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
Here the arches, with few exceptions, are pointed; but otherwise the
design of the two churches is just the same. The nave has a pointed
barrel-vault; the triforium, however, has quadripartite vaulting
throughout, in place of the half barrel-vaults used at Santiago; and the
buttresses externally are connected by a series of arches below the
eaves. The triforium consists in each bay of two pointed arches under a
round enclosing arch, carried upon coupled shafts, which have rudely
sculptured capitals. The five eastern bays of the nave appear at first
sight to have no arches opening into the aisles; but upon closer
examination the outline of some low arches will be found behind the
stall work of the Coro. These arches are all blocked up; but if they
were originally open they are so low that they could not have made the
effect very different from what it now is. It looks, in fact, at first
sight, as if the present arrangement of the Coro were that for which the
church was originally built, and as if the nave proper was always that
part only of the church to the west of the present Coro which opens to
the aisles with simple pointed arches of the whole height of the aisle.
But on further examination we find that the vaulting of the aisles in
the four eastern bays is a round waggon-vault, and this, of course,
limited the height to which it was possible to raise the arches between
the aisle and the nave; and it is therefore probable that their height
is not to be attributed so much to the wish to define a Coro in the
nave, as to the fault of the architect, who did not at first
perceive the advantage of using a quadripartite vault instead of a
waggon-vault. The three bays west of these have the former kind of
vaulting without ribs, and with windows both larger and higher from the
floor than the simple round-arched openings which light the four eastern
bays. The eighth and ninth bays are evidently rather later than the
rest; and the western bays, again, are quite subsequent additions. The
crossing has a quadripartite vault, and the transepts waggon-vaults like
those of the nave.
[Illustration: No. 15.
LUGO CATHEDRAL. p. 131.
INTERIOR OF TRANSEPT, LOOKING NORTH-WEST.]
[Illustration: LUGO:--Ground: Plan: of: the: Cathedral: Plate VII.
W. West, Lithr.
Published by John Murray, Albemarle St. 1865.]
It is pretty clear that the work was commenced upon the scheme which we
still see in the bays next the crossing, and carried on gradually with
alterations as the work went on, and probably as it went on the
architect discovered the mistake he was making in confining himself to
waggon-vaulting in the aisles. It is somewhat remarkable that, with the
example of Santiago so near, such a scheme should ever have been
devised, unless, indeed, the work was commenced earlier than the date
assigned, of which I see no evidence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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