Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/543

Rh Be. J. Ch. III. SPAIN. 527 the materials, which are in this place white and colored marbles and true mosaic work, are very mxach to be preferred to the paint and plaster of the other and more celebrated edifice. The ornamentation of the screen of columns in front of the Sanc- tuary seems to be of a later date than the holy place itself, and to have been remodelled to its present form at a time when the wooden roof was removed and the existing vault substituted. Like every form of architecture which is appropriate and fulfils its purpose, it demands our admiration; but it would be extremely difficult to design forms so ungraceful in themselves, or so clumsily put together as the interlacing arches of the upper part, and the whole is so bizarre that it requires all its richness of detail, and all its associations, to reconcile a stranger to its appearance. The same system of ornamentation is carried out in the chapel of Villa Viciosa, erected apparently about the /^'"l^ — — - - .■^■^^-^- -; ':,:_r — "-^- , year 1200. It is evi- dently one of those raised platforms so common in Indian, nnd indeed in all royal mosques, where the king in his grandeur could pray, uncontami- nated by the vulgar crowd. Though a good deal altered and de- ranged by being con- verted into a Christian chapel, it still shows, in the age of its greatest originality, the germ of that style which was afterwards elaborated at Granada, and is generally considered as the typical style of the country. Before leaving this mosque it may be as well to remark that nowhere in any of these styles does the pointed arch appear, or only so timidly as to be quite the exception, not the rule. At an age when its employment was universal in the East, it is singular to observe how comj)letely the Saracenic architects followed the traditions of the country in which they found themselves. At Cordoba they never threw off thu influence of the Roman arch, though farther north the pointed arch is by no means uncommon in tlieir buildings. Contemporary with the rebuilding of the sanctuary of the mosque Avas the erection of the great palace in the city of Zahra, near Cordoba, 973. Screen of the Chapel of Villa Viciosa, Mosque of Cordoba.