TO the north of the railway between LÉrida and Zaragoza, and within easy distance of the stations of Monzon and Tardienta, are the two old Aragonese cities of Barbastro and Huesca Monzon—a possession of the Knights Templars since A.D. 1143—is still dignified by a castle on the hill, which rises steeply above the town, and in which there are said to be some remains of the residence of their superior in Aragon. The accounts I obtained of Barbastro made me think it hardly worthy of a visit. The cathedral was built between 1500 and 1533; and it is a small church (about 140 feet in length), without either triforium or clerestory, the groining springing from the capitals of the columns, and being covered with ogee lierne ribs.[371] Huesca seemed to promise more, so leaving the railway at AlmudÉvar[372] I made an excursion thither. It is a drive of three or four hours from the railway; and the distant views of the old city are striking, backed as it is by a fine mountain-range, on one of whose lower spurs it is built. The cathedral stands on the highest ground in the city; and the rocky bluffs of the mountain behind it look like enormous castles guarding its enceinte. These picturesque views are the more refreshing by the contrast they offer to the broad corn-covered plain at their feet. Two or three miles from Huesca, on another hill, are the remains of the great monastery of Monte Aragon, which was, however, rebuilt in 1777, and is not very likely therefore now to reward examination.

The Plaza in front of the cathedral is surrounded by an important group of buildings—the palace of the kings of Aragon, the college of Santiago, and others belonging to the old university. They are mostly Renaissance in their design; but in the old palace is a crypt called “la Campana del Rey Monje,” which seems to date from the end of the twelfth century. It has an apse covered with a semi-dome; and a quadripartite vault of good character covers the buildings west of the apse. The arches are all semi-circular.

The cathedral was almost entirely rebuilt in the fifteenth century, from the designs of a Biscayan architect, Juan de Olotzaga.[373] The cloister on the north side is the principal remaining portion of the older church, and this is so damaged and decayed as to present hardly a single feature of interest save two or three of the picturesque tombs corbelled out from the walls, which are so frequently seen in the north of Spain.

The plan[374] of the cathedral consists of a nave and aisles of four bays in length, with chapels between the buttresses. The Coro is formed by screens which cut off the two eastern bays of the nave; it opens at the east into the rather grand transept, which, as is so invariably the case in the later Spanish churches, completely usurps the functions of the nave as the place of gathering for worshippers. To the east of the transept are five apsidal chapels opening out of it; that in the centre larger than the others, and containing the High Altar. Three broad steps are carried all across the church from north to south, in front of these chapels. It struck me that the plan of this east end was so very similar to that of some of the earlier Spanish churches[375] as to render it probable at any rate that Olotzaga raised his church upon the foundations of that which was removed to make way for his work. The steeple which takes the place of the westernmost chapel on the north side of the nave is octagonal in plan, but is much modernized, and finished with a brick belfry-stage: it is evidently of older foundation than the church. The columns between the nave and aisles are all clustered, and the main arches are boldly moulded. There is no triforium, the wall above the arcade being perfectly plain up to a carved stringcourse which is carried round the church below the clerestory; the windows in which are filled with flamboyant tracery. The groining is generally rather intricate, and has bosses at all the intersections of the ribs. There is no lantern at the intersection of the nave and transepts. It has been already said that the Coro occupies the usual place in the nave; and it is clear that it has never been moved, as there are small groined chapels formed between the columns on either side of it. The Reja at the west end of choir is not old; the usual brass rails are placed to form a passage from the Coro to the Capilla mayor, across the transept.

The reredos behind the high altar is carved in alabaster: it is of the latest Gothic, but certainly very fine. Damian Forment, a Valencian sculptor, executed it between A.D. 1520 and 1533.[376] It is divided into three great compartments, the centre rising higher than the others. Each compartment has a subject, crowded lavishly with figures in high relief; whilst a broad band of carving is carried round the whole, and many figures in niches are introduced. The subjects are: 1, The Procession to Calvary; 2, the Crucifixion, with the First Person of the Holy Trinity surrounded by angels in the sky; and, 3, the Descent from the Cross. Between these subjects and the altar are statues of the twelve Apostles and our Lord, and a door on either side of the altar opens into the space behind the reredos.

The west doorway is said by Cean Bermudez to be the work of Olotzaga. My own impression is that it is a work of circa A.D. 1350. It is a fine middle-pointed doorway of rich character. The arch is of seven orders; three enriched with foliage, and the remainder with figures under canopies, of—1, figures with scrolls; 2, angels; 3, holy women; 4, apostles and saints. The tympanum has the B. V. Mary and our Lord under a canopy; she is standing on a corbel, on which is carved a woman with asps at her bosom; on either side of the canopy is an angel censing; below, on the left, are three kings, and on the right the Noli me tangere. The lintel has some coats of arms; and there are seven statues of saints in each jamb; and below them were subjects enclosed within quatrefoils, all of which have been destroyed.[377] The gable over the doorway arch is crocketed, and pierced with tracery, and has pinnacles on either side. The horn-shaped leaf so often seen in English work is profusely used here, and in the arches is generally arranged in the French fashion, À crochet. The wooden doors are covered with iron plates beaten up into a pattern, and nailed on with great brass nails.

The west end is finished at the top with a straight cornice, with circular turrets at the angles, and pinnacles between, dividing it into three compartments. The detail of all this upper part is very poor and late in style, and altogether inferior to that of the west doorway. The clerestory is supported by simple flying buttresses, finished with rich pinnacles.

There are two other old doorways. That from the cloister on the north side is round-arched, with dog-tooth, chevron, and roses carved on it; yet the detail seems to prove that it cannot be earlier than A.D. 1300, whilst some of the carving looks as if it were even later than this. The other door is in the south transept, and certainly deserves examination. It has a small groined porch formed between two buttresses in front of it; over the arch is the Crucifix, S. Mary, and S. John; whilst on the west wall are the three Maries coming with spices, &c., to the grave of our Lord, which is represented on the east wall of the porch, with the angel seated on it.

The church of San Pedro el Viejo, which I now have to mention, is by far the most interesting in the city, being of much earlier date than any part of the cathedral.[378] It has a nave and aisles of four bays, a transept with a raised lantern over the crossing, and three parallel apses at the east end. A hexagonal tower is placed against the north wall of the north transept, and a cloister occupies the whole south side of the church; whilst on the east of the cloister is a series of chapels or rooms of early date. There is, so far as I know, no evidence of the date of this work; but judging by its style, it can hardly be later than the middle of the twelfth century, with the exception of the raised vault of the lantern, which was finished, however, before the consecration of the church, which is said to have taken place in A.D. 1241.[379]

The nave and aisles are vaulted with continuous waggon-vaults, the chapels at the east end with semi-domes, and the lantern with a quadripartite vault, the ribs of which are enriched with the dog-tooth ornament. The waggon-vault of the nave is divided into bays by cross arches corresponding with the piers of the arcades. The vaulting of the lantern springs from a higher level than the other vaults, and has ridge ribs as well as diagonal and wall ribs. The lantern is lighted by four circular windows, which have rich early thirteenth-century mouldings, and are filled in with tracery which is evidently of Moorish origin. A fine round-arched doorway, with three engaged shafts in each jamb, leads from the transepts into the tower, which has groining shafts in each angle. The Coro here now occupies the western bay of the nave, and is fitted up with fair fifteenth-century stalls, which, being carried across the end, block up the old western doorway.

Interior of San Pedro, Huesca.
Interior of San Pedro, Huesca.

The whole church is built of red sandstone, but is whitewashed throughout, and the exterior is much modernized, though the old work is still in part visible. The west front has a bold arch under the roof, which corresponds with the waggon-vault inside. The abacus from which this springs is carried across as a stringcourse, and in the space enclosed between it and the arch is a round-headed window, with a broad external splay and plain label moulding. A very plain western doorway is now (as also is this window) blocked up. The aisles have also small windows high up in the walls, and the whole church is covered with a roof of very flat pitch laid immediately on the stone vaults. The lowest stage of the tower had windows in each of its disengaged sides: it rises in four stages of equal height, divided by stringcourses, but is capped with a modern belfry stage. The lantern is carried up to the level of the top of its vault, and then covered like the rest of the church with a flat tiled roof. A stringcourse, richly worked with a billet moulding, is carried round the outer walls of the aisles, and round their pilaster buttresses.

[larger view]
[largest view]
HUESCA: Ground: Plans: of: Cathedral: and: of: San: Pedro: Plate XXI. W. West, Lithr. Published by John Murray, Albermarle St. 1865.

The cloister, though in a very sad state of dilapidation, is still very interesting. It is covered with a lean-to roof, and has round arches throughout springing from capitals, some of which are carved with figures, and some with foliage only, but all of rude character. Several arched recesses for monuments are formed in the outer walls, but none of the inscriptions that I observed were earlier than A.D. 1200. In the south wall six of these arches have enormous stone coffins, each supported on three corbels on the backs of three lions. These coffins are about two feet deep, by seven feet in length, and covered with a gabled stone cover. The columns in the arcades of this cloister are curiously varied, some being coupled shafts, some quatrefoil in section, some square, and some octagonal. Against the east wall are four chambers opening into the cloister. That nearest the church is the Chapel of San BartolomÉ, and of the same style as the nave, covered with a low waggon-vault, and with the original stone altar still remaining against the square east end. The chapel next to this has a very late vault; the next, a quadripartite vault; and the southernmost has a pointed waggon-vault, with three plain, pointed-arched recesses in each of the side walls.

Over the modern doorway from the cloister into the church is the tympanum of the original doorway, rudely sculptured with the Adoration of the Magi, above which two angels hold a circle, on which are inscribed the monogram of our Lord, and the letters A and O.

I could find nothing else of much architectural interest in Huesca. The Church of San Martin has a plain thirteenth-century west doorway, and that of San Juan—said to have been consecrated in A.D. 1204—seemed to have an apse of about that date, with a central lantern-tower carried on pointed arches. There are remains also of two of the town gateways, but they are of no interest.

In the distance, as I approached Huesca, I had noticed what looked like an old church at Salas, and, having time to spare, I walked there. The way lay along fields and by the muddiest of roads, where ruts were being levelled, and the whole made uniformly muddy, in order to accommodate the Bishop of Huesca, who was coming out in procession to have a service in the church there. I found the east and west ends of the church to be old, but the rest, inside and out, had been hopelessly modernized. The east end retains nothing beyond three very long slits for windows, about six inches wide, and not intended for glazing. The west end is very fine, and almost untouched. It has a noble doorway of six orders, very richly sculptured with chevrons, dog-tooth, mouldings of first-pointed character, and rich transitional foliage. The capitals have similar foliage, but the shafts and their bases have been destroyed, and a modern head to the door has been inserted within the arch. This door is set forward from the face of the wall nearly four feet, and has engaged shafts in the angles, and a richly-carved cornice. The gable (which is of flat pitch) is filled with a large circular window, the tracery of which has been destroyed. It has three orders of moulding round it, one moulded only, the others carved with a very bold dog-tooth enrichment. The label has rather ingeniously contrived crockets of very conventional design. The whole of this front is of very much the same character as the early work in the cathedral at LÉrida. It is only about a mile and a half out of Huesca, and ought to be visited, as, with the exception of San Pedro el Viejo, it is certainly the most interesting work to be seen.

Travellers will find accommodation which is just tolerable in the Posada at Huesca. They should not return, as I was obliged to do, to Zaragoza, but should extend the journey to Jaca, where there seems to be a fair Romanesque cathedral. Near Jaca, too, Sta. Cruz de los Seros has a fine Romanesque church, with an octagonal raised central lantern, and a steeple of several stages in height on its north side. San Juan de la PeÑa, a monastery in the same district, has a fine Romanesque cloister, of the same character as that of San Pedro at Huesca: but the church is, I think, modern.[380]

No. 46. SALAS, NEAR HUESCA. WEST FRONT OF THE CHURCH.
No. 46.
SALAS, NEAR HUESCA.
WEST FRONT OF THE CHURCH.

I returned from Huesca to the railway, and thence to Zaragoza, hoping that, notwithstanding all it had suffered from wars and sieges, something might still be found to reward examination. I have seen no city in Spain which is more imposing in the distance, and yet less interesting on near acquaintance. A great group of towers and steeples stands up so grandly, that it is natural to suppose there will be much to see. But whether the French in their sieges destroyed everything, or whether it is that the city is too prosperous to allow old things to stand in the way, it is certainly the fact that but few old buildings do stand, and that none of them are of first-rate interest. The river here is rapid and broad, and the view of the distant mountains fine, whilst, partly owing to its being a centre for several railways, it is a fairly gay and lively city, and is year by year in process of improvement, in the modern sense of the word.

There are here two cathedrals, in which I believe the services are celebrated alternately for six months at a time, the same staff serving both churches. On the two occasions on which I have stopped in Zaragoza, it has fortunately happened that the old cathedral was open, and the exterior of the other promises so little gratification in the interior, that I never even made the attempt to penetrate into it.

The old cathedral is called the “Seu,” par excellence, the other being the Cathedral “del Pilar.” The Seu[381] is the usual term for the principal church, and the name of the second is derived from a miracle-working figure of the Blessed Virgin on a pillar, which it seems that the people care only to worship half the year.

The Seu is in some respects a remarkable church, but it is so much modernized outside as to be, with the exception of one portion, quite uninteresting, and the interior, though it is gorgeous and grand in its general effect, is of very late style and date, and does not bear very much examination in detail. It is very broad in proportion to its length, having two aisles on each side of the nave, and chapels beyond them between the buttresses; and there are but five bays west of the Crossing, and of these the Coro occupies two. There is a lantern at the Crossing, and a very short apsidal choir. The nave and aisles are all roofed at the same level, the vaulting springing from the capitals of the main columns, and the whole of the light is admitted by windows in the end walls, and high up in the outer walls of the aisles. In this respect Spanish churches of late date almost always exhibit an attention to the requirements of the climate, which is scarcely ever seen in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and this church owes almost all its good effect to this circumstance, for it is in light and shade only, and neither in general design nor in detail, that it is a success. The detail, indeed, is almost as much Pagan as Gothic. The capitals of the columns, for instance, have carvings of fat nude cherubs, supporting coats of arms, and the groining, which is covered with ogee lierne ribs, has enormous bosses and pendants cut out of wood and gaudily gilded.

There is some interesting matter in the history of the Cimborio over the Crossing. It seems that in the year 1500 there was supposed to be some danger of the old Cimborio falling, and the Archbishop, D. Alonso de Aragon, and his Chapter, thereupon invited several artificers and skilled engineers to examine the works, and advise as to its repair. At this Junta there were present two maestros from Toledo—one of them Henrique de Egas; Maestro Font, from Barcelona; Carlos, from Montearagon (Huesca); and Compte, from Valencia; and they, having deliberated with the artificers attached to the cathedral, reported that it would be necessary to take down the Cimborio and rebuild it, and do other repairs to the rest of the church.

This report having been presented, the archbishop some time afterwards, in January, 1505, makes an appeal to the King on the subject, in order that he may obtain the services of Henrique de Egas as architect for the work. He says that he has had the advice of the most experienced and able architects of the day, and among them of Egas, and that they were all agreed that the Cimborio must be taken down, which had been done. And then he says that, inasmuch as the rest of the church seems to be much in want of repair, and as Egas seemed to be a man of great ability and experience, he was very anxious to procure his aid, but that Egas had excused himself on the plea that he had a certain hospital to build at Santiago in Galicia for the King, who required him to go there. Whereupon the archbishop begs the King, for the love of God our Lord, that he will have pity on him; and since there is no great necessity at Santiago, and a very great one at Zaragoza, that he will command Egas to undertake the work.

It is said that Egas did execute the work after all. But it is impossible not to be amused at the enormous contrast between those times and our own, if then it was necessary for an archbishop to appeal to the King to make an architect undertake such a work![382]

The detail of the Cimborio is, as might be expected from its date, most impure. It is octagonal in plan, the canted sides being carried on semi-circular arches thrown across the angles. It is of two stages in height, the lower having square recesses for statues, and the upper traceried windows. The general scheme is Gothic, but the detail is all very Renaissance in character.[383]

The choir is apsidal, but the apse is concealed by an enormous sculptured Retablo, which, in spite of its very late date, is certainly dignified in its effect.

Externally there are evidences of the existence of an earlier church, the lower part of the apse being evidently Romanesque, a portion of the buttresses and one of the windows retaining their old character. The new work is of brick, the windows generally of four lights, with flamboyant tracery, and the walls crowned with rich cornices. The exterior of the Cimborio, as well as of the church, owes much of the picturesqueness which marks it to the fact that the brickwork is everywhere very roughly and irregularly executed.

One portion of the exterior of the church is, however, most interesting; for on the face of the wall, at the north-east angle, is a very remarkable example of brickwork, inlaid with coloured tiles, the character of which proves that it is, no doubt, part of the cathedral which was approaching completion in the middle of the fourteenth century, and earlier in date therefore than the greater part of the existing fabric. This wall is a lofty unbroken surface, about sixty-four feet in length from north to south, and is erected in front of a building of two stages in height, and pierced with pointed windows in each stage. It is built with bricks of, I think, a reddish colour (though I am a little uncertain, owing to their being now very dirty), which are all arranged in patterns in the wall, by setting those which are to form the outlines forward from one-and-a-half to two inches in advance of the general face of the wall. The spaces so left are then filled in with small tiles set in patterns or diapers, the faces of which are generally about three quarters of an inch behind those of the brick outlines. The tiles are of various shapes, sizes, and colours, red, blue, green, white, and buff on white. The blue is very deep and dark in tone, the green light and bright. The patterns are generally of very Moorish character; and there can be no doubt, I think, that the whole work was done by Moorish workmen. The general character of this very remarkable work is certainly most effective; and though I should not like to see the Moresque character of the design reproduced, it undoubtedly affords some most valuable suggestions for those who at the present day are attempting to develop a ceramic decoration for the exteriors of buildings. Here I was certainly struck by the grave quiet of the whole decoration, and was converted to some extent from a belief which I had previously entertained rather too strongly, that the use of tiles for inlaying would be likely to lead to a very gay and garish style of decoration, foreign to all dignity and repose in its effect. There is an intersecting arcade under the lowest windows, in which, as also in some other parts, the ground of the panels is plastered; and in this plaster panels of tiles and single sunk disks of tile are inserted on the white ground. The windows are pointed, and all of them have rich borders to their jambs, which are continued round the arches. Within their borders there appears to have been an order of moulded brickwork, and then the window opening, which is now blocked, but which may possibly have had stone monials and tracery. The bricks used here are of the usual old shape, about 1 ft. 1½ in. long by 6¾ in. wide. They are generally built alternately long and short, but not by any means with any great attempt to break the bond. The mortar-joints are also not less than half an inch in thickness, and this, it must be remembered, in a work the whole characteristic of which is the extreme delicacy and refinement of the decoration. The tiles are five-eighths of an inch thick; some of them are encaustic, of two colours; and all are, as is usual with Moorish tiles, glazed all over. This tile and brick decoration begins at a height of about eight feet from the ground, and is carried up from that point to the top of the wall. Such work seems to be obviously unfitted to be close to the ground; and the lower part of the wall is therefore judiciously built with perfectly plain brickwork.

The most important church in Zaragoza after the cathedral is that of San Pablo. This is an early thirteenth-century church, of the same class as that of San Lorenzo at LÉrida, having a nave of four bays, and an apse of five sides with a groined aisle round it. The side walls of the nave, which are of enormous thickness, are pierced with pointed arches opening into the aisles, which seem to be of the same date, though from the enormous size of the piers they are very much cut off from the nave. The groining ribs are of great size, and moulded with a triple roll in both nave and aisles. Some trace of the original lancet windows is still to be seen in the apse; but most of them are blocked up or destroyed. The aisle is returned across the west end of the nave; and there is a western door and porch, with a descent of some eleven or twelve steps into the church. The Coro is at the west end of the nave, and is fitted with stalls executed circa A.D. 1500-1520, with a Renaissance Reja to the east of them. There is a good reredos, rich in coloured and sculptured subjects, which is said to be a work of the beginning of the sixteenth century, by Damian Forment, of Valencia, who, as will be recollected, carved the reredos in the cathedral at Huesca. The fine octagonal brick steeple is evidently a later addition to the church, and rises from the north-west angle of the nave. It is very much covered with work of the same kind as the wall veil at the cathedral, which I have just been describing, though on a bolder and coarser scale; and it belongs, as far as I can judge by its style, to somewhere about the same period.[384] The brick patterns here, as there, are in parts filled in with glazed tiles; and the general effect of the steeple is very graceful, rising as it does with richly ornamented upper stages, upon a plain base, out of the low and strange jumble of irregular roofs with which the church is now covered.

The great steeple, called the Torre Nueva, in the Plaza San Felipe, is finer and loftier than that of San Pablo, and is, I suppose, on the whole, the finest example of its kind anywhere to be seen. It is octagonal, in plan, and the sections of the various stages differ considerably in outline, owing to the ingenious manner in which the face of the walls is set at various angles. The face of most of the work is diapered with patterns in brickwork as in the other Zaragozan examples; but the most remarkable feature is, perhaps, the extraordinary extent to which the whole fabric falls out from the perpendicular. This, which is so common a fault with the Italian campaniles, arises here evidently from the same causes, the badness of the foundations, and the absence of buttresses. A great mass of brickwork has been built up on one side, in order to prevent the further settlement of this steeple; and it is to be hoped that the remedy may be effectual; for Zaragoza can ill afford to lose so remarkable a feature out of the scanty number still left; and it is valuable also as one of the grandest examples of a very remarkable class. It is said to have been built in A.D. 1504.

Another parish church in the principal street has a very small brick steeple of the same class, but very simple, and with it I think I must close my list of really Gothic erections here. The Renaissance buildings have often a certain amount of Gothic detail, and some Gothic arrangements of plan, but of so late and debased a kind as to make them little worthy of much study. Their real merit is their great size, and the rude grandeur of their treatment. They are usually built of rough brickwork, boldly and massively treated. They have always an arcaded stage, just below the eaves, which are very boldly corbelled out from the walls, and generally supported on moulded wood corbels, carrying a plate which projects some three or four feet from the face of the wall, and throws, of course, a very fine shadow over it. The patios, or court-yards, are lofty, and surrounded by columns which carry the open stages of the first and second floors. There is here no attempt at covering the brickwork with plaster or cement; and accordingly, though the detail is poor and uninteresting, the general effect is infinitely more noble than that of any of our compo-covered, smooth-faced modern London houses. The picturesque roughness of the work which was always indulged in by the mediÆval architects was no sin, it seems, in the eyes of the early Renaissance architects; and it is, indeed, reserved for our own times to realize the full iniquity of any honest exhibition of facts in our ordinary buildings!

Among the buildings here which illustrate the transition from Gothic to Renaissance the cloister of the church of Sta. Engracia seems to be one of the most remarkable. It is said to have been constructed in 1536 by one Tudelilla of Tarazona, and an illustration is given of it in Villa Amil.[385] The Gothic element seems here to have been as much Moresque as Gothic, and hence the combination of these with Renaissance makes a whole which is as strange and heterogeneous as anything ever erected.

It will be seen that Zaragoza has not very much to interest an architect or ecclesiologist. Travellers in Spain who find it necessary to recruit after roughing it in country towns may no doubt feel grateful for the creature comforts they will be able to enjoy there, and it is now rather a centre of railway communication, being on the line of railway which runs from Bilbao to Barcelona, and at the point where the line from Madrid joins it.