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Updated: June 23, 2025
The narthex and the western end are still preserved. They are of the same width as the nave, for, beneath the towers, of which one seems to have been far higher than the other, each of the aisles terminates in a chapel. Byzantine in appearance, the two western doors are, nevertheless, crowned by an ogival arch, and flanked by statuettes of the same style.
This cathedral was at one time used as the pantheon of the kings of Navarra. About ten elaborate marble tombs still lie at the foot of the building. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. The primitive ground-plan of the cathedral has been preserved, a nave and two aisles showing Romanesque strength in the lower and ogival lightness in the upper tiers.
The nave and two aisles, pierced by ogival windows in the clerestory and round-headed windows in the aisles, constitute the church; the croisée is covered by means of a simple ogival vaulting; the arches separating the nave from the aisles are Romanesque, as is the vaulting of the former.
A short time after its first appearance it swept all before it, thanks to the Cluny monks, and was exclusively used in church-building. OGIVAL ART. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries are, properly speaking, those of the great northern art wave which spread rapidly through the peninsula, bending all before its irresistible will.
Restored by the Fonseca family in the sixteenth century, it is ogival in conception and execution, and contains some fine tombs of the above named aristocratic family. But the chapel passes unnoticed in this peculiarly exotic building, where solidity and not grace was the object sought and obtained.
This circumstance examined from within or from without is one of the causes of the solid appearance of the church; the windows of the aisles unimportant, it is true, from an artistic point of view are slightly ogival; those of the nave are far more primitive and round-headed. The transept, originally of the same length as the width of the church, was prolonged in the fifteenth century.
The superior body is formed by two concentric and slightly ogival arches embedded in the wall. The greatest attraction, and that which above all gives a warlike aspect to the whole building, is the cimborio, or lantern of the croisée.
Recently the abandoned ruin has been declared a national monument, which means that the state is obliged to undertake its restoration. La Magistral is a brick building of imposing simplicity and severity in its general outlines. Its decorative elements are ogival, but of true Spanish nakedness and lack of elegance.
They must be examined one by one, and they will be admired; the view of the ensemble will puzzle and amaze him, yet it will be wise for him not to criticize harshly the lack of unity of style. Frequently the choir stalls are ogival, the retablo Renaissance, the rejas plateresque, and the general decoration of columns, etc., of the most lavish grotesque.
TRANSITION. Many of the cathedrals of Galicia belong, according to several authors, to this period in which Romanesque strength evolved into primitive Gothic or ogival airiness. In another chapter a personal opinion has been emitted denying the accuracy of the above remark. There is no typical example of Transition in Spain.
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