Authors: James Michener
Toledo’s cathedral has a score of similar focal points, each laden
with historical and spiritual significance; I wonder if there is
another church in the world whose interior is so rich and at the
same time so beautiful. I propose to speak of only four of the
treasures: the choir, the main altar, a preposterous thing called
the Transparente and the sacristy, which may be the most
rewarding of all because of two paintings it contains.
In the center of the cathedral, facing the main altar, has been
set down a very large masonry cube whose outer walls of stone
are tastefully carved. It is the inside which is noteworthy, a
symphony of dark beige alabaster and oil-stained wood, accented
here and there by fine statues in marble, bronze and a lighter
alabaster. To appreciate the quality of this noble structure, large
enough to hold a chorus of up to eighty priests who chant during
celebration of Mass, you must visualize the five layers of art which
fit together, one on top of the other, to form the stalls in which
the singing priests sit. At the lowest level, of course, are the carved
misericords, those half-seats which can be quietly propped up
when the service is long and leaned against so that the singer
seems to be standing up while he is actually sitting down.
‘Cheater-seaters,’ I heard an American girl explain to a friend.
Since misericords were used by the human fundament, custom
allowed them to be carved to represent devils, fiends, vices and
other low forms of life, so that in some cathedrals the misericords
present scenes of sexual malpractice and abomination. The second
layer is formed by the backs of the choir stalls, where a series of
fifty-four carved wooden panels depict scenes from the Conquest
of Granada. The third tier consists of misericords for an upper
row of choir stalls and above them the great treasure of the choir,
a series of wooden panels depicting standing figures from the
Bible, and these are magnificently carved. And at the top, above
the two ranks of choir stalls, runs a fine series of standing figures
carved in pale alabaster that shines so as to make the faces of these
noble figures seem alive. Any one of these five components would
have made this choir notable; taken together they form one of
the chief treasures of Spanish art.
I should like to comment briefly on only three of the
components. The battle scenes by Rodrigo the German are an
extraordinary production insofar as magnitude is concerned, for
each of the panels is large and contains dozens and sometimes
scores of separate figures. Since they were carved shortly after the
Conquest of Granada the observation of armies and weaponry is
of historic value. I am not so sure about the art. There is a decided
monotony of design; in panel after panel a set of identical towers
appears off-center left or right, against which an army moves with
a confrontation of sorts between heroic Christians and abject
Moors, all the warriors presenting a sameness of figure and face.
This is one war in which the Muslims, who had defeated the
Spaniards for some seven hundred years, fail to win a battle. On
the other hand, these repetitious panels do contain much
delightful observation on the wildlife of the countryside, and
some of this work is of merit. Taken as a whole, the panels are
delightful, and what they lack in art they compensate for in their
ability to convince the viewer that he is seeing the Conquest of
Granada, not as it happened, but as Fernando and Isabel desired
it to be remembered.
The topmost parade of alabaster warriors used to please me
very much, for it presented the heroic figures of Bible story in the
dress of German knights of the fifteenth century, and I especially
liked old Roboam (where does he appear in the Bible and under
what name, I used to wonder; later I found that he was a link in
the genealogy of Christ as given in Matthew), who stands tenth
in on the right-hand side, next to King Solomon. He strides
ingratiatingly, with a military sash pulled about his body,
reminding me of Lohengrin. But in later years as I have grown to
know the figures better I have concluded that they are fairly
ordinary, possibly because the wooden figures below them now
seem so wonderful.
This endless line of Biblical figures, carved in the darkest wood,
is probably the most important Renaissance work in Spain, and
was completed between 1539 and 1543 by two men with
contrasting styles, the figures on the right as you enter the choir
being by the Frenchman Felipe Vigarní de Borgoña and those on
the left by the Spaniard Alonso de Berruguete. At first
acquaintance the work of the former is easier to appreciate,
especially panels like the one near the middle showing Jacob
wrestling with the angel, in which the intertwining of figures is
done with invention and grace. Vigarní’s share of the work
contains another half-dozen panels of high merit, particularly the
one in the corner showing a man with an ox.
But as I grew to know the panels my taste inclined more and
more to the remarkable portraits carved by Berruguete. They are
sometimes heavy but always inspired; they are decidedly awkward
but always moving; they are particularly tortured, like the late
work of El Greco, but never tedious. A good panel with which to
start an appreciation of Berruguete is the one to the left of the
alabaster relief in the central wall, for this shows St. Peter and is
not successful: the chair is grotesquely done, the keys and book
are out of balance and the savage distortion of the figure produces
no artistic gain. In fact, the whole idea misses. The four evangelists
who appear next to Peter are ordinary, but they seem not to know
what to do with the books they carry, and even John the Baptist,
who comes next, emphasizes a tortured distortion rather than an
artistic form.
So far Berruguete shows less talent than Vigarní, but on the
left-hand wall he offers a series of figures that are explosive in
their excellence. Jerome and his lion are magnificent; I have never
seen a better Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac; Eve, as she
stands nude plucking the apple, is wonderfully seductive, her eyes
closed in rapture, her face wreathed in an enigmatic smile; a
blindfolded old Sibyl with her prophetic tablets seems to have
been carved by Michelangelo, so reminiscent is the weather-beaten
face. The panels are not well designed and display a clutter that
a purist would not have indulged in, but they are powerful and
speak with the clear, strong voice of the Renaissance.
Before leaving the choir you should look at the rare marble
statue of the standing Virgin and Child which graces the altar.
She wears a white robe and is known as the White Virgin. (Legend
says she was the gift of St. Louis, King of France, some time in
the thirteenth century, but most art historians are satisfied that
she was carved no earlier than the fourteenth, which knocks that
legend in the head.) Her title is curious in that both she and Jesus
have very dark faces; indeed, He looks like an adorable little Negro
baby. I mentioned this once to a Spanish friend, who was
outraged, so I asked him how otherwise he explained the darkness
of the pair, and he replied, ‘It’s difficult but they’re not Negroes.’
Later when we meet the Virgin of Montserrat and the Virgin of
Guadalupe we will find that they too are dark, as is San Fermín,
the saint after whom the yearly feria at Pamplona is named. There
I was warned, ‘We will forever damn you if you say Fermín was
a Negro. Dark, yes. Moorish, yes. Negro, never.’
Facing the choir, but separated from it by the full width of the
transept, is a second structure containing the high altar, and this
area is so lavish that books have been written about it alone, but
I shall refer only to the reredos because the rest of the place
overwhelms me and I doubt that I could do it justice. To approach
the reredos you must pass through the wrought-iron screen which
cuts it off from the main body of the church. It is an exquisite
piece of work, so classically proportioned and so intricately
executed that it allows the worshipers outside the altar area to
participate as if they were inside, yet it marks them off as not
being priests. This is one of the most delicate screens ever forged
of iron and is ideally suited for this cathedral. It was authorized
at the late date of 1548 and was wrought by Francisco de
Villalpando, who took ten years for the job. Today the hinges of
its great gates swing as easily as they did when installed, and
Americans who are not familiar with screens ought to see this
masterpiece.
The gold-leafed reredos which soars above the tabernacle is so
intricate and ornate as to be more like a fantasy than reality.
Immensely high, its upper figures seem to be trying to escape
through the roof of the cathedral. It is composed of tier upon tier
of religious tableaux carved in high relief on larch wood, then
covered with gold leaf. One panel, for example, might contain as
many as five life-sized figures set off from nearby panels by yards
of intricate filigree work, but the construction is so gigantic that
one has no sense of clutter but rather of a heavenly pageant which
one is permitted to glimpse through a golden frieze. There are
fourteen such scenes, any one large enough for an average church,
plus ten huge figures of patriarchs and prophets, all topped by an
enormous Crucifixion featuring a mammoth Jesus surrounded
by the two thieves on their crosses and the two Marys in red. A
predella offers a series of smaller panels, also crowded with gold
figures, and a fine Virgin and Child. In the center of the reredos
stands an enormous tabernacle used in the Mass; each inch is
ornamented in gold and encrusted in jewels.
What I have failed to convey is the effect of this intricate
flowering of Late Gothic: it is so resplendent and dazzling that in
a lesser building it would be overpowering if not preposterous,
but in the far reaches of this cathedral it seems necessary. It was
put together—that is the only phrase to describe its
construction—within the brief period of two and a half years by
a team of craftsmen whose names indicate how artisans moved
about in Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century: Rodrigo
the German, Petijean of France, Diego Copín of Holland, Juan
and Felipe de Borgoña, Francis of Antwerp, and two Spaniards
who designed the whole, Enrique de Egas and Pedro Gumiel.
When I was younger I did not care much for the confection this
team threw together, and I amused myself by imagining Egas
shouting one afternoon, ‘Petijean, we need six more statues just
like the last ones.’ But when I saw it recently I was awed by the
sheer bravado of the thing; its mass is overpowering; its intricacy
is as well planned as a Bach fugue. If Egas did indeed call for
carved saints by dozen lots, he knew where to put them when he
got them.
The reredos is so placed that the tabernacle, which is the raison
d’être for the whole, is in shadow, and in the early days of the
eighteenth century it was decided that a shaft of light should be
brought through the rear wall of the cathedral and then through
the back of the reredos so as to illuminate the tabernacle. This
might also solve another problem; just as Queen Isabel had
objected to people’s staring at the articulated statue of the Conde
de Luna during Mass, so two centuries later devout Catholics
were objecting to the fact that others less devout were wandering
about the ambulatory during service, and it was thought that if
they could see the tabernacle from the rear they would respect it
and be silent when Mass was being read. The result of these two
needs was the Transparente, so named because light would pass
through solid walls. It is one of architecture’s cleverest juggling
feats, if not one of art’s successes.
Into the back of the high altar a circle was cut so that persons
in the ambulatory could see through to the tabernacle and know
when it was being used. At the same time, high on the opposite
wall of the cathedral, a very large hole was cut, perhaps twenty to
thirty feet across, to admit a shaft of light that would fall upon
the tabernacle thus exposed. It was a bold solution, made possible
only because the outside walls of the cathedral, erected about
1227, were strong and could withstand being pierced, and because
the altar had been so solidly built that it did not collapse when a
fairly large hole was driven through. Thus, in the mornings when
Mass was being said and when the sun stood in the eastern
heavens, shafts of sunlight came unimpeded to illuminate the
filigreed tabernacle when seen from either front or back.
Of course, two gaping holes resulted and it was the steps taken
to mask them that constituted the marvel of the Transparente,
known in Spain as ‘the eighth wonder of the world.’ Tastes of the
time were on the florid side, and the Transparente became the
most florid baroque accomplishment of its period. It is a fantastic
thing. The clue to its bewildering opulence comes with the
identification of the team who built it: the Spanish architect
Narciso Tomé assisted by his four sons, two of whom were
architects, one a sculptor and the last a painter. Tomé put his
whole family to work, and when the holes were completed, the
sculptor and the painter, aided by teams of assistants, began
producing a whole company of saints, angels, prophets and
cardinals. Some were painted flat on the walls of the openings
but in wonderful perspective, so that from the great distance at
which they were seen, and from below, they appeared to be
sculptures. Most were sculpted in marble or bronze and some of
these were polychromed. Intricate abstract designs suggesting
flowing robes and foliage were created to hang over corners so
that the architectural details of the piercing could be masked. And
splendid groups of figures, so intricate that the eye could hardly
unravel them, were put together so that the opening leading to
the tabernacle could be hidden and yet permit light to pass
through unimpeded. As a jigsaw puzzle, the Transparente of
Toledo is without peer, and the pieces are full-sized human beings.