Toledo Cathedral: Art and Circumstance. The Transparent

juancar347 (72)in #photography • 5 years ago

The poet Remarque was right when, in a letter addressed to his friend and teacher, the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, he commented that Toledo was a capital of forgotten empires.

Depending on how everyone interprets this phrase, in my opinion I believe that the conclusion could be reached that the author's affirmation of that excellent anti-war film - No novelty on the front - results from a peripatetic objectivity, because although he let himself be seduced by Toledo, approximately in the same glorious period in which Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca -among others- founded the Order of Toledo' - testing the patience of the taverners, hiding a miraculous gesture of looking the other way' in the Guardia Civil and causing ulcers in the honour of the cadets of the Alcázar- Toledo continues to be that fantastic sleeping princess, who awaits the kiss of the Prince Charming who wakes her up and frees her from her apparent lethargy.

Toledo, like a good wine, must be tasted without haste; its aroma must be allowed to penetrate through the nose like a Don Juan, passionately seducing those easily blushing maidens who are the senses, its flavour being Cupid's arrow, which, transformed into a dagger, penetrates to the deepest part of the heart.

And there is nothing better than to do it, drinking to small sips, to discover that Toledo, after centuries of waste and unarmed Gothic army, continues to be an Empire. If not to the use of what we esteem that word, yes in terms of opulence and Art in general refers.

But even good wine, still making good Latin', as François Rabelais -the libertine creator of a giant glutton called Gargantúa- would say, must be taken with moderation and a lot of patience. That is why, when one approaches that great jewel, which is its cathedral, one has to taste it in small, very small sips, under penalty of running the risk of ending up irremissibly drunk.

Not in vain is it considered to be the richest and even arguably the most ostentatious' of all the Spanish cathedrals, including the Santa Catedral de San Salvador de Oviedo - every pilgrim always remembers the saying: he who goes to Santiago and not to the Salvador, visits the servant and forgets the Lord' - in whose Holy Chamber, apart from the famous Pañolón or Veronica's Face, the famous relics that were saved in the Monsacro, when the Peninsula was conquered by the Muslims, are guarded.

To enter the cathedral is to participate in a fantastic adventure, having as a base a universe whose foundations form nebulae that are small worlds gravitating around that central star or sun, which is, I have no doubt, its ambulatory, better known as the Transparent.

The Transparent one, although not recognized with everything deserved in century XVII, generating the opinion of excess of churriguerismo, is a work appreciated worldwide nowadays.

A work by the sculptor Narcissus Tomé, it reproduces, in special marbles and jasper brought from Genoa, an interesting hermeneutic based on the biblical and New Testament stories, whose details must be observed with attention.

For its illumination - apart from the current lighting technology, which possibly takes away part of its mystery - an oculus was made, very similar to the one made by the extraordinary sculptor Bernini on the Chair of St. Peter, in Rome.

It is therefore of extraordinary beauty to contemplate the interesting effects of the light that develops around it; effects that, together with the beauty of the work, eclipse other small satellites nearby, including the extraordinary chapel where the former Commander of Castile, Don Álvaro de Luna, lies, whose sepulchre contained an authentic wonder, irremissible lost many years ago: an automaton.