Part 20 (1/2)

Much of the flooring of the cloister appears to be coeval with it;[272]

and though composed of the very simplest materials, it is most effective. Most of the patterns are formed with red tiles of different sizes, fitted together so as to make very simple diapers, and with the addition here and there of small squares of white marble, which are used with the tiles. Some of these have an incised pattern on their face, sunk about a quarter of an inch; and in one case I found that this pattern had been filled in with red marble. The pattern is arranged with a broad stripe down the centre of the cloister, and on either side of this a succession of varying arrangements of tiles is contrived, each pattern being continued for but a short distance. Here, with the simplest materials, very great variety of effect is obtained, whilst, with the much smarter and very elaborate materials of the present day, we seem to run every day more risk than before of sinking into the tamest monotony.

In the west wall of this cloister there is a monumental recess of completely Moorish character, very delicately adorned; and on one of the doors I noticed that the wood had been covered with thin iron plates, stamped with a pattern, gilded, and fastened down with copper nails. The Chapter-house, of whose entrance archways I have spoken, is a square room, roofed with a stone waggon-vault of pointed section; and at the south end of this is a seven-sided apse, which seems to have been added to the original fabric circa A.D. 1350. On the eastern side of it are some large sacristies, but they did not appear to be old.

So far the work I have had to describe has been all, with the exception of part of the steeple and Cimborio, not later than the end of the thirteenth century. It is evident, however, that considerable works were undertaken in various parts of the fabric at a later date. Most of the nave windows were taken out, in order to insert others with very fair geometrical traceries; the upper part of the steeple was, as we have seen, erected; and finally the west front was, in great part, reconstructed. The original west front of the aisles still remains, with a simple doorway, and richly moulded and carved circular windows, without tracery. Pilaster b.u.t.tresses are placed at their north-west and south-west angles, and these have shafts at their angles, but have lost their old finish at the top. Probably another door and circular window of large size occupied the end of the nave in the original design; but these have been entirely removed, to make way for a work which, though it seems to have been commenced in A.D. 1278,[273] has all the air of complete middle-pointed work, and was evidently not completed until late in the fourteenth century. The existing central doorway is of grand dimensions, with figures under canopies on either side, and round the b.u.t.tresses which flank it. In the centre is a statue of the Blessed Virgin with our Lord, and above, on the lintel, the Resurrection; and the tympanum is pierced with rich geometrical tracery. The pedestal under the statue of the Blessed Virgin has sculptured on its several sides--(1) the Creation of Adam; (2) of Eve; (3) the Fall; (4) Adam and Eve hiding themselves; and (5) the Expulsion from Paradise. These subjects are very fitly placed here, the Fall in the centre coming just under the feet of her who bears our Lord in her arms, and thus restores the balance to the world. The arch is lofty, but only moulded; and above it is a pediment of extremely flat pitch. Above this, again, is a large and finely-traceried circular window. The lower part only of the gable remains, and this is of very steep pitch, and must always have been intended to be a mere sham. Whenever this sort of thing is done, there is always some ground for suspicion that the architect may have been a foreigner, unused to the requirements of a southern climate; and, at any rate, most of the work in this facade might very well have been executed by a German architect, for its character is all that of German, rather than of Spanish art. It recalls, to some extent, the facade of the north transept of Valencia Cathedral, though scarcely so much as to appear to be the work of the same hands. It is to be regretted that the great western gable is incomplete, for, unreal as it is, its outline must have been fine; and even now, seen as it is in its small Plaza from the steep, narrow, dark and shady street, surmounting the flights of steps which lead up to it, the effect is very striking. The traceries, both of the tympanum of the doorway, and of the circular window above, are sharp geometrical works, very delicately executed. The upper part of the western gable above the circular window seems to have had three windows, but these are now partially destroyed. The hinges and knockers of the western doorway are elaborately designed, covered with pierced traceries, made with several thicknesses of metal. The doors are diapered all over with iron plates, nailed on with copper nails, and with copper ornaments in the centre of each plate. The b.u.t.tresses are bold, but rather clumsily designed. The statues of the door-jamb are carried round their lower parts, and the stage above is occupied with traceried panels. A great crocketed pinnacle conceals the set-off, and forms, with the flat pediment of the doorway, a group in advance of the real face of the western wall. Other crocketed pinnacles probably finished the angle b.u.t.tresses on each side of the main gable, but they are now destroyed.

The north side of the nave is not easily seen, being enclosed within walls and behind houses; but the south side is fairly open to view.

Here, however, much of the original design is now completely concealed by modern additions. The two western bays have chapels, added in the fifteenth century; the third bay a domed chapel of the seventeenth century; and there are two other late Gothic chapels in the two bays nearest the south transept. On the north, side chapels have been added in the same fas.h.i.+on, those in the two western bays alone being mediaeval.

From the west side of the south transept a fair view is obtained of the best portion of the old exterior. The transept gable is extremely flat in pitch; the b.u.t.tresses are all carried up straight to the eaves, and the trefoiled eaves-arcading, which recalls the favourite brick eaves-cornices of the Italian churches, is returned round them at the top, and a deep moulding, covered with billets, is carried along over the eaves-arcading. The original semi-Romanesque window, with its very broad external splay, still remains in the bay of the transept next to the Crossing; but the other windows have been altered; and there is a rich traceried rose window in the southern facade. The exterior of the lantern is certainly not very attractive. The entire absence from view of its roof is a fault of the most grievous kind; though, otherwise, its windows, recalling as they do the traceries of our own first-pointed, are not at all to be condemned. I doubt very much whether this lantern was ever a fine work on the exterior; but we may well be content to have anything so fine as the interior, and may fairly pardon its architect for his failure to achieve a more complete success.

The internal arrangements here do not present much subject for notice.

The Coro is in the nave, and in the screen on its western side the entrance-doorway still remains. It is of marble, of two well-moulded orders, and the outer order of the arch has voussoirs of grey and white marble counterchanged. The steps are of dark marble, with three s.h.i.+elds in low relief on the riser of each, and the bearings which occur here are seen also in the keystone of the tower vaulting--both being works of the fourteenth century. The choir stalls and the panelling behind them are of the very richest and most delicate fifteenth-century work; and the great desk for books, in the centre of the Coro, is of the same age.[274] The stall-ends are covered with delicate tracery, put on in a separate piece against the end, and not carved out of the solid. The divisions between the panelling at the back of the stalls are wrought with foliage and animals of really marvellous execution, and a band of inlaid work with coats-of-arms goes all round just above the stalls.

There is a throne on the right hand of the entrance to the choir, and another at the east end of the south side; but both of these are of Renaissance character.

Many of the choir books are mediaeval, with large knops at their angles, and a piece of fringed leather under each knop. At the east end of the Coro, and in a line with the west wall of the transepts, is the iron Reja, and on each side of it a pulpit facing east. These have all the appearance of having been rebuilt. They have the same armorial bearings as the doorway to the Coro; and as the screen in which the latter is now built is not old, it is probable that they all form part of the same old choir screen, and that the two pulpits were the ambons. I saw nothing to prove decidedly whether the Coro was in its original place, or whether it has been moved down into the nave as at Burgos.

The great organ is on the north side of the Coro; it is not very old, but its pipes are picturesquely arranged, and it has enormous painted wings or shutters.

Much of the pavement is old; that in the choir proper--the Capilla mayor--is of marble in various stripes of patterns extending across the church.[275] The nave is also paved with marble, arranged in lines and patterns divided to suit the position of the columns. The Coro alone is paved with tiles, and this seems to some extent to prove that this part of the floor has been altered, which would be the case if the stalls were moved down from their original position. The high altar has a very rich reredos executed for the most part in marble, and rich in sculptured subjects. There is a doorway on each side of the altar, opening into the part of the apse shut off by this Retablo. Here the pavement has a large oblong compartment, which seemed to me to suggest the original position of the altar to have been much nearer the east wall than it now is. This s.p.a.ce is indicated in my ground-plan, and though it is more than usually set back towards the wall, it was no doubt a more convenient position in so short a choir than that which the present altar occupies.

There is a richly-sculptured monument of a bishop on the southern side of the sacrarium.

It will be seen that here, as is the case with so many other Spanish cathedrals, though the scale is not very great, the dignity and grandeur of the whole conception is extreme. The cloister, indeed, yields the palm to few that I have seen, and it is in scale only, and not in real dignity and n.o.bility, that the interior of the church does so.

I did not discover any other old church in Tarragona, yet I should suppose there must be some in so large a city. There is a four-light _ajimez_ window, of the type so common on this coast, in the Plaza in front of the cathedral; and in the Plaza della Pallot is an early round-arched gateway, with a coeval two-light opening above.

In the wall of a chapel to the east of the cathedral I found a fairly good example of an early headstone, perfectly plain in outline, and finished with a flat gable, in which is incised a cross under an arch, the inscription being carried across the stone in the common mode, just below the pediment.

I had not time to make excursions to any of the other churches in this district, but there are some which appear, from what I have learnt, to be so fine, that it is to be hoped others will contrive to inspect them.

The monasteries of Vallbona and Poblet, and the church of Sta.

Creus,[276] not far from Poblet, seem to be all of great interest.

Poblet and Sta. Creus seem both to have cloisters with projecting chapels somewhat similar to that shown on my ground-plan of the monastery at Veruela.

The church at Reus, too, is interesting, from the fact that the contract for its erection is preserved, and has been published by Cean Bermudez.

It dates from A.D. 1510. This town is a few miles only from Tarragona, and after seeing Poblet and Vallbona, the ecclesiologist would do well, I think, to make his way across to Lerida, instead of returning to Barcelona, as I did. But I wished much to examine the Collegiata at Manresa on my way to Lerida, and for this purpose the line I took was on the whole the best.

I bade farewell to Tarragona with a heavy heart, and with a determination to avail myself of the first chance I may have of returning to look once more at its n.o.ble and too little known cathedral.[277]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TARRAGONA:--Ground: Plan: of: Cathedral: Plate XV.

Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865]

CHAPTER XIV.

BARCELONA

The architectural history of Barcelona is much more complete, whilst its buildings are more numerous, than those of any of our own old cities, of which it is in some sort the rival. The power which the Barcelonese wielded in the middle ages was very great. They carried on the greater part of the trade of Spain with Italy, France, and the East; they were singularly free, powerful, and warlike; and, finally, they seem to have devoted no small portion of the wealth they earned in trade to the erection of buildings, which even now testify alike to the prosperity of their city, and to the n.o.ble acknowledgment they made for it.

The architecture of Cataluna had many peculiarities, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when most of the great buildings of Barcelona were being erected, they were so marked as to justify me, I think, in calling the style as completely and exclusively national or provincial, as, to take a contemporary English example, was our own Norfolk middle-pointed. The examination of them will, therefore, have much more value and interest than that of even grander buildings erected in a style transplanted from another country, such as we see at Burgos and Toledo; and beside this, there was one great problem which I may venture to say that the Catalan architects satisfactorily solved--the erection of churches of enormous and almost unequalled internal width--which is just that which seems to be looming before us as the work which we English architects must ere long grapple with, if we wish to serve the cause of the Church thoroughly in our great towns.