The church forms one great nave, divided into four vaults enriched with
wonderful stone lace-work. A superb frieze surrounds the entire nave,
bearing in great Gothic letters an inscription narrating the foundation
of the church. Everywhere the arms of Castile and Arragon, and the
wedded ciphers of the Catholic kings. Statues of heralds start
unexpectedly out from the face of the pillars. Fine as the church is, we
cannot linger here long. The glory of San Juan is its cloisters. It may
challenge the world to show anything so fine in the latest bloom and
last development of Gothic art. One of the galleries is in ruins,--a sad
witness of the brutality of armies. But the three others are enough to
show how much of beauty was possible in that final age of pure Gothic
building. The arches bear a double garland of leaves, of flowers, and of
fruits, and among them are ramping and writhing and playing every figure
of bird or beast or monster that man has seen or poet imagined. There
are no two arches alike, and yet a most beautiful harmony pervades them
all. In some the leaves are in profile, in others delicately spread upon
the graceful columns and every vein displayed. I saw one window where a
stone monkey sat reading his prayers, gowned and cowled,--an odd caprice
of the tired sculptor. There is in this infinite variety of detail a
delight that ends in something like fatigue. You cannot help feeling
that this was naturally and logically the end of Gothic art.
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