The exterior of the church has some features which have all the air of being very early and original in their character. Such is the grand south doorway of the nave. Its arch is semicircular, and above it the spandrels are filled with sculpture. Above this is a line of panels containing the signs of the Zodiac; below are figures with musical instruments; and below these again, on the west, is a figure of San Isidoro, and on the right a figure of a woman, I think, book in hand, both of them supported on corbels formed of the heads of oxen. The tympanum itself is divided into two parts, the lower half being surmounted by a flat pediment, and the upper filling up the space from this to the _intrados_ of the arch. The upper half has an Agnus Dei in a circle in the centre, and the lower half has Abraham’s sacrifice, with figures on horseback on either side. The head of the opening of the doorway is finished with a square trefoil, under which rams’ heads are carved. The whole detail of this sculpture is very unlike that of most of the early work I have seen in Spain; the figures are round and flabby, and badly arranged, and very free from any of the usual conventionality. All this made me feel much inclined to think that the execution of this work was at an early date, and soon after the first consecration of the church. The elevation of the south transept is rather fine. It has a doorway, now blocked, with a figure against the wall on either side, standing between the label and a second label built into the wall from buttress to buttress. Above this is a rich corbel-table, and then an arcade of three divisions, of which the centre is pierced as a window; in the gable is another statue standing against the wall. The doorway has its opening finished with a square trefoil, and the tympanum is plain. The design of the apsidal chapel east of the apse is so precisely like the eastern apsidal chapels of many of the Spanish Romanesque churches,[130] that its date must, to some extent, be decided by theirs: and it may well be doubted whether it can be much earlier than circa A.D. 1150, though the lower part of the south transept appeared to me to be as early as the south door, or at any rate not later than A.D. 1100. The walls are all carried up high above the clerestory windows, and finished with corbel-tables, carved with a billet-mould on edge, and carried on corbels moulded, not carved. Simple buttresses divide the bays of the clerestory.