Chapter 17

The old mosque was of the usual type of Moslem house of prayer, its eleven aisles subdivided by a forest of columns and resembling in general aspect the far greater mosque of Cordova. Prior to the actual commencement of the new Cathedral, though not to its design, the Royal Chapel was erected, between the years 1506 and 1517, and when the Cathedral was built, it became its southern, lateral termination and by far the most magnificent and interesting portion of the interior. It was planned and executed by the original designer of the church, and even after this was finished, the Royal Chapel remained, like the chapel of Saint Ferdinand of Seville, an independent church with its own Chapter and clergy and independent services.

About a dozen master-builders, almost all working under foreign influence, are known as the architects of the great Spanish cathedrals. They seem generally to have worked more or less in conjunction with each other, several being employed on the same building, or called in turn to advise in one place or superintend in another. Sometimes a whole body of them reported together, or several of them were jointly consulted by a cathedral chapter.

The original conception of the Cathedral of Granada was the work of Enrique de Egas of Brussels, who, when he was commissioned by the new Chapter to plan a fitting memorial to the final triumph of Christianity over Islam in Spain, was among the most celebrated builders of his day. He had already succeeded his father as Maestro Mayor of the Cathedral of Toledo when, just before his death, in 1534, he executed the Royal Chapel of Granada Cathedral, as well as built the hospital of Santa Cruz in the same city. The Colegio de Santa Cruz at Valladolid was also his work, and he had been summoned with other leading architects to decide the best mode of procedure in Seville Cathedral after the disastrous collapse of its dome. At times he was giving advice in both Saragossa and Salamanca. Enrique de Egas' designs were accepted in 1523. He had hardly proceeded further in two years than to lay out the general plan of the Cathedral, when, either through misunderstanding or some controversy, he was supplanted in his office by the equally celebrated Diego de Siloé. Like Egas, his activity was not confined to Granada, but extended to Seville and Malaga.

In the year 1561, two years before Siloé's death, the building was sufficiently completed to be opened for public worship, and consequently on August 17th of that year it was solemnly consecrated. The foundations and lower portion of the northern tower were executed about this time by Siloé's successor, Juan de Maeda. The tower was completed and partially taken down again during the following twenty years by Ambrosio de Vico. Then follows the main portion of the exterior work, especially the west façade (of the first half of the seventeenth century), by the celebrated, not to say notorious, Alfonso de Cano, and José Granados. The decoration of the interior, the addition of chapels and the building of the sagrario were continued through the latter part of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries.

The building operations thus extended over a period of two hundred and fifty years. Alfonso de Cano's reputation was of various kinds; the son of a carpenter and a native of Granada, as soon as his talents were recognized, he was apprenticed to the great Montañes. To judge from contemporaneous accounts, he must have been as hot-headed and quarrelsome as the Florentine goldsmith of similar talents and versatility. He was always ready to exchange the paint-brush or chisel for his good sword, and there was scarcely a day during the years of his connection with the Cathedral in which he was not enjoying a hot controversy with the Chapter. His favor with the weak monarch and the powerful ruling Conde-Duc was so great that they had the audacity to appoint him a prebendary of the Chapter after he had been forced to fly from justice in Valladolid on a charge of murder, as well as for having beaten his wife on his return from a meeting of the ecclesiastical body. The Chapter deprived him of his office as soon as they dared, which was six years after his appointment.

Egas' original plan, like the work he actually carried out in the Royal Chapel, was undoubtedly for a Gothic edifice, as this style was understood and executed in Spain. From the fact that the original Gothic intention was abandoned for a Spanish Renaissance church, many authorities give the date of its commencement as 1529, when Diego de Siloé's Renaissance work was under way. In the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, the great turning-point had come. Italian influences were beginning to predominate over earlier styles and the last exquisite flames of the Gothic fire were slowly dying out to give place to the heavy Renaissance structure of ecclesiastical inspiration. Spaniards who had returned fresh from Italian soil and tutelage evolved with their ornate sense and characteristic love for magnificence, the style, or rather decorative treatment, which marks the first stage of Spanish Renaissance architecture called "Estilo Plateresco." This is a happy name for it, its derivation being from "plata," or silver plate, and indicating that architects were attempting to decorate the huge superficial spaces on their churches with the same intricacy and sparkle as the silversmiths were hammering on their ornaments. There was evolved the same lace-like quality, the same sparkling light and shade. Wonderful results were indeed obtained by the stone-cutters of the sixteenth century.

The Cathedral of Granada is not at all remarkable. Its interest is derived from the city of which it is the chief Christian edifice and the great bodies which it contains; to students of architecture it is in a manner a connecting link between the Gothic building of the middle ages and the modern revival of classical building methods.

It is the death of the old and the birth of the new; it marks the advent of stagnant, uninspired formalism in constructive forms. Its sarcophagi and much of its decoration are both in design and execution most exquisite and appropriate examples of Renaissance art in Spain. Its easy victory in decorative forms was owing to the fact that there had practically been evolved little or no Spanish ornamental design outside of that produced by the ingenuity and peculiar skill of the Moors. The influence of Moorish design is long traceable in Christian decoration. The Spanish nature craves rich adornment in all material. The art of the great sculptors who, like Berruguete, returned at the beginning of the new century with inspiration gained in the workshops of the Florentine Michael Angelo, soon found a host of pupils and followers. Not only in stone, but in wood, metal, plaster, and on canvas, the new forms were carried to a gorgeous profusion never dreamt of before. Charles V stands out amid its glories in as clear relief as in the tumult of the battlefield. The decline and frigid formality did not set in until the reign of his unimpassioned and repulsive son. The grandest epoch in Spain's history thus corresponds to the most inspired period of its sculpture. The first architects of this period worked on Granada Cathedral; the work of the greatest sculptor, the Burgundian Vigarny, is found in inferior form on the retablo of the Royal Chapel. In Spain, where the climate made small window openings desirable, the churches offered great wall spaces to the sculptor. The splendid portals, window frames, turrets and parapets, the capitals and string courses and niches all became rich fields for Spanish interpretation of the exquisite art of Lombardy.

The new art first found tentative expression in decorative forms, then in more radical and structural changes. The world-empire of which Ferdinand had dreamed, and which his grandson almost possessed, placed untold wealth and the art of every kingdom at the disposal of Spain.

Granada Cathedral has a strange exterior, meaningless except in certain portions, which are essentially Spanish. To the Granadines it is as marvelous as Saint Peter's to the Romans. Its view is obstructed on all sides by a maze of crumbling walls, yellow hovels, and shop fronts shockingly modern and out of keeping. It is all very, very provincial. The stream of the world has left it behind and its pageants and glories had departed centuries ago. Donkeys heavily laden with baskets of market produce stand--personifications of wronged and unremonstrating patience--hitched to the iron rails before its main portals. Goats browse on the grass in its courtyards, and are milked between the buttresses. Immediately to the south of it lies the old episcopal palace, where the archbishop preached the sermons criticized by the ingenuous Gil Blas.

The main entrance is to the west. This front is the latest portion of the building with the exception of certain portions of the interior. Though not as corrupt as some of the surgical decorations in the trascoro, it is the heaviest and least interesting part of the church. It bears no relation to the sides of the building, but seems to have been clapped on like a mask. The central portion is subdivided into three huge bays, the spring of the arch, which rises from the intermediate piers, being considerably higher in the centre than those of the two to the north and south. Diego de Siloé probably designed the composition, intending that it should be flanked and terminated by great towers. Three stages, rising to a height of some 185 feet, stand to the north. Corinthian and Ionic orders superimpose a Doric entablature over a plain and restrained base. Arches frame more or less meaningless and unpierced designs between the pilasters and engaged columns of the orders. The whole is as painfully dry as the transfer of a student's compass from a page of Vignola. Old cuts and descriptions represent this northern tower crowned by an octagonal termination with a height of 265 feet. Despite the apparent massiveness of the substructure, this soon made the whole so alarmingly insecure that it was pulled down. The present tower scarcely reaches above the broken lines and flat surfaces of the roof tiles and, particularly at a distance, has the effect of a huge buttress. The southern tower was never erected, but in place of it the front was supported by a makeshift portion of base. The northern tower is the work of Maeda, the façade principally by Cano, although much of the sculpture, such as the Incarnation over the central doorway, and the Annunciation and Assumption over the side portals, are by other inferior eighteenth-century sculptors.

Statues, cartouches and ornamental medallions relieve the paneled surfaces of the stonework, the masonry of which has been laid and jointed with the utmost conceivable mechanical skill. The whole central composition fizzles out in a meaningless mass of parapets and variously carved stone terminations. One feels as if the original designer had started on such a gigantic scale that he either had to give up finishing his work proportionately or keep on till it reached the sky,--he wisely chose the former alternative.

In Granada, as in most of the Spanish cathedrals, the decoration of the doorways and portals forms one of the principal features of exterior interest. Their ornamentation, with that of the parapets crowning the outer walls of chapels and aisles, is practically all that relieves the huge surfaces of ochre masonry. The walls themselves indicate in no manner the interior construction; the windows which pierce them are very low and narrow and Gothic in outline. The north and south façades,--if despite their many obstructions they may be spoken of as such,--differ radically. The northern is to a great extent executed in the same ponderous magnificence as the western. Two doorways pierce it, the Puerta de San Jeronimo with mediocre sculpture by Diego de Siloé and his pupil and successor, Juan de Maeda, and the Puerta del Perdon, leading into the transept. The decoration of this doorway is as good pure Renaissance work as was executed in Spain during the first quarter of the sixteenth century. It consists of a double Corinthian order crowned by a broken pediment. The shafts of both orders are wreathed. The pilasters, the moldings of the arch, the archivolt and jambs are all, in the lower order, most profusely covered with exquisite designs, admirably fitted to their respective fields, full of imagination and virility. They are as good as the best corresponding work in Italy.Above the arch key of the main door, splendidly treated bas-reliefs of Faith and Justice support from the spandrels an inscription recounting the defeat of the Moors. The frieze band of both lower and upper orders is profusely filled with ornament, while small cherubs in excellent scale replace the conventional volutes of the Corinthian capitals. In the upper order the niches have unfortunately been left uncompleted. A bas-relief of God the Father fills the semicircle of the main arch; Moses and David occupy the lunettes.

The huge pilasters or buttresses of the church which run up east and west of the entire composition are decorated with the enormous imperial shields of Charles V, overshadowing in their vulgar predominance all the exquisitely proportioned and delicate detail adjacent to them.

Some of the bays on the southern side of the Cathedral can be better seen, as a small courtyard separates them from the adjacent building, the episcopal palace. The others are choked by the Capilla del Pulgar, the Royal Chapel and the sagrario.

This side of the church exhibits in its balustrades, its ornamentation and the crocketed terminations and finials to the exterior buttresses, what is far more interesting in the Plateresque style of Spain than the purely borrowed and imitative features of the west and northern fronts. Here appear in jeweled play of light and shade, in all their imaginative and exquisite intricacy, those forms of carved string courses which were developed by the Spanish Renaissance and were essentially Spanish and national. You feel somewhere back of it the Moorish influence. It presents all the richness, the magnificence and exuberant fancy which characterizes the spirit in which its masters worked. The labor it involved must have been enormous. The splendor of the solid lacework ten to twelve feet high is thrown out by contrast with the naked walls which it crowns.

The Capilla del Pulgar, which blocks the most westerly corner of the south elevation, was named in honor of Hernan Peres del Pulgar, the site of whose brave exploit it marks. In 1490, during the last siege of Granada, he determined on a deed which should outdo all feats of heroism and defiance ever performed by Moslem warriors. At dead of night, some authorities say he was on horseback, others that he swam the subterranean channel of the Darro, he penetrated to the heart of the enemy's city and fastened with his dagger to the door of their principal mosque a scroll bearing the words "Ave Maria." Before this insult to their faith had been discovered, he had regained Ferdinand's camp.

A double superimposed arcade faces the southern side of the sagrario: the lower story has been brutally closed and defaced by modern additions, almost concealing its original carving. The upper story, however, which forms a balcony, strongly recalls by its fancifully twisted shafts, elliptical arches and Gothic traceried balustrade, similar early Renaissance work at Blois, where the Gothic and early Italian work were so charmingly blended.

The Royal Chapel is entered through an Italian Renaissance doorway of good general design and decoration, but the Spanish cornice and balustrade crowning the outer walls are much more interesting in details. The principal member consists of a band of crowned and encircled F's and Y's, the initials of the Catholic Kings. It is broken over the window by three gigantic coats-of-arms. To the left is Ferdinand's individual device of a yoke, the "yugo," with the motto "Tato Mota" (Tanto Monta) tantamount, assumed as a mark of his equality with the Castilian Queen; to the right Isabella's device of a bundle of arrows or "flechas," the symbol of union. In the centre is the common royal shield, proudly adopted after the union of the various kingdoms of the Peninsula had been cemented. The Eagle of Saint John the Evangelist and the common crown surmount the arms of Castile and Leon, of Aragon, Sicily, Navarre, and Jerusalem and the pomegranate of Granada.

The various roofs of the Cathedral are covered with endless rows of tiles, which in the furrowed, overlapping irregularity of their surfaces add to the general play of light and shade. Above them all spreads the umbrella-shaped dome which crowns the Capilla Mayor.

At the period when Gothic church-building was disappearing, we find not a few edifices where the old and new styles are curiously blended. A Renaissance façade added in later days might encase a practically complete Gothic interior. In Granada, with the exception of the Royal Chapel, very little of the interior contained traces of the expiring style. In the Cathedral proper, it is principally found in a groined vaulting of the different bays, which is covered with varying and most elaborate schemes of ornamental Gothic ribs, which seem strangely incongruous to the architect as he looks up from the classical shafts in the expectation of finding a corresponding form of building and decoration in the later vaulting.

The general plan of the church is more Renaissance than Gothic, exhibiting rather the form of the "Rundbau" than the "Langbau" of the Latin cross. Its main feature is likewise the great dome rising above and lighting the Capilla Mayor. The Spanish cimborio has at last reached its fullest development in the Renaissance lantern.

The church is divided into nave and double side aisles, outside of which is a series of externally abutting chapels. East and west it contains six bays. The choir blocks up the fifth and sixth bays of the nave, and in the customary Spanish manner it is separated from the high altar in the Capilla Mayor by the croisée of the transept. Back of this, forming the eastern termination, runs an ambulatory.

The vaulting, one hundred feet high, is carried by a series of gigantic white piers consisting of four semi-columns of Corinthian order with their intersecting angles formed by a triple rectangular break. The vaulting springs from above a full entablature and surmounting pedestals, the latter running to the height of the arches dividing the various vaulting compartments. The church is about 385 feet long and 220feet wide.

The choir is uninteresting; the carving of its stalls and organs in nowise comparing with the "silleria" of Seville or Burgos. The Capilla Mayor, the principal feature of the interior, is circular in form, and separated from the nave by a splendid "Arco Toral." The dome, which rises to a height of 155 feet, is carried by eight Corinthian piers. In general scheme it is pure Italian Renaissance, of noble and harmonious proportions and very richly decorated. At the foot of the pilasters stand colossal statues of the Apostles. Higher up there is a series of most remarkable paintings by Alfonso Cano and some of his pupils. Cano's represent seven incidents in the life of the Virgin,--the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Assumption, etc. Though some of his carvings, and especially the dignified and noble Virgin in the sacristy, are admirable, still, to judge from this series, it was as a painter that he excelled. They show, too, how essentially Spanish he was, like his great master, Montañez. The careless, lazy quality of his temperament is sufficiently apparent, but he cannot be denied a place among the great masters of Spanish painting who immediately preceded the all-eclipsing glory of Velasquez, Murillo, and Ribera.

The lights of the dome which rises over the paintings are filled with very lovely stained glass, representing scenes from the Passion by the Dutchmen, Teodor de Holanda, and Juan del Campo. On the two sides of the choir below are colossal heads of Adam and Eve carved by Cano and kneeling figures of Ferdinand and Isabella.

There are endless chapels outside the outer aisles, but, in spite of some good bits of sculpture and painting here and there, one longs to sweep them out of the way and free the edifice from their encumbrance.

The interior of the great sagrario is an expressionless jumble of the later Renaissance decadence,--and it is a shame that no more fitting architecture surrounds the tomb of the good Talavera, here laid to rest by his friend Tendilla, the first Alcaide of the Alhambra, with the inscription over his tomb, "Amicus Amico."

The general color scheme in the interior of the Cathedral is white and gold. One feels that it is handsome, even harmonious and magnificent, but that all the mystery and religious awe that pervaded the great churches of the previous centuries have vanished forever.

The Royal Chapel, although the oldest part of the building, should be considered last of all, as it is by far the most interesting portion and leaves an impression so vivid as to overshadow all other parts of the great edifice. It is situated between the sagrario and the Sacristia and is entered through the southern arm of the transept. The chapel itself is the very last Gothic efflorescence from which the spirit has fled, leaving only empty form. It consists of a single big nave flanked by lower chapels. The ornamentally ribbed vaulting with gilt bosses and keystones is carried by clustered shafts engaged in its side walls. The shafts are too thin and the capitals too meagre. A broader and more generous string course runs, at the height of the capitals, across the wall surfaces between the upper clerestory and the lower arcades. Portions of this reveal a strong Moorish influence, as the manner in which the great Gothic lettering is employed to decorate the band. Similarly to the invocations to Allah running round the walls of the Alhambra, we read here that "This chapel was founded by the most Catholic Don Fernando and Doña Isabel, King and Queen of the Españos[d], of Naples, of Sicily, and Jerusalem, who conquered this kingdom and brought it back to the faith, who acquired the Canary Isles and Indies, as well as the cities of Ican, Tripoli, and Bugia; who crushed heresy, expelled Moors and Jews from these realms, and reformed religion. The Queen died Tuesday, November 26, 1504. The King died January 25, 1516. The building was completed 1517." Enrique de Egas had, at Ferdinand's order, commenced building two years after Isabella's death. The grandson enlarged it later, finding it "too small for so much glory."