Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain
9781465558848
492 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
THE book which I here commit to the reader requires, I fear, some apology on my part. I feel that I have undertaken almost more than an artist like myself, always at work, has any right to suppose he can properly accomplish in the little spare time he can command. Nevertheless, I have always felt that part of the duty which every artist owes to his mother art is to study her developments wherever they are to be seen, and whenever he can find the opportunity. Moreover, I believe that in this age it is only by the largest kind of study and range of observation that any artist can hope to perfect himself in so complex and difficult an art as architecture, and that it is only by studying the development of Gothic architecture in all countries that we can form a true and just estimate of the marvellous force of the artistic impulse which wrought such wonders all over Europe in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. In a day of revival, such as this, I believe it to be necessary that we should form this just estimate of bygone art; because I am sure that, unless our artists learn their art by studying patiently, lovingly, and constantly the works of their great predecessors, they will never themselves be great. I know full well how much hostility there is on the part of some to any study of foreign examples; but as from my boyhood up I have never lost any opportunity of visiting and studying our old English buildings, and as my love for our own national artistic peculiarities rather increases than diminishes the more I study the contemporary buildings of the Continent, I have no hesitation in giving to the world what I have been able to learn about Spanish art. What I have here written will no doubt be supplemented and corrected by others hereafter; and much additional light will, I hope, be thrown upon the history of Spanish buildings and their architects. It will be found that I have referred to many Spanish authorities for the historical facts on which the dates of the buildings I have visited can alone be decided. Of these authorities none is more useful to the architect, none is more creditable to its authors, than the ‘Notices of the Architects and Architecture of Spain, by D. Eugenio Llaguno y Amirola, edited with additions by D. Juan Agustin Cean-Bermudez,’ in four volumes, compiled about the beginning of this century, but not published until A.D. 1829.[1] This work, full of documentary evidence as to the Spanish architects and their works, appears to me to be far better in its scheme and mode of execution than any work which we in England have upon the buildings of our own country; and, though it is true that neither of its authors had a very accurate knowledge of the art, they seem to have exercised great diligence in their search after information bearing on their subject, and to have been remarkably successful
