Spain; a study of her life and arts

Preface

The object of this book is to give some account of the various schools of art which are represented by existing monuments in Spain, and of the manner of their adoption. In order to do this I have attempted to discover the nationality of the artists themselves, or, failing that, of their employers, and also to suggest some of the other agencies which brought about the importation of foreign styles. The study of medieeval art in Spain is puzzling at the best; but it is utterly impossible if the fact that the Peninsula was the world's end, into which every nationality was shaken at one time or another, is not taken into account. For this reason I have called the book a study of Spain's life and arts.

It would, of course, be foolish to try to give a complete catalogue of these works in a volume such as the present one, or in twenty ; and I need hardly apologise for passing by certain ancient churches with a word, or ignoring others altogether. I do not pretend to have visited every building of importance in Spain. I believe, however, that enough examples are described to give an idea of each style as it is now to be studied in the

PREFACE country. I would beg the reader to have patience with the descriptions of churches. I know that they are dry and monotonous; I have been appalled by constantly recurring quadripartite vaults and apses roofed with semi-domes. Let the reader reflect that if they are bad to read they are a thousand times worse to write, and that they are intended to be useful, not beautiful. However good one's memory is, it is impossible to keep the detail of many churches in one's head ; and in the confident hope that these bald statements of facts will be valuable aids to the memory, and facilitate that most delightful pursuit, the comparison of distant works of art, I have made them the base of this book.

At first sight it will doubtless strike many readers that I give ridiculously small space — one chapter — to Andalusia. I am aware that in doing so I am running counter to the general opinion that regards the South as the most interesting part of Spain ; and I have given my reasons at some length elsewhere. Here I would only explain that the book is written on existing monuments, not on those that once existed or are said to have existed ; and, this being the case, I cannot give much space to the half-dozen buildings which, transformed to a great extent by restorations, are all the Moslems left on Spanish soil.

The two great kingdoms into which Spain was divided during the best periods of her existence

PREFACE

are Castile and Aragon. It is consequently to their cities, which are richer in every branch of Christian art, with the one exception of Sevillian painting, than those of the south, that I have given most of my space. Castile and Aragon are the least visited parts of Spain, and by far the most interesting. I hope that I may convince English lovers of Christian art of this fact, that they may visit the Romanesque and Gothic churches of Catalonia, the little Asturian and Mozarabe basilicas, and mediaeval cities such as Soria, El Burgo de Osma, Ciudad-Rodrigo, and Santiago de Compostela, to say nothing of the better-known capitals like Burgos, Salamanca, and Toledo. The days when Spanish travel was dangerous are past; and though trains are slow and hotels uncomfortable, travellers will often find that the tales of Spanish dirt they have heard were exaggerated.

I have avoided making the alphabetical list of artists unnecessarily long by only including in it those men whose work is mentioned in the course of the book. I have tried not to use Spanish words except when a translation would have been misleading as in the case of the term " coro," the English equivalent of which is " choir." The choir, properly speaking, lies east of the crossing of the church, whereas coro is used to designate the spot in the nave into which the stalls were moved in almost all Spanish cathedrals in the early sixteenth

PREFACE

century, or is even applied to a western gallery if the stalls have been placed there. The choir proper is called capilla mayor in Spanish.

I have to express my warmest thanks to my friend Miguel Utrillo, editor of Forma, for the ground plans and the great majority of the photographs reproduced, and for his encouragement and help, without which I should have hardly undertaken the book. I must also thank T. R. Castle for much valuable assistance.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Preface . . ... 5

I. Spain and Europe . . 17

II

The principality of Asturias, once a kingdom, is comprised in the modern province of Oviedo. It is bounded east and west by the Rias de Tinamayor and Rivadeo, to the south by the peaks of the Cordillera Cantabrica. The great mountains have in all ages been a last barrier against the invader, for which reason the Romans left few traces in Asturias. The little principality played a mighty part in early Spanish history ; for it was in the fertile moist valleys of its Atlantic slope that the scattered Visigothic monarchy took refuge early in the eighth century. Thanks to the humble position into which it sank as soon as the kings forced their way down into Leon, Asturias has preserved a number of monuments dating from the days of its greatness.

So little remains of the art of the Visigoths that its importance is usually minimised. In Spain there are a few vestiges dating from before the Moorish invasion, the study of which has been much neglected, but which furnish documents able to knock the bottom out of at least one important archaeological dogma. Tt is true that these remains are not to be looked for in Asturias. However, ninth - century Asturian architecture owed so much to this people that something must be said about it here. Among all the hordes that invaded Spain in the fifth century the Visigoths, natives of Dacia, the modern Roumania, were already Christians, and by far the most advanced in the arts of war and peace. The former enabled them to subdue the other barbarians, the latter to develop a style of art in which they were greatly helped by frequent intercourse between the Spanish, the African, and the Eastern churches. The Arian heresy had struck deep roots in Spain ; but King Recared renounced it in 589, firmly upheld by the Roman-Spanish clergy of Seville, who had kept alive the tradition of Latin letters. Under the strong theocratic monarchy of the Visigoths there existed in Spain a higher degree of civilisation than in any other of the Western countries, which were torn by continual wars.

Of the buildings of this age the most important existing are San Juan de Banos, a basilica of debased Roman forms, and the Byzantine baptistery, San Miguel de Tarrassa. Sr. Lamperez adds another class of Byzantine basilicas, represented by Santa Comba de Bande (Orense) and San Pedro de la Nave (Zamora), which I have not been able to visit. These churches have naturally lost much of their primitive form and all their decoration ; we know, however, from the accounts of San Isidoro of Seville that magnificent mosaics, marbles, and rare stones were used in them. The votive crowns of Guarrazar, some of which are in the Cluny and others in the Armoury at Madrid, prove that splendid works of art were made in this period. Yet more important are some funeral monuments of the second or third century in the museum at Leon, upon which the horseshoe arch appears as a decorative motive, and a double horseshoe window, of the form known as ajimez, of the Visigothic ducal palace in the museum at Merida. It is furthermore stated in Arab chronicles that some of the eighth - century windows of the Mosque of Cordova were taken from Visigothic buildings.

The meaning of the above is plain. The horseshoe arch, so long looked upon as an infallible sign of Moslem influence — we have all heard how the Arabs reproduced in it the form of their horses' shoes — is found in use in Spain before the first Moslem invasion. The Infidels admittedly had no art of their own when they landed on Spanish soil. Visigothic windows were made use of in their first buildings ; therefore the horseshoe arch is not in its origin a Moslem element of construction. It came to Spain from the East as a decorative motive, probably symbolic, and in

Spain it was applied to windows and doors in Visigothic buildings, whence it was appropriated by the Moslems.

After the rout of Rodrigo's army by the invaders in the early part of the eighth century, Pelayo laid the foundations of the new Spanish monarchy with what remained of the old. Indeed, it was a struggle for life, this first beginning in the rough mountains, and only the fittest survived. The Christians had lost all but the bones of their saints, which they took with them up to Asturias, and for which they built their first churches in the Visigothic style of those that had sheltered them at Toledo. The reign of Alfonso el Casto opened a period, nearly coinciding with the ninth century, in which Asturian architecture developed forms of its own.

At the same time the less warlike elements of Christian Spain were living peacefully under the Arabs and building churches in a style evolved out of the Visigothic and known as Mozarabe, few traces of which remain in the regions where it was born. When persecutions began in the ninth century crowds of monks fled from the South to Leon and Castile and built themselves churches in a modification of the same style, which was called Mozarabe (Mostarab = Arabicised) from the fact that its authors had lived under Arab rule. Plenty of these have survived. I shall speak of them at greater length in other chapters. Both the Asturian and, even more, the Mozarabe styles appeared to be on the point of blossoming out into vigorous national schools when, in the eleventh century, they were swamped by the introduction of much more advanced French architecture, which coincided with the subjection of the Spanish monasteries, all of which were already of the Benedictine order, to the rule of Cluny, and the invasion of Spain by French queens and bishops and their retinues.

The first king of any of the realms which later became united in Castile to marry a foreigner was Alfonso el Casto (died 843), who took to wife Bertha, a Frenchwoman. The experiences of this lady with her chaste husband presumably gave Spanish princes a bad name abroad, for no more foreign queens came until another Alfonso, sixth of that name (died 1108), redeemed the reputation of his house by marrying five wives, one of whom was Moorish and the others French, in rapid succession. After this the Spanish queens are, almost without exception, foreigners.

The tiny Asturian churches which make a journey to these mountains so interesting may be divided roughly into two classes : the Latin basilica of three naves and three apses, with a wooden roof ; and the Byzantine basilica of a form approaching that of the Greek cross and roofed with stone. The first class is represented by San Salvador de Val-de-Dios, San Salvador de Priesca, and Santullano at Oviedo ; the second by San Miguel de Linio. Besides the churches which can be thus classified there are others, such as Santa Maria de Naranco and Santa Cristina de Lena, of rectangular plan with porticoes added on to the sides. The interior decorations have for the most part vanished ; whether or not mosaics were used is unknown. Mural paintings still exist in the Royal Pantheon at Leon ; but this building hardly comes under the heading Asturian. However, enough carving remains, notably at San Miguel de Linio, Santa Maria de Naranco, and Santa Cristina de Lena, to show that the tradition of Visigothic decoration, as we know it in the crowns of Guarrazar, was closely followed in Asturias. Sr. Lamperez has shown that some of the bases and capitals of San Miguel de Linio exactly reproduce designs existing in these crowns. The case is probably the same with the horseshoe-arched windows, which are as common as the plain semicircular ones in these buildings, though the form may have reached some parts of the region through Mozarabe refugees. Many of the churches have buttresses built on to the outside of the walls to resist the thrust of the roof — an important innovation, but one which also appears in the sixthcentury African churches.

My duty here calls me to warn the reader that certain French archaeologists flatly deny the authenticity of all the Visigothic and Asturian churches, which they do not hesitate to ascribe to the latter part of the twelfth century. Though anxious to avoid controversy, I must briefly mention the reasons adduced by the Frenchmen and other reasons for disregarding their views.

M. Enlart, Directeur du Musee de Sculpture Comparee and collaborator in M. Andre Michel's Histoire de V Art, says that Spain has no monument of the Visigothic period whose authenticity is established. M. Marignan, author of a monograph entitled Les Premieres Eglises Chretiennes en Espagne (1902), states that all the churches attributed to the Visigothic and Asturian periods are in reality of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. According to M. Marignan, the Arab invaders must have destroyed all existing churches, and San Juan de Banos cannot be Visigothic because it has a rectangular apse and is built not of brick but of stone. It may be answered that the Moslems overran the north of Africa and have held sway there ever since ; and still a number of basilicas exist there, which the French will admit to be of the Constantinian age. As for the second and third points, M. Marignan evidently demands that in all lands art shall conform to the rules that prevail in France. Rectangular apses are more frequent than any others in the early periods of Spanish architecture, and why should brick be used in regions where the materials to make it are lacking? San Juan de Banos also has a consecration stone which states that it was built by Recces vinto in 661. M. Marignan simply dismisses this inscription as false, which need not distress the other camp as the German Hiibner admits it as genuine. Finally it would seem that neither M. Marignan nor M. Enlart knew San Miguel de Tarrassa, and that M. Marignan had never seen San Juan de Banos, which he condemned on the evidence of plans and photographs.

To return to the Asturian churches ; M. Marignan will not admit them to be earlier than the latter part of the twelfth century, because : their walls are not built of brick like contemporary structures in France ; they have rectangular apses ; they have horseshoe arches ; they have exterior buttresses, unknown in France at the time ; the character of the ornamentation proves them to be of later date ; nothing like them exists in France. All these objections have already been answered except the last, which no one but a French archaeologist would make, and no one but a French archaeologist will wish to hear answered. The church of San Salvador de Val-de-Dios has a consecration stone with the date 893, which M. Marignan rejects and Herr Hiibner admits.

Such, very briefly, are the outlines of the case for the early Spanish churches. Those who wish to go into the subject thoroughly must do so in Volume I of Sr. Lamperez's Historia de la Arquitectura Cristiana Espanola (Madrid, 1908). Sr. Lamperez knows his subject through and through; not only that, he has a wide knowledge of all schools of architecture, and a gift for lucid exposition, The French had better take care. It is natural that they should have been ruffled by the assertions of Spanish writers of the last century that Spanish owed nothing to French Gothic. The men who made these statements did not know what they were talking about. Sr. Lamperez shows no wish to repudiate the enormous debt which Spain owes to France for her great pointed cathedrals ; but when French archaeologists try to rob him of his little Visigothic, Mozarabe, and Asturian churches they may burn their fingers.

Except for its primitive churches Asturias is poor in monuments. There are two or three houses of the Cister of no great importance, and the cathedral of Oviedo. After the removal of the capital to Leon, the mountain principality sank gradually back into its old course of life. In the succeeding centuries it played a small part in Spanish affairs. In modern times its wealth in minerals and timber has given it prosperity, and would make it rich if good means of communication existed. The Asturians are tenacious and close-fisted ; like the Basques, they go to America, make fortunes, and return again. They once spoke their own tongue, called Bable, which has now died out in most of the valleys but still lives in the inability of the people to speak good Castilian. Gijon for some twenty years gave promise of becoming a large manufacturing centre ; but it fell a prey to a series of so-called Socialist strikes, and 1900 saw its ruin. In the way of art it has nothing but the great Asturian Jovellanos' collection of Spanish and Italian drawings, which are attributed to great masters and are worthy of study. Manufactories exist all along the coast from Gijon to Santander ; but, on the one hand, the whole body of workmen is obliged to say the Rosary every evening, and, on the other, there is constant fear of strikes. The seaside towns are much frequented by summer visitors from Madrid ; the Castilians, accustomed to bare plains and bald mountains, find themselves in paradise in the hills and dales of Asturias, Galicia, and the Basque provinces.

Oviedo is the capital of the province and the see of a bishop. By reason of the many relics preserved there its cathedral is the holy church of Spain.

The existing cathedral was begun late in the fourteenth century to replace the primitive Asturian building, of which the Camara Santa, where the relics are preserved, is all that remains. It is a fine cruciform church with nave and aisles of five bays, transepts, choir and choir aisle, with chapels opening out of it. There is a triforium and a six-light window with flamboyant tracery in each bay of the nave. Those on the north side are blocked up ; the others have effective fifteenth-century glass. The side chapels are modernised and have bad retablos ; and the choir aisle was transformed in the neo-classic period. The groining of the nave is sexpartite, that of the aisles quadripartite ; there is no lantern, but a bay of elaborate groining over the crossing. The apse is groined into nine bays, and has five three-light clerestory windows with good glass, and seven more in the lower row. All but two of the latter are obscured by the retablo. In the west end and in the end walls of the transepts there are large circular windows. The main arches are well moulded ; but the capitals are very shallow, as usual in this period. From the north transept a fine door covered with German-looking sculpture opens into a large neo-classic chapel with Gothic groining. This is El Pantedn Real del Rey Casto (Alfonso II), who lies buried here with most of the early kings of Asturias.

Behind the high altar is a magnificent carved wood retablo of the fifteenth century, almost certainly by northern hands. It has been hideously marred at great expense by being repainted and gilded. The church has a non- Spanish look, for the coro, which until a very few years ago was in the first bays of the nave, has been moved to its proper place in the choir, making of Oviedo the only Spanish cathedral with an unbroken nave. The exterior is shut in by houses and has an unfinished look, except for the grand late Gothic buttressed and pinnacled tower which rises at the west end. The west front has a portico and a good main door which it was intended to cover with carving. South of the church is a very creditable cloister with three openings on each side full of excellent perpendicular tracery.

A door in the west wall of the south transept opens into a staircase which leads up to the Camara Santa. Of the group of buildings finished by Alfonso el Casto this alone remains. Chroniclers and other writers give accounts of the others ; the basilica of San Salvador seems to have closely resembled the church of Santullano, and of the Royal Pantheon of Santa Maria we know from Morales — that sixteenth-century traveller who enormously preferred the little Asturian churches to Burgos and Toledo — that it had three apses and was richly decorated with marbles. Both these have been replaced by the more modern buildings described above. The Camara Santa, or Capilla de San Miguel, was originally built for the very purpose which it serves to-day : to guard the relics. Alfonso el Casto also built a castle on the site of the bishop's palace to give them still surer protection. In spite of the modifications it has undergone at various periods the Camara Santa still shows part of its original fabric. It consists of a waggon-vaulted crypt, and a rectangular upper story of three divisions corresponding to those which are found in most of the Asturian churches : a narthex, an antechamber, and an apse. The first is wholly transformed ; the second was furnished with bases, on which stand statues of saints, in the reign of Alfonso VI (died 1108), of which period is the front visible from outside ; the third has kept its primitive form with its round entrance arch and barbaric capitals. The name of the man who built the original San Salvador is known. He was one Tioda, and he may have been the architect of the Camara Santa as well.

In the apse stands the great chest of cedar wood in which a stupendous collection of relics, "the number of which," in the words of the Breve Sumario sold in the cathedral, "God alone knows," was brought from Jerusalem to Oviedo by way of Cartagena, Seville, and Toledo. Even more interesting than the relics themselves are the coffers and caskets in which they are contained.

Two sides of the great cedar ark are covered with silver plates with remains of gilding, figures in relief, and a border in which Cufic letters are used as a decorative motive. These plates probably date from the time of Alfonso VI, when the box was repaired. The casket containing relics of Santa Eulalia of Merida is also covered with silver-gilt plates with a border of Cufic characters. There are several ivories and smaller caskets of varying interest ; but the pearls of the Camara Santa are the two crosses known as the Cruces de los Angeles and de la Victoria. The first is of wood covered with gold plates decorated with filigree and stones, many of which are Roman engraved gems. It has the form of a Maltese cross. The name is owed to the tradition that it was made by angels in this cathedral ; but incredulous people say that the story was invented to cover the fact that the makers were infidels. It bears the inscription : 44 OfFert Adefonsus humilis servus Christi. Hoc opus perfectum est in Era DCCCXLVI " (a.d. 808). The other cross is also of wood, covered with gold plates and studded with stones. It bears the inscription : 44 Offerunt famuli Christi Adefonsus Princeps et Scemena Regina. Hoc opus perfectum est . . . operatum est in Castello Gauzon anno regni nostri XLII discurrenti Era DCCCCXLVI " (a.d. 908). It is called de la Victoria because the wooden body of the cross was carried before Pelayo at the battle of Covadonga. The archaeological importance of these crosses, in particular that of the angels, needs no mention.

Oviedo has little more to show. The university is comparatively modern ; it celebrated its tercentenary the other day. In a private collection there is a series of Apostles by El Greco, which originally belonged to the church of San Pelayo in this city. In the suburbs of the town, however, outside the line of the walls, that untiring builder of fanes, Alfonso el Casto, founded the little church of San Julian de los Prados, vulgarly known as Santullano, which, though disfigured by paint and plaster in the interior, is valuable for the exterior of its apse and its ground plan. This is that of the Latin basilica : nave and aisles, transepts, wooden roofs (reformed), and three square apses. There is a vestibule at the west end, and two rooms are added on to the ends of the transepts, which Sr. Lamperez suggests may have been the diaconicum and gazophylaciwn.

On the hill which overlooks Oviedo from the north are two little, churches founded by Ramiro I in 848. One of them, San Miguel de Linio, is mentioned by early chroniclers, who also speak of a palace existing near by. The other, Santa Maria de Naranco, was supposed by several writers to have been the palace in question ; but a document of the year 858 has come to light, in which it is mentioned as a church, and a consecration stone has been found, the inscription upon which would seem to state that the church was rebuilt in 848, the former edifice having become unserviceable by reason of its great age !

San Miguel at present consists of a vestibule with two lateral compartments, from which stairs lead up to the coro, and part of a nave and aisles. We have an elaborate and enthusiastic but not very clear account of it as it was in the late sixteenth century in Morales' Viage Sac?~o, from which it seems that at that time the plan was square, with vestibule, sanctuary, and lateral rooms, forming a Greek cross — that is to say, the usual Byzantine type. Morales also mentions a tower at the west end which has disappeared. The crippled church is still of the greatest interest because of the elaborate carvings on the bases and jambs, and the stone slabs, pierced in typical Visigothic designs, in the windows. The designs of the carvings on the jambs have been much discussed. The Spaniards have taken them to represent martyrdoms, but a French writer points out that the figures were obviously copied from a consular diptych. We have the consul in his chair, and, in the other compartments, scenes in the arena. Be this as it may, Sr. Lamperez has proved that much of the line ornament is exactly like that of the crowns of Guarrazar.

Santa Maria is a rectangular building, with two rooms added on to the ends by way of vestibule and sanctuary, and two more joined on to the middle of the long sides which serve as porticoes. Served, that is to say, for one of them is gone now. Underneath is a crypt of the same form. The fact that the church is not built east and west gave colour to the theory that it originally had d 49 another destination ; but the consecration stone seems to put an end to the controversy. The side walls were originally simply round-arched arcades which, still visible in the interior, have at some time been blocked up. The church was therefore open to the four winds — if, indeed, it was a church, which, in spite of documents and consecration stones, the fact that it is not oriented, coupled with the very strange arrangement by which all the building between the vestibule and the sanctuary was an open gallery, makes it difficult of belief.

The columns which support the arcade, and their capitals, are elaborately carved, the latter with rather Moorish-looking beasts. The waggon vault has cross-ribs ; under every second one a large carved medallion is let into the wall as if suspended from the corbels from which spring the ribs. This curious form of ornamentation may well be derived from the custom of hanging bucklers upon the wall, as Sr. Lamperez suggests. The vestibule and the sanctuary are separated from the main body of the nave by three arches. All the furniture is modern and shabby, but the church is preserved to the cult, unlike its neighbour San Miguel.

Crowning a hillock which overlooks the railway between the stations of Campomanes and Pola de Lena, stands the little hermitage of Santa Cristina de Lena, which closely resembles Santa Maria de

5°

Naranco, with which it forms a class apart in Asturian architecture. No mention of this church is known to exist in the chronicles ; until the last century it was unknown to archaeologists. On one of the stones which form a sort of screen in the middle arch of the three which separate the narthex from the main body, a fragmentary inscription has been found which speaks of an Abbot Flainus. This would seem to be the Flagino of whom mention is made at Oviedo in the first years of the tenth century. Whether or not he consecrated it, the hermitage probably dates from that time. In plan Santa Cristina resembles Santa Maria de Naranco, with the difference that it is built east and west, from which latter side it is entered, thus leaving the rooms added on to the long sides to their proper liturgical use as diaconicum, or treasury, and gazophylacium, or place of offerings. The main body of the church is divided into two parts, one of which, the analogio, or place of the priests, has its floor raised several feet above that of the others, from which it is also separated by a sort of screen carried by three round arches. In the middle one of these are three slabs richly carved in the style of the Visigothic remains in the museum at Merida. The sanctuary is contained in the room added on to the east end. The exterior has two buttresses on each face, and there are two old windows, one in the east and one in the north wall. The latter is composed of three little horseshoe arches.