[Ill.u.s.tration: No 23.

SAN VICENTE, AVILA. p. 172.

INTERIOR OF WESTERN PORCH.]

To me the sight of such work as this is always somewhat disheartening.

For here in the twelfth century we find men executing work which, both in design and execution, is so immeasurably in advance of anything that we ever see done now, that it seems almost vain to hope for a revival of the old spirit in our own days: vain it might be in any age to hope for better work, but more than vain in this day, if the flimsy conceit and impudent self-a.s.sertion which characterize so much modern (so-called) Gothic is still to be tolerated! for evil as has been the influence of the paralysis of art which affected England in the last century, it often seems to me that the influence of thoughtless compliance with what is popular, without the least study, the least art, or the least love for their work on the part of some of the architects who pretend to design Gothic buildings at the present day, may, without our knowing it, land us in a worse result even than that which our immediate ancestors arrived at. Here, however, at Avila, in this porch of San Vicente, let us reverence rightly the art and skill of him who built, not only so delicately and beautifully, but also so solidly and so well; let us try to follow his example, knowing for certain that in this combination lies the true merit of all the best architecture--Pagan or Christian--that the world has ever seen.

The three stages of the western towers are, I think, respectively of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fifteenth centuries. The second or intermediate stage is arcaded, and has its angles planned with a shaft set in a broad splay precisely in the mode we see so commonly adopted in the Segovian towers.[177] The upper stage is finished with gables on each face, the gable being fringed with a line of granite trefoils in not very good taste. Gil Gonzales Davila[178] says that the tower of this church was built by alms in A.D. 1440. He refers, no doubt, to the upper stage, the design of which agrees with this statement. I was not able to learn how it had originally been roofed; but my impression is that it probably had two stone gabled roofs intersecting each other.

In addition to the western door there is another fine entrance on the south side of rather earlier date than the other, and now always in use as the ordinary entrance to the church. Descending here by some steps from the cloister, we find ourselves in the impressive interior, and are at once struck by some features which are of rare occurrence in this part of Spain. The columns are of very bold, perhaps heavy, design, and rest on circular bases. Their front portion is carried up on a bold and ma.s.sive groining pier in front of the main wall; the arcades are severely simple, the arches semi-circular, and the capitals richly carved. A carved stringcourse is carried round the church above the arches, and there is the very uncommon arrangement (in this country) of a well-developed triforium; each bay here having a round-arched opening, subdivided into two smaller openings, divided by a ma.s.sive column with sculptured capital. Another stringcourse divides the triforium and clerestory, which has also round-arched windows of one light. The vaulting, both in the nave and aisles, is quadripart.i.te, the only remarkable feature in it being the ma.s.sive size of the ribs.

The three eastern apses are vaulted with waggon-vaults over their western compartments, and semi-domes over the apses, and the transepts are roofed with waggon-vaults. All the latter have cross arches or ribs below them carried on engaged shafts, and the side walls of the chancel and chancel-aisles are arcaded below the vaulting.

The central lantern is carried on piers, which have evidently been in great part rebuilt at some time subsequent to the foundation of the church. They carry pointed arches of granite, clumsily moulded, and have rudely-carved capitals. Two piers on the south of the nave next the Crossing, and one on the north, were either partly or altogether rebuilt at the same time, and it looks very much as though the first lantern had partly fallen, and then, two centuries after the original foundation of the church, the existing one had been erected, for over the pointed arches there still seem to be remains of the older round arches. The lantern is rather loftier than is usual; it is vaulted with an eight-ribbed dome, carried on arched pendentives, and is lighted by small windows of two lights in its upper stage. Davila[179] says that this church was rebuilt in the time of Ferdinand "El Santo" (1252-1284), who endowed it with certain rents for the purpose. But other authorities say, with more show of probability, that the work undertaken in this year was the repair of the church. The rebuilding at this date, which is utterly inconsistent with the whole character of the church, agrees, nevertheless, very well indeed with that of the lantern. Subsequently, in A.D. 1440, according to Davila,[180] the tower of the church was built, and this statement probably refers to the upper stages of the western steeples. The crypt under the choir, called Nra. Sra. de Soterrana, is important only for its position: it is entered by a long flight of steps from the east end of the north aisle, and extends under the three eastern apses. It is mainly modernized, and the great attraction seems to be the hole in which, as I understood, people who wish to take a solemn oath put their hands whilst they swear.

There are no original ritual arrangements remaining here; but an iron Reja is carried across the nave and aisles one bay to the west of the crossing, and here probably was the old place for the Coro, as the position of the shrine of San Vicente under one side of the lantern would have made it impossible for the Coro to be placed nearer the east.

Some features still remain to be noticed, and the most important is the tomb or shrine of the tutelars--San Vicente and his brethren. This is picturesquely placed on one side of the s.p.a.ce under the lantern, with entire disregard to that desire for balance everywhere which so painfully affects almost all of us now-a-days. It is a thirteenth-century erection standing on detached shafts, within which appears to be a tomb which is always kept covered with a silken pall.

Over this is a lofty canopy carried on four bold shafts at the angles, and consisting of a deep square tester, above which is a lofty pyramidal capping with its sides slightly concave and crockets at the angles. It is rather difficult to convey an idea of this very remarkable work without large and careful ill.u.s.trations. The inner tomb or shrine is the really important work, the outer canopy or tester being evidently a much later addition.[181] The shrine has all the character of an early pointed Italian Gothic work. Its canopy is carried on cl.u.s.ters of four shafts twisted together, at each of the angles; between them, on each side, are three coupled columns, and at the east and west ends are single shafts. These carry trefoiled or many-cusped arches, the spandrels of which are sculptured; and above this is a sort of shrine with a sloping stone scalloped all over on either side, and a steep diapered roof rising out of the centre. A series of subjects is carved in panels all along the sides of the shrine, which seem to have reference to three saints and martyrs--probably to San Vicente and his companions. Figures of the Twelve Apostles are introduced, two and two, at the angles, and other figures sitting and reading between the subjects. A late iron screen between the columns of the outer baldachin makes it rather difficult either to see or to sketch this interesting work carefully. Its detail is all very peculiar, and in the twisted and sculptured shafts, the strange form of some of the cusping, and the iron ties with which it is undisguisedly held together, I thought I saw evident traces of the influence of Italian art. I take the shrine to be a work of the thirteenth century, though the baldachin is no doubt of later date.

Near this shrine in the south aisle is some very fine rich and delicate wrought-ironwork in a _grille_ round a side altar. It is possibly part of the old choir-screen, and at any rate does not belong to the place in which it is now preserved. The beauty of this work consists in the delicacy of the thin strips of iron, which are bent into a succession of circular lines ending in roses, and on an excessively small and delicate scale. Some similar work is still to be seen in one of the windows of the apse.

The arches on either side of the great western porch are filled in with open trellis-work wood-screens, which show how good occasionally may be the adaptation by Gothic hands of Moorish work. Here the lines of wood cross each other at intervals, leaving, of course, a regular series or diaper of open squares. The edges of all these are simply cut out in a pattern, or notched, in a variety of forms, and the effect is extremely good. The same kind of work is common in Moorish buildings, but I had not seen it before so boldly used by Christians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AVILA: San Vicente and MEDINA DEL CAMPO: S: Antholin: Plate XI.

Published by John Murray, Albermarle Street 1865]

San Vicente stands outside the walls of Avila, close to one of the princ.i.p.al gates, and near the north-east angle of the city. The church of San Pedro is similarly placed at the south-east angle, and at the end of a large open Plaza called the Mercado Grande. It is not a little remarkable that so soon after the enclosure of the city within enormous walls two of the most important of its churches should have been built deliberately just outside them, and exposed to whatever risks their want of defence entailed. In plan and general design San Pedro is very similar indeed to San Vicente. It has a nave and aisles of five bays, transepts of unusual projection, a central lantern, and three apsidal projections to the east. The doors, too, are in the centre of the west front, and in the next bay but one to the transept on both sides. The detail is almost all of a simple and extremely ma.s.sive kind of Romanesque, round arches being used everywhere and uncarved capitals with square abaci. The nave piers are of the commonly repeated section, but very large in proportion to the weight they have to carry. There is no triforium, and the clerestory windows are of moderate size, whilst those in the aisles are very small, and placed as high as possible from the floor. The groining generally is quadripart.i.te, and some of the ribs boldly moulded in a manner which suggests the possibility of this severe Romanesque-looking work being in truth not earlier than circa 1250. The transepts and the western portion of the apses are covered with waggon-vaults, and the apses themselves with semi-domes. The lantern over the Crossing is probably not earlier than A.D. 1350, the mark of the junction with the old work just over the arches into the transepts being still very plainly visible. The vaulting here is very peculiar.

Groined pendentives at the angles are introduced to bring the vault to an octagon in plan, but the eight compartments are variously treated; those on the cardinal sides having ordinary vaulting cells over the windows, whilst those on the intermediate or diagonal sides are crossed with four segments of a dome with the masonry arranged in horizontal courses.

The west front has three circular windows, that in the centre having wheel tracery; the north doorway has a richly-sculptured archivolt, which is later in character than the general scheme of the church, having an order of good dog-tooth enrichment, and the abacus is carved with rosettes. There are staircases in the usual position in the angle between the transepts and the aisles, and the apses are divided into bays by engaged shafts with sculptured capitals. There is, in fact, not very much to be said about this otherwise n.o.ble and remarkable church, because it repeats to so great an extent most of the features of its neighbour San Vicente. Yet its scale, character, and antiquity are all such as would make us cla.s.s it, if it were in England, among our most remarkable examples of late Romanesque.

There are several other churches in Avila,[182] but the only one besides those already mentioned of which I made any notes is that of the Convent of San Tomas built between A.D. 1482 and 1493.[183] In a charter of Ferdinand the Catholic, dated May 29, 1490, reference is made to this monastery, together with those of Sta. Cruz, Segovia; San Juan de los Reyes, Toledo; Sta. Engracia, Zaragoza; and other churches in Granada, &c., all of them founded by that King and Queen Isabella. They founded this convent on the pet.i.tion of Confessor P. W. Tomas de Torquemada.

The convent has been closed for some years, but has just been purchased by the Bishop of Avila, who is now repairing it throughout, with the intention, I believe, of using it as a theological seminary. The detail of the conventual buildings, which surround two cloisters, one of which is of great size, is, as might be expected, of the latest kind of Gothic, and extremely poor and uninteresting, whilst the design of the church, as so often seems to be the case with these very late Spanish churches, is full of interest. It has a nave of five bays with side chapels between the b.u.t.tresses, short transepts, and a very short square chancel to the east of the Crossing; but the remarkable feature is, that not only is there a large gallery filling the two western bays of the nave and fitted up with seventy stalls with richly-carved canopies, the old choir-book desk in the centre, and two ambons projecting from the eastern parapet, but that there is also another gallery at the east end, in which the high altar, with its fine carved and painted Retablo, is placed. This eastern gallery has also gospel and epistle ambons projecting from its front. Strange as the whole arrangement of this interior is, it strikes me as almost more strange that it should not have been one of constant occurrence in a country where at one period the Coro was so constantly elevated in a western gallery. For there is a sort of natural propriety, as it seems to me, in the elevation of an altar, where folk care at all for the mysteries celebrated at it, to at least as high a level as any part of the church used for service; and undoubtedly the effect of the altar-service to those in the raised Coro is much, if not altogether, marred where the altar is in its usual place on the floor. Here the effect is certainly very fine, whether the altar is looked at from the Coro or from the floor of the nave below it; and from the former in particular, the strangeness of looking across the deep-sunk well of the nave to the n.o.ble altar raised high above it at the east is in every way most attractive. The detail of all the architecture here is very uninteresting, though the many-ribbed vaulting is certainly good, and the effect of the dark cavernous nave under the western gallery is very fine in light and shade. Rarely as I trouble my reader with any reference to Renaissance works, I must here in justice say that the great tomb of Don Juan, the son of Ferdinand and Isabella, which occupies the floor below the altar, is one of the most tender, fine, and graceful works I have ever seen, and worthy of any school of architecture. The rec.u.mbent effigy, in particular, is as dignified, graceful, and religious as it well could be, and in no respect unworthy of a good Gothic artist. It was executed by Micer Domenico Alexandra Florentesi, who refers to it in a contract which he entered into with Cardinal Ximenes in 1518; but it is said to have been completed as early as A.D. 1498.[184] At present it is necessary to get an order to see it from the Bishop, who has the key of the church; doubtless before long this will not be necessary, but it is well to give the caution, as the convent is some little distance beyond the town-walls, and the Bishop's palace is in the very centre of the city.

It will be felt, I think, that Avila is a city which ought on no account to be left unseen in an architectural tour in Spain. Fortunately it is now as easy of access as it was once difficult, for the railway from Valladolid to Madrid, in order to cross the Sierra de Guadarrama, makes a great detour by Avila, and thence on to the Escorial is carried on through the mountain ranges with considerable exhibition of engineering skill, and with great advantage to the traveller, as the views throughout the whole distance are almost always extremely beautiful.

I did not stop on my road to see the Escorial: as far as the building is concerned, it is enough I think to know that Herrera designed it, to be satisfied that it will be cold, insipid, and formal in character. And the glimpses I had of it as I pa.s.sed amply justified this expectation.

It is, too, as utterly unsuited to its position on the mountain-side as it well could be. On the other hand, I no doubt lost much in neglecting to make the excursions to the various points of view which it is the fashion for visitors to go to, though it seemed to me that the country in the neighbourhood of La Granja, which one pa.s.ses on the road from the Escorial to Segovia, was more interesting than this, the mountains being as high and much more finely wooded.

CHAPTER IX.

SEGOVIA.

Few journeys can be made by the ecclesiologist in Spain which will be altogether more agreeable or more fruitful of results than one to this time-honoured city; for not only does it contain within its walls more than the usual number of objects of architectural and ecclesiological interest, but the road by which it is usually approached, across the Sierra de Guadarrama, presents so much fine scenery as to be in itself sufficient to repay the traveller for his work. It was from Madrid that I made my way to Segovia, taking the railway as far as the little station at Villalba, near the Escorial, and travelling thence by a fairly-appointed diligence. The very fine and picturesque granite ranges of the Guadarrama are generally bare and desolate on their southern side, though here and there are small tracts of oak-copse, or fern, or pine-trees; but, after a slow ascent of some three or four hours, when the summit of the pa.s.s is reached, the character of the scenery changes entirely, and the road winds down through picturesque valleys and dips in the hills, which are here thickly covered everywhere with pine-trees of magnificent growth. It is necessary to travel for a time in the dismal plains of Old Castile, to enjoy to the full the sudden change to the mountain beauties of the Guadarrama; and it is impossible not to sympathize with the kings of Spain, who at La Granja, on the lower slopes of the northern side of the range, have built themselves a palace within easy reach of Madrid, and--owing to its height above the sea--in a climate utterly different from, and much more endurable than, that of the capital. Of the palace they have built I must speak with less respect than I do of their choice of its site, for it is now untidy in its belongings and apparently little cared for. A church forms the centre of it, and the whole group of buildings has slated roofs, diversified by an abundance of _tourelles_. The walls are all plastered and covered with decaying paintings of architectural decorations--columns, cornices, and the like--which give a thoroughly pauperized look to the whole place. But probably the interior of the palace and its famous gardens would correct the impression which I received from a hurried inspection of the exterior only. It is an uninteresting drive of about an hour from La Granja to Segovia. The tower of the cathedral is seen long before reaching the city; but it is not till one is very near to it that the first complete view is gained, and this, owing to the way in which the Alcazar and cathedral stand up upon a rocky height above the suburbs, and the streams which girt it on either side, is very picturesque. Even finer is it as one drives on through the suburb and first finds oneself in presence of the grand old Roman aqueduct, which, still perfect and still in use, spans with its magnificent ranges of arch upon arch the valley which separates the city rock from the hills beyond. Its base is girt closely round by houses and the diligence road pa.s.ses under one of its arches, so that the enormous scale upon which it is built is thoroughly appreciated, and it is quite impossible not to admire the extreme simplicity and grandeur of the work. Nothing here was done that was useless or merely ornamental, and the whole still stands with but little repair--and that little well done--after so many centuries of good service, as useful as at the first.

A steep hill leads up from the valley below the aqueduct through a gateway in the walls into the city, and after threading the narrow winding streets we find ourselves in the fine Plaza de la Const.i.tucion, which is surrounded by picturesque balconied houses, save at its north-west angle, where it opens so as to allow a fine view of the east end of the cathedral. The houses have generally extremely picturesque open upper stages of wood arcading, and the windows and balconies are all gay with the heavy curtains which protect them from the sun.

The situation of the city is in every way striking. On either side of it there is a deep valley, and these at their meeting have between them the great rock on which the Alcazar is built--as admirably secure a site for a castle as could have been selected. Going eastward along the narrow ridge the cathedral is soon reached, and this is the centre of the city, which then widens somewhat, before the edge of the hill is reached which leads down to the suburb below the aqueduct. In the two valleys are some of the best of the buildings: San Millan in one, the Templars' Church and the Convent of El Parral in the other; but most of the old churches are crowded closely together on the summit of the hill.

I shall begin my architectural notes with the cathedral, in deference only to its rank, and not at all to its age or architectural merits. It is nevertheless a building of no little value in the history of Spanish art, as being perhaps the latest Gothic building erected, and one which was yet but little influenced by Renaissance art. In the Appendix I give a translation of the interesting contemporary account of the church, written by one Juan Rodriguez, who appears to have been the canon in charge of the work. According to his account, Juan Gil de Hontanon, the architect of Salamanca Cathedral, was appointed in A.D. 1522 to superintend the work, and on the 8th of June in the same year the Bishop ordered a procession, and, going himself to the site of the church, laid its foundation-stone at the western end. Cean Bermudez, in his account of this cathedral, speaks of a compet.i.tion among several architects for the work, and says that the design of Rodrigo Gil de Hontanon--the son of Juan Gil--was selected.[185] But this seems to be clearly contrary to the distinct statement of the Canon Juan Rodriguez. The work was commenced, as we have seen, in 1522, and Juan Gil seems to have died circa 1531. His son Rodrigo was not made Maestro mayor until 1560, and on the 5th of August, 1563, laid the first stone of the Capilla mayor.

The inscription on his tombstone in the cloister[186] says that he laid the first stone of the church; but if he did so it was on behalf of his father, who was then undoubtedly the Maestro mayor, and we may a.s.sume, I believe, that the greater part of the church, as we now see it, was finished before the year 1577, in which he died, though, indeed, Madoz says that the Sacrament was moved to the new cathedral as early as 1558, though the chapels of the apse were not completed until 1593. The north door, by Juanes de Mugaguren, was added in A.D. 1626, and is thoroughly Pagan.

The plan[187] of this church must be compared with that of the new cathedral at Salamanca, built by the same man. The details of the two churches are very similar; but the scale of Segovia is slightly greater than that of Salamanca, and it has the enormous advantage of having a grand chevet in place of a square east end. It will be seen, on reference to my account of Salamanca, that the architects who drew up the scheme for the cathedral there, intended that its end should be circular, but that nevertheless it has not been so built. It seems probable, therefore, that Hontanon felt that this alteration was a mistake, or else that we owe the amended plan of Segovia to the better taste of his son Rodrigo, who was master of the works of the eastern portion of the church. But in any case, whether it is to the father or the son that we owe it, the internal effect is undoubtedly very n.o.ble, in spite of all the shortcomings which must be looked for in a work of such a date. The main columns are of grand dimensions, moulded, and rising from lofty bases planned with that ingenious complication of lines which was always so much affected by the later German and Spanish architects. The arches are very lofty, and there is no triforium, but only a traceried bal.u.s.trade in front of the clerestory, which consists of uncusped triplets filling the wall above the springing of the groining, and very low in proportion to the great height of the church, though at the same time amply sufficient for the admission of all the light necessary in such a climate. The aisle has a somewhat similar clerestory, but without the traceried bal.u.s.trade which we see in the nave clerestory, and the aisles and chapels are all lighted with windows, each of one broad light. Most of the smaller arches here are semi-circular; but though this is the case, and though so many of the windows are of one light, there is no appearance anywhere of any attempt to revive the form or detail of earlier work.

On the exterior the general character is just the same as that of Hontanon's work at Salamanca. There are the same pinnacles and b.u.t.tresses, the same parapets, and the same concealment of the roofs and roof-lines everywhere--even in the transepts, which have no gables--and there is also a domed lantern over the Crossing and a lofty tower at the west end, finished with an octagonal stage covered with a dome, and rising from between four great pinnacles. So great, in short, are all the points of similarity, that I can well believe that portions of the two works may have been executed from the same plans, and this close copying of the earlier work at Salamanca may perhaps have been the true reason of the respectably Gothic detail of the chevet, built as it was so near the end of the sixteenth century. The groining is all of the kind so common in Spain, having ogee lierne ribs in addition to the diagonal, and in place of ridge ribs.

Not a little of the grand effect of the interior is owing to the rich stained gla.s.s with which all, or nearly all, the windows are filled. It is all, of course, of the very latest kind, and poor in much of its design; yet nevertheless it is often magnificent in colour, and in this respect quite beyond anything that most of our artists in gla.s.s seem to me to accomplish nowadays. The Coro is here--and probably was from the first--in the nave; but there is nothing either in its fittings or in those of the Capilla mayor which struck me as worthy of note. The detail of the central dome is quite Pagan, and here and there throughout the work little indications of the same spirit peep out, and show how narrow was the escape which the whole church had of being from first to last executed in the Renaissance style.

With all its faults this church has grand points: this every one will allow who has seen it rising in a n.o.ble pyramidal ma.s.s above the houses of the town from the open s.p.a.ce in front of the Alcazar, from whence all its parts are seen to great advantage. Of the other subordinate buildings I need not say much. The canon, whose account I give in the Appendix, is much more enthusiastic about them than I was, for in truth they are cold and tame in design and meagre in detail; and wanting the effect of height and colour of the interior of the cathedral, want all that makes it so striking. I saw no great, if any, difference of style between the cloisters and the church; but they were the cloisters of the old church, and were removed here by a contract entered into by one Juan de Campero in 1524. Campero was one of the architects consulted as to the rebuilding of Salamanca Cathedral, and was evidently a mason or builder as well as an architect. I was not aware of the history of the cloister when I was at Segovia, and I did not notice any evidence of the work having been rebuilt and added to in the way described.

The cathedral is the largest and most important, but at the same time the most modern mediaeval building in Segovia; whilst, on the contrary, one of the smallest, the church of the Templars, is also one of the most ancient and curious; it is situated by the roadside just out of the city, on its north-west side, and below the great rock which is crowned by the Alcazar. The date of its consecration in A.D. 1208 is given by an inscription which still remains in the interior, and which has been incorrectly given by Cean Bermudez. It is as follows:--

Haec sacra fundantes clesti sede locentur; Atque suberrantes in eadem consocientur.

Dedicatio ecclesiae beati Sepulchri Xrti Idus Aprilis Era MCCXLVI. +.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 24.

SEGOVIA p. 184.

INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLARS CHURCH LOOKING N E.]

The plan is very peculiar.[188] The nave is dodecagonal, and has a small central chamber enclosed with solid walls, round which the vaulted nave forms a kind of aisle. This central chamber is of two storeys in height, the lower entered by archways in the cardinal sides, and the upper by a double flight of steps leading to a door in its western side.

The upper room is vaulted with a domical roof which has below it four ribs, two parallel north and south, and two parallel east and west, and it retains the original stone altar, arcaded on its sides with a delicately wrought chevron enrichment and chevroned shafts. The upper chapel is lighted by seven little windows opening into the aisle around it. The room below the chapel has also a dome, with ribs on its under side. On the east side of the building are the chancel and two chapels, forming parallel apses, to the south of which is a low steeple, the bottom stage of which is also converted into a chapel. The chapel in the centre of the nave is carried up and finished externally with a pointed roof, whilst the aisle is roofed with a lean-to ab.u.t.ting against its walls. There are pilasters at the angles outside, small windows high up in the walls, and a fine round-arched doorway on the western side. The character of the whole of this interesting church is late Romanesque, and its value is considerable, as being an accurately dated example. It is not now used, the Templars having been suppressed in A.D. 1312.

Within a few minutes' walk of this church of La Vera Cruz (for this is its dedication) is the convent of El Parral, founded in the fifteenth century,[189] by a Marquis de Villena, on a spot once so beautiful as to give rise to the saying, "Los huertos del Parral, Paraiso terrenal," but now so dreary, desolate, decaying, and desecrated, that the eye refuses to rest on it, and seeks relief by looking rather at the grand view of the town on the rocky heights on the other side of the little valley.

Juan Gallego, a native of Segovia, was the master of the works here in 1459, and it is recorded that before beginning to construct the convent he collected all the waters from the hill above its site, and distributed them by aqueducts for the service of the convent. The Capilla mayor was not commenced until A.D. 1472, in which year a contract was drawn up with Bonifacio and Juan de Guas, of Segovia, and Pedro Polido, of Toledo, binding them to complete the work within three years, for the sum of 400,000 maravedis. Then the tribune of the Coro was found to be too low for the taste of the monks, and it was taken down and rebuilt by Juan de Ruesga, of Segovia, for 125,000 maravedis; and by a contract signed in July, 1494, he bound himself to complete the work before the end of the same year. After this, in 1529, Juan Campero, whose name has already been mentioned in connexion with the rebuilding of the cloister of the cathedral, undertook to raise the tower twenty-nine feet.[190]

The ground-plan and general design of this church are very peculiar. The accompanying sketch-plan[191] will explain them better than any words; and, strange as the planning of the transepts looks, it is, nevertheless, very fine in effect. This is mainly the result of the very remarkable distribution of light. The western part of the church is almost without windows, and the great western gallery coming forward just half the length of the nave, adds much to the impression of gloom at this end of the building. The eastern end seems to be by contrast all window, being lighted by twelve large three-light windows, with statues of the Apostles in their jambs. The effect of the brilliant light at the east end, and the deep gloom of the west, is most impressive, and shows how much architects may do by the careful distribution of light. Few old buildings are altogether without some sign of attention to this important element of beauty in building, whilst few modern buildings seem to me ever to have been devised with even any thought of the existence of such a phenomenon as a shadow! The front of the gallery is elaborately panelled, and returned eastward on the north side, to form a gallery in front of the organ; and on the south, to make a pa.s.sageway to the staircase by which the monks reached the Coro. The arch under the gallery is struck from three centres and richly cusped, and the whole is carried on a stone vault. A very richly carved and cusped doorway leads from the south transept to the cloisters, and to an elaborately painted chapel, which has been added on the south-east of the choir. The exterior of the church and convent is poor and uninteresting, though there is a rather fine double west door, with a statue of the Blessed Virgin in the centre, and saints on either side in the jambs.

The conventual buildings deserve but little notice. In the modern cloister--fast falling to ruin--are retained the traceried bal.u.s.trades which probably adorned the cloister built at the time of the foundation of the convent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: No. 25.

SAN ESTEBAN, SEGOVIA. p. 187.

SOUTH-EAST VIEW OF CHURCH AND STEEPLE]

A very picturesque path loads up from El Parral into the city. The effect of the Alcazar from hence is very imposing, the enormous keep-tower which rises out of its western face being very prominent, with its outline marked by round corner turrets projecting from the angles so often seen in the old castles of Castile. Its walls, as well as many others in the Alcazar, are covered with diapers in plaster, with the pattern left slightly in relief, a mode of decoration which seems to have been extremely popular in Segovia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Until very lately this Alcazar was covered with picturesque tall slated roofs, but, unfortunately, a fire has completely gutted the whole building, and left nothing but the outside walls, which still, however, are most imposing in their effect. The old town walls diverge slightly from the Alcazar, and enclose the whole city; their outline is broken picturesquely with towers, sometimes round and sometimes square, and they wind about to suit the uneven and rugged surface of the rock on which they are built. The gateways are not very remarkable, though always effective. One of them is pa.s.sed in coming from El Parral, and, as soon as the town is reached, the n.o.ble steeple of San Esteban--one of its finest architectural features--is seen in front.

I have seldom seen a better work than this. It is evidently one of a large cla.s.s, most of the other steeples here reproducing the unusual arrangement of the angles. They are boldly splayed off, and in the middle of the splay is set a shaft, which finishes with a sculptured capital. The effect of this design is to give great softness of contour to the whole steeple, and yet to mark boldly and broadly the importance of the angles. The arcading of the various stages is richly and admirably managed, and the details throughout are very pure and good. I have found no evidence of its exact date, though it is evidently a work of the first half of the thirteenth century.