The woodwork of the choir-fittings is of very late date,[293] but good of its kind. The stall-divisions are richly traceried under the elbow, and the misereres carved with foliage. Behind the stalls, and under the old canopies, is a series of Renaissance panels, covered with paintings of the arms of the Knights of the Golden Fleece.[294] The canopies above are very delicate, and of the same character as the stalls. The carved oak pulpit is corbelled out at the east end of the north range of stalls, and is approached by a staircase outside the arcaded stone parclose, which still remains north and south of the choir. This staircase, with its arched doorway between pinnacles at the bottom, its traceried handrail fringed at the top with fantastic ironwork, and its door cunningly and beautifully made of open ironwork, is quite worth notice.
The Bishop’s throne, second only in height and elaboration to that of Exeter, occupies its proper place at the east end of the southern side of the choir, with one stall for a chaplain beyond it. It will be remembered that in most Spanish cathedrals it is placed where the door from the nave into the choir ought to be: here, however, the old arrangement has never been altered.
The principal altar has a very Gothic Retablo, covered with gilding till it looks like gingerbread. I imagine it to be modern. It has curtains on either side, with angels standing on the columns which carry the rods. The iron screen across, in front of the altar, and round the apse, is none of it old.
Near the door to the sacristies a hexagonal box for the wheel of bells is fixed against the wall; and just below it a fine large square box arcaded at the sides, and painted, appears to contain a couple of larger bells.
The sculpture here is not very remarkable. Over the east door of the cloister is a Pietà in the tympanum, whilst the finial of the canopy is a crucifix. The bosses at the intersection of the ribs in the nave are of enormous size, and each has a figure or subject. The boss in the chapel over the font in the north side of west door has the Baptism of our Lord, and another in the large chapel in the north-west of the cloister has the Descent of the Holy Ghost, and the eight bosses around it the Evangelists and Doctors. Some of the monuments are peculiar. The effigy is generally laid on a sloping stone, so as to suggest the greatest possible insecurity. There are sculptures on the tombs and inside the enclosing arch; a favourite and odious device in this last feature is to make the radius of the label much longer than that of the arch below it; and the space between the two is then filled with tracery. The nave groining was once painted. There seems to have been cinquecento foliage extending from the centre, about half-way across each vaulting cell; and the ribs were painted to the same extent. In the aisles there seems to have been no painting anywhere but on the ribs.
[larger view]
[largest view]
BARCELONA:—Ground Plan of Cathedral, Cloister. &c. Plate XVI Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865
The old organ occupies the north tower, and is corbelled out boldly from the wall. Below it is a pendant, the finish of which is a Saracen’s head, which, for some reason unknown to me, is held by Catalans to be appropriate to the position. There are enormous painted shutters, and a projecting row of trumpet-pipes. The organ was first of all built in the fourteenth century; Martin Ferrandis, organ-builder of Toledo, having bound himself, by a contract dated July 25, 1345, to construct it for 80 libras[295] (pounds).
The sacristies are old and vaulted. The sacristan knew of no old vestments or vessels to be seen there; and as they were always occupied by clergy I had to satisfy myself with his ignorance.
The bishop’s palace is on the south side of the cloister: its quadrangle still retains some remains of good late Romanesque arcading, ornamented with dog-tooth, nail-head, and billet mould; and probably there is more to be seen if access were gained to the inside. On the opposite side of the cathedral is a vast barrack, dating from the fifteenth century, and which, first of all a palace, was given in A.D. 1487 by Ferdinand to the Inquisition. It seems now to be a mixture of school, convent, and prison, and is apparently without any architectural interest.
The grandest church, after the cathedral, is that of Sta. Maria del Mar, a vast building, of very simple plan, and exceedingly characteristic of the work of Catalan architects.[296] An inscription written in Limosin (Catalan) on one side, and in Latin on the other,[297] gives the date of the commencement of the work as A.D. 1328; and it is said by Cean Bermudez not to have been finished until A.D. 1483;[298] but Parcerisa[299] says that the last stone was placed on November 9th, 1383, and the first mass said on August 15th, 1384; and I am inclined to think that the latter dates are the more likely to be correct. I have found no evidence as to the architect of this church: he was one of a school who built many and exceedingly similar churches throughout this district. My impression is that he was most probably Jayme Fabre, the first architect of the cathedral. Fabre had constructed a church for the Dominicans at Palma, in Mallorca, between the years 1296 and 1339. Of this church I can only learn the dimensions; but these point to a church of the same class as those in Barcelona. It had no aisles, and was 280 palms long by 138 broad. The cathedral in the same city is figured in Parcerisa, and is similar in plan to Sta. Maria del Mar, but of far larger dimensions, the width from centre to centre of the nave columns being 71 feet, and the whole church 140 feet wide in the clear, and with the chapels 190 feet. There are north and south doors, and octagonal pinnacles at the west end, and, as will be noticed, its dimensions are proportioned just as at Sta. Maria del Mar. I do not think that Fabre’s name occurs in connexion with the cathedral at Palma; but his fame must have been great, as he was specially summoned to Barcelona by the king and bishop; and nothing is more likely than that he would then have been consulted about this other great work going on at the same time, and in which, though the general design is different, there are so many points of similarity. The church at Manresa is said to have been commenced in the same year, 1328; and it is extremely similar in all respects to Sta. Maria del Mar, as I shall have further on to show when I have to describe it.
No. 39. STA. MARIA DEL MAR, BARCELONA p. 308. SOUTH-WEST VIEW.
No. 39.
STA. MARIA DEL MAR, BARCELONA p. 308.
SOUTH-WEST VIEW.
But whether these churches are to be attributed to the influence of one man suddenly inventing an innovation, or of a school of architects working on the same old traditions—and I have been unable to find any kind of evidence of this—it is certain that they are very similar. They are marked by extreme simplicity, great width, and great height. Usually they have no arcades and consist of broad unbroken naves, always groined in stone, and sparely lighted from small windows high up in the walls. The two examples, so far as I know, which surpass all others, are the single nave of Gerona, seventy-three feet wide in the clear, and the nave and aisles of the Collegiata at Manresa, sixty feet wide from centre to centre of the columns, and a hundred and ten between the walls of the aisles. The Barcelonese examples do not equal the extraordinary dimensions of these two churches, but they are still on a fine scale. Sta. Maria del Mar is the only Barcelonese example with aisles. It has—as will be seen by the plan[300]—an aisle round the apse, and small chapels between the buttresses. These apses are all internal only, so that the side elevation of the church shows a plain straight wall pierced with windows. This is a very favourite device of this school, and has been already noticed in the north wall of the cathedral, and in the wall all round the cloisters. The interior of Sta. Maria del Mar is very simple. Enormous octagonal columns carry the main arches and the groining ribs, which all spring from their capitals. The wall rib towards the nave is carried up higher than the main arches so as to allow space between them for a small circular and traceried clerestory window in each bay. The arches of the apse are very narrow, and enormously stilted. There are small windows above them, but they are modernized. The aisles are groined on the same level as the main arches, a few feet, therefore, below the vault of the nave, and they are lighted by a four-light traceried window in each bay, the sill of which is above a string-course formed by continuing the abacus of the capitals of the groining shafts. Below this there are three arches in each bay, opening into side chapels between the main buttresses. Each of these chapels is lighted by a traceried window of two lights; and the outer wall presents, as will be seen, a long unbroken line, until above the chapels, when the buttresses rise boldly up to support the great vaults of the nave and aisles. The Barcelonese architects of this period were extremely fond of these long unbroken lines of wall; and there is a simplicity and dignity about their work which is especially commendable. Long rows of little sheds for shops which have managed to gain a footing all along the base of the walls rather disturb the effect, though they and their occupants, and the busy dealers in fruit who ply their trade all about Sta. Maria del Mar, make it a good spot for the study of the people.
The altar is a horrible erection of about A.D. 1730, and all the internal fittings are modern and in the worst possible taste.
The view which I give of the west front will explain the whole design of the exterior. Unquestionably it is a grand work of its kind, with good detail throughout. The great octagonal pinnacles at the angles are, however, awkwardly designed, and quite insufficient in scale for the vast mass of building to which they are attached. They are reproduced in all the churches of the same class in Barcelona; and indeed most of the features of one of these churches are common to the others. The tracery in the circular window at the west end certainly looks later in date than that of the others in this church, and than that in the west front of Sta. Maria del Pi, which was commenced in A.D. 1329, but not completed until much later. It is worth mention that the western doors of this church are covered with iron, cut out into the form of cusped circles, with rather good effect.
The church of SS. Just y Pastor is of the same class as Sta. Maria del Mar, but its foundation is slightly later, as it seems to have been commenced circa A.D. 1345. It consists of a nave without aisles, but with chapels between the buttresses—one chapel in each bay. There are five bays, and an apse of five sides. The altar stands forward from the wall, and stalls are ranged round the apse. The nave is 43 feet 6 inches in width in the clear by about 130 feet in length. The vaulting is quadripartite throughout, with large bosses at the intersection of the ribs, on which are carved—1, the Annunciation; 2, the Nativity; 3, the Presentation; 4, the Adoration of the Magi; 5, the Resurrection; 6, the Coronation of the B.V.M. The whole church has lately been covered with painting and gilding, in the most approved French style, and to the destruction of all appearance of age. The light is admitted by three-light windows with good geometrical traceries, very high up above the arches, into the side chapels, and by two-light windows in the chapels themselves. At the west end are remains of the usual octagonal flanking turrets; but the whole front is modernized. The side elevation is a repetition of those already described, presenting a long unbroken wall below, out of which the buttresses for the clerestory rise.
Santa Maria del Pino is a still grander church, but on the same plan, with the addition of a lofty octagonal tower detached at the north-east of the church.[301] This is four stages in height, and the belfry-stage has windows on each face. The traceried corbel-table under the parapet remains, but the parapet and roof are destroyed. The nave here consists of seven bays, is fifty-four feet wide in the clear, and has an eastern apse of seven sides. The chapels between the buttresses are not carried round the apse, but an overhanging passage-way is formed all round outside, upon arches between, and corresponding openings through, the buttresses just below the windows. The north door here is a very fine early work of just the same character as those already described in the earliest portions of the cathedral. It appears to be a work of the end of the twelfth century, and much older than any other portion of the church. The west front has a doorway with a figure in a niche in the tympanum, and a system of niches round and above it, enclosing it within a sort of square projecting from the face of the wall. The whole scheme is so exceedingly similar both in design and detail to that of the north transept door of the cathedral, that we may fairly conclude them to be the works of the same man. Above the door is a large circular window filled with good and very rich geometrical tracery. A church existed here as early as 1070;[302] and Cean Bermudez says that the first stone of the present church was laid in 1380, and that it was concluded in 1414.[303] Parcerisa,[304] on the other hand, says that materials were granted for the work in 1329, that it was nearly finished in 1413, and consecrated in 1453;[305] whilst in A.D. 1416 we have Guillermo Abiell describing himself as master of the works of Sta. Maria del Pi, and of St. Jayme, in Barcelona, when he was called as one of the Junta of architects to advise about the building of the nave of Gerona cathedral.[306]
[larger view]
[largest view]
BARCELONA:—Ground Plans of Sta Maria del Mar:—Sta Maria del Pi:—and the Collegista of Sta Ana: Plate XVII. Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.
St. Jayme, of which Abiell was the architect, is a small church in the principal street of the city, with an ogee-headed door with a crocketed label between two pinnacles. Above are some small windows; and the whole detail is poor in character, and exactly consistent with what might be expected from an architect at Abiell’s time. I believe, therefore, that either Abiell was only the surveyor to an already existing fabric, who wished to make the most of his official position among his brethren at Gerona, or that if he really executed any works at Sta. Maria del Pi they were confined to the steeple, which is of later character than the church. I believe that the real meaning of the dates given by the authorities just quoted is as follows:—In A.D. 1329 stone was granted for the work which was then no doubt just commenced at the same time as the similar work in the transept of the cathedral; and the consecration probably took place in A.D. 1353, a date which occurs in an inscription in the church, and has been, I suspect, read by Parcerisa by mistake, 1453; and the work commenced in A.D. 1380 was probably the steeple, which was completed in A.D. 1414. To decide otherwise would be to ignore altogether all the information to be derived from the character of the architectural detail, which, after all, is to a practised eye a safer guide than any documentary evidence. I should assume, too, from the identity of the character of the two works, that Jayme Fabre was the architect who designed the church, and that Guillermo Abiell probably built the tower some time after his death.
Interior of Santa Agata.
Interior of Santa Agata.
I must now take my readers back somewhat to an earlier church, which is full of interest, but very different from those which I have been describing, and of different style. This is the church of Sta. Agata, situated just to the north of the cathedral. I have been unable to learn anything as to its history. It has a nave of four bays, spanned by pointed arches, which carry the wooden roof, and a groined apse of five sides. East of the apse is a waggon-vaulted chamber, whose axis is at right angles to that of the church, and out of it rises a delicate octagonal steeple, the belfry-stage of which has two-light windows on four sides, and gables on each face. These gables run back till they intersect the base of a low stone spire, which is now nearly destroyed, but the lower part of which can be clearly made out from the neighbouring steeple of the cathedral. A staircase, ingeniously constructed in the thickness of the south wall, leads up from the nave to the pulpit (now destroyed), and thence on again to a western gallery. Some of the windows are like domestic windows in design, having a slender shaft-monial with the capital of foliage so often repeated in all the towns from Perpiñan to Valencia. The great height of the windows from the floor—about twenty-six feet—secures an admirable effect of light, and their detail is thoroughly good early middle-pointed. The southern façade has a great deal of that picturesque irregularity which is always so charming when it is natural. The door is in the western angle of the south front, partly built under a great overhanging arch, which carries the wall of a building which abuts on the west end of Sta. Agata. The lower half of the walls has small windows irregularly placed, lighting the eastern chapel, the pulpit, and the passage to the gallery; and then above them the wall is set back a couple of feet between buttresses, and each bay has an extremely well designed and moulded window of two lights, with geometrical tracery. The finish of the walls at the top is modernized. The construction of the roof is very effective, and at the same time of a most unusual character; it consists of a series of purlines resting on corbels in the walls over the arches across the nave; and though it is of flat pitch, this is but little noticed, owing to the good proportions of these arches, which are so marked a feature in the design.
The same kind of roof exists still in the great hall of the Casa Consistorial, and evidently once existed also in the church which I shall presently mention in the Calle del Carmen. In England we have somewhat parallel examples at Mayfield and the Mote House, Ightham; but these Barcelonese examples are useful, as showing how, when a flat-pitched roof is of necessity adopted, a very good internal effect may nevertheless be secured. This church is now desecrated, and used as a sculptor’s workshop.
Another church, of which only the ruins now remain, in the Calle del Carmen, must, I presume, be Nuestra Señora del Carmen, founded in 1287.[307] This building was evidently greatly altered in the fourteenth century. It was first of all roofed with a flat roof, carried on arches across the nave, as at Sta. Agata, and subsequently the walls were raised and the church was groined. The groining is now destroyed, and behind it are seen the corbels in the cross wall marking the rake of the first roof. The aisles had roofs gabled north and south, and their windows good fourteenth-century tracery. This church of seven bays in length is 43 feet wide between the columns of the nave, and nearly 80 feet wide from north to south. Compared with Sta. Agata, it seems to prove that this class of timber-roofed church was introduced here between the early waggon-vaulting of the chapel of Sta. Lucia and of Sta. Ana, and the great quadripartite vaults of the cathedral and the other churches of its class.
The other churches here are not of much interest. The front of San Jayme has already been incidentally mentioned: its interior is modernized. San Miguel is probably a very early church, having a Roman mosaic pavement preserved in the floor. It has a pointed waggon-vault, and a sixteenth-century stone gallery at the west end. The western front has a rich west door, half Gothic and half Renaissance, with St. Michael and the dragon in the tympanum, and the Annunciation in the jambs. The flat gable has its old crocketed coping and cross, and two very small windows. The best feature is the tower, a simple structure, square in plan, from within the parapet of which, over the centre, rises a small square turret, open at the sides and roofed with four intersecting gables. It is a pretty arrangement for carrying a fifth bell, the other bells hanging in the belfry windows, in the Italian fashion. The church of San Anton has a groined narthex or porch all across the west front, with three open arches in front. The nave cannot be wide, and has chapels between the buttresses, but I did not see the interior. Another church, that of San Gerónimo, is on the same plan, but of later date.[308] The churches of the Renaissance class are numerous and ugly; but Berruguete and his followers hardly perpetrated so many freaks in art here as they did in the centre of Spain; had they been more popular, there had been much less for me to describe. But in truth, rich as this old city still is, it was much richer, two or three noble churches having disappeared at a comparatively late period, either during the war or in subsequent popular disturbances.
No. 40. BARCELONA. p. 314. CASA CONSISTORIAL.
No. 40.
BARCELONA. p. 314.
CASA CONSISTORIAL.
Ajimez Window.
Ajimez Window.
The civic buildings are quite worthy of the ancient dignity of the city. The Casa Consistorial, and the Casa de la Disputacion, face each other on opposite sides of the principal square, not far from the cathedral, The former has a modern Pagan front, but on the north side the old work remains. This building is said to have been commenced in A.D. 1369, and finished in A.D. 1378;[309] and inside the great hall I noticed an inscription (which unfortunately I neglected to copy) with the date of 1373. The old front to the north of this building seems worthy of illustration. The enormous arch-stones of the principal doorway are very common throughout Cataluña, and are seen indeed as far east even as Perpiñan. The figure of St. Michael has metal wings; and as the little church dedicated in honour of the same archangel is just on the other side of the Casa, it seems as if there was some special connection between the two buildings. The patio or quadrangle is oblong in plan, and on the first-floor the passage is open to the air, with delicate arches all round. On the east side of this passage a door opens into a noble hall, with a dais for the throne at the upper end, and doorways on each side of the dais. This hall is spanned by four moulded semicircular arches rising from corbels formed of a cluster of shafts. These arches support a flat ceiling of rafters, with boarding between them, resting on corbels in the cross walls. The light is admitted by large cusped circles high up in the side walls, and by good ajimez windows of three lights at the dais end. The rafters of the roof are all painted with coats of arms enclosed within quatrefoils, with a very rich effect. The dimensions of this room are about 40 feet wide by 90 feet long, and 45 feet in height. In a passage near it is an admirable ajimez window, which, as it illustrates this common type very well, is worth preserving a record of. The marble shafts here are only three inches in diameter.[310]
The Casa de la Disputacion was still more interesting; but on my last visit the delicate arcades of its beautiful patio were all being walled up with common brick, leaving narrow slits of windows, which I suppose are to be glazed, to save the degenerate lawyers for the future from any of the chance squalls of wind or rain which their predecessors have endured since the fifteenth century, when Master Pedro Blay, the architect, superintended its erection. This patio is of three stages in height, with a picturesque external staircase to the first floor. The lofty corridor round the first floor leads to the various courts and offices, and in one angle of it is the entrance to the chapel, consisting of three small arches, forming a door and two windows, with the wall above them covered with an elaborate reticulation of tracery. The arches have ogee crocketed canopies, and the side arches iron grilles. This chapel is dedicated to St. George, the tutelar saint of Cataluña, and a figure of the saint rivals that of St. Michael in the Sala Consistorial. There are here some extremely well-managed overhanging passage-ways corbelled out from the walls, and various excellent features of detail. The parapets generally to the various passages are of plain stone slabs, pierced here and there only with a richly traceried circle.
Another old building—the Lonja or Exchange—was built near the sea in A.D. 1383.[311] But everything old has been completely destroyed, with the one exception of its grand hall, which still does service as of old. This consists of three naves, divided by lofty and slender columns, which carry stilted semi-circular arches. The ceiling is flat, of the same description as that of the Sala Consistorial. The dimensions are about 100 feet in length by 75 feet in width.
Another great building, founded soon after, circa 1444, was intended for a cloth-hall:[312] in 1514 it was converted into an armoury, and subsequently into a residence for the Captains-General of Cataluña; it has been completely modernized throughout the exterior, and I did not see the interior.
Cean Bermudez mentions an interesting fact about the construction of the old Mole. It was built, he says, by Estacio, a famous hydraulic architect of Alexandria, in A.D. 1477; and the city authorities took counsel about it with the most learned professors of Syracuse, Rhodes, and Candia.
THERE are few Spanish towns which are altogether more interesting than the now insignificant and little-known city of Gerona. It not only contains several buildings of rare architectural interest, but it has, moreover, the advantage of being picturesquely placed on the banks of the rapid river Oña, and on the steep slope of the hills which bound it.
The Cathedral is the first object of attraction, and its history is so curious, that I need make no apology for proceeding without further preface to say the substance of what I have been able to learn about it.
There was a cathedral here at a very early period; and when Gerona was taken by the Moors, they converted it into a mosque, but, with their usual liberality, allowed the services of the Church still to be carried on in the neighbouring church of San Feliu, which for a time, accordingly, was the cathedral church. In A.D. 1015 this state of affairs had ceased, owing to the expulsion of the Moors, and the cathedral was again recovered to the use of the Church. Considerable works were at this time executed,[313] if, indeed, the cathedral was not entirely rebuilt, as the old documents declare, and the altered church was re-consecrated in A.D. 1038,[314] by the Archbishop of Narbonne, assisted by the Bishops of Vique, Urgel, Elne, Barcelona, Carcassonne, and others. In A.D. 1310 works seem to have been again in progress,[315] and in A.D. 1312 a Chapter was held, at which it was resolved to rebuild the head or chevet of the church with nine chapels,[316] for which, in A.D. 1292, Guillermo Gaufredo, the treasurer, made a bequest in favour of the work.[317] In A.D. 1325 I find that an indulgence was granted by the Bishop Petrus de Urrea in favour of donors to the work of the cathedral;[318] and the work, so far westward as the end of the choir, was probably complete before A.D. 1346, inasmuch as in this year the silver altar, with its Retablo and baldachin, were placed where they now stand.[319] We know something of the architects employed during the fourteenth century upon the works just mentioned. In 1312 the Chapter appointed the Archdeacon Ramon de Vilarico and the Canon Arnaldo de Montredon to be the obreros or general clerical superintendents of the progress of the works. In A.D. 1316, or, according to some authorities, in February, 1320, an architect—Enrique of Narbonne—is first mentioned; and soon after this, on his death, another architect of the same city, Jacobo de Favariis by name, was appointed with a salary of two hundred and fifty libras[320] a quarter, and upon the condition that he should come from Narbonne six times a year[321] to examine the progress of the works. In A.D. 1325 Bart. Argenta was the master of the works, and he probably carried them on until the completion of the choir in 1346.[322]
In A.D. 1395 it was proposed to erect a Chapter-house, and the canons in charge of the fabric (“canonigos fabriqueros”) presented in writing their reasons for not erecting it where proposed by the Chapter—at the south end of the refectory. They said that the works of the church itself ought first of all to be gone on with, and that the proposed work would destroy a good and convenient refectory, and make it obscure and ridiculous: and it seems that their report had the effect of staying the work. In A.D. 1416 Guillermo Boffiy, master of the works of the cathedral, proposed a plan for its completion by the erection of a nave; and though the chevet had an aisle and chapels round it, he proposed to build his nave of the same width as the choir and its aisles, but as a single nave without aisles. This proposition was deemed so hazardous, and created so great a discussion, that the Chapter, before deciding what plan should be adopted, called together a Junta of architects, and propounded to each of them separately certain questions, to each of which they all returned their answers upon oath. In the September following, these answers were read before the Chapter by a notary, and it may be supposed carefully digested, for it was not until March 8th, 1417, that Guillermo Boffiy, the master of the works, was called in and in his turn interrogated with the same questions. Immediately after this, on the 15th of the same month, at a Chapter-meeting presided over by the Bishop, it was decided to carry on the work as proposed, with a single nave. The story is so well worth telling in full, that I have given in the Appendix a translation of the entire document, which equals in interest any with which I am acquainted, bearing on the profession of architect in the middle ages.[323] It is valuable also, incidentally, as giving us the names of the architects of several other buildings, most of those who were examined having described themselves in a formal style as masters of the works of some particular church or churches. It is difficult to say exactly when the nave was completed, but the great south door was not executed until A.D. 1458, and the key-stone of the last division of the vault seems to have been placed in the time of Bishop Benito, so late as circa 1579.[324] In A.D. 1581 the same bishop laid the first stone of the bell-tower, and in 1607 the west front and the great flight of steps leading up to it seem to have been commenced.
We have thus the story of the periods at which the church was founded, altered, and enlarged very fully told, and it now only remains to apply it to what is still to be seen in the existing building.
A reference to my ground-plan[325] will show that the church remains very much in the state which the documentary evidence describes. The choir has nine chapels round its chevet, as described, and has lofty arches, a series of very small openings in lieu of triforium, and a clerestory of two-light windows, of decidedly late but still good Middle-pointed character. The columns, in the usual Catalan fashion of this age, are clusters of rather reedy mouldings, with no proper division or subordination of parts, and consequently of poor effect, and there is no division by way of stringcourses above or below the triforium. On the exterior the east end is not seen to much advantage, as it is built into and against a steep hill, so that at a distance of a few feet only the eye is on a level with the top of the walls of the chapels round the apse. The roofs, too, have all been modernized and lowered. The only peculiarities here are a series of trefoiled openings, just under the eaves of the roof, into the space over the vaulting, and perhaps devised for the purpose of ventilation: and the gurgoyles projecting from the buttresses, which are carved and moulded stones finished at the end with an octagonal capital, through the bottom of which the water falls, and which almost looks as if it were meant for the stone head of a metal down-pipe.
When the choir was built, some considerable portions of the church consecrated in A.D. 1038 were left standing. The nave was probably entirely of this age; and a portion of what was no doubt one of the original towers still remains on the north side, between the cloister and the nave. This tower has pilasters at the angles and in the centre, and is divided into equal stages in height by horizontal corbel-tables. An apse of the same age remains on the east side of what seems to have been the south transept of the early church: and from its position we may, I think, assume with safety that the church was then finished with three or five apses at the east, very much as in the church of San Pedro, close by, which I shall have presently to describe. In addition to these early remains there is also a magnificent and all but unaltered cloister. I cannot find any certain evidence of its exact date, though it seems to have existed in A.D. 1117, when an act of the Bishop Raymond Berenger was issued in the “cloister of the cathedral.”[326] The character of the work confirms, I think, this date. The plan is very peculiar, forming a very irregular trapezium, no two of the sides being equal in length. It has on all four sides severely simple round arches carried on coupled shafts: these are of marble, and set as much as 20 inches apart, so as to enable them to carry a wall 3 feet 1½ inches thick. This thickness of wall was quite necessary, as the cloister is all roofed with stone, the section of the vaults on the east, west, and south sides being half of a barrel, and on the north a complete barrel vault. The detail of the capitals is of the extremely elaborate and delicate imitation of classical carving, so frequently seen throughout the south of France. The abaci are in one stone, but the bases of the shafts are separate and rest upon a low dwarf-wall, and square piers are carried up at intervals to strengthen the arcade. The columns have a very slight entasis.
This cloister deserves careful study, as it seems to show one of the main branches of the stream by which Romanesque art was introduced into Spain. It is impossible not to recognize the extreme similarity between such work as we see here, and that which we see in the cloister at Elne, near Perpiñan, and, to go still farther afield, at S. Trophime at Arles. And if any Spanish readers of these pages object to my assumption that the stream flowed from France westward, they must prove the exact converse, and assume that this Romanesque work was developed from Roman work in Spain, and thence spread to Elne and Arles, a position which none, I suppose, will be bold enough to take.
The nave remains to be described; and to do this well and adequately, it is necessary to use, not indeed many, but certainly strong, words. Guillermo Boffiy, master of the works, might well cling fondly to his grand scheme, for his proposal was not less, I believe, than the erection of the widest pointed vault in Christendom. Such a scheme might be expected to meet then in Spain, as it most certainly would now in this country,[327] a good deal of criticism, and many objections, on the score of its impracticability; and it is to the honour of the Chapter that they had the good sense to consult experts and not amateurs as to the steps to be taken, and then, having satisfied themselves that their architect was competent to his work, that they left it entirely in his hands.
No. 41. GERONA CATHEDRAL p. 322 INTERIOR LOOKING EAST
No. 41.
GERONA CATHEDRAL p. 322.
INTERIOR LOOKING EAST
The clear width of this nave is 73 feet, and its height is admirably proportioned to this vast dimension.[328] It is only four bays in length; each bay has chapels opening into it on either side, and filling up the space between the enormous buttresses, whose depth from the front of the groining shaft to their face is no less than 20 feet. Above the arches which open into the side chapels is a row of small cusped openings, corresponding with those which form the triforium of the choir; and above these are lofty traceried clerestory windows. The groining-ribs are very large and well moulded. At the east end of the nave three arches open into the choir and its aisles; and above these are three circular windows, the largest of which has lost its tracery. And here it is that the magnificence of the scheme is most fully realized. A single nave and choir, all of the same enormous size, would have been immeasurable by the eye, and would have been, to a great extent, thrown away; here, however, the lofty choir and aisles, with their many subdivisions, give an extraordinary impression of size to the vast vault of the nave, and make it look even larger than it really is. In short, had this nave been longer by one bay, I believe that scarcely any interior in Europe could have surpassed it in effect. Unfortunately, as is so often the case among those who possess the most precious works of art, there is now but little feeling in Gerona for the treasure it possesses in this wondrous nave, for the stalls and Coro have been moved down from their proper place into the middle of its length, where they are shut in and surrounded by a high blank screen, painted in the vulgarest imitation of Gothic traceries, to the utter ruin, of course, of the whole internal perspective. It would be a grand and simple work of restoration to give up here, for once, the Spanish usage, and to restore the stalls to the proper choir. I say “restore,” because it is pretty clear that they could not have been in the nave when they were first made, inasmuch as this was in A.D. 1351, sixty-six years before its commencement. A deed still remains in the archives of the cathedral, by which we ascertain this fact, for by it a sculptor from Barcelona agreed, on June 7th, 1351, to make the stalls at the rate of 45 libras of Barcelona for each.[329] The detail of some parts of the woodwork is exceedingly good, and evidently of the middle of the fourteenth century, so that it is clear they are the very stalls referred to in the agreement. There is ample length in the proper choir for them, and they must have been moved into the nave in unwise obedience to the common modern Spanish arrangement, which was certainly never more entirely unfortunate and destructive of effect than it is here.
It will be seen, by reference to the Appendix, that though the architects consulted were fairly unanimous as to the possibility of building the single nave, they were by no means so in their recommendation of it as the best plan. The general feeling seems to have been decidedly adverse to it; and we may assume that the Chapter decided on it partly because it was already commenced, and partly because it promised to be a cheaper plan than the other. There seems also to have been great dread on the part of the Chapter of interfering in any way with the wall which now forms the east end of the nave, for fear lest, when it was cut into for the introduction of the respond of the nave arcade, the whole should give way.
Paschasius de Xulbe, one of the architects questioned, gives the valuable answer, that if the nave is of triple division in width, the groining of the choir must be raised in order that it may correspond in its measurements to its third; from which it is pretty clear that he spoke of a then recognized system of proportioning the height to the width of a building.
Guillermo Sagrera, master of the works at St. John Perpiñan, tells us, in his answer, that the choir was originally built with the intention of having a single nave; and this will account for the otherwise unintelligible finish of its western wall, which it is clear, from the tenour of all the answers, was not prepared for any arches in the nave. I am not certain indeed whether we are not to assume, in reading the questions asked by the Chapter, that the Romanesque nave was itself of the same plan and dimensions; and the vast width of the old nave of Toulouse Cathedral—sixty-three feet—affords an example, at no great distance from Gerona, of the fact that architects, even so early as the beginning of the thirteenth century, were not afraid to propose and execute works on so unusual a scale.
I will not quote farther from the answers of the architects, because they well deserve to be read in detail; but it is a satisfaction to be able to say that their conviction of the practicability of the work has been amply justified, inasmuch as, even to the present day, there is scarcely a sign of a settlement or crack throughout the entire building.
It is difficult to express a positive opinion as to the original intention of the architect in regard to the design and finish of the exterior of this part of the church. The gable walls have been altered, the roofs renewed, and the original termination of the buttresses destroyed. At no time however, I think, can it have looked well. The position is charming, on the edge of a steep, rocky hill falling down to the river, and girt on its north side by the old many-towered city wall; yet with all these advantages it is now a decidedly ugly work, and the nave looks bald, and large out of all proportion to the subdivided, lower, and over-delicately-treated choir. On the west side the whole character of the church is Pagan;[330] and I well remember the astonishment with which, when I had climbed the long flight of broad steps which leads to the western door, I looked down the stupendous interior, for which I had been so little prepared!
The effect is not a little enhanced by the dark colour of the stone, which has never been polluted by whitewash; but there are some defects. The want of length has already been noticed; the entire absence of stringcourses inside is not pleasant; and the lowering of the arches into the chapels in the second bay from the west wall, where there are three in place of the two in each of the other bays, breaks the main lines of the design very awkwardly. The mouldings too, as might be expected in work of so late a date, are nowhere very first-rate, though they certainly retain generally the character of late fourteenth-century work.
The doorway on the south side of the nave is remarkable in one respect. It has in its jambs a series of statues of the Apostles, executed in terra-cotta; and the agreement for their execution, made, in A.D. 1458, with the artist Berenguer Cervia, binds him to execute them for six hundred florins, and “of the same earth as the statue of Sta. Eulalia and the cross of the new doorway at Barcelona.”[331] This doorway is very large, but bald and poor in detail; the statues to which the contract refers still remain, and are in good preservation.
There is nothing more specially worth noticing in the fabric; but fortunately the choir still retains precious relics in the Retablo behind, and the baldachin above, the high-altar. There are also said to be some frontals of the altar still preserved, which are of silver, and which were originally adorned with precious stones, and with an inscription which proves them to have been made before the consecration of the church, in A.D. 1038. Unfortunately they were not in their place when I was at Gerona, and so I missed seeing them.[332] The Retablo is of wood entirely covered with silver plates, and divided vertically into three series of niches and canopies; each division has a subject, and a good deal of enamelling is introduced in various parts of the canopies and grounds of the panels. Each panel has a cinquefoiled arch with a crocketed gablet and pinnacles on either side. The straight line of the top is broken by three niches, which rise in the centre and at either end. In the centre is the Blessed Virgin with our Lord; on the right, San Narcisso; and on the left, San Feliu. The three tiers of subjects contain (a) figures of saints, (b) subjects from the life of the Blessed Virgin, and (c) subjects from the life of our Lord. A monument in one of the chapels gives some account of this precious work; for though it is called a ciborium, it is also spoken of as being of silver, which, I believe, the actual ciborium is not.[333] The date of this monument is 1362; but in the ‘Liber Notularum’ for A.D. 1320, 21, and 22, it seems that the Chapter devoted 3000 libras for the reparation of the Retablo, though it was not till A.D. 1346 that the work was finished, and the altar finally fixed in its present position. [334] The whole of the work is therefore before this date; and probably the Retablo and the baldachin date from the period between the two dates last given, viz. A.D. 1320 and A.D. 1348.
Altar, Gerona.
Altar, Gerona.
The baldachin is, like the Retablo, of wood covered with thin plates of metal. It stands upon four shafts, the lower portions of which are of dark marble resting on the moulded footpace round the altar. These four shafts have capitals and bands, the latter being set round with enamelled coats-of-arms. The canopy is a sort of very flat quadripartite vault covered with small figures; but on both my visits to Gerona it has been so dark in the choir as to render it impossible to make out the subjects. The central subject seems to be the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin, and in the eastern division is a sitting figure of our Lord with saints on either side. In order to show the figures on the roof of the baldachin as much as possible, the two eastern columns are much lower than the western, the whole roof having thus a slope up towards the west. A singular arrangement was contrived behind the altar—a white marble seat for the bishop raised by several steps on either side to the level of the altar, and placed under the central arch of the apse. Here, when the bishop celebrated pontifically, he sat till the oblation, and returned to it again to give the benediction to the people.[335]