Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/286

270 270 SPANISH ARCHITECTURE. Part II. not its novelty or mechanical boldness that should surprise us so much as its appropriateness for Christian worship. As might be expected, there is a little awkwardness in the junction of the two designs. It is easy to see what an opportunity the eastern end of the great naA-e offered to a true artist, and how a Northern architect would have availed him- self of it, and by canopies and statues or ]>ainting have made it a masterpiece of dec- oration. It is too much to expect this in Spain ; but it probably was originally painted, or at least intended to be. Other- wise it is almost impossible to understand the absence of string-courses or architectural framings throughout. But, even as it stands, the church at Gerona must be looked upon as one of the most successful designs of the Middle Ages, and one of the most original in Spain. The cimborio had somewhat gone out of fashion in the North of Spain in the 15th century, and with these very wide naves had become not only difficult to construct, but somewhat inappropriate. Still there are examples, such as that at Valencia (Woodcut No. 717), which, externally at least, are very noble objects. The church at Valencia seems to have been erected in 1404, and probably it was originally intended to have added a spire or external roof of some sort to the octagon. So completed, the tower would have been a noble central feature to any church, though hardly so perfect in design as that of the old cathedral at Salamanca (Woodcut No. 699). Of about the same age (1401) is the great cathedral of Seville, the largest and in some respects the grandest of Mediaeval cathedrals. Its plan can, however, hardly be said to be Gothic, as it was erected on the site of the Mosque, which was cleared away to make room for it, and was of exactly the same dimensions in j)lan (Woodcut No. 718). It consists of a parallelogram 415 ft. by 298, exclusive of the sepulchral chapel behind the altar, which is a cinque-cento addi- tion. It thus covers about 124,000 sq. ft. of ground, more than a third in excess of the cathedral at Toledo (75,000), and more than Milan (108,000 ft.), which, next to Seville, is the largest of Mediaeval crea- tions. The central aisle is 56 ft. wide from centre to centre of the columns, the side aisles 40 ft., in the exact proportion of 7 to 10, or of the side of an isosceles right-angled triangle to the hypothenuse. As will be explained hereafter, this is the proportion arrived at from 715. Plan of Cathedral at Ge- rona. (Reduced from Street's to 100 ft. to 1 in.)