Part 8 (1/2)

The walls throughout the church were built of rubble, faced with wrought stone inside and out, and some of the failures in the work are attributable, no doubt, to the want of strength and bond of this kind of walling.

The dimensions of the various parts are about as follows:-- Total internal length 300 feet.

” width of nave and aisles 83 feet.

Height to springing of main arches 25 feet 6 inches.

” floor of triforium 46 feet.

” centre of groining about 100 feet.

These dimensions, though not to be compared to those of many of the French churches, are still very n.o.ble, and would place this among the finest of our own buildings in respect of height; but, like all Spanish, and most French churches, the length is not very grand.

The various views of the exterior are fine, but everywhere the height of the clerestory appears to be rather excessive. This is seen even at the west end, where a little management might easily have prevented it. But the two steeples standing beyond the aisles leave a narrow vertical chasm between their side walls and those of the clerestory, which is brought out, without any break in its outline by means of b.u.t.tresses, quite to the west front. The lower part of these steeples is perfectly plain; each has a sort of double belfry stage, and they are both finished with low spires--that on the south pierced with open traceries, and that on the north simply crocketed; both of them are somewhat ungainly, of very late date, and not sufficiently lofty or important for the church to which they are attached.

The grand feature of the west front is the beautiful porch which extends all across, forming three grand archways, corresponding with the nave and aisles, with smaller and extremely pointed arches between them.

These arches are all supported on cl.u.s.tered shafts, standing away between four and five feet from the main wall, in which the doorways are set. Statues are set on corbels round the detached shafts, and again in the jambs of all the doorways, and the tympana and archivolts of the latter are everywhere crowded with sculpture. An open parapet is carried all across the front above the porch, and above this the west end is pierced with a row of four windows corresponding with the triforium, and again, above, by a very large and simple wheel-window. The finish of the west front is completely modernized, with a seventeenth-century gable between two pinnacles.

The sculpture of the western doors well deserves description and ill.u.s.tration. It is charming work, of precisely the same character as the best French work of the latter half of the thirteenth century, and there is a profusion of it.

The central west door has in the tympanum our Lord seated, with angels, and St. John and the Blessed Virgin wors.h.i.+pping on either side. Below is the Last Judgment, the side of the Blessed being as pretty and interesting as anything I have seen. A youth sits at a small organ playing sweet songs to those who go to Paradise; and a king, going jauntily, and as if of right, towards St. Peter, is met by a grave person, who evidently tells him that he must depart to the other and sadder side. The three orders of the arch are filled with the resurrection of the dead, angels taking some, and devils others, as they rise from their graves,--the whole mixed very indiscriminately. On the central shaft is a statue of the Blessed Virgin and our Lord, now with wretched taste dressed up and enclosed in a gla.s.s case, to the great damage of the whole doorway.

The north-west doorway has its tympanum divided in three horizontal lines. The lower compartment has the Salutation, the Nativity, an Angel, and the Shepherds; the middle the Magi adoring our Lord in the Blessed Virgin's arms, and the Flight into Egypt; and the upper, the Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents. The arch of this door is elliptic, and the s.p.a.ce between it and the tympanum is filled with figures of angels with crowns and censers, playing an organ and other instruments, and singing from books. The meaning of the sculpture in the archivolt was not clear to me, and seemed to refer to some legend.

The south-west doorway has the tympanum divided as the last, and in the lower compartment the death of the Blessed Virgin; next to this our Lord and the Blessed Virgin seated; and above, angels putting a crown on her head. The archivolt here is adorned with one order of sitting figures of saints and two of angels.

The east end is more striking than the west. It retains almost all its old features intact, save that the roof is now very flat, and covered with pantiles, whereas it is probable that at first it was of a steep pitch. It stands up well above the sort of boulevard which pa.s.ses under its east end, and when seen from a little further off, the steeples of the western end group well with it, and, to some extent, compensate for the loss of the old roofing line.

The south transept had been entirely taken down when I was at Leon, and the sculpture of its three doorways was lying on the floor of the church. It is of the same fine character as that of the western doors; the central door has a figure of our Lord with the emblems of the Evangelists on either side, and beyond them the Evangelists themselves writing at desks. Below this are the twelve Apostles seated, and the several orders of the archivolt are carved with figures of angels holding candles, sculptures of vine and other leaves, and crowned figures playing on musical instruments. The south-west door of the transept has no sculpture of figures, but the favourite diapers of fleur-de-lys and castles, and lions and castles, and an order of foliage arranged in the French fas.h.i.+on, _a crochet_. The south-east door has in its tympanum the death of the Blessed Virgin, with angels in the archivolt holding candles. The gable of this transept seems to have been very much altered by some Renaissance architect before it was taken down.

The north transept has two doorways, only one of which is now open. This has a figure of our Lord seated within a vesica, supported by angels, and the archivolt has figures of saints with books. The jambs have--like all the other door-jambs--statues under canopies, and below them the common diaper of lions and castles. The closed north-west door of this transept now forms a reredos for an altar; it has no sculpture of figures.

The north transept doorway opens into a groined aisle which occupies the s.p.a.ce between the transept and the cloister. This aisle is very dark, and opens at its eastern end into the chapel of Santiago, a fine late building of the age of Ferdinand and Isabella, running north and south, and showing its side elevation in the general view of the east end to the north of the choir.

The cloister is so mutilated as to have well-nigh lost all its architectural value. The entrance to the porch in front of the north transept is, however, in its old state; it is a fine doorway, richly and delicately carved with small subjects enclosed in quatrefoils. The original groining shafts, which still remain, show that the whole cloister was built early in the fourteenth century; the traceries, however, have all been destroyed; and the groining, the outer walls, and b.u.t.tresses altered with vast trouble and cost, into a very poor and weak kind of Renaissance. But if the cloister has lost much of its architectural interest, it is still full of value from another point of view, containing as it does one of the finest series of ill.u.s.trations of the New Testament that I have ever seen, remaining in each bay of the cloister all the way round. These subjects begin to the east of the doorway to the north transept, and are continued round in regular order till they finish on its western side. I have not been able to learn anything as to the history of these works. If they are Spanish, they prove the existence of a school of painters of rare excellence here, for they are all more or less admirable in their drawing, in the expression of the faces, and in the honesty and simplicity with which they tell their story. The colours, too, where they are still visible, are pure and good, and the whole looked to me like the work of some good Florentine artist of about the middle of the fifteenth century. It would not be a little curious to find the King or Bishop of Leon not only sending to France for his architect, but to Tuscany for his wall-painter, and, if it be the fact, it would show how firm must have been the resolve to make this church as perfect as possible in every respect, and how little dependence was then placed on native talent.

The subjects represented are the following, each painting filling the whole of the upper part of the wall in each bay of the cloister:--

1. The Birth of the Blessed Virgin.

2. Her Marriage.

3. The Annunciation.

4, 5, 6. Destroyed.

7. Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents, and Herod giving orders for it.

8, 9. Destroyed.

10. The Blessed Virgin Mary seated with our Lord, angels above, and three figures with nimbi sitting and adoring, others with musical instruments.

11. The Baptism of our Lord.

12. Destroyed.

13. An a.s.s and its foal, Jerusalem in the background, and indistinct groups of figures.

14. Our Lord riding into Jerusalem. The city has circular towers all round, and churches with two western octagonal steeples.

15. The Last Supper.

16. Our Lord was.h.i.+ng the Disciples' feet; some figures on the right carrying water-jars are drawn with extreme grace.

17. Destroyed.