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 church of SS. Just y Pastor is of the same class as Sta. Maria del
Mar, but its foundation is slightly later, as it seems to have been
commenced circa A.D. 1345. It consists of a nave without aisles, but
with chapels between the buttresses--one chapel in each bay. There are
five bays, and an apse of five sides. The altar stands forward from the
wall, and stalls are ranged round the apse. The nave is 43 feet 6 inches
in width in the clear by about 130 feet in length. The vaulting is
quadripartite throughout, with large bosses at the intersection of the
ribs, on which are carved--1, the Annunciation; 2, the Nativity; 3, the
Presentation; 4, the Adoration of the Magi; 5, the Resurrection; 6, the
Coronation of the B.V.M. The whole church has lately been covered with
painting and gilding, in the most approved French style, and to the
destruction of all appearance of age. The light is admitted by
three-light windows with good geometrical traceries, very high up above
the arches, into the side chapels, and by two-light windows in the
chapels themselves. At the west end are remains of the usual octagonal
flanking turrets; but the whole front is modernized. The side elevation
is a repetition of those already described, presenting a long unbroken
wall below, out of which the buttresses for the clerestory rise.
Santa Maria del Pino is a still grander church, but on the same plan,
with the addition of a lofty octagonal tower detached at the north-east
of the church.[301] This is four stages in height, and the belfry-stage
has windows on each face. The traceried corbel-table under the parapet
remains, but the parapet and roof are destroyed. The nave here consists
of seven bays, is fifty-four feet wide in the clear, and has an eastern
apse of seven sides. The chapels between the buttresses are not carried
round the apse, but an overhanging passage-way is formed all round
outside, upon arches between, and corresponding openings through, the
buttresses just below the windows. The north door here is a very fine
early work of just the same character as those already described in the
earliest portions of the cathedral. It appears to be a work of the end
of the twelfth century, and much older than any other portion of the
church. The west front has a doorway with a figure in a niche in the
tympanum, and a system of niches round and above it, enclosing it within
a sort of square projecting from the face of the wall. The whole scheme
is so exceedingly similar both in design and detail to that of the north
transept door of the cathedral, that we may fairly conclude them to be
the works of the same man. Above the door is a large circular window
filled with good and very rich geometrical tracery. A church existed
here as early as 1070;[302] and Cean Bermudez says that the first stone
of the present church was laid in 1380, and that it was concluded in
1414.[303] Parcerisa,[304] on the other hand, says that materials were
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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