The real architect was Philip himself. His interest in the work was so intense, his attention to its details so minute, the idea of the whole so much his own and so tenaciously insisted upon, that Toledo and Herrera can have had little else to do than commit the scheme to paper.
The Escorial is essentially the work of one man, and the expression if not of his personality, at least of the idea that obsessed him.
It was the custom in Northern Europe to propitiate some half-forgotten infernal deities by burying a pig or a sheep alive in the foundations of every church. The monastery of San Lorenzo was similarly consecrated by human and animal sacrifices. After the Hermits of St Jerome (Charles V.’s favourite order) had established themselves in the incomplete edifice, it was whispered that a black dog persistently interrupted their chanting by his howlings. The animal was looked upon by the people as inspired by God thus to protest against the spoliation of the peasantry by the Hermits. It turned out that it was only one of the hounds of the Marquis de las Navas, bewailing his absent master; but the benevolent monks promptly hanged the poor brute from the roof of their cloister. In the same year a young man, twenty-four years of age, was (no doubt for some serious offence) burned at the stake on the spot in the neighbouring Jardin del Principe marked by a stone cross. Thus with most solemn rites was the great Christian temple consecrated to Death.
The building constitutes an immense parallelogram, its sides nearly facing the cardinal points of the compass. The small rectangular annex called the Palacio de Infantes projecting from the middle of the eastern face, gives the plan a purely accidental resemblance to a gridiron, which, according to legend, was the instrument of the titular saint’s martyrdom. The dimensions, according to a Spanish writer, are 744 Castilian feet from north to south, 580 from east to west, and 400,000 square feet in area. The whole building is of grey granite, and appears to form an integral part of the rock on which it stands. In its simplicity and hugeness it might easily be mistaken for the work of Nature, not of man. Artistically this is perhaps its sole merit, yet, as I have said, it never fails to awe. The style is that of the second Renaissance, here called Greco-Roman, which prefers the Doric order and rejects all superfluous ornament. Each angle is capped by a square tower, surmounted by a pinnacle. The façades, devoid of all decoration, are relieved only by rows of small square windows. The upper stories are faced with blue slate and sheets of lead. The Escorial is rivalled in simplicity and severity by the Pyramids alone.