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
To the south of this sacristy is another groined chamber, in which is
kept the coffer of the Cid,[27] and where the groining ribs are painted
in rich colour for about three feet from the centre boss. A door out of
this leads into the Chapter-house, a room with a flat wooden ceiling of
Moresque character. It is made in parqueterie of coloured woods arranged
in patterns with gilt pendants, and the cornice is of blue and white
majolica, inlaid in the walls: the combination of the whole is certainly
very effective. East of these rooms were others, of which traces still
remain on the outside; but they have been entirely destroyed, and
streets now form, on the east and on the south, the boundaries of the
church and its dependent buildings. Advantage was taken of the rise of
the ground to make a second cloister below that which I have been
describing. In the centre of the enclosure stands a cross, but the
arches are built up, and the cloister is now used for workshops, so that
there is here none of that air of beauty which the gardened cloisters of
Spain usually possess. In the north-west angle of this lower story is a
sacristy, reached by a staircase from one of the choir chapels, and
still in use for it.
I have now in a general way gone over the whole of this very interesting
church, and have said enough, I hope, to prove that popular report has
never overrated its real merits, though no doubt it has regarded too
much those points only of the fabric which to my eye seemed to be least
worthy of praise--the late additions to it rather than the old church
itself. As to the charm of the whole building from every point of view
there cannot be two opinions. It has in a large degree that real
picturesqueness which we so seldom see in French Gothic interiors,
whilst at the same time it still retains much of that fine Early Pointed
work which could hardly have been the work of any but one who knew well
the best French buildings of his day; whoever he was--and amid the
plentiful mention of later artists I have looked in vain for any mention
of him--he was no servile reproducer of foreign work. The treatment of
the triforium throughout is evidently an original conception; and it is
to be noted that the dog-tooth enrichment is freely used, and that the
bells of the capitals throughout are octagonal with concave sides. The
crocketing of the pinnacles is, I believe, quite original; and the
general planning and construction of the building is worthy of all
praise. Nor was the sculptor less worthy of praise than the architect.
The carving of foliage in the early work is good and very plentiful; the
figured sculpture is still richer, and whether in the thirteenth-century
transept doors, the fourteenth-century cloisters, or the
fifteenth-century Retablos, is amazingly good and spirited. The
thirteenth-century figures are just in the style of those Frenchmen who
always conveyed so riant and piquant a character both of face and
attitude to their work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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