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
Another church, of which only the ruins now remain, in the Calle del
Carmen, must, I presume, be Nuestra Señora del Carmen, founded in
1287.[307] This building was evidently greatly altered in the fourteenth
century. It was first of all roofed with a flat roof, carried on arches
across the nave, as at Sta. Agata, and subsequently the walls were
raised and the church was groined. The groining is now destroyed, and
behind it are seen the corbels in the cross wall marking the rake of the
first roof. The aisles had roofs gabled north and south, and their
windows good fourteenth-century tracery. This church of seven bays in
length is 43 feet wide between the columns of the nave, and nearly 80
feet wide from north to south. Compared with Sta. Agata, it seems to
prove that this class of timber-roofed church was introduced here
between the early waggon-vaulting of the chapel of Sta. Lucia and of
Sta. Ana, and the great quadripartite vaults of the cathedral and the
other churches of its class.
The other churches here are not of much interest. The front of San Jayme
has already been incidentally mentioned: its interior is modernized. San
Miguel is probably a very early church, having a Roman mosaic pavement
preserved in the floor. It has a pointed waggon-vault, and a
sixteenth-century stone gallery at the west end. The western front has a
rich west door, half Gothic and half Renaissance, with St. Michael and
the dragon in the tympanum, and the Annunciation in the jambs. The flat
gable has its old crocketed coping and cross, and two very small
windows. The best feature is the tower, a simple structure, square in
plan, from within the parapet of which, over the centre, rises a small
square turret, open at the sides and roofed with four intersecting
gables. It is a pretty arrangement for carrying a fifth bell, the other
bells hanging in the belfry windows, in the Italian fashion. The church
of San Anton has a groined narthex or porch all across the west front,
with three open arches in front. The nave cannot be wide, and has
chapels between the buttresses, but I did not see the interior. Another
church, that of San Gerónimo, is on the same plan, but of later
date.[308] The churches of the Renaissance class are numerous and ugly;
but Berruguete and his followers hardly perpetrated so many freaks in
art here as they did in the centre of Spain; had they been more popular,
there had been much less for me to describe. But in truth, rich as this
old city still is, it was much richer, two or three noble churches
having disappeared at a comparatively late period, either during the war
or in subsequent popular disturbances.
[Illustration: No. 40.
BARCELONA. p. 314.
CASA CONSISTORIAL.]
[Illustration: Ajimez Window.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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