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
In addition to the western doorway there were four others in these
screens, two on the north and two on the south; these opened into small
chapels contrived in the space left between the screen just described,
outside the columns, and the wooden screen inside the columns and behind
the choir-stalls.
The screen on the south side of the apse--the remains of what no doubt
once went all round it--is even more elaborate than that round the Coro:
it is pierced below, so that the altar may be seen, and has large
statues of saints above, and an open-gabled parapet, finished with
angels everywhere, and truly a most gorgeous work! This is in the
south-west arch of the choir only, a late flamboyant screen having been
added afterwards beyond it to the east, whilst on the north side a
Berruguetesque monument has taken the place of the old screen.
The last great middle-pointed feature is the chapel of San Ildefonso, at
the extreme east end of the church. It is a most elaborate work, groined
with an eight-sided vault; its windows and arches full of rich
mouldings, and enriched by ball flowers and some of the other devices
commonly seen in our own work of the same age. Each side of this chapel
had an elaborate tomb with an arched recess in the wall over it,
surmounted by a gabled canopy between pinnacles, and under which
sculptured subjects are introduced.[241] These tombs were evidently all
erected at the same time, and help to make the _tout ensemble_ of the
chapel very rich and striking. A string-course is carried round above
them; and above this there are large traceried windows, alternately of
three and four lights. The vaulting-ribs are treated in an unusual and
rather effective way, being fringed with a series of cusps on their
under side, which give great richness to the general effect. There are
small triangular vaulting compartments in the two western angles, which
are necessary in order to bring the main vault to a true octagon in
plan.
The works added in the fifteenth century were both numerous and
important. The cloister and chapel of San Blas, on its north side, are
the first in importance. They owe their origin, indeed, to the previous
century, the first stone having been laid on the 14th of August, A.D.
1389, by Archbishop Tenorio,[242] Rodrigo Alfonso being the master of
the works. In the chapel is a fine monument of the Archbishop; and in
the cloister walls a door which, in the capricious cusping and
crocketing of its traceried work, illustrates the extreme into which the
Spanish architects of this age ran in their elaboration of detail and
affectation of novelty. The traceries of the whole of the windows of the
cloister are destroyed, but the groining remains, and the proportions
and scale of the whole work are both very fine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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