An Architect's Note-Book in Spain: principally illustrating the domestic architecture of that country.Wyatt, M. Digby (Matthew Digby), Sir
History
An Architect's Note-Book in Spain: principally illustrating the domestic architecture of that country.
Wyatt, M. Digby (Matthew Digby), Sir
Architecture -- Spain
think they were so many gally-slaves a rowing, by the motion they make
on their knees."
[Illustration: PLATE 42
TOLEDO
TOWER OF SAN PEDRO MARTIRE
MDW 1869]
PLATE XLII.
_TOLEDO_.
MOORISH TOWER OF SAN PEDRO MARTIRE.
PLATE Forty-two presents us with another type of Christiano-Moorish
Campanile from that given by the last sketch. In this case the usual
fashion of the mediæval church builders of dividing the total height of
the tower into several compartments, pierced with largish openings on
more than one floor, has been followed. The regular Arabian
praying-tower is generally simply the inclosure of a staircase, with a
gallery, or open chamber, only at the summit, from which "the faithful"
are duly summoned by the Imaum to their devotions. The conversion of one
or more stories into belfries, however, indicates (where the work is
clearly that of a Mahommedan artificer), that he has been working only
for the performance of the behests of a Christian, as in the case of the
Tower of San Pedro Martire at Toledo. The Church itself exhibits only a
clumsy and overgrown Palladian style of a thoroughly commonplace
description, gloomy and uninteresting.
[Illustration: PLATE 43
TOLEDO
SANT' JAGO DEL LA VEGA
MDW 1869]
PLATE XLIII.
_TOLEDO_.
TOWER OF THE CHURCH OF SANT' IAGO DE LA VEGA.
THIS Church appeared to me to retain more of the primitive "Mezquita,"
or mosque, than any other in Toledo, excepting the celebrated "Christo
de la Luz." Its aspect is most picturesque as one descends from the city
towards the Vega, or once rich and lovely plain. I could not help
recognizing in it how good an effect might be produced in our ordinary
street architecture by the use of common brick, provided that the masses
of the construction should be artistically disposed, and used without
the appearance of pinching here and paring off there, which spoils many
of our usually too ambitious efforts.
In all such work as this in Spain, one is reminded only of the "bottom
of the purse" when the work remains unfinished. With us the aspect of
the "fond-du-sac" begins generally with the beginning, with the first
lines of the disposition of the plan, and ends only with the end of the
whole. As far as appearances go in this structure, differences of style
from those of the rest of the building shown in my sketch in the belfry,
and in the apsidal end of the choir of the Church, and in one or two
other parts, seemed to point to those features of the design as being of
considerably later date than that of the rest of the building. If the
primitive Moorish work may have been of the middle of the eleventh
century, the Christiano-Moorish may have been of the end of the
thirteenth.
[Illustration: PLATE 44
TOLEDO
HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY CROSS]
PLATE XLIV.
_TOLEDO_.
EXTERNAL VIEW OF THE HOSPITAL OF THE HOLY CROSS.
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