FIG. 144.—TOWN HALL, LOUVAIN.
In general, the Gothic architecture of Belgium presents the traits of a borrowed style, which did not undergo at the hands of its borrowers any radically novel or fundamental development. The structural design is usually lacking in vigor and organic significance, but the details are often graceful and well designed, especially on the exterior. The tendency was often towards over-elaboration, particularly in the later works.
The Gothic architecture of Holland and of the Scandinavian countries offers so little that is highly artistic or inspiring in character, that space cannot well be given in this work, even to an enumeration of its chief monuments.
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. The beginnings of Gothic architecture in Spain followed close on the series of campaigns from 1217 to 1252, which began the overthrow of the Moorish dominion. With the resulting spirit of exultation and the wealth accruing from booty, came a rapid development of architecture, mainly under French influence. Gothic architecture was at this date, under St. Louis, producing in France some of its noblest works. The great cathedrals of Toledo and Burgos, begun between 1220 and 1230, were the earliest purely Gothic churches in Spain. San Vincente at Avila and the Old Cathedral at Salamanca, of somewhat earlier date, present a mixture of round- and pointed-arched forms, with the Romanesque elements predominant. Toledo Cathedral, planned in imitation of Notre Dame and Bourges, but exceeding them in width, covers 75,000 square feet, and thus ranks among the largest of European cathedrals. Internally it is well proportioned and well detailed, recalling the early French masterworks, but its exterior is less commendable.
FIG. 145.
—FAÇADE OF BURGOS CATHEDRAL.
In the contemporary cathedral of Burgos the exterior is at least as interesting as the interior. The west front, of German design, suggests Cologne by its twin openwork spires (Fig. 145); while the crossing is embellished with a sumptuous dome and lantern or cimborio, added as late as 1567. The chapels at the east end, especially that of the Condestabile (1487), are ornate to the point of overloading, a fault to which late Spanish Gothic work is peculiarly prone. Other thirteenth-century cathedrals are those of Leon (1260), Valencia (1262), and Barcelona (1298), all exhibiting strongly the French influence in the plan, vaulting, and vertical proportions. The models of Bourges and Paris with their wide naves, lateral chapels and semicircular chevets were followed in the cathedral of Barcelona, in a number of fourteenth-century churches both there and elsewhere, and in the sixteenth-century cathedral of Segovia. In Sta. Maria del Pi at Barcelona, in the collegiate church at Manresa, and in the imposing nave of the Cathedral of Gerona (1416, added to choir of 1312, the latter by a Southern French architect, Henri de Narbonne), the influence of Alby in southern France (see [p. 206]) is discernible. These are one-aisled churches with internal buttresses separating the lateral chapels. The nave of Gerona is 73 feet wide, or double the average clear width of French or English cathedral naves. The resulting effect is not commensurate with the actual dimensions, and shows the inappropriateness of Gothic details for compositions so Roman in breadth and simplicity.