The beauty and refinement of the little

Chapter-house here lead me to suppose that it cannot be earlier than the

end of the century.

There are some of these churches which require more detailed notice as

being derived to some extent from the same models, but erected on a

grander scale, and if documentary evidence can be trusted, whose

erection was spread over so long a time as to illustrate very well

indeed the slow progress of the development in art which we so often see

in these Spanish buildings. The old cathedral at Salamanca was building

from A.D. 1120 to 1178; Tarragona Cathedral was begun in 1131; Tudela,

commenced at about the same time, was completed in 1188; Lérida, whose

style is so similar to that of the others as to make me class them all

together, was not commenced until 1203, nor consecrated until 1278; and

Valencia Cathedral, of which the south transept of the original

foundation still remains, was not commenced until A.D. 1262. Yet if I

except the early and Italian-looking eastern apse at Tarragona, most of

the features of these churches look as though they were the design of

the same man, and very nearly the same period; and it is altogether

unintelligible how such a work, for instance, as Lérida Cathedral could

be in progress at the same time as Toledo and Burgos, save upon the

assumption that the thirteenth century churches in an advanced Pointed

style, such as these last, were erected by French workmen and artists

imported for the occasion, and in a style far in advance of that at

which the native artists had arrived.

Yet I think few churches deserve more careful study than these. I know

none whose interiors are more solid, truly noble, or impressive; and

these qualities are all secured not by any vast scale of

dimensions--for, as will be seen by the plans, they are all churches of

very moderate size--but by the boldness of their design, the simplicity

of their sections, the extreme solidity of their construction, and the

remarkable contrast between these characteristics and the delicacy of

their sculptured decorations; they seem to me to be among the most

valuable examples for study on artistic grounds that I have ever seen

anywhere, and to teach us as much as to the power of Pointed art as do

any churches in Christendom.

In all there is a very remarkable likeness in the section of the main

clustered piers. They are composed usually of four pairs of clustered

columns, two of them carrying the main arches, and two others supporting

bold cross arches between the vaulting bays, whilst four shafts placed

in the re-entering angles carry the diagonal groining ribs both of the

nave and aisle. The arches are usually quite plain and square in

section, the groining ribs are very bold and simple, and the whole

decorative sculpture is reserved for the doorways and the capitals and

bases of the columns. The windows have usually jamb-shafts inside and

out; and the eastern apses are always covered with semi-dome vaults.

Permanence being the one great object their builders set before them,

they determined to dispense as far as possible with wood in their

construction, and they seem to have laid stone roofs of rather flat

pitch above the vaulting, and in some cases very ingeniously contrived

with a view to preventing any possible lodgment of wet, and so any

danger of decay. It may be said, perhaps, that fragments only of these

roofs remain, so that after all timber roofs covered with tiles would

have been equally good; but this is not so. The very attempt to build

for everlasting is in itself an indication of the highest virtue on the

part of the artist. The man who builds for to-day builds only to suit

the miserable caprice of his patron, whilst he who builds for all time

does so with a wholesome dread of exciting hostile criticism from those

grave unprejudiced men who will come after him, and who will judge, not

consciously perhaps, but infallibly, as to the honesty of his work. In

England we have hardly a single attempt at anything of the kind, though

in Ireland, in St. Cormack’s Chapel at Cashel, we not only have an

example, but one also that proves to us that we may build in this solid

fashion, so that our work may endure in extraordinary perfection come

what may--as it has there--of neglect, of desolation, and of

desecration! Yet of all the virtues of good architecture none are

greater than solidity and permanence, and we in England cannot therefore

afford to affect any of our Insular airs of superiority over these old

Spanish artists!

Look also at the thorough way in which their work was done. The

Chapter-houses, the cloisters, the subordinate erections of these old

buildings, are always equal in merit to the churches themselves, and I

really know not where--save in some of the English abbeys which we have

wickedly ruined and destroyed--we are to find their equals. Nothing can

be more lovely than such cloisters as those of Gerona or Tarragona, few

things grander than that desecrated one at Lérida, whilst the

Chapter-house at Veruela, and the doorways at Valencia, Lérida, and

Tudela, deserve to rank among the very best examples of mediæval art.

There are yet two other grand early churches to be mentioned which do

not seem to range themselves under either of the divisions already

noticed, and which yet do not at all belong to the list of churches of

French design with which my notice of thirteenth-century Spanish work

must of necessity conclude. These are the cathedrals of Sigüenza and

Avila.[414] Both of these are, so far as I can see, but to a slight

extent founded upon other examples. Sigüenza Cathedral seems to have had

originally three eastern apses: the plan is simple and grand, and its

scale, either really, or at any rate in effect, very magnificent. The

great size of the clustered columns, their well-devised sections, the

massive solidity of the arches, the buttresses, and all the details,

make this church rank, so far at least as the interior is concerned,

among the finest Spanish examples of its age. At Avila, on the other

hand, we see a remarkable attempt to introduce somewhat more of the

delicacy and refinement of the first-pointed style; and just as if the

architect had been exasperated by the obligation under which he lay to

end his chevet within the plain, bald, windowless circular wall

projecting from the city ramparts which was traced out for him, we find

him indulging in delicate detached shafts, a double aisle round the

chevet, and subsequently in such strange as well as daring expedients in

the way of the support of the groining and the flying buttresses, as

could hardly have been ventured on by any one really accustomed to deal

with the various problems which the constructors of groined roofs

ordinarily had before them. I venture therefore to place these two

churches at Sigüenza and Avila among the most decidedly Spanish works of

their day; I see no distinct evidence of foreign influence in any part

of their design, and they seem to me to be fairly independent on the one

hand of the early Spanish style of Tarragona, Lérida, Salamanca, and

Segovia, and on the other of the imported French style of Toledo,

Burgos, and Leon.

And now I must say a few words on the three last-named churches. I have

already expressed my opinion as to their origin, which seems to me to be

most distinctly and undoubtedly French. The history of the Spanish

Church at the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth

century, points with remarkable force to such a development as we see

here. What more natural than that the country which looked, on the

recovery from its troubles--on the expulsion of the Saracen--to its

neighbour the French Church to supply it with bishops for its

metropolitan and other sees--should look also to it for a supply of that

instruction in art which had grown and flourished there, whilst men were

fighting and striving with all their might and main here? And what is

there more natural than that French architects, sent over for such

works, should first of all plan their buildings on the most distinctly

French plan, with French mouldings and French sculpture; and then--as we

see both at Burgos and Toledo, in the singular treatment of the

triforia--should have gradually succumbed to the national and in part

Moresque influences by which they were surrounded? At Leon the evidences

of imitation of French work are so remarkable, that no one capable of

forming a judgment can doubt the fact; and if at Burgos and Toledo they

are not quite so strong, the difference is slight, and one only of

degree. I have already spoken upon these points in describing the

churches in question; and here I will only repeat that, as the features

of which I speak are exceptional and not gradually developed, it is as

certain as anything can be that their style was not invented at all in

Spain. We have only to remember the fact, that at the same time that

Lérida Cathedral was being built, those of Toledo and Burgos were also

in progress, whilst that of Valencia was not commenced until much later,

to realize how fitful and irregular was the progress of art in Spain. It

is, in fact, precisely what we see in the history of German art. There,

just as in Spain, the Romanesque and semi-Romanesque styles remained

long time in quiet possession of the field, and it was not until the

marvellous power and success of the architects of Amiens and Beauvais

excited the German architects to emulation in Cologne Cathedral, that

they moved from their Romanesque style into the most decided and

well-developed geometrical Gothic. And just as Cologne Cathedral is an

exotic in Germany, so are those of Burgos, Leon, and Toledo in Spain; so

that, whilst Spaniards may fairly be proud of the glory of possessing

such magnificent works of art, their pride ought to be confined to that

of ownership, and should not extend to any claim of authorship.

The demands of these three great churches upon our admiration are very

different. The palm must be awarded to Toledo, which, as I have shown,

equals, if it do not surpass, all other churches in Christendom in the

beauty and scale of its plan. Undoubtedly, however, it lacks something

of height, whilst later alterations have shorn it also of some of its

attractiveness in design, the original triforium and clerestory

remaining only in the choir. Nevertheless, as it stands, with all its

alterations for the worse, it is still one of the most impressive

churches I have ever seen, and one in which the heart must be cold

indeed that is not at once moved to worship by the awefulness of the

place.

I have already, in my account of this great church, entered somewhat

fully into a description of the peculiarities of its plan, and the

evidence which they afford of its foreign origin. The unusual

arrangement of the chevet, in which the vaulting bays in both the

surrounding aisles of the presbytery are made of nearly the same

size,[415] by the introduction of triangular vaulting compartments, and

in which the chapels of the outer aisle are alternately square and

circular in plan, renders it, however, not merely an example of a French

school, but one of the very highest interest and peculiarity. There is

no church, so far as I know, similarly planned, though some are

extremely suggestive as to the school in which its architect had

studied. The cathedral at Le Mans has triangular vaulting compartments

in the outer of its two aisles, arranged somewhat as they are at Toledo,

but with inferior skill, the aisle next the central apse having the

unequal vaulting compartments, which have been avoided here; but the

surrounding chapels in these two examples are utterly unlike. Notre

Dame, Paris, also has triangular vaulting compartments, but they are

utterly different in their arrangement from those in Toledo

Cathedral.[416] Neither of these examples, in short, proves much as to

the authorship of the latter. A far more interesting comparison may,

however, be instituted between the plan of this chevet and that rare

example of a Mediæval architect’s own handiwork, which has been handed

down to us in the design for a church made by Wilars de Honecort, under

which he wrote the inscription, “Deseure est une glize a double charole.

K vilars de honecort trova & pieres de corbie.” In English: “Above is

(the presbytery of) a church with a double circumscribing aisle, which

Wilars de Honecort and Peter de Corbie contrived together.”[417] In this

plan we find these two old architects, not only introducing alternate

square and circular chapels round their apse, but also an arrangement of

the groining which looks almost as though they were acquainted with some

such arrangement as that of the triangular vaulting compartments of Le

Mans and Toledo. The diligent and able editors of Wilars de Honecort--M.

Lassus and Professor Willis--say that no such plan as this is anywhere

known to exist; and I believe they were nearly, though not, as I have

shown, absolutely correct in this assertion. At Toledo they still exist

in part, and once, no doubt, existed all round the chevet; and it may

well, I think, be a question whether Peter, the architect of Toledo,

had not studied in the French school, and with these very men--Wilars

de Honecort and Peter de Corbie--who, “inter se disputando,” as they

wrote on this plan, struck out this original scheme. At the same time it

will be seen, on comparison of the two plans, that if he derived his

idea from his brethren, he developed it into a much more scientific and

perfect form.

It will be recollected that though I claim a French origin for Toledo

Cathedral, I allow that it is not only possible, but probable, that, as

the work went on, either Spaniards only were employed on it, or (which

is more likely) that the French architect forgot somewhat of his own

early practice, and was affected by the work of other kind being done by

native artists around him. The evidence of this change is mainly to be

seen in the triforium and clerestory of the choir and transepts.

The religious gloom of the cathedral at Toledo is strangely different

from the religious brightness of that of Leon; for in the latter, where

the sole end of the architect seems to have been the multiplication of

openings and the diminution of solid points of support, the artist in

stained glass has fortunately come to the rescue, and filled the windows

with some of the most gorgeous colouring ever seen, so as to redeem it

from its otherwise utter unfitness for its work in such a climate as

that even of Northern Spain. I have already said that this church has

not stood well. It was, in truth, too daring, and has in consequence

failed to some extent. Yet, in spite of this, I cannot but admire

immensely the hardihood and the skill of the man who could

venture--knowing as much as he did--upon such a daring work as this; and

I know not to whom to liken him so well as to the first architect of

Beauvais Cathedral, though certainly the work at Leon has not failed so

conspicuously as it did there. In both these churches the arrangement of

the ground-plan of the chevet is so nearly similar as to allow of their

being classed together as at any rate works of the same style, if they

are not indeed both works of the same school. Both have pentagonal

chapels round the apse, and square chapels to the west of them, and they

were built within a few years of each other.[418] The detail at Leon is

almost all very French, and the windows of its clerestory are, in their

general design as well as in their detail, almost reproductions of those

at Saint Denis, in the peculiar mode adopted there of strengthening the

principal monials by doubling the smaller monials in width, without any

change in their thickness.

The cathedral at Burgos is certainly in most respects a somewhat

inferior work to that at Leon. It, too, is French; but its architect was

familiar not with the best examples of French art in the Ile de France

and Champagne, but only, I think, with those of the somewhat inferior

Angevine school. The plan of this chevet[419] was probably never so fine

as that of Leon, though it was very similar to it. Here, too, I think,

we see some local influence exerting itself in the design of the

triforia throughout the church, whereas at Leon the original scheme

seems from first to last to have been faithfully adhered to. But if

Burgos Cathedral is far inferior in scale to that of Toledo, and

somewhat so to that of Leon in skilfulness of design, it is in all other

respects equally deserving of study, and is in its general effect at

present far more Spanish than either of them. The many additions have to

a great extent, it is true, obscured the original design; but the result

is so picturesque, and so far more interesting than an unaltered church

usually is, that one cannot well find fault. The main failure of the

design is the smallness of the scale, and the loss of internal effect

owing to the alteration of the primitive arrangements by the placing of

the Coro in the nave, and the leaving of the ample choir unoccupied save

by the altar at its eastern end.

The succeeding great division of Gothic art is much more distinctly

marked and more uniform throughout Spain, whilst at the same time it is

even less national and peculiar. There are in truth very considerable

remains of fourteenth-century works, though, perhaps, no one grand and

entire example of a fourteenth-century building. All these examples are

extremely similar in style; and I think, on the whole, more akin in

feeling and detail to German middle-pointed than to French. The west

front of Tarragona Cathedral, the lantern and north transept of Valencia

Cathedral, the chapel of San Ildefonso, the Puerta of Sta. Catalina, and

the screen round the Coro at Toledo, Sta. Maria del Mar and the

cathedral at Barcelona, the chevet of Gerona Cathedral, the north

doorway and nave clerestory of Avila Cathedral, and the cloisters of

Burgos and Veruela, afford, with many others, fair examples of the

design and details of churches of this period. The traceries are

generally elaborately geometrical and rather rigid and ironlike in their

character, the carving fair but not especially interesting--dealing

_usque ad nauseam_ in diapers of lions and castles--and the whole system

of design one of line and rule rather than of heart and mind. Yet, in

this, Spain reflected much more truly than before what was passing

elsewhere in the fourteenth century; and exhibited, just as did Germany,

France, and England[420] at the same moment, the fatal results of the

descent from poetry and feeling in architecture to that skill and

dexterity which are still in the nineteenth century, as they were in the

fourteenth, regarded--and most wrongly regarded--as the elements of art

most to be striven after and most taught. Art, in truth, was ceasing to

be vigorous and natural, and becoming rapidly tame and academical!

Yet if these works are not very national, they are at any rate most

interesting and deserve most careful study. He was no mean artist who

made the first design for Barcelona Cathedral, who completed the chevet

of Gerona, or who designed the steeple at Lérida, or the cloisters of

Burgos, Leon, or Veruela. At this time indeed art was cosmopolitan, and

all Europe seems to have been possessed with the same love for

geometrical traceries, for crockets, for thin delicate mouldings, and

for sharp naturalesque foliage, so that no country presents anything

which is absolutely new, or unlike what may be seen to some extent

elsewhere. There are perhaps only two features of this period which I

need record here, and these are, first, the reproduction of the

octagonal steeple, which, as we have seen, was a most favourite type of

the Romanesque builders; and, secondly, the introduction of that grand

innovation upon old precedents, the great unbroken naves, groined in

stone, lighted from windows high up in the walls, and inviting each of

them its thousands to worship God or to hear His word in such fashion as

we, who are used to our little English town churches, can scarcely

realize to ourselves.[421] But on this point I will say no more because

its consideration more naturally arises in the succeeding period, in

which the problem was more distinctly met and more satisfactorily

settled.

The survey of Spanish art in the fifteenth century is, I think, on the

whole, more gratifying than it is in the fourteenth. In the earliest

churches, as the models from which they were derived were first of all

built in hot climates, the windows were small and few, the walls thick,

the roofs flat-pitched, and the whole construction eminently suited to

the physical circumstances of the country. But these models, having been

taken to the north of Europe, and there largely and perhaps

thoughtlessly copied, in spite of the vast difference of climate, were

soon found to be unfitted for their purpose, and were consequently, in

due course of time, developed into that advanced style of Gothic of

which the main characteristic is the size and beauty of its windows. Of

course this development was just that of all others which ought not to

have been tolerated at all under a southern sun; and we must allow the

fifteenth-century architects the credit of having discovered this, and

of having returned very much to the same kind of design as that in which

their thirteenth-century predecessors had indulged.

The examples of this age which I have described will have given a fair

idea of their main characteristics. The magnificent size, the solid

construction, and the solemn internal effect of such churches as those

of Segovia, Salamanca, Astorga, Huesca, Gerona, Pamplona, and Manresa,

would be sufficient to mark the period which produced them as one of the

most fertile and artistic the world has ever seen. We may approach such

buildings full of prejudice in favour of an earlier style of

architecture, of a purer form of art; but we cannot leave them without

acknowledging that at least they are admirable in their general effect,

and if not conceived in the very purest art, still conceived in what is

at any rate a true form of art. By the time in which they were erected,

Spain had become far more powerful than ever before; she was quite free

from all fear of the Moors, and was so rich as to be able to expend vast

sums of money in works of art and luxury. She had also more trade and

communication with her neighbours; and no doubt their customs and their

schools of art had become so familiar to Spanish architects as to lead

naturally to some imitation of them in their works. In their later works

we find, at any rate, a development beyond that point at which Spaniards

had before arrived, and noticeably an affection for the French chevet or

apsidal choir surrounded by a procession-path and group of chapels. This

arrangement, which, when it was adopted at Veruela, Santiago, Burgos,

Leon, and Toledo, was evidently only adopted because the architects of

these churches were French, was a favourite one of the artists of the

fifteenth century. Huesca and Astorga alone of the great churches

mentioned just now are founded upon the old Spanish type of parallel

apses at the east end: the others are all founded upon that of the

French chevet with some modifications in the details of their design. Of

these, few are more interesting than that which we see in the cathedral

at Pamplona, the chevet of which is, to the best of my belief, unique in

its curious use of the equilateral triangle in the plan. This is perhaps

the most novel modification of the French plan; but among all of them it

is impossible not to award the palm, most decidedly, to the really

magnificent works of the Catalan School. In other parts of Spain the

great churches of this period had no very special or marked character;

nothing which clearly showed them to be real developments in advance of

what had been done before or elsewhere. In Cataluña, on the other hand,

there was a most marked impulse given by a Mallorcan artist at the

latter part of the fourteenth century; and to the influence of his

school we owe some of, I suppose, the most important mediæval churches

to be seen in any part of Europe. Their value consists mainly in the

success with which they meet the problem of placing an enormous

congregation on the floor in front of one altar, and within sight and

hearing of the preacher. The vastest attempt which we have made in this

direction sinks into something quite below insignificance when compared

with such churches as Gerona Cathedral, Sta. Maria del Mar, Barcelona,

or the Collegiata at Manresa. The nave of the former would hold some two

thousand three hundred worshippers, that of the next hard upon three

thousand, and that of the third about two thousand. Their internal

effect is magnificent in the extreme; and if, in their present state,

their external effect is not so fine, it must be remembered, first of

all, that they have all been much mutilated, and, in the next place,

that their architects had evidently mastered the first great necessity

in church-building--the successful treatment of the interior. In these

days it is impossible to say this too strongly: men build churches

everywhere in England, as though they were only to be looked at, not

worshipped in; and forget, in fact, that the sole use of art in

connexion with religion is the exaltation of the solemnity of the

ritual, and the oblation of our best before the altar, and not the mere

pleasing of men’s eyes with the sweet sights of spires rising among

trees, or gables and traceried windows standing out amid the

uninteresting fabrics of nineteenth-century streets!

In our large towns in England there is nothing we now want more than

something which shall emulate the magnificent scale of these Catalan

churches. They were built in the middle ages for a large manufacturing

or seafaring population; and we have everywhere just such masses of

souls to be dealt with as they were provided for. But then, of course,

it is useless to recommend such models if they are only to be used as we

use our churches, for four or five hours on Sundays, instead of, as

these Spanish churches were and still are, for worship at all sorts of

hours, not only on Sundays, but on every day of the week also. When

English Churchmen are accustomed to see churches thoroughly well used;

when no church is without its weekly, no great church without its daily

Eucharist; and when they see none, great or small, without their doors

open daily both for public and private prayer,--then, and not till then,

can we expect that they will allow architects any chance of emulating

the glories achieved by these old men. Till then we shall hold fast to

our insular traditions of little town churches and subdivided parishes,

and shall doubt the advantages of enormous naves, of colleges of clergy

working together, and of those other old Catholic appliances, which must

be tried fully and fairly before we give up in despair the attempt to

Christianize the working population of our large cities.

The general idea of these great fifteenth-century churches has no doubt

already been grasped by my readers. Worship at the altar appears to me

to be the key to the design and arrangement of many of them, for nowhere

else in Europe, I suppose, can we find a church on so very moderate a

scale as the Cathedral at Barcelona crowded in the way it is with

altars, and so planned and fitted up as to make it absolutely useless as

a place of gathering for a large number of persons at one service. But

if this multiplication of side altars was here carried to excess, one of

the most remarkable examples of an attempt to glorify the high altar,

and at the same time to provide for one enormous and united

congregation, is unquestionably that which is presented by Sta. Maria

del Mar in the same city. This church has its prototype at Palma in

Mallorca, and I much regret that I have never yet been able to visit

that island, for, so far as I can learn, it seems that the mainland owed

much to it in the way of architectural development, and that some of the

finest examples of the Catalan style in this age are still to be seen

there.

The special devotion to the altar service which is exemplified in

Barcelona Cathedral led naturally to other architectural developments.

Such are the remarkable church of San Tomás at Avila, with its western

choir and eastern altar both raised in galleries, and its arrangement

for the congregation of worshippers below. Such again is the church of

El Parral, Segovia, with its deep western gallery for the choir, its

dark, gloomy, and austere nave, and the concentration of light and

window round the altar. Indeed, the institution of the western gallery,

so common--I might almost say so universal--in small churches at this

period in Spain, arose from the same feeling as did the removal of the

choir into the nave in the larger churches. The object of all these

changes was to give the people access to the altar, and usually they

seem to have been made upon the assumption that no one would care to

assist at the services in the choir itself. I am very much inclined to

think that the rise of this feeling was to a great extent an accident,

and the result of the fact that almost all the early Spanish churches

were founded on models in which the eastern limb of the Cross was so

very short that the choir or Chorus Cantorum must almost always have

occupied the eastern part of the nave, or the Crossing under the central

lantern. This must have been almost a necessity in such cathedrals as

those of Lérida, Tudela, and Sigüenza: whilst in others, as those of

Tarragona, Tarazona, and Avila, the space must always have been cramped,

though a choir might have been accommodated. Of the larger churches

Burgos alone has a really large constructional choir. In Toledo it is

very short, and in Leon certainly below what we usually find in a French

church of the same age and pretensions.

The cathedrals of Segovia and Salamanca are the two latest great Gothic

churches in Spain, and in some respects among the grandest; and here, as

might be expected, the Spanish custom as to the position of the Coro had

become so thoroughly fixed and invariable, that the choir proper is very

short, and built only for the altar. The plan of Segovia Cathedral is

very fine and well proportioned; whilst that of Salamanca has been

unhappily ruined by the erection of a square east end, in place of the

apse which was first of all intended: and this, in place of emulating at

all the noble design of any of our English eastern ends, is contrived

with but little skill, the aisle returning across behind the altar,

whilst beyond it to the east there is a line of chapels similar to those

beyond the aisles.

Of the later styles I need say but little. They are not Gothic, and this

is a summary of Gothic architecture only; yet it is interesting to look

into their history if only to notice how curious the fact is that at the

same time that men like Berruguete were designing in the most

thoroughly Renaissance style, Juan Gil de Hontañon was still painfully

superintending the erection of a great Gothic cathedral. The remarkably

Gothic staircase to the Hall at Christ Church, Oxford (A.D. 1640); the

Gothic window traceries of Stone Church, Kent, of the same date; the

rebuilding of Higham Ferrers steeple by the great Archbishop Laud, and

of the spire of Lichfield Cathedral by good Bishop Hacket in 1669, are

well-known instances of the remarkable love for Christian art which

Englishmen retained long after the fashion for Pagan and Renaissance art

had set in. And it is not a little interesting to find the same contest

going on in Spain, and the same love for the old and hallowed form of

art exhibited.

I cannot see much--I might almost say I can see nothing--to admire in

the works of the Renaissance school in Spain. It was in their time that

the discovery of America raised the country to the very summit of her

prosperity, and right nobly did she acknowledge her duty by the

offerings she made of her wealth. Few Spanish churches are without some

token of the magnificent liberality of the people at this time, and one

is obliged to acknowledge it in spite of the horror with which one

regards the works they did, and the damage which their erection did to

the older buildings to which they were added.

It would be dreary work to follow the stream of Spanish art down by

Berruguete and Herrera to Churriguera and so on to our own time; and the

only fact of interest that I know is that the old scheme of cruciform

church with a central lantern is still the most popular, and that down

to the present time almost every modern church has been so planned, with

a lantern dome rising from above the intersection of the nave and

transepts.

Fortunately, down to this time the tide of “Restoration” has hardly

reached Spain, and one is able therefore to study the genuine old

records in their old state. There are no Salisbury Chapter-houses or

Worcester Cathedrals to puzzle us as to whether anything about them is

old, or whether all may be dismissed or discussed as if it were

perfectly new; and so it affords a field for study the value of which

cannot be overrated, and which ought not to be neglected. It must not be

supposed that this field of study is limited to the general scheme of

the churches. On the contrary, their fittings and furniture, their

appendages and dependent buildings, are unsurpassed in interest by those

of any other land, and in addition to these there are several other

heads under which my subject naturally presents itself.

First among them is that of church furniture. No country is perhaps now

so rich in this respect as Spain. Few of course--if any--of her churches

retain their old furniture in its original place earlier in date than

the fifteenth century. It is true that the magnificent baldachin and

Retablo at Gerona, the screens round the Coro at Toledo, and the

beautiful painted Retablo in the old cathedral at Salamanca, are earlier

than this; but these are exceptions to the rule. The great glory of the

country in this respect are such Retablos--rich in sculpture, covered

with gold and colour, and in paintings of no mean merit, and lofty and

imposing beyond anything of the kind ever seen elsewhere--as those of

Toledo Cathedral or the Carthusian Church of Miraflores. In these one

hardly knows whether to admire most the noble munificence of the

founders, or the marvellous skill and dexterity of the men who executed

them. It is not only that they are rich and costly, but much more, that

all the work in them is usually good of its kind, and far finer than the

work of the same age and style which we see in the Netherlands and

Germany. The choir stalls, again, are often magnificent. Nothing can be

more interesting than the contemporary chronicle of the capture of

Granada which we see in the lower range of stalls at Toledo; they are

full of character and spirit, and represent what was no doubt felt to be

a truly religious enterprize, with at least as much fidelity as any view

of our own military operations at the present day ever attains to. Other

churches have choir fittings, like those of Zamora, full of curious

interest to the student of Christian iconography; like those at

Palencia, remarkable for the exceedingly elaborate character of their

traceries and panelling; and like those of Gerona, valuable for the fine

character of the rare fourteenth-century woodwork which has been

re-arranged in the modern Coro. Turn again from the choir stalls to the

other fittings of the choir. Seldom elsewhere shall we see the old

columns for the curtains at the side of the altar still standing as they

do at Manresa. Nowhere shall we see such magnificent choir lecterns, in

brass as that of Toledo, or in wood as that of Zamora; nowhere else such

pretty and sweet-sounding wheels of bells for use at the elevation of

the Host; nowhere, perhaps, so many old organs, many of which, if not

Mediæval, are at any rate not far from being so; nowhere else so many or

such magnificent Rejas or metal screens and parcloses, as in this

country. In every one of these works Spanish workmen excelled, because

they devoted themselves to them. We have lists of men who made screens,

of others who carved the choir stalls, of others who made Retablos, and

of others, again, who painted and gilded them. Each class of men is

named after the furniture to the execution of which they devoted

themselves, and occasionally individuals rose to rare eminence from this

kind of work. The time was late, indeed, when it happened, but see how

Borgoña and Berruguete strove for mastery over their work on the upper

stalls at Toledo, or how the poor Matias Bonifé, at Barcelona, was bound

to carve no beasts or subjects on his stalls, to which we may suppose he

was addicted; and how his successor died of distress because the Chapter

did not like the pinnacles he added to the canopies; and consider how

people interested themselves in the matter, how they were excited in the

contest between Borgoña and Berruguete, and no doubt in the others also,

and we see at once how different was the position which these men

occupied from that which, so far as we know, their contemporaries in

England held.

The monuments in the Spanish churches are not the least of their

glories. From one of the earliest and finest, that of Bishop Maurice at

Burgos, there is a sequence illustrating almost every variety of Gothic

down to that exquisite Renaissance monument of the son of Ferdinand and

Isabella at Avila, in which--in spite of the date and style--the old

spirit still breathes an air of grace, refinement, and purity over the

whole work. Such chapels as those which enshrine these monuments,--that

of the Constable at Burgos, of Santiago at Toledo, of Miraflores near

Burgos,--are well fitted to hold the most magnificent of memorials; for

were it not that such a work as the tomb of Juan II. and Elizabeth is

almost unmatched anywhere for the skill and delicacy of its workmanship,

and that some of the others are almost equally sumptuous, the chapels

within which they are erected would appear to be in themselves the

noblest remembrances of the dead.

Of the dependent buildings of these great churches I have had to speak

over and over again. The ground-plans which I have given will show how

complete they usually are. Their arrangement varies very much. The

cloister, for instance, is on the north-east at Tarragona; the north at

Sigüenza, Toledo, and Leon; the west at Lérida and Olite; the south at

Santiago, Palencia, Tudela, and Veruela; and the south-east at Burgos.

The Chapter-houses by no means always stand on the east of the cloister,

though they usually retain the old triple entrance, and the remaining

buildings seem to vary very much in the positions assigned to them.

The roofing of Spanish churches has been incidentally noticed in various

places throughout this volume. It was almost always of stone. So far as

the interior roofing is concerned, the changes that are seen are of

course very much the same as those which marked the vaults of most other

parts of Europe at the same period. At first the cylindrical Roman

vault, then the same vault supported by quadrant vaults over the aisles,

then simple quadripartite vaults, and finally vaults supported on very

elaborate systems of lierne ribs. But there are some minor peculiarities

in these vaults which deserve record. The waggon vaults generally have

transverse ribs on their under side, and occur usually in buildings in

which all the apsidal terminations are roofed with semi-domes--and they

are sometimes (as in Lugo Cathedral, and Sta. Maria, la Coruña) pointed.

The early quadripartite vaulting is generally remarkable for the large

size of the vaulting-ribs, and for the very bold transverse arches which

divide the bays. Ridge-ribs are hardly ever introduced, and the ridge is

generally very little out of the level. The vaults of Leon Cathedral are

filled in with tufa in order to diminish the weight, but I have not

noticed any similar contrivance elsewhere. Down to the end of the

fourteenth century the vaulting seldom if ever had any but diagonal,

transverse, and wall-ribs; and even in many of the works of the

succeeding century the same judicious simplicity is seen. But usually at

this time it became the fashion to introduce a most complicated system

of lierne ribs, covering the whole surface of the vault, dividing it up

into an endless number of small and irregularly shaped compartments, and

very much damaging its effect. My ground-plans of Segovia and (new)

Salamanca Cathedrals show how extremely elaborate these later vaults

very frequently were. There is another form of vault which is not

unfrequently met with: this occurs where a square vaulting bay is

groined with an octagonal vault. In these examples a pendentive is

formed at each angle of the square, and thus the octagonal base is

formed for the vault. Examples of this are to be seen in the Chapels of

San Ildefonso and Santiago at Toledo Cathedral, in three of the late

Chapels at Burgos Cathedral, and in the Chapter-house of Pamplona

Cathedral. The fashion for this vault arose probably from the custom

which had obtained of building central lanterns, which were frequently

finished with octagonal stages, and consequently vaulted with octagonal

vaults. So far as to the internal roofing. The evidence I have found of

the old external roofing in some cases is even more interesting. It is

clear that many of the early churches were intended from the first to

be built entirely of stone in the roof as well as in the walls. Avila,

Toledo, and Lérida Cathedrals, and the Collegiata at Manresa, still

retain some of their old stone covering; and though it is true that in

none of these cases has the attempt to construct an absolutely

imperishable building been perfectly successful, it appears to me that

the workmen and architects who attempted to carry such plans into

execution deserve all our admiration. I have described these roofs in

the course of my notes upon the churches in which they occur, and here I

need only refer to my descriptions and illustrations.

In sculpture Spain is not so rich as France, but on the whole probably

more so than England. The best complete Gothic work that I have seen is

at Leon; but it offers no variety whatever from the best of the same age

in France. I have given the various iconographical schemes, so far as I

could manage to do so, in describing the several works, and here I will

only repeat that, to my mind, the triple western doors at

Santiago[422]--completed in A.D. 1188--are among the finest works of

their age, and deserving of the greatest care and tenderness on the part

of their guardians. Most of us are conscious how much good sculpture

adds to the interest of good architecture. Usually, however, we spread

our modern sculpture too lavishly in all directions if we have the money

to spend. But even in this there may be too much of a good thing; the

mind and eye become satiated, and sicken; and not half the real pleasure

is felt in seeing some modern works that would be if the work had been

somewhat less lavishly applied, somewhat more thoughtfully, or as at

Santiago, in one spot, leaving the whole of the rest of the church in

its stern, rude simplicity.

The domestic architecture of Spain in the middle ages is, as might be

expected, very much less important than the religious architecture.

Probably the wealth of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was even

more damaging to the former than it was to the latter. At any rate, no

country--Italy excepted--contains a greater number of showy Renaissance

palaces in all its principal towns than Spain does; and there can be

little doubt that they took the place of Gothic houses to a very

considerable extent. Either I was very unlucky, or, if I saw what is to

be seen, I must pronounce Spain to be unusually barren of old examples

of domestic buildings. Of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries I have

hardly seen a single example, save the house which I have described at

Lérida; whilst of the two following centuries, the best examples seem to

be confined very much to the Mediterranean sea-board. In this part of

Spain are the simple houses lighted by _ajimez_ windows, which I have

described and illustrated; they extend all along the coast from Perpiñan

to Valencia, and are usually so much alike as to produce the impression

that they are all made from the same design. Later than this, the public

buildings at Barcelona and Valencia, the palace of the Dukes del

Infantado at Guadalajara, the museum and other convents at Valladolid,

the house of the Constable Velasco at Burgos, and the great hospital at

Santiago, are no doubt magnificent examples of their class. In these the

buildings are generally arranged round courtyards, which are surrounded

by passages opening to the court, and lighted either with open arches or

with traceried windows. Rich and noble as some of these buildings are,

there is little that is interesting or picturesque in them, and they

seldom attain the degree of importance of which one would suppose such

an architectural scheme skilfully treated would admit. Their date is

rarely earlier than circa A.D. 1450, and the detail of their mouldings

and sculpture is consequently of the latest kind of Gothic. There is,

however, a rude barbaric splendour in some of the courts or patios at

Valladolid, where this kind of building is seen to perhaps greater

advantage than anywhere else.

The castles of Spain deserve, apparently, much more attention, and are

in every way more important, than the other domestic buildings. Those at

Olite, Segovia, and Medina del Campo have been already described; and

there is, no doubt, a vast number of buildings of somewhat similar

character to be seen, especially in those parts of the country which

formed for a time the frontier land between the Moorish and Christian

kingdoms. Generally, they are remarkable for the unbroken surface of

their lofty walls, crowned with picturesque and complicated projecting

turrets at the angles. The scale on which they are built is magnificent,

and their walls still stand almost untouched by the ages of neglect from

which they have suffered. In the same way the walls which encircle the

Spanish cities are often still so perfect throughout their circuit that

it is almost possible to persuade oneself that they have been untouched

for three hundred years. Avila, Lugo, Segovia, Toledo, Pamplona,

Astorga, Gerona, Tarragona, and many other towns are girt round with so

close an array of tower and wall as to make them still look fit for

defence. The age of these walls varies much; but most are probably of

early foundation, owing their first erection to the days when the Moors

still from time to time rode raiding across the land. They are always of

extraordinary solidity, and consist usually of plain walls with circular

projecting towers at short intervals.

The materials used by Spanish architects and builders seem to have been

granite, stone, and brick. Granite was used in some of the very earliest

constructions; but after the introduction of Christian art into the

country, nothing but stone was used for two or three centuries, when

granite was again made use of. We see the same thing in England; and no

doubt the admirable masons who played so important a part in the

development of Christian architecture must have detested the hard,

coarse, and unyielding material, when they compared it with the more

easily-wrought free-stones which lent themselves so kindly to their

work. The Spanish masons were always, I think, skilful; and in the

fifteenth century, when Gothic art was glowing forth in all the glory of

decay, pre-eminently so. I know no mere execution of details more

admirable in every way than that which we see, for instance, in the work

of Diego de Siloe. It reaches the very utmost limit of skilful

handiwork. It is not very artistic, but it is so clever that we cannot

but admire it; and I doubt much whether the best of our own works of the

same age can at all be put in comparison with it. It is generally marked

by the extraordinary love of heraldic achievements which is so

characteristic of the Spaniards. There are some of the façades of the

later churches which are adorned with absolutely nothing but coats of

arms and their supporters; and I know no work which is less interesting

in spite of its extraordinary elaborateness. The decorations of parts of

our Houses of Parliament give some idea of this sort of work, though

they are by no means so painfully elaborate.

The masons seem to have worked together in large bodies, and the walls

are marked in all directions with the signs which, then as now,

distinguished the work of each mason from that of his neighbour, but I

have been unable (save in one or two cases) to detect the mark of the

same mason in more than one work; and from this it would seem to be

probable that the masons were stationary rather than nomadic in their

habits, a deduction which is fortified by the difference of general

character which may, I think, be detected between the groups of marks in

different buildings. Occasionally the number of men employed on one

building seems to have been unusually large, and it is clear therefore

that there were great numbers of masons in the country. In the small

church of Sta. Maria, Benavente, there are the marks of at least

thirty-one masons on the eastern wall; as many as thirty-five were at

work on the lower part of the steeple at Lérida; whilst in one portion

of Santiago Cathedral there appears to have been as many as sixty. These

numbers would be large at the present day; and are very considerable

even if compared with such a building as Westminster Abbey, where, in

A.D. 1253, when the works were in full progress, the number of

stone-cutters varied from thirty-five to seventy-eight.

The use of bricks was not, so far as I have seen, very great. They were

used either in combination with stone, plaster, or tiles, or by

themselves. Examples of their use in combination with stone may be seen

at Toledo. Here, in all the Moorish or Moresque examples, the walls are

built of rubble stone, with occasional bonding-courses of brick, and

brick quoins. This kind of construction, which has been sometimes

adopted of late years in England, is obviously good and convenient, but

wanted, to some minds, the authority of ancient precedent; and here at

Toledo we are able to show it from a very early period. In the very

early Puerta de Visagra (circa A.D. 1108-1136) single bonding-courses of

brick are used at a very short distance apart, whilst in the later

works, such as the steeples of San Roman and La Magdalena, the bands are

farther apart, and consist frequently of two or three courses of brick,

whilst the stringcourses and corbel-tables are formed of projecting

bricks, which are seldom, if ever, moulded. This, indeed, may almost be

said to be the special peculiarity of Spanish brickwork; for in every

other part of Europe, so far as I have seen, where bricks are much used,

they were always more or less moulded. These examples are useful,

however, as showing how very much richness of effect can be obtained by

the use of the simple rough material in the simplest way. At Zaragoza,

at Tarazona, at Calatayud, and elsewhere, the buildings and their

steeples are covered with panels and arcades, formed by setting forward

some of the bricks a few inches in advance of the face of the wall. In

some cases, as in the Cimborio of Tarazona Cathedral, and the east wall

of Zaragoza, the spaces so left are filled in with extremely rich work

in coloured tiles, the effect of which is far less garish and strange

than might have been expected.

The most curious feature that I have noticed about Spanish brickwork is,

that it always, or almost always, appears to have been the work of

Moorish workmen, and not of the Christian workmen by whom the great

churches throughout the country were erected. The Moors continued to

live and work in many towns long after the Christians had recovered

them; and wherever they did so, they seem to have retained, to a great

extent, all their old architectural and constructive traditions. We see

this most distinctly in the markedly different character of the old

Spanish brickwork both from the other Spanish architectural developments

of the day, and also from any brickwork of the same period that is seen

in other parts of Europe. If after leaving Zaragoza the traveller were

to cross the Pyrenees, and then make his way to Toulouse, he would find

himself again in the midst of brick buildings, erected at various times

from the twelfth to the sixteenth century; but he would find them

utterly different in style from the brick buildings of the Zaragozan

district, and thoroughly in harmony with the stone buildings which were

being erected at the same time in the same neighbourhood. And this

brings us in face of one of the most curious evidences of the extremely

exotic character of most Spanish art. Spain was the only country in

Europe, probably, in which at the same time, during the whole period

from A.D. 1200 to A.D. 1500, various schools of architecture existed

much as they do in England at the present day. There were the genuine

Spanish Gothic churches (derived, of course, from Roman and Romanesque),

the northern Gothic buildings executed by architects imported from

France, and in later days from Germany, and the Moresque buildings

executed by Moorish architects for their Christian masters. Of these

schools I have already discussed two in this chapter, and I must now say

a few words about the third.

I do not propose to speak here of Moorish art, properly and strictly so

called, but only of that variety of it which we see made use of by the

Christians, and which throughout this volume I have called “Moresque.”

Of these, the most remarkable that I have seen are in that most

interesting city of Toledo, which, so far as I can learn, seems to

surpass Seville in work of this kind, almost as much as it does in its

treasures of Christian art. Here it is plain that, though Christians

ruled the city, Moors inhabited it. The very planning of the town, with

its long, narrow, winding lanes; the arrangement of the houses, with

their closed outer walls, their _patios_ or courts, and their large and

magnificent halls, speak strongly and decidedly in favour of the Moorish

origin of the whole. And when we come to look into the matter in detail,

this presumption is most fully supported; for everywhere the design of

the internal finishing and decorations of the houses and rooms is

thoroughly Moorish, executed with the remarkable skill in plaster for

which the Moors were noted, and with curious exhibitions here and there

of a knowledge, on the part of the men who did them, of the Gothic

details which were most in vogue at the time.

It may well be supposed that if the Moors were thus influenced by the

sight of Christian art, the Christians would be not less so by the sight

of theirs. I fully expected when I went first to Spain that I should

find evidences of this more or less everywhere; I soon found that I was

entirely mistaken, and that, though they do exist, they are

comparatively rare and very unimportant. This will be seen if I notice

some of the most remarkable of the examples.

(1.) In Toledo Cathedral the triforium of the choir is decidedly

Moresque in its design, though it is Gothic in all its details, and has

carvings of heads, and of the ordinary dog-tooth enrichment. It consists

of a trefoiled arcade; in the spandrels between the arches of this there

are circles with heads in them; and above these, triangular openings

pierced through the wall; the mouldings of all these openings

interpenetrate, and the whole arcade has the air of intricate ingenuity

so usual in Moorish work. It might not be called Moresque in England,

but in Toledo there can, I think, be no question that it is the result

of Moorish influence on the Christian artist. So also in the triforium

of the inner aisle of the same Cathedral the cusping of the arcades

begins with the point of the cusp on the capital, so as to produce the

effect of a horseshoe arch: and though it is true that this form of

cusping is found extensively in French buildings in the country between

Le Puy and Bourges, here, in the neighbourhood of the universal

horseshoe cusping of the Moorish arches, it is difficult to suppose that

the origin of this work is not Moorish also. The same may be said with

equal truth of the triforium at the east end of Avila Cathedral.

(2.) The towers of the Christian churches in Toledo, at Illescas, at

Calatayud, at Zaragoza, and at Tarazona, all appear to me to be

completely Moresque. Those in Toledo make no disguise about it, the

pointed arches of their window openings not even affecting to be Gothic

in their mode of construction. So also in some of the churches of Toledo

much of the work is completely Moresque. The church of Sta. Leocadia is

a remarkable example of the mixture of Romanesque and Moresque ideas in

the same building.

(3.) In many buildings some small portion of Moorish ornament is

introduced by the Christian workman evidently as a curiosity, and as it

were to show that he knew how to do it, but did not choose to do much of

it. Among these are, (_a_) the traceries in the thirteenth-century

cloister at Tarragona,[423] where the Moresque character is combined

with the Christian symbol; (_b_) the interlacing traceries of the

circular windows in the lantern of San Pedro, Huesca;[424] (_c_) the

carving of a Moorish interlacing pattern on the keystone of a vault at

Lérida; (_d_) the filling in of the windows of the Cloister at Tarazona

with the most elaborate pierced traceries;[425] (_e_) the traceries of

the clerestory of the aisle of the chevet of Toledo Cathedral; (_f_) and

similar semi-Moresque traceries inserted in Gothic windows at Lugo, and

many other places, where everything else is purely Gothic.

(4.) The introduction of coupled groining ribs, as in the vault of the

Templars’ Church at Segovia, and in that of the Chapter-house at

Salamanca. The Moorish architects seem always to have been extremely

fond of coupled ribs. We see them in several of the vaults in the church

or mosque called Cristo de la Luz;[426] and the principal timbers of the

wooden roofs of the synagogue “del Transito” are similarly coupled. It

is an arrangement utterly unknown, so far as I remember, in Gothic work,

and there can be no doubt that in these examples it is Moresque. The

vault of the Chapter-house at Salamanca, which also has parallel

vaulting ribs, produces, as will be seen[427] in the centre, the sort of

star-shaped compartment of which the Moorish architects were always so

fond.

(5.) The Moorish battlement is used extensively on walls throughout

Spain. It is weathered on all sides to a point, and covers only the

battlements, and not the spaces between them.[428]

(6.) The Moorish system of plastering was considerably used, not only

at Toledo, but also to a late period on the Alcazar and on houses and

towers at Segovia. Here, however, though the system of design and the

mode of execution are altogether Moorish, the details of the patterns

cut in the plaster are generally Christian.

(7.) The Moorish carpentry is very peculiar, and is constantly

introduced in late Gothic work. Most of my readers have probably seen

the ingenious puzzles which the Moors contrived with interlacing ribs in

their ceilings at the Alhambra, illustrated with so much completeness by

Mr. Owen Jones; these patterns are constantly used in Gothic buildings

for door-framing; and examples of this kind of work may be seen

frequently, and especially in towns--like Valencia and Barcelona--on the

eastern coast.

These evidences of Moorish influence upon Christian art in Spain are, it

will at once be seen, rather insignificant, and serve on the whole to

prove the fact, that Christian art was nearly as pure here as it was

anywhere. This is precisely, I think, what might have been expected. For

where a semi-religious war was for ages going on between two nations,

and where art was, as it almost always is--God be praised--more or less

religious in its origin and object, nothing can be imagined less

probable than that their national styles of art should be much mixed one

with the other. It is probable, on the contrary, that each would have a

certain amount of pride in this practical way of protesting against his

enemy’s heresies, so that art was likely to assume a religious air even

greater and deeper than it did elsewhere.

The mention of the religious element in art leads naturally to the

consideration of that art which most objectively ministered to the

teaching of religious truths and history--the art of Painting. The

admirable and interesting work of Mr. Stirling[429] begins just where I

leave off, and almost treats the painters before Velasquez, Murillo, and

Joánes as though they had never existed. But in truth I suppose it is

necessary that the whole subject should be studied from the beginning;

and though we can never hope for such a mine of information about

mediæval Spanish painters as Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle have given

us about their Italian contemporaries, it is not, I think, unreasonable

to suppose that a good deal of information might still be obtained. I

regret very much that in all my Spanish journeys my time has been so

fully occupied with purely architectural work that I have never been

able to pay so much attention as they seemed to deserve to the early

paintings that I saw. Yet the works of Borgoña at Avila, the paintings

round the cloister and choir-screen at Leon, the painted Retablos at

Barcelona, Toledo, and elsewhere, seemed to me to be often very full of

beauty both of drawing and colour. Their number is very great, and most

of them are still in the very places for which they were originally

painted. Their character appears to me to be utterly different from that

to which we are accustomed as marking Spanish painting. Almost all our

ideas are formed, as it seems to me, on the work of a school of painters

who, adopting religious art as their special vocation, and shutting

themselves out almost entirely from any representation of any other kind

of subject, contrived unfortunately to take the gloomy side of religion,

and to paint as though an officer of the Holy Office was ever at their

elbow. How contrary this spirit to that of the earlier men, who, so far

as I have seen, painted just as naturally religious men, cheerful,

hearty, and unaffected by the souring influence of the Inquisition,

might be expected to paint! Their work appears to me to give them an

intermediate place between the tenderly delicate treatment of the early

Italian masters, and the intensely realistic and consequently very

mundane style of the early German painters; but it is always bright,

cheerful, and agreeable both in manner and choice of subject. The names

of but a few of these early men are preserved, and unfortunately next to

nothing beyond their names. Among them are Ramon Torrente of Zaragoza,

who died in 1323; Guillem Fort, his pupil; Juan Cesilles of Barcelona,

who at the end of the fourteenth century contracted for the painting of

the Reredos at Reus, and some of whose handiwork may not impossibly

remain among the Retablos still preserved in the cloister chapels of

Barcelona Cathedral; Gherardo d’Jacobo Starna (or Starnina), born at

Florence in 1354, who before the end of the fourteenth century spent

several years painting in Spain; Dello, also of Florence, and a friend

of Paolo Uccello, who died somewhere about 1466-70;[430] Rogel, a

Fleming, who painted a chapel at Miraflores in A.D. 1445; Jorge Ingles

(probably an Englishman), who was painting in Spain circa A.D. 1450;

Antonio Rincon,[431] who was born at Guadalajara in 1446, studied under

Ghirlandaio for a time, and, subsequently residing at Toledo, painted in

A.D. 1483 the walls of the old sacristy, and died circa 1500, with the

reputation of being the painter who had most contributed to the

overthrow of the mediæval style; finally, Juan de Borgoña, who may be

mentioned as one of the latest and greatest of the earlier school, and

almost the only one of them whose known works are still to be seen. His

great work appears to have been a series of paintings round the cloister

of Toledo Cathedral, which have all been destroyed; besides which he

executed other works in the sacristy, chapter-house, and Mozarabic

chapel there, and in the Cathedral at Avila. The feature which strikes

one the most in these early works is the strange way in which sculpture

and painting are combined in the same work. The great Retablos which

give so grand an effect to Spanish altars are frequently adorned with

paintings in some parts and sculptured subjects in others. The frames to

the pictures are generally elaborate architectural compositions of

pinnacles and canopies, and consequently the art is altogether rather

decorative than pictorial in its effect. Sometimes, when the altar is

small, and the Retablo close to the eye, this is not so much the case,

and I have seen many of the pictures in these positions look so

thoroughly well as to give a very high impression of the men who

produced them. They are almost all painted on panel, and, as might be

expected, on gold grounds. Old wall-paintings are comparatively rare: I

have seen no important series save that which I have described at Leon,

and of the later of these some at least appeared to me to be extremely

Florentine in their character.

This general review of the whole course and history of Spanish art

seemed to be necessary in order to give point and intelligible order to

the various descriptive notices which have been given in the previous

chapters of this book. It is probable that some of my readers may after

all think that I have had but little that was new to tell them. Possibly

this may be so. The history of art repeats itself everywhere in

obedience to some general law of progress; and it might have been

assumed beforehand that we should find the same story in Spain as in

France, Germany, or England. But the real novelty of my account is, I

take it, this,--that whereas generally men credited Spain with forming

an exception to a general rule, my business has been to show that, on

the whole, she did nothing of the sort. Just as we obtained a French

architect for our Canterbury, as the people of Milan obtained one from

Germany for their cathedral, as the architect of St. Mark at Venice

borrowed from the East, as he of Périgueux from St. Mark, as he of

Cologne from Amiens or Beauvais, so Spain profited, no doubt, from time

to time, by the example of her French neighbours. But at the same time

she formed a true branch of art for herself, and one so vigorous, so

noble, and so worthy of study, that I shall be disappointed indeed if

her buildings are not ere long far more familiar than they now are to

English Ecclesiologists.

I think, too, that the occasional study of any ancient school of

architecture is always attended with the best possible results to those

who are themselves attempting to practise the same art. It recalls us,

when necessary, to the consideration of the points of difference between

their work and ours; and thus, by obliging us to reconsider our

position, may enable us to see where it is defective, and where the

course we are pursuing is evidently erroneous. I have already noticed

incidentally, in more than one place in this work, the noble air of

solidity which so often marks the early Spanish buildings; I need hardly

say that in these days none of us err on this side, and that in truth

our buildings only too often lack even that amount of solidity which is

necessary to their stability. And this leads me naturally to another

questionable feature in modern work, which is to a great extent the

cause of our failing in the matter of solidity. These noble Spanish

buildings were usually solid and simple; their mouldings were not very

many, and their sculptures were few, precious, and delicate. There was

little in them of mere ornament, and never any lavish display of it.

Sculpture of the human figure was but rarely introduced, and whatever

sculpture there was, was thoroughly architectural in its character. How

different is the case now! Hardly a church or public building of any

kind is built, which--whatever its poverty elsewhere--has not sculpture

of foliage and flowers, birds and beasts, scattered broadcast and with

profusion all over it. However bad the work, it is sure to be admired,

and as it is evidently almost always done without any, or with but

little interference of the architect, he is often tempted to secure

popularity for his work in this easiest of ways. I know buildings of

great cost which have been absolutely ruined in effect by this miserable

practice; and I know none in the middle ages in which so much carved

work has been introduced, as has been in some of those which have

recently been erected. I believe it to be a fact that more carving--if

the vulgar hacking and hewing of stone we see is to be called

carving--has been done in England within the last twenty years than our

forefathers accomplished in any fifty years between A.D. 1100 and 1500!

And I believe equally that, if we limited ourselves to one-tenth of the

amount, there would be more chance of our having time to think about it

and to design it ourselves.

The same misfortune that has befallen us with foliage will soon befal us

with figures. It has suddenly been discovered that every architect ought

to be able to draw the human figure, and soon, I fear, we shall see it

become the fashion to introduce figures without thought or value

everywhere. If men would but look at some of our own old buildings, they

would see how great is still the work which has to be done before we

understand how to emulate the merits of those even among them which have

no sculpture of any kind in their composition, and how great the

architect may be who despises and rejects this cheap kind of

popularity.[432] And they ought to take warning, by the comparison of

old work and old ways of working with new, of those too attractive but

most dangerous schemes for seducing them from the real study of their

art into other paths, certain, it is true, of popularity, but full of

snares and pitfalls, which, as we see on all sides, entrap some of those

even who ought to have been aware of their danger.

Sculpture in moderation is above everything beautiful. Sculpture in

excess is very offensive. These Spanish churches teach us this most

unmistakably if they teach us anything at all; and as the main object of

the study of ancient art--the main object of those who wish to “stand in

the old ways where is the truth”--is to derive lessons for the present

and future from the practice of the past, I am sure that, in applying

the results of my study of Spanish art in the warning which I here very

gravely give, I am only doing that which as an artist I am bound to do,

if I care at all for my art.