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 cathedral, dedicated to S. Antholin, stands in a desolate-looking
open space on the edge of the hill which slopes down to the river
Carrion on the west side of the city. Cean Bermudez says that it was
commenced in A.D. 1321,[62] and completed in the beginning of the
sixteenth century.[63] An inscription on the door from the cloister to
the church has the date A.D. 1535, and the enclosure of the choir is of
A.D. 1534. These dates appear to be fairly correct; but the work having
been so long in progress, it may, I think, be assumed that the
ground-plan only is of the earliest date, and that the greater part of
the architectural detail belongs more probably to the fifteenth than to
the fourteenth century. This is quite consistent with the evidence
afforded by the building, for the detail of the design is of very poor
character throughout, and the window tracery is generally of inferior
and rather late flamboyant style. The triforium is well developed,
having large traceried openings; and the church is groined throughout.
In the eastern part of the chevet the window tracery has an early
character, but the mouldings belie this effect; and, if I may judge by
them, none of it is earlier than circa A.D. 1350-1370. The plan of the
chevet is probably old, but all its details, save those of the piers
between the chapels, have been modernized. The thin spandrels of the
vaulting in the apse of the choir are pierced with cusped circles, a
device occasionally seen in French churches.
It will be seen, therefore, that there is little to praise here, save
the grand scale upon which the work has been done. The nave is 36 feet 8
inches from centre to centre of the columns, whilst each aisle is no
less than 31 feet 2 inches. The relative proportions are bad, but owing
to the arrangement of the Coro in the nave there is not much opportunity
of seeing this, and the internal view of the aisles, owing to their
width and to the very massive character of the nave columns, is
extremely fine. The nave is of five bays in length, the two eastern bays
being occupied by the Coro. There is an altar against the western screen
of the Coro, in front of which are some steps leading down to a well,
said to be that of St. Antholin, the tutelar saint. The whole of the
stalls are old, and fine of their kind; they are mainly the work of El
Maestro Centellas, a Valencian, who contracted to execute them about the
year 1410,[64] but they are not in their old place, for in A.D.
1518-1519 Pedro de Guadalupe agreed to move them from the old choir into
the new choir for the sum of fifteen hundred maravedis, and to execute
twenty additional stalls for the sum of two thousand maravedis each.[65]
At the same time the Retablo was moved forward and enlarged to fit its
new position by one Pedro Manso, at a cost of two hundred ducats; whilst
Juan de Valmeseda executed the statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St.
John, and the Crucifixion for it for one hundred ducats.[66]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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