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
It is difficult to express a positive opinion as to the original
intention of the architect in regard to the design and finish of the
exterior of this part of the church. The gable walls have been altered,
the roofs renewed, and the original termination of the buttresses
destroyed. At no time however, I think, can it have looked well. The
position is charming, on the edge of a steep, rocky hill falling down to
the river, and girt on its north side by the old many-towered city wall;
yet with all these advantages it is now a decidedly ugly work, and the
nave looks bald, and large out of all proportion to the subdivided,
lower, and over-delicately-treated choir. On the west side the whole
character of the church is Pagan;[330] and I well remember the
astonishment with which, when I had climbed the long flight of broad
steps which leads to the western door, I looked down the stupendous
interior, for which I had been so little prepared!
The effect is not a little enhanced by the dark colour of the stone,
which has never been polluted by whitewash; but there are some defects.
The want of length has already been noticed; the entire absence of
stringcourses inside is not pleasant; and the lowering of the arches
into the chapels in the second bay from the west wall, where there are
three in place of the two in each of the other bays, breaks the main
lines of the design very awkwardly. The mouldings too, as might be
expected in work of so late a date, are nowhere very first-rate, though
they certainly retain generally the character of late fourteenth-century
work.
The doorway on the south side of the nave is remarkable in one respect.
It has in its jambs a series of statues of the Apostles, executed in
terra-cotta; and the agreement for their execution, made, in A.D. 1458,
with the artist Berenguer Cervia, binds him to execute them for six
hundred florins, and “of the same earth as the statue of Sta. Eulalia
and the cross of the new doorway at Barcelona.”[331] This doorway is
very large, but bald and poor in detail; the statues to which the
contract refers still remain, and are in good preservation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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