The Gothic window openings, which had been steadily developing larger and bolder up to their culmination in the glorious conservatory of Leon, had again grown smaller and more fitted to the climate. In Salamanca they are small and high up. Nave and side aisles both carry clerestories; that of the nave consisting of seventy-two windows in alternate bays of three windows and two windows with circle above, that of the side aisle, of one large window subdivided within its own field. The chapel walls are also pierced by smaller openings. Some have good though not excellent coloring. The form of the Renaissance lantern is not infelicitous, either from the inside or outside. It was first built by Sacchetti. The double base is octagonal, with corners strengthened by columns and pilasters and executed with much artistic skill. Were it not for the vulgar interior coloring and ornamentation of cherubs, scrolls, and scallop shells, contorted, disproportionate, and unmeaning, its high, brilliantly lighting semicircle might be pleasing. Horrible decoration fills the panels of the octagonal base. The dome itself is almost as gaudily colored. The interior is built of a clear gray stone on which sparing employment of color in certain places is most effective. Thus in the bosses of the vaulting ribs throughout, in the capitals of the piers of nave and transept, in the very elaborate fan-vaulting of the Capilla Mayor, and in the soffits of nave-clerestory, the blue and gold contrasts finely with the cold gray surfaces. Renaissance medallions decorate the spandrels of the nave, but those of the side aisles bear the coats-of-arms of the Cathedral and the City of Salamanca. A differently designed fan-vaulting spreads over every chapel. Great rejas enclose choir and Capilla Mayor from the transept. The rear of the choir is badly mutilated by a Baroque screen, while the sides and back of the high altar still consist of the rough blocks which have been waiting for centuries to be carved. The choir-stalls are very late eighteenth century, a mass of over-elaborate detail, as fine as Grinling Gibbon's carving, and if possible even more remarkable in the detail.