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 ritual arrangements deserve a few words of description. There are
six steps up from the nave to the altar, and there is an ambon on each
side of them entered from the altar side. There is a stalled western
gallery, with an organ on its south side, of late mediæval design, but
apparently an insertion, and not erected at the same time as the Coro.
Beside the gallery Coro, there is a second Coro on the floor, with
screens round it on the north, south, and west sides, which are
evidently not original, being mere brick walls. A metal screen extends
all across the nave and aisles at the east of the Coro; and there are
gates, not only in these, but also in the screen on the west side of the
Coro, which, it will be remembered, is an unusual arrangement at this
late date. The large organ is on the north side of the Coro, and of the
same date as the woodwork of the stalls. The good people of Valladolid,
who seem to feel inordinately proud of all that Berruguete did, have
carried off the stalls to the museum. They are much praised by Mr. Ford,
but for what reason I endeavoured in vain to discover. Their sculpture
appeared to me to be contemptible, and mainly noticeable for woolly
dumplings in place of draperies, and for the way in which the figures
are sculptured, standing insecurely on their feet, dwarfed in stature,
altogether inexpressive in their faces, out of drawing, and wholly
deficient in energy or life. There were also three great Retablos to the
principal altars at the ends of the aisles. The Renaissance frames of
these are mostly _in situ_, but the sculptures have all been taken, with
the stalls, to the museum, where they cumber the little chapel in the
most uncouth fashion. I never saw such contemptible work; yet Mr. Ford
calls this work[85] “the _chef-d’œuvre_ of Berruguete, circa
1526-1532.” I can only say that the architecture is bad, the sculpture
is bad, and the detail is bad; that all three are bad of their kind, and
that their kind is the worst possible.[86] It is in truth the ugliest
specimen of the imbecility and conceit which usually characterize
inferior Renaissance work that I ever saw. The whole of the figures are
strained and distorted in the most violent way, and fenced in by columns
which look like bedposts, with entablatures planned in all sorts of new
and original ways and angles. I have no patience with such work, and it
is inconceivable how a man who has once done anything which, from almost
every point of view, is so demonstrably bad, can have preserved any
reputation whatever, even among his own people. It is a curious
illustration, however, of the singular extent to which both Gothic and
Renaissance were being wrought at the same time in Spain; for at the
time he did this work, in which not a trace of Gothic feeling or skill
remained, other men at Salamanca, Zaragoza, and elsewhere, were still
building in late Gothic, and some buildings were still more than half
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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