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
In one respect, however, the design of this church is very important.
The Spanish architects seldom troubled themselves to suit their
buildings in any respect to the climate; and this, no doubt, because in
very many cases they were merely imitating the works of another country,
in which no precautions against heat were necessary. Here we have a
church expressly designed, and with great judgment, for the requirements
of the climate. The windows are very high up, and very small for the
size of the building, so that no sunlight could ever make its way to any
unpleasant extent into it. There are galleries in front of all the
windows, both in the nave and aisles, but they are of thoroughly
Renaissance character. The section of the church gives a main clerestory
to the nave, and a second clerestory on one side of each aisle over the
arches opening into the side chapels. The upper clerestory has two
windows of two lights, and a circular window above them in each bay, and
the lower clerestory traceried windows generally, I think, of three
lights. The traceries are very weak and ill proportioned; but I noticed
in places what seemed to be a recurrence to earlier traditions in the
groupings of small windows, with several circles pierced in the wall
above them. It was, however, just like the imitation of old works we so
often see from incompetent hands at the present day. You see whence the
idea has been taken, though it is so travestied as to be not even
tolerable where the original was probably perfect!
The planning of the church is certainly infelicitous. The square east
end is bald to a degree externally, and finished as it is inside with
chapels corresponding with those of the aisles, wants relief and life.
If the square east end is adopted in a great church, no doubt the
prolonged Lady Chapels of our own churches are infinitely to be
preferred to such a plan as this, which fails to give the great east
windows of which we boast, and loses all the effects of light and shade
in which the apsidal chevets of the Continent are so rich.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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