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
These facts are of great interest, proving as they do that the stalls
stood from the year 1410 to 1518 in their proper place in the choir, and
were then moved to their present position in the nave precisely in the
same way that we have already seen the old arrangement changed at Burgos
at about the same period. This peculiar Spanish arrangement of the Coro
in the nave, and separated from the altar, we may now, I think, assume
was not known or thought of until this comparatively late date in this
part of Spain, though now it is universal throughout the country. The
design of the stalls is somewhat like that of late Flemish work, but
peculiar in many respects: the forward slope of the stall elbows, the
rich traceries behind the lower stalls--very varied in their design--and
the upper stalls, are all worthy of notice. I did not observe any
distinction in the style of the work answering to the dates at which
Maestro Centellas and Pedro de Guadalupe were employed, and I think,
therefore, that the latter must have copied rather closely the work of
the former. Probably, however the Prie-Dieu desk in front of the
bishop’s stall is of the later date, as also the desks which have been
widened in front of the upper row of stalls; and possibly Pedro de
Guadalupe executed the twenty stalls on each side of the choir forming
the easternmost block.
[Illustration: Prie-Dieu.]
The eastern part of the church has been worse treated even than the
nave, all the old arrangements having been ruthlessly altered. The apse,
shut in by screens, covered with a low groined gallery, and used as a
mere chapel,[67] is dark, dismal, and undignified. The bay west of the
apse is open from north to south, but walled in on the west with the
wall behind the high altar. West of this are two bays walled in at the
sides, and then we come to the transept, which is open, save the rails
marking the passage from the Coro to the choir. The whole arrangement is
so confused, unintelligible, and contrary to the obvious intentions of
the first designers of the fabric, that it hardly needed documentary
evidence to prove that it had no kind of ancient authority. There is no
lantern or Cimborio at the crossing. The metal screens[68] across the
choir are of no special interest, but those round the apse and opening
into one or two of the chapels of the chevet are better, and well
illustrate the designs of most of the fifteenth-century iron screens in
Spain. They are met with in all directions, for there was no country in
the middle ages which made so free a use of iron. They have most of the
faults of German ironwork of the same age, the smiths having apparently
forgotten the right use of their hammers, and, like Birmingham smiths of
the present day, having tried to do what was necessary with thin plates
of iron twisted about fantastically here and there, but very much more
easily wrought, and proportionably less effective, than the work of the
English smiths of a couple of hundred years earlier.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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