The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, Volume 3 (of 3)Williams, Leonard
History
The Arts and Crafts of Older Spain, Volume 3 (of 3)
Williams, Leonard
Decorative arts -- Spain -- History
"The second tier is formed by a small socle, crowned by a band of leaves
and diminutive figures. Over this is a gilded balustrade, and finally
another and a broader frieze containing gilded figures, together with
delicate foliage wrought in dull silver. This second tier grows
gradually narrower, and sustains the third, whose base projects, serving
as cornice to the frieze of the tier below, and decorated with a gilded
balustrade. Upon it rises a mass or body with twelve sides, following
the same arrangement of projecting and receding angles as the lower
tiers. In each of its receding spaces this order contains three
compartments, and in each of its salient faces it has a small tower or
buttress, which springs from the base and rests upon a delicate plinth
carved with a gilded ornamental band. Thus, the order we are describing
has six salient faces behind the six towers or buttresses, and six
spaces containing three open compartments. In these compartments,
separated one from another by diminutive buttresses with delicate
pinnacles, there is the same number of sunken spaces, one inch deep, on
which are represented, in high relief, scenes of the life and passion of
our Lord. The figures, admirably executed, are two inches high. Above
this order is a projecting cornice, decorated along its lower part with
a band of dull silver. It should be noted, that as the _custodia_
narrows gradually as it rises, the receding spaces grow proportionally
larger, thus affording room for the spacious inner order on which is
raised the _viril_. This order is formed by a crystal cylinder
(containing the host) resting on a base which is also cylindrical, the
lower part of which is decorated with a broad hexagonal band, narrower
at the top than at the bottom, and wrought with delicate foliage and
figures, as are the bands which lie beneath it. Above the transparent
cylinder enclosing the _viril_ rises a Gothic vault, drooping over in
the manner of a plume, and resting on the buttresses which fill the
projecting spaces on the base of the principal order. These buttresses
have a similar arrangement to, and coincide with, the other ones which
spring from the base of the third tier of the first order, and are
joined one to another by means of fine cross-buttresses surmounted by
statuettes. The circular vault which holds the crystal cylinder
containing the _viril_, and which resembles that of the rotunda
dedicated as a sepulchral chapel by the emperor Constantine to the
memory of his daughter, saint Constance, supports other and finer
buttresses, alternated with those beneath; but instead of rising from
the salient spaces of the base, these rise from the receding spaces and
support another vault, of smooth open-work, beneath which is a graceful
statuette of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. Over this vault is a kind of
open-work dome, consisting of an effective series of pinnacles and
buttresses in the shape of segments of a circle, which bridge over the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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