You may alter a name by trick when force is
unavailing.
A noble lord in Segovia, following the custom of the good
old times, once murdered a Jew, and stole his house. It was a pretty
residence, but the skeleton in his closet was that the stupid commons
would not call it anything but "the Jew's house." He killed a few of
them for it, but that did not serve. At last, by advice of his
confessor, he had the facade ornamented with projecting knobs of stucco,
and the work was done. It is called to this day "the knobby house."
The conscience of Philip did not permit a long delay in the
accomplishment of his vow. Charles V. had charged him in his will to
build a mausoleum for the kings of the Austrian race. He bound the two
obligations in one, and added a third destination to the enormous pile
he contemplated. It should be a palace as well as a monastery and a
royal charnel-house. He chose the most appropriate spot in Spain for the
erection of the most cheerless monument in existence. He had fixed his
capital at Madrid because it was the dreariest town in Spain, and to
envelop himself in a still profounder desolation, he built the Escorial
out of sight of the city, on a bleak, bare hillside, swept by the
glacial gales of the Guadarrama, parched by the vertical suns of summer,
and cursed at all seasons with the curse of barrenness. Before it towers
the great chain of mountains separating Old and New Castile. Behind it
the chilled winds sweep down to the Madrid plateau, over rocky hillocks
and involved ravines, - a scene in which probably no man ever took
pleasure except the royal recluse who chose it for his home.
John Baptist of Toledo laid the corner-stone on an April day of 1563,
and in the autumn of 1584 John of Herrera looked upon the finished work,
so vast and so gloomy that it lay like an incubus upon the breast of
earth. It is a parallelogram measuring from north to south seven hundred
and forty-four feet, and five hundred and eighty feet from east to west.
It is built, by order of the fantastic bigot, in the form of St.
Lawrence's gridiron, the courts representing the interstices of the
bars, and the towers at the corners sticking helpless in the air like
the legs of the supine implement. It is composed of a clean gray
granite, chiefly in the Doric order, with a severity of facade that
degenerates into poverty, and defrauds the building of the effect its
great bulk merits. The sheer monotonous walls are pierced with eleven
thousand windows, which, though really large enough for the rooms, seem
on that stupendous surface to shrink into musketry loopholes. In the
centre of the parallelogram stands the great church, surmounted by its
soaring dome. All around the principal building is stretched a
circumscribing line of convents, in the same style of doleful
yellowish-gray uniformity, so endless in extent that the inmates might
easily despair of any world beyond them.
There are few scenes in the world so depressing as that which greets you
as you enter into the wide court before the church, called El Templo.
You are shut finally in by these iron-gray walls. The outside day has
given you up. Your feet slip on the damp flags. An unhealthy fungus
tinges the humid corners with a pallid green. You look in vain for any
trace of human sympathy in those blank walls and that severe facade.
There is a dismal attempt in that direction in the gilded garments and
the painted faces of the colossal prophets and kings that are perched
above the lofty doors. But they do not comfort you; they are tinselled
stones, not statues.
Entering the vestibule of the church, and looking up, you observe with a
sort of horror that the ceiling is of massive granite and flat. The
sacristan has a story that when Philip saw this ceiling, which forms the
floor of the high choir, he remonstrated against it as too audacious,
and insisted on a strong pillar being built to support it. The architect
complied, but when Philip came to see the improvement he burst into
lamentation, as the enormous column destroyed the effect of the great
altar. The canny architect, who had built the pillar of pasteboard,
removed it with a touch, and his majesty was comforted. Walking forward
to the edge of this shadowy vestibule, you recognize the skill and taste
which presided at this unique and intelligent arrangement of the choir.
If left, as usual, in the body of the church, it would have seriously
impaired that solemn and simple grandeur which distinguishes this above
all other temples. There is nothing to break the effect of the three
great naves, divided by immense square-clustered columns, and surmounted
by the vast dome that rises with all the easy majesty of a mountain more
than three hundred feet from the decent black and white pavement. I know
of nothing so simple and so imposing as this royal chapel, built purely
for the glory of God and with no thought of mercy or consolation for
human infirmity. The frescos of Luca Giordano show the attempt of a
later and degenerate age to enliven with form and color the sombre
dignity of this faultless pile. But there is something in the blue and
vapory pictures which shows that even the unabashed Luca was not free
from the impressive influence of the Escorial.
A flight of veined marble steps leads to the beautiful retable of the
high altar. The screen, over ninety feet high, cost the Milanese Trezzo
seven years of labor. The pictures illustrative of the life of our Lord
are by Tibaldi and Zuccaro. The gilt bronze tabernacle of Trezzo and
Herrera, which has been likened with the doors of the Baptistery of
Florence as worthy to figure in the architecture of heaven, no longer
exists.
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