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 columns of the choir arches have been modernized, and there is
consequently but little of the old structure visible on the inside, the
Retablo rising to the groining, and concealing the arches of the apse.
Between these arches sculptures in stone are introduced, which are said
to have been executed by Juan de Borgoña, in 1540. They are bold and
spirited compositions in high relief, and give great richness of effect
to the aisle towards which they face. The subjects are--(1) the Agony in
the Garden; (2) our Lord bearing His Cross; (3) the Crucifixion; (4) the
Descent from the Cross and the Resurrection; (5) the Ascension. Numbers
1 and 5 are not original, or at any rate are inferior to and different
in style from the others.
When we leave the choir for its aisles, we shall find that everything
here, too, has been more or less altered. Chapels of all sizes and
shapes have been contrived, either by addition to or alteration of the
original ground-plan; and, picturesque as the _tout ensemble_ is, with
dark shadows crossed here and there by bright rays of light from the
side windows, with here a domed Renaissance chapel, there one of the
fourteenth century, and here, again, one of the fifteenth, it has lost
all that simplicity, unity, and harmony which in a perfect building
ought to mark this, the most important part of a church. In truth hardly
any part of the aisles or chapels of the chevet of Bishop Maurice now
remains; for of the two early chapels on the north side (marked _a_ and
_b_ on the plan), the former is evidently of later date, being possibly
the work of Bishop Juan de Villahoz, who founded a chapel here,
dedicated to S. Martin, in A.D. 1268-69.[16] The style of this chapel is
very good middle-pointed; the abaci of the capitals are square, the
tracery is geometrical, the vaulting very domical, and its north-western
angle is arched across, and groined with a small tripartite vault, in
order to bring the main vault into the required polygonal form. This
arrangement occurs at an earlier date, as I shall have presently to
show, at Las Huelgas (close to Burgos), but ought to be noticed here, as
the same feature is seen reproduced, more or less, in many Spanish works
of the fifteenth century, and here we have an intermediate example to
illustrate its gradual growth. It is, in fact, the Gothic substitute for
a pendentive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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