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
advanced, was soon completed under Bishop Luis Acuña y Osorio, the
founder also of the central lantern.[22] Between the two towers is a
figure of the Blessed Virgin, with the words “Pulcra es et decora.” On
the upper part of the towers, “Ecce Agnus Dei,” and “Pax vobis;” and on
the spires, “Sancta Maria,” and “Jesus.” These words are in large stone
letters, with the spaces round them pierced.
The detail of the spires is coarse, and the open stonework traceries
with which they are covered are held together everywhere by ironwork,
most of which appeared to me to have been added since the erection. The
crockets are enormous, projecting two feet from the angles of the
spires, curiously scooped out at the top to diminish their weight, and
with holes drilled through them to prevent the lodgement of water. The
bells are, I think, the most misshapen I ever saw; and, as if to prove
that beauty of all kinds is sympathetic, they are as bad in sound as
they are in form!
The façades of the two transepts are quite unaltered, and as fine as
those of the best of our French or English churches. I particularly
delighted in the entrance to and _entourage_ of the southern transept,
presenting as it does all those happy groupings which to the
nineteenth-century Rue-de-Rivoli-loving public are of course odious, but
to the real lover of art simply most exquisite and quaint.[23] The
cloister and bishop’s palace, built out from the church on the south,
leave a narrow lane between them, not absolutely in face of the great
door, but twisting its way up to it; the entrance to this is through a
low archway, called the Puerta del Sarmental, above which, on the right,
towers one of the enormous and really noble crocketed pinnacles which
mark the angles of the cloister, and then, passing by several old
monuments built into the walls of the passage, the great doorway is
reached by a flight of steps at its end. Above this doorway is a fine
rose window of twenty rays of geometrical tracery, and above this is a
screen in front of the roof, consisting of four traceried openings, each
of four lights, and each monial protected, as are the lights at the west
front, by figures of angels rather above life-size. The angles of the
transepts are flanked by crocketed pinnacles, the crockets here, as
elsewhere throughout the early work, being simple in form and design,
but as perfect in effect as it is possible for crockets to be. The
sculptures of the south door are, in the tympanum, our Lord seated with
the evangelistic beasts around Him, and the four evangelists, one on
either side and two above, seated and writing at desks, whilst below His
feet are the twelve apostles, seated and holding open books. Below,
there is a bishop in front of the central pier, and statues on either
side, of which I made out two on the right to be St. Peter and St. Paul,
and two answering to them on the left Moses and Aaron. The three orders
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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