Some Account of Gothic Architecture in SpainStreet, George Edmund
History
Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain
Street, George Edmund
Architecture, Gothic -- Spain; Church architecture -- Spain
The only old church I saw was the cathedral. A stone here is inscribed
with the following words in Spanish: “In 1471, on the 16th of August,
the first stone of the new work of this holy church was laid;” and there
is no doubt that the church is all of about this date, with some
additions,--chiefly, however, of Retablos and other furniture,--in the
two following centuries. The character of the whole design is
necessarily in the very latest kind of Gothic; and much of the detail,
especially on the exterior, is quite Renaissance in its character. The
east end is finished with three parallel apses, and the nave is some
seven or eight bays in length, with towers projecting beyond the aisles
at the west end, and chapels opening into the aisles between the
buttresses. The light is admitted by windows in the aisles over the
chapel arches, and by a large clerestory. These windows are fortunately
filled with a good deal of fine early Renaissance glass, which, though
not all that might be wished in drawing and general treatment, is still
remarkable for its very fine colour. Arches of the same height as the
groining of the aisles open into the towers, the interior view across
which produces the effect of a sort of western transept, corresponding
with a similar transept between the nave and the apsidal choir. The
detail is throughout very similar to that of the better known
cathedrals at Segovia and Salamanca, the section of the columns being
like a bundle of reeds, with ingeniously planned interpenetrating base
mouldings, multiplied to such an extent that they finish at a height of
no less that ten feet from the floor. Another evidence of the late
character of the work is given by the arch mouldings, which die against
and interpenetrate those of the columns, there being no capitals. Beyond
a certain stateliness of height and colour which this small cathedral
has in common with most other Spanish works of the same age, there is
but little to detain or interest an architect. But stateliness and good
effects of light and shade are so very rare in modern works, that we can
ill afford to regard a building which shows them as being devoid of
merit or interest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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