Iberia

by James A. Michener

  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.

  Except for the worm holes through his forehead, this saint seems as alive today as he did three hundred years ago. He is for sale on the streets of Toledo.

  The reredos is so placed that the tabernacle, which is the raison d’ětre 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.

  Now to fit the puzzle together. It is apparent, I hope, that we are speaking about two rather large holes separated by a considerable distance, the first low down at the back of the main altar, the second across the ambulatory very high up and on the outside wall. Well, Nar
ciso Tomé and his four sons solved this by posting along the edges of the outside cut a stunning array of Biblical figures who seem to pour into the cathedral from the heavens. They twist and tumble, clutch at one another and raise their hands in prayer, fall and slide, gesticulate and grimace, forming a veritable cascade of heavenly figures from which we slowly pick out the significant fact: at the outer edge of the opening sits Jesus Himself, on a bank of clouds and surrounded by the angels of paradise.

  This upper half of the Transparente is the lesser of the two parts and the more restrained, for the whole back of the reredos has been converted to a tower of marble which reaches from floor to ceiling. When it was finished a problem arose: ‘How to join the two halves?’ and here Tomé and his sons showed ingenuity. The painter provided a mural which crosses the top of the cathedral and ties the two halves together. It is a daring and successful device, in which painted and sculptured forms unite to make one vast procession, but to try to pick out the various parts from below makes one dizzy. We can, however, enjoy the massive structure that backs the high altar, for it is composed of four identifiable parts: at the bottom a beautiful enthroned Mother and Child; quite high up so that most visitors miss it, a Last Supper with thirteen full-sized polychromed marble celebrants; at the very top, so that her head almost touches the muraled ceiling, the Virgin Mary ascending into heaven; and in the center, masking the opening to the tabernacle, a whirlwind of angels and clouds, one of the most successful depictions of wild movement ever to have been achieved in marble.

  Left, the Transparente: upper hole. Right, the wedding of sculpture and fresco.

  That’s the Transparente, save for some score of separate standing figures and a forest of highly ornamented pillars that lend a pattern to the whole. It is blatantly a work of the early eighteenth century and could have been created, I suppose, only by a man who had four sons who could paint, carve, cast bronze and work upside down while suspended from ropes which passed through the ceiling.

  Art of a different quality is to be found at our last stop, the sacristy, a long hall which one enters through an avenue of sixteen El Grecos, depicting the twelve disciples, Jesus, Mary, Santo Domingo and an extra portrait of St. Peter. Any one of these, appearing by itself in a foreign museum, would become a famous work; it is interesting to study the second portrait of Peter, one of the finest of its size El Greco ever did, for it shows Peter weeping and reminds one that the artist must have had a special fondness for him. He always painted him with such love.

  Our purpose in visiting the sacristy, however, is to see two paintings more important than the portraits. They are among the finest examples of Spanish art, and with their help we shall discover something about the soul of Spain.

  The first is the more conspicuous and more easily grasped. At the far end of the long hall, framed as an altarpiece, stands the ‘Spoliation of Christ’ by El Greco, depicting the mysterious figure of Jesus draped in flaming red as he is taunted by the rabble while in the foreground a carpenter in a yellow smock prepares the cross. Gaunt, ethereal faces stare out from the crowd; a woman in ochre robe and purple dress, her back to the viewer, raises her hand dramatically as a Roman guard, posed by some man brought in from the streets of Toledo, stands in polished armor. Flags and spears and plumed helmets fill the top of the picture. One sees the passion and terror of sixteenth-century Spain. It is a stunning picture and El Greco must have liked it, for a nearby museum has a smaller copy, but it lacks the vitality of this great presentation.

  A few yards away, set so far back in a niche that the unobservant might miss it, is a slightly smaller picture by Goya. ‘The Arresting of Jesus on the Mount of Olives,’ a vigorous night scene, earthy and with no sense of mystery. Christ is shown as a faltering man robed in a curious pinkish white, while the soldiers who surround him are counterparts of those depicted in Goya’s series of etchings ‘The Disasters of War.’ They are not Romans, but rather peasants from the central plateau of Iberia, and their leering faces can be seen even today in the villages outside Madrid. The picture is a haunting thing, a country scene of torment in which Jesus appears to be actually suffering the indignities being thrown at him by the mob, and those hurried visitors who miss this fine work miss something very good and very Spanish.

  In neither of these powerful pictures do I find anything of Jesus the religious figure nor of the Holy Land as I knew it in Israel and Jordan; I doubt that in the strictest sense they ought to be called religious pictures. But in each I find an infinite amount of Spain in its basic manifestations, the mystical of El Greco and the practical of Goya. The former, with its tortured figures and demonic faces, recalls the agonies which Spain has always inflicted upon itself, the self-condemnation, the religious fervor, the leaping of inspired minds directly to the throne of heaven, the impassioned singing and violence. These things I can see in the El Greco, where flaming red dominates and leads the eye to colors no other artist would dare place in juxtaposition, just as no sensible man laying out the history of a nation would dare give one country the contradictory experiences that Spain has known. In the Goya, on the other hand, I see the earthiness of Spain, the robust animal-like characteristic of the soil and the men who work it. These ugly, extremely human and likable faces remind me of the Spaniards who cursed as they pulled the oars at the Battle of Lepanto, who cursed as they mounted a guerrilla resistance against Napoleon, who suffered through the sad mismanagement of their country and who have survived whatever defeats and humiliations have been visited upon them. It is not by accident that in this canvas, which shows one of the most solemn moments of Biblical history, when the first physical step toward the Crucifixion was being taken, a goodly number of the participants are laughing. As one reads this book he must not forget that at the most solemn moments of Spanish history someone is laughing, sardonically perhaps, but laughing.

  I never leave the cathedral at Toledo without paying my respects to two contrasting figures, now shadowy but once of earth-moving power, who ruled from this building and whose confrontation continues throughout Spanish history, for they are so dramatic that they seem to have been created by a playwright rather than by the chances of history. They are the two fiery cardinals, Mendoza and Cisneros, who had large roles in governing Spain, Mendoza from 1482 till 1495, Cisneros from 1495 till 1517. Pedro González de Mendoza (1428–1495) was the fourth (some say fifth) son of a noble family and his presence in the church was an accident: he was really a confirmed layman pushed by his relatives into a position from which he could exercise power. In clerical robes he led the armies of Fernando and Isabel and helped them gain the crown. He was first into Granada at the end of the conquest, served as civil governor of Castilla in the footsteps of Don Aalvaro de Luna, and was one of the few at court who understood what Columbus was talking about. Taking his religious vows lightly, he sought Rome’s forgiveness for having sired illegitimate children, but being prudent as well as lecherous he made his appeals in group lots. He was cast in heroic mold and maintained his own court and armed guard, and he left behind him in Toledo so many monuments that he seems as alive today as he did in that period when he was helping usher Spain into its period of maximum greatness. His tomb stands at the left of the main altar and is a fantastically pompous affair of pillars, arches, statues, niches plus a gaudy marble casket in which he lies in regal splendor befitting his nickname, ‘third King of Spain.’ When I studied Mendoza in books I never cared much for him, but it was not until I saw his tomb that I understood why.

  To me the best thing he did was to sponsor as his successor Gonzalo Jiménez de Cisneros (1436–1517), who had begun his life as a poor boy in a town near Madrid and who when entering orders changed his name to Francisco in honor of his patron. Of a shy retiring nature, he hid himself in a convent, where his piety commended itself to Queen Isabel, who made him her confessor. The better she knew him the more she respected him, and one day she handed him a letter from the Pope appointing him Archbishop of Toledo, but he refused the hon
or, an impasse which she solved by appointing him anyway. Soon Fernando, desiring some strong administrators at the head of the Spanish Church, connived to have him made cardinal, and one of the first things this quiet, bookish man did was to conscript an army of twenty thousand soldiers to invade Oran and Tripoli to teach the Muslims a lesson. There is a touching account of how, on the eve of a great battle in which he would lead the troops, he reflected upon the irony of a fate which had made him, a seeker after retreat and silence, the general of an invading army.

  Much more was in store for him. When Fernando died in 1516, Cisneros found that he had been appointed in the king’s will to serve as regent of Castilla until Fernando’s grandson, Carlos I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire, should reach Spain, which he had not yet seen. That year Cisneros was eighty, and without hesitation he launched upon one of the miraculous years of Spanish history. He challenged the power of Adrian of Utrecht, the tutor of young Carlos, and frustrated his plans to make Spain an appendage of Austria. He battled the nobles and recovered from them powers which he felt Carlos ought to exercise when he became king. He put down the intrigues of the courtiers who wanted to pass the throne of Aragón along to Carlos’ younger brother, Fernando of Austria, who had been brought up in Spain. Under his own supervision he built several buildings that are notable still. He strengthened farming and initiated steps which would have ensured Spain great agricultural wealth had they been pursued. He armed the nation’s ships against the pirates of the Mediterranean and the freebooters of the Atlantic, thus establishing himself as the father of the navy which seventy-two years later culminated in the Armada. He spent much time furthering the development of the new university which he had founded at Alcalá de Henares. He watched over the publication of one of the world’s premier examples of scholarship, the Biblia Poliglota Complutense (the Polyglot Bible of Alcalá de Henares, completed in 1514–1517 but not set into type until 1522), which he had fathered and in which, for the Old Testament, the Hebrew, Greek and Latin texts were printed side by side, ‘with the Latin in middle,’ as the preface pointed out, ‘like Jesus between the two thieves at Crucifixion.’ For the Pentateuch, that is, the first five books, a fourth column was provided, giving the Aramaic text of the Targum of Onkelos; for the New Testament, of course, only two columns were needed, Greek and Latin. All subsequent Biblical scholarship would be dependent upon this great work. And most important of all, Cisneros quietly rebuffed every attempt to put on the throne of Spain the rightful heir, Juana la Loca (Mad Joanna), daughter of Fernando and Isabel and mother of Carlos I. He argued that even though Juana had divine right to the throne—which fact none denied—she was so incompetent that she could rule only through a regency, and this he feared would be so prolonged that only evil could result. (He was right; in her virtual prison Juana lived for another thirty-nine years.) Quiet, relentless in pursuit of all he believed in and champion of the rights of the boy king whom he had never seen, Cisneros by force of character held Spain together on the eve of its greatness.