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
San Roman has a nave and aisles, with arcades of two arches between
them; a chancel, mainly of Renaissance style, covered with a dome, but
with some late Gothic groining to its apse; and a south chancel aisle
ending without an apse. The tower is on the north side of the chancel.
The whole church is plastered and whitewashed most painfully, but still
retains one or two interesting features. The footpace in front of the
altar has a good pavement of large plain red tiles, laid diagonally,
with small encaustic blue and white glazed tiles at intervals. The whole
pavement is divided into a number of strips by rectangular bands of blue
stone. The altar at the east end of the south choir aisle also deserves
a note, being built with a solid black stone front, carved in imitation
of embroidery and fringes, with an inscription on the superfrontal, and
a shield suspended in the centre of the frontal. This strange device for
economizing altar vestments was not common, I think, here, but several
examples remain in the new cathedral at Salamanca. The reredos over this
altar has a very sweet painting of the Last Supper, the figure of our
Lord being much raised above those of the apostles, and the table at
which He sits being polygonal.
[Illustration: Santa Magdalena. Toledo.]
Sta. Magdalena has a smaller and simpler tower of the same class; it is
perfectly plain below the belfry stage, which has two windows in each
face. The bells hang here, as is so often the case in Southern
buildings, in the window; and in all these buildings, as in most other
old examples of brickwork, the putlog-holds (or holes for the insertion
of the scaffold-poles) are left open. The bricks, too, are used very
roughly and picturesquely with a very thick mortar-joint, and the
consequence is that every part of this work has a value in texture and
light and shade undreamt of by those who have never seen anything but
our own smooth, smart, and spiritless modern brick walls, built with bad
bricks and no mortar.[219]
The steeple of San Tomé is so absolutely identical in its details--save
that its shafts of glazed earthenware are alternately green and
yellow--with that of San Roman, that it is unnecessary to describe
it.[220]
San Pedro Martyr has a steeple which is much wider on one side than on
the other, but is otherwise similar to that of San Roman in its general
design. San Miguel, and Sta. Leocadia, and La Concepcion, have steeples
more like that of La Magdalena, the towers being small, and with only
one arcaded stage below the belfry. The masonry and brickwork is the
same in all these examples, but their scale differs considerably, the
steeple of San Roman being by far the largest and loftiest, that of San
Tomé the next, and the others a good deal smaller.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account