SANTIAGO CATHEDRAL.
PORTICO DE DA GLORIA.

The right of Translation is reserved.

TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

WILLIAM   EWART   GLADSTONE,

&c. &c. &c.,

THIS WORK IS INSCRIBED

AS A TESTIMONY OF THE AUTHOR’S RESPECT

AND ADMIRATION.

PREFACE.

THE book which I here commit to the reader requires, I fear, some apology on my part. I feel that I have undertaken almost more than an artist like myself, always at work, has any right to suppose he can properly accomplish in the little spare time he can command. Nevertheless, I have always felt that part of the duty which every artist owes to his mother art is to study her developments wherever they are to be seen, and whenever he can find the opportunity. Moreover, I believe that in this age it is only by the largest kind of study and range of observation that any artist can hope to perfect himself in so complex and difficult an art as architecture, and that it is only by studying the development of Gothic architecture in all countries that we can form a true and just estimate of the marvellous force of the artistic impulse which wrought such wonders all over Europe in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries.

In a day of revival, such as this, I believe it to be necessary that we should form this just estimate of bygone art; because I am sure that, unless our artists learn their art by studying patiently, lovingly, and constantly the works of their great predecessors, they will never themselves be great. I know full well how much hostility there is on the part of some to any study of foreign examples; but as from my boyhood up I have never lost any opportunity of visiting and studying our old English buildings, and as my love for our own national artistic peculiarities rather increases than diminishes the more I study the contemporary buildings of the Continent, I have no hesitation in giving to the world what I have been able to learn about Spanish art.

What I have here written will no doubt be supplemented and corrected by others hereafter; and much additional light will, I hope, be thrown upon the history of Spanish buildings and their architects. It will be found that I have referred to many Spanish authorities for the historical facts on which the dates of the buildings I have visited can alone be decided. Of these authorities none is more useful to the architect, none is more creditable to its authors, than the ‘Notices of the Architects and Architecture of Spain, by D. Eugenio Llaguno y Amirola, edited with additions by D. Juan Agustin Cean-Bermudez,’ in four volumes, compiled about the beginning of this century, but not published until A.D. 1829.[1]

This work, full of documentary evidence as to the Spanish architects and their works, appears to me to be far better in its scheme and mode of execution than any work which we in England have upon the buildings of our own country; and, though it is true that neither of its authors had a very accurate knowledge of the art, they seem to have exercised great diligence in their search after information bearing on their subject, and to have been remarkably successful.

Mr. Ford’s ‘Handbook of Spain’ has been of great service to me, not only because it was the only guide to be had, and on account of the charm of his style, but because it had the rare excellence (in a Guide-book) of constantly referring to local guides and authorities, and so enabling me to turn at once to the books most likely to aid me in my work.

The other works to which I have at some pains referred are mainly local guides and histories, collections of documents, and the like. Of these a vast number have been published, and I cannot pretend to have exhausted the stores which they contain.

Unfortunately, so far as I have been able to learn, no one of late years has taken up the subject of the Mediæval antiquities of Spain in the way in which we are accustomed to see them treated by writers on the subject elsewhere in Europe. The ‘Ensayo Historico’ of D. José Caveda is very slight and unsatisfactory, and not to be depended on. Passavant, who has published some notes on Spanish architecture,[2] is so ludicrously wrong in most of his statements that it seems probable that he trusted to his internal consciousness instead of to personal inspection for his facts. The work of Don G. P. de Villa Amil[3] is very showy and very untrustworthy; and that of Don F. J. Parcerisa,[4] and the great work which the Spanish Government is publishing,[5] are both so large and elaborate as to be useless for the purpose of giving such a general and comprehensive idea of the features of Gothic architecture in Spain as it has been my effort to give in this work.

Seeing, then, how complete is the ignorance which up to the present time we have laboured under, as to the true history and nature of Gothic architecture in Spain, I commit this volume to the reader with a fair trust that what has