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 mixed character of the detail in this church is well seen in the
great doorway. Its jambs are richly moulded and carved, but the
mouldings are all planned on a line receding but little from the face of
the wall, so that the general effect is flat, and wanting in shadow. The
main arch is a bold simple trefoil, but the label above it is carried on
in an ogee line, and the arches below over two sculptured subjects, and
over two door-openings under them, are elliptical. So, too, in the
sculpture on the bas-reliefs over the door-openings, we have the richest
luxuriance of the latest school of Spanish Gothic, with its beasts, its
crisp foliage, and its wild love of heraldic achievements, and, mixed
with all this, naked cherubs, clouds, and representations of Roman
architecture.
In conclusion, I am bound to say of this great church that, whilst its
exterior fails in almost every single particular, its interior, thanks
to compliance with certain broad rules of Gothic building, is beyond
question very grand and impressive. To the vast size and height of the
columns this is mainly owing, for though they are cut up with endless
little mouldings ingeniously “stopped,” one does not observe their
pettinesses, and the arches which they carry are bolder and more
important than might have been expected.
Some of the side chapels have altars both at the east and the west; and
where the old altars remain they have carved in stone an imitation of an
altar frontal. They represent worked super-frontals with fringes, and
frontals with fringed orphreys at either end: and I saw one altar with a
painted imitation of embroidery all over it. A chapel on the south side
of the nave has an altar entirely covered with glazed tiles, the walls
around it being similarly inlaid.
Close to the cathedral is one of the University buildings, with a
central dome and two dome-capped towers to the west of it, and near
these again is another domed church, and in the distance this group is
very remarkable and stately-looking.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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