Parts of the old cathedral are, however, still standing. Between the tower of the new[{288}] temple and the episcopal palace, but unluckily weighted down by modern superstructures, stands the old façade, almost intact. The grossness of the structural work, the timid use of the ogival arch, the primitive rose window, and the general heaviness of the structure, show it to belong to the decadent period of the Romanesque style, when the artists were attempting something new and forgetting the lessons of the past.
The new cathedral is a complicated Gothic-Renaissance building of a nave and two aisles, with an ambulatory behind the high altar. Not a square inch but what has been hollowed out into a niche or covered over with sculptural designs; the Gothic plan is anything but pure Gothic, and the Renaissance style has been so overwrought that it is anything but Italian Renaissance.
The façade of the building is imposing, if not artistic; it is composed of four bodies, each supported laterally by pillars and columns of different shapes and orders, and possessing a hueco or hollow in the centre, the lowest being the door, the highest a stained glass window, and the two central ones blind windows, which spoil the whole. The floral and Byzantine (Arab?) decoration[{289}] of pillars and friezes is of a great wealth of varied designs; statuettes are missing in the niches, proving the unfinished state of the church.
FAÇADE OF PLASENCIA CATHEDRAL
Three arches and four pillars, sumptuously decorated, uphold each of the clerestory walls, which are pierced at the top by a handsome triforium running completely around the church. The retablo of the high altar is richly decorated, perhaps too richly; the reja, which closes off the sacred area, is of fine seventeenth-century workmanship.
The choir stalls are of a surprising richness, carved scenes covering the backs and seats. They are famous throughout the country, and the genius, above all the imagination, of the artist who executed them (his name is unluckily not known, though it is believed to be Alemán) must have been notable. Pious when carving the upper and visible seats, he seems to have been exceedingly ironical and profane when sculpturing the inside of the same, where the reverse or the caustic observation produced in the carver's mind has been artfully drawn, though sometimes with an undignified grain of indecency and obscenity not quite in harmony with our Puritanic spirit of to-day. [{290}]