Yes But It's Still A Tomb

We're still indoors, in that shadowy vaulted room, enthusing over the tomb of King Juan II of Castile and his wife.

"It is impossible to conceive a work more elaborate than the details of the costumes of the King and Queen. The imitation of lace and embroidery, the exquisite delicacy of the hands and features, the infinitely minute carving of the pillows,"

"the architectural railing by which the two statues are separated, the groups of sporting lions and dogs placed against the foot-boards, and the statues of the four Evangelists, seated at the four points of the star which face the cardinal points of the compass,—all these attract first the attention as they occupy the surface; but they are nothing to the profusion of ornament lavished on the sides. The chisel of the artist has followed each retreating and advancing angle of the star, filling the innermost recesses with life and movement. It would be endless to enter into a detailed enumeration of all this. It is composed of lions and lionesses, panthers, dogs,—crouching, lying, sitting, rampant, and standing; of saints, male and female, and personifications of the cardinal virtues... Were there no other object of interest at Burgos, this tomb would well repay the traveller for a halt of a few days, and a country walk."

Yes, well I'm trying to like it. But it’s still a tomb. Here is a photo held by Cornell University Library, which was taken about twenty years after Nathaniel's visit.

Wonderful workmanship I grant you, but still - it's a fancy box for two dead bodies.

The close-up image above, by the way, is by Ecelan and is taken, with permission, from Wikimedia.

Now and Then

Then: what Nathaniel saw

Now: it has changed a bit, I agree.

The discrepancy between these two images is not due to Nathaniel's bad drawing skills: the fountain apparently did look different back then.  It had clearly been in the wars, in every sense. According to Nathaniel, when he saw it you couldn't even tell what those four fragmented, beaten-up Cupids were meant to be riding on.

Looking at the modern photo we can see the basin and central column rising from it aren't much altered, but the Cupids and their dolphins(?) have been heavily restored, and there has clearly been a significant rebuild at the top.  Even in Nathaniel's day, when the little statue surmounting the fountain was so damaged the Christ child had vanished altogether, there was  a visible difference in colour between the lower part of the fountain and the upper: so it seems the lower part is much older. The original design is perhaps impossible to guess.  Would an earlier age have chosen to place the vaguely erotic symbols of Cupids and Melusines beneath a statue of the Virgin?   I can't say.  Anyway, as Nathaniel described it:

"This little antique monument charms, by the quaint symmetry of its design and proportions, and perhaps even by the terribly mutilated state of the four fragments of Cupids, which, riding on the necks of the same number of animals so maltreated as to render impossible the discovery of their race, form projecting angles, and support the basin on their shoulders. Four mermaids, holding up their tails, so as not to interfere with the operations of the Cupids, ornament the sides of the basin, which are provided with small apertures for the escape of the water; the top being covered by a flat circular stone, carved around its edge. This stone,—a small, elegantly shaped pedestal, which surmounts it,—and the other portions already described, are nearly black, probably from antiquity; but on the pedestal stands a little marble virgin, as white as snow. This antique figure harmonises by its mutilation with the rest, although injured in a smaller degree; and at the same time adds to the charm of the whole, by the contrast of its dazzling whiteness with the dark mass on which it is supported. The whole is balanced on the capital of a pillar, of a most original form, which appears immediately above the surface of a sheet of water enclosed in a large octagonal basin."

"Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me"

Heroes! We all have them. Personal and national heroes, men who mirror to us the qualities we most envy, the ones we fervently wish we had ourselves.  But heroism is like taffeta, it is not the same in all lights. A man devoutly admired by one group can be an object of passionate scorn, or even downright hate, to another.  Through Nathaniel's eyes we are about to meet the greatest hero of Christian Spain - El Cid.

"The hero is represented in the most extraordinary of attitudes: the head is thrown back, and the face turned towards one side; the legs in a sort of studied posture; a drawn sword is in the right hand, the point somewhat raised. The general expression is that of a comic actor attempting an attitude of mock-heroic impertinence; and is probably the result of an unattained object in the mind of the artist, of producing that of fearless independence."

This is Nathaniel's damning verdict on an oil painting of El Cid that once hung in the Ayuntamiento - not a very good one it seems.  It was presumably put there by those who genuinely wished to honour the great man whose bones rested amongst them.   But Nathaniel has no time for this picture.  To him it's an artistic failure, rubbish.

Only, is it just the picture he has no time for?  Really he is not just dissing whatever poor provincial artist attempted the likeness of Spain's great preserver: inevitably, by association, he is ridiculing the hero himself. 

El Cid statue in the centre of modern Burgos

This is an unpopular viewpoint, at least in the west.  The statue above was put up only sixty years ago, a mere six years before Hollywood canonised El Cid in the person of Charlton Heston. Like the film, it aims to show El Cid as the magnificent champion of Christian Spain against the Moors, and that is still very much how he is seen by many in Spain today.  But we soon learn that, for Nathaniel, El Cid's hero status is overblown, ambiguous,  untrustworthy - undeserved.

"For those who are satisfied with the orthodox histories of the monks, he is without defects—a simple unsophisticated demi-god. But there have been Mahometan historians of Spain. These are universally acknowledged to have treated of all that concerned themselves with complete accuracy and impartiality; and, when this happens, it should seem to be the best criterion, in the absence of other proof, of their faithful delineation of others' portraits."

The icon of one group will often be the hate figure of another.  I am sensing something significant about Nathaniel, which is that he loves Spain so much not for its triumphant Christian past, but for its lost Moorish civilization. His derogatory attitude to El Cid is the litmus test which proves something profound about him.

Deep, deep  down,  Nathaniel Armstrong Wells Esq. of Piercefield, Monmouthshire, wishes the Africans had won.

We don't like the clergy much, unless they're made of stone

He is rambling round this dark and probably echoing interior.  Vaulted stone is overhead. To describe what he sees he is using precise terminology, not all of which is penetrable, e.g. "The transept has no lateral naves."

This conveys nothing to me, and there is much more like it, so my eye quickly skims down to his next illustration.

Now, this I like.  This says gloom, and grandeur, and gothic. The pygmy human figures give scale to its magnificence while the strong Spanish sunlight plummets into the space beyond like a waterfall into a subterranean cavern.  Young ladies at home in Victorian parlours could sigh over this and wistfully imagine themselves as nuns, gliding about in a holy way with sexily downcast eyes.

Nathaniel would probably have taken a second look at a nun, but in general seems to find the clergy unimpressive, because here he drops in one of his little asides about a couple of quarrelling bishops:

"Don Pedro Fernandez de Frias, Cardinal of Spain... was, it is affirmed, of low parentage, of base and licentious habits of life, and of a covetous and niggardly disposition. These defects, however, by no means diminished the high favour he enjoyed at the successive courts of Henry the Third and Juan the Second. The Bishop of Segovia, Don Juan de Tordesillas, happened by an unlucky coincidence to visit Burgos during his residence there. The characters of the two prelates were not of a nature to harmonise in the smallest degree, and, being thrown necessarily much in each other's way, they gave loose occasionally to expressions more than bordering on the irreverent. It was on one of these occasions, that, the eloquence of the Cardinal Bishop here interred being at default, a lacquey of his followers came to his assistance, and being provided with a palo, or staff, inflicted on the rival dignitary certain arguments ad humeros—in fact, gave the Bishop of Segovia a severe drubbing. The Cardinal was on this occasion compelled to retire to Italy."

So much for undignified dignitaries.  But soon he comes across a clergyman he really does like - a carving decorating an arch.  It is a cowled head, perhaps meant to represent St. Francis :

"The attention is instantly rivetted by this head: it is not merely a masterpiece of execution. Added to the exquisite beauty and delicate moulding of the upper part of the face, the artist has succeeded in giving to the mouth an almost superhuman expression. This feature, in spite of a profusion of hair which almost covers it, lives and speaks. A smile, in which a barely perceptible but irresistible and, as it were, innate bitterness of satire and disdain modifies a wish of benevolence, unites with the piercing expression of the eyes in lighting up the stone with a degree of intellect which I had thought beyond the reach of sculpture until I saw this head. Tradition asserts it to be a portrait of Saint Francis, who was at Burgos at the period of the completion of the cathedral; and who, being in the habit of examining the progress of the works, afforded unconsciously a study to the sculptor."

He draws it, as you see: but by the time the head has passed through his hands and those of the artist who transferred his work into etchings, I can't see what's so great about it. Nor can I find the original in google images. Has it gone?