Salamanca's cathedrals
Extracts from GE Street
The main objects of attraction to me were the two cathedrals, the one grand and new, of the sixteenth century, by whose side and as it were under whose wing nestles the smaller but most precious old cathedral of the twelfth century, fortunately preserved almost intact when the new one was erected... I know indeed few spots, if any, in which the importance, or the contrary, of mere size in architecture can be better tested than here. Most educated artists would, I dare say, agree with me in rating size as the lowest of all really artistic qualities in architecture; and here we find that the small and insignificant old church produces as good an effect as the large and boastfully ambitious new one, though its dimensions are altogether inferior. This is owing to the subdivision of parts, and to the valuable simplicity which so markedly characterises them.
The foundation of this cathedral may be fixed, I think, with a fair approach to certainty, as being some time in the twelfth century. It was at this time, soon after the city had been regained from the Moors, in AD 1095, that Bernard, archbishop of Toledo, himself a Frenchman, brought many other Frenchmen into Spain, and through his great influence procured their appointment to various sees – a fact which I may say, in passing, suggests much in regard to the origin of the churches which they built... In AD 1178 a priest, Don Miguel of San Juan, Medina del Campo – made a bequest to the Chapter of his property for the work of the cloister, and we may fairly assume, therefore, that before this date the church itself was completed. 
This early church is, it will be seen, cruciform, with three eastern apses, a nave and aisles of five bays, and a dome or lantern over the crossing. There is a deep western porch, and I think it probable that there were originally towers on either side of this. The church has been wonderfully little altered, save that its north wall has been taken down in order to allow of the erection of the new cathedral, and at the same time the arch under the northern part of the central lantern or dome was also underbuilt. In other respects the church is almost untouched, and bears every mark of having been in progress during the greater part of the twelfth century.
There is no provision in the plan of the main piers for carrying the diagonal groining ribs, and it may be, therefore, that when they were first planned it was not intended to groin the nave. The groining-ribs are now carried on corbels, in front of which were statues, only two or three of which, however, now remain in their places. The statues at the angles of the lantern are of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, an angel, and a bishop. The vaulting throughout is quadripartite in the arrangement of the ribs; but the vaults of the three western bays of the nave have quadripartite groining, planned in the common way. The apses have semi-domes. The main arches everywhere are pointed, those of the windows semi-circular, and the capitals throughout are elaborately carved, either with foliage or groups of coupled monsters or birds, a very favourite device of the early Spanish sculptors.
The most interesting feature in this old cathedral still remains to be mentioned: this is the dome over the crossing. The remainder of the original fabric is bold, vigorous, and massive, well justifying the line in an old saying about the Spanish cathedrals, 'Fortis Salmantina'; but still it is merely a good example of a class of work, of which other examples on a grander scale are to be met with elsewhere. Not so, however, the dome; for here we have a rare feature treated with rare success, and, so far as I know, with complete originality. The French domed churches, such as Saint Front, Perigueux, and others of the same class, Notre Dame du Port, Clermont, and Notre Dame, Le Puy, have, it is true, domes, but these are all commenced immediately above the pendentives or arches which carry them. The lack of light in their interiors is consequently a great defect, and those which I have seen have always seemed to me to have something dark, savage and repulsive in their character. And it was here that the architect of Salamanca Cathedral showed his extreme skill for, instead of the common low form of dome, he raised his upon a stage arcaded all round inside and out, pierced it with windows, and then,m to resist the pressure of his vault, built against the external angles four great circular pinnacles. The effect of his work both inside and out is admirable...
The vault is hardly to be called a dome, having a series of ribs on its under side, nor does the external covering follow the same curve as the internal, but with admirable judgment it is raised so much as to have rather the effect of a very low spire, with a considerable entasis, than of a regular dome. The exterior angles have lines of simple and boldly contrived crockets, and the stones with which it is covered seem all to have been cut with scallops on their lower edge.
I ought to notice the contrast between the shafted windows, with their springing lines definitely and accurately marked by sculptured capitals, and the openings in the turrets, with their continuous mouldings. The value of contrast – a treasure in the hands of the real artist – is here consciously and most artistically exhibited; and it was no mean artist who could venture to make so unsparing a use of architectural ornamentation without producing any sense of surfeit on those who look at his work even with the most critical eyes.
There are some fine monuments in the south transept, all of them adorned with elaborate bas-reliefs of scriptural subjects. One, of the thirteenth century, has a tomb supported on lions, and a death-bed represented on its side; a little apsidal recess above is groined with a semi-dome, with ribs. Another has sculptures of the Crucifixion, the Entombment, the Maries going to the Sepulchre, and the 'Noli me tangere', and a third has another representation of a death-bed. The effigies are all slightly tilted outwards, and those in the east wall have their feet to the north.
The most remarkable features in the decoration of the church are, however, the Retablo and the painting on the semi-dome above it. On the vault the Last Judgment is painted, our Lord being drawn much in the famous attitude of St Michael in Orcagna's fresco at Pisa, and without drapery. The retablo is a work of the fourteenth century, of wood, and planned so as exactly to fit the curve of the apse wall. It is divided into five panels in height and even in width, so that there are 55 subjects, each surrounded by an architectural framework of delicate character. The subjects are all richly painted on a gold ground... Generally speaking, a retablo is placed across the apse and cuts off its eastern portion, which thenceforward becomes a receptacle for all the untidiness of the church; and when so arranged, if it reaches the height common in Spain, it almost, and in some cases altogether, destroys the internal effect of the apse. Here, however, the exact fitting of the Retablo to the curve of the wall is free from this objection, and its effect is unusually good.
On the east side of the cloister and close to the transept, what was no doubt the original Chapterhouse remains, though it is now called the Mozarabic chapel, and was formerly used for the Mozarabic ritual.... it is a very remarkable chamber, square in plan below, and brought to an octagon above by arches thrown across the angles, and finally roofed with a sort of dome, carried upon moulded and curved ribs of very intricate contrivance. The interlacing of those ribs gives the work somewhat the effect of being Moorish, and there can be little doubt, I think, that it owes its pecularities in some degree to Moorish influence. .. The groining ribs are arranged in parallel pairs. The ribs go from the angles to the centre of the opposite side instead of from angle to angle, and the sixteen ribs form a star-shaped compartment in the centre. This coupling of ribs in parallel lines is a feature of Moorish work, and is seen in the curious mosque, the Cristo de la Luz, at Toledo, and in the somewhat Moorish vault of the Templars' church at Segovia. But whether Moorish or not, it is a remarkable room, and deserves careful study.
A considerable number of masons' marks remain on the exterior of the early part of this church; and if they are the marks of the men who erected so complicated a piece of stonework as the vault of the Chapter-house, they well deserve to be preserved. Throughout this church, indeed, the masonry is unusually good, and, owing to the rich warm colour of the stone, the eastern apses, though they follow the common design of most of the Romanesque apses in this part of Spain, are more than usually good in their effect.
Salamanca – the new cathedral
Salamanca seems to have tasted early of that prosperity which in the end ruined art in Spain; and it was possible, therefore, for the bishop, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, to propose a scheme for replacing his modest old cathedral by one of the most sumptuous and ambitious in Spain, without attempting what was absurd or sure to fail.
In 1509 a Royal order was issued to Anton Egas, master of the works at Toledo Cathedral, to go to Salamanca to make a plan for the cathedral there. Egas seems to have delayed so long that it was necessary to send another order to him, and then at last, in May 1510, he went. The same kind of command had been laid at the same time by the kind on Alfonso Rodriguez, the master of the works at Seville, and after these two had considered the matter, they presented a joint plan, drawn on parchment, showing the heights and widths of the naves, the thickness of the walls, and so forth; but they were unable, they said, to agree as to the proportion of length to breadth in the Capilla mayor, and so they settled to meet in ten days at Toledo, and then to appoint an umpire. Nothing more seems to have been done by them, for in 1513 the bishop and Chapter resolved to call together a Junta of architects to make another report; and Rodriguez being dead, they summoned Anton Egas of Toledo, Juan Gil de Hontañon, Juan de Badajoz of Leon, Alonso de Covarrubias of Toledo, Juan Tornero, Juan de Alava, Juan de Orozco, Rodrigo de Saravia, and Juan Campero, who all assembled in September, 1512, at Salamanca, and drew up their report. The detailed character of this report is very curious. It decides the dimensions of every part of the church, the thickness of the walls, the projection of the buttresses, and the exact position that it ought to occupy. The architects not only agreed in all their opinions, but testified to their truth by taking an oath 'by God and St Mary', saying, each one, 'So I swear, and amen'.
Three days after the presentation of this report certain of the Chapter were appointed to select an architect, and their choice fell at once on Juan Gil de Hontañon for the architect, and Juan Campero for clerk of the works.
In this cathedral the only point one can heartily praise is the magnificence of the general idea, and the noble scale and proportion of the whole work. But the detail throughout is of the very poorest kind, fairly Gothic in character inside, but almost Renaissance outside, and everywhere wanting in vigour and effect. Nothing can be much worse than the treatment of the doorways and windows, and – to take one portion – the south transept façade is spotted all over with niches, crockets, ,and pedestals in the most childish way; whilst every spandrel has a head looking out of a circle, reminding one forcibly of the old application of a horse-collar, and in fact, the men were foolish who repeated, usque ad nauseam, so stale and unprofitable an idea!
In one respect, however, the design of this church is very important. The Spanish architects seldom troubled themselves to suit their buildings in any respect to the climate; and this, no doubt, because in many cases they were merely imitating the works of another country, in which no precautions against heat were necessary. Here we have a church expressly designed, and with great judgment, for the requirements of the climate. The windows are very high up, and very small for the size of the building, so that no sunlight could ever make its way to any unpleasant extent into it. There are galleries in front of all the windows, both in the nave and aisles, but they are of thoroughly Renaissance character. The section of the church gives a main clerestory to the nave, and a second clerestory on one side of each aisle over the arches opening into the side chapels...
The planning of the church is certainly infelicitous. The square east end is bald to a degree externally, and finished as it is inside with chapels corresponding with those of the aisles, wants relief and life. If the square east end is adopted in a great church, no doubt the prolonged Lady Chapels of our own churches are infinitely to be preferred to such a plan as this, which fails to give the great east windows of which we boast, and loses all the effects of light and shade in which the apsidal chevets of the Continent are so rich.
Everywhere here the buttresses are finished with pinnacles, always planned in the same way, each group being planned on a square, counterchanged over the one below; they are of several stages in height, furnished throughout with crocketed finials on all sides, and at last with a single tall pinnacle. Nothing can be more wearisome than this kind of pinnacled buttress, but the later Spanish authorities were very fond of it, and repeated it everywhere.
In conclusion, I am bound to say of this great church that, whilst its exterior fails in almost every single particular, its interior, thanks to compliance with certain broad rules of Gothic building, is beyond question very grand and impressive. To the vast size and height of the columns this is mainly owing, for though they are cut up with endless little mouldings ingeniously 'stopped', one does not observe their pettinesses, and the arches which they carry are bolder and more important than might have been expected.