Toledo, the Story of an Old Spanish CapitalLynch, Hannah
History
Toledo, the Story of an Old Spanish Capital
Lynch, Hannah
Toledo (Spain) -- Description and travel; Toledo (Spain) -- History
In his accurate (if for the general reader perhaps somewhat technical)
pages on the interior, Street says: "The original scheme of the church
is only to be seen now in the choir and its aisles. These are arranged
in three gradations of height--the choir being upwards of a hundred
feet, the aisle round it about sixty feet, and the outer aisle about
thirty-five feet in height. The outer wall of the aisle is pierced with
arches for the small chapels between the buttresses. The intermediate
aisle has in its outer wall a triforium, formed by an arcade of cusped
arches, and above this quite close to the point of the vault, a rose
window in each bay. It is in this triforium that the first evidence of
any knowledge on the part of the architect of Moorish architecture
strikes the eye. The cusping of the arcade is not enclosed within an
arch, and takes a distinctly horse-shoe outline, the lowest cusp near to
the cap spreading inwards at the base. Now it would be impossible to
imagine any circumstances which could afford better evidence of the
foreign origin of the first design than this slight concession to the
customs of the place in a slightly later portion of the works. An
architect who came from France, bent on designing nothing but a French
church, would be very likely, after a few years' residence in Toledo,
somewhat to change in his views, and to attempt something in which the
Moorish work, which he was in the habit of seeing, would have its
influence. The detail of this triforium is, notwithstanding, all pure
and good. The foliage of the capitals is partly conventional, and in
part a stiff imitation of natural foliage, somewhat after the fashion of
the work in the Chapter House at Southwell; the abaci are all square;
there is a profusion of nail-head used in the labels; and well-carved
heads are placed in each of the spandrels of the arcade. The circular
windows above the triforium are filled in with cusping of various
patterns. The main arches of the innermost arcade (between the choir and
its aisle) are of course much higher than the others. The space above
them is occupied by an arcaded triforium reaching to the springing of
the main vault. This arcade consists of a series of trefoil-headed
arches on detached shafts, with sculptured figures, more than life-size,
standing in each division; in the spandrels above the arches are heads
looking out from moulded circular openings, and above these again, small
pointed arches are pierced, which have labels enriched with the
nail-head ornament. The effect of the whole of this upper part of the
design is unlike that of northern work, though the detail is all pure
and good. The clerestory occupies the height of the vault and consists
of a row of lancets (there are five in the widest bay, and three in each
of the five bays of the apse) rising gradually to the centre, with a
small circular opening above them. The vaulting-ribs in the central
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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