A Journey Through Spain’s Sacred Architecture: Santiago de Compostela and Chartres Cathedral
Santiago de Compostela Cathedral
A Romanesque Masterpiece
The heart of Santiago de Compostela revolves around a pivotal Romanesque creation in the Iberian Peninsula: its renowned cathedral, housing the relics of St. James the Apostle. Bishop Gelmírez spearheaded the project in the late 11th century, with construction largely completed by 1122, barring the western facade and preceding section.
Architectural Features
The cathedral boasts a classic pilgrimage church layout, featuring three naves, three expansive transepts with semicircular chapels, and an ambulatory with radiating chapels. The central square is distinct, while the two adjacent squares are semicircular and polygonal. A gallery encircles the aisles and transept, counteracting the thrust of the nave’s barrel vaults and providing space for pilgrims to worship. These galleries are topped with quarter-sphere vaults. The central nave, soaring nearly 22 meters high, is covered by a barrel vault and supported by alternating circular and square pillars. A grand dome crowns the transept.
Master Mateo’s Contribution
In 1168, Ferdinand II commissioned Master Mateo, the architect behind the crypt, to complete the cathedral. The crypt, built to accommodate uneven terrain, sits beneath the western facade, behind the famed Portico de la Gloria. Nine towers enhance the cathedral’s imposing presence, reflecting its role as the archbishop’s stronghold. Large doorways, including the monumental Platerías door, punctuate the transept ends. The sanctuary, dedicated to St. James, features five radiating chapels in the apse and two more in each transept arm.
Chartres Cathedral
, taking as a model of Soissons. The temple was consecrated in 1260, in the presence of Louis IX.
We are a church with a Latin cross located in the transept was in the middle of the longitudinal axis, leaving a marked difference between the area east of the transept and the rest of the temple. The eastern part of the church is occupied by the eastern apse, is situated around a double ambulatory with radiating chapels, leaving a structure of five ships heading to communicate with the transept, taking as a Notre Dame de Paris.
The transept and the west side of the body has three naves naves opening to the outside in three stunning covers.
The central nave of Notre-Dame de Chartres is a masterpiece of Gothic architecture as it is removed first and divided the gallery wall at three levels, corresponding to the lower arches separating the naves, the central triforium and the gallery above the windows where the glass wall to replace the brightness and lightness to the building. Chartres is used to permanently turn quatripartita the customary thirteenth century, the whole temple. The shape of the pillars alternating successively between cylindrical and octagonal coordinate baquetones to create a rhythmic structure: the lead baquetones polygonal cylindrical pillars and columns have octagonal baquetones rounded.
The exterior buttresses that indicate the powerful strength of construction, to support the drives get around in the buttresses, as in all the cathedral of Chartres there to buttress the system of distributing pressures, developing their structure dramatically.
The construction of this cathedral, a masterpiece of Gothic architecture, was begun at the behest of the bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully. Presents the same construction elements that other great cathedrals of the time as Denis, Laon Senlins or, as the frame of the facade between two towers, three gates open and the large central rosette. However, in this case architectural proportions of this building is a perfect rationale, reflecting a balanced set complete with beautiful artistic decoration.
The factory’s current Notre Dame was begun in 1163. We chose a simple structure, in the same line as the Cathedral of Laon, his most direct precedent: five ships in the area of the header generated double ambulatory and transept not marked on the outside. Work was moving forward with some speed and in the vicinity of 1200 began the western facade, completed towards 1245.
In times of St. Louis in the mid-thirteenth century, and the hand of two of the most prestigious architects of the time: Jean Chelles and Pierre de Montreuil, the cathedral is made a major reform. First, adding a line of chapels between the buttresses on the north side, and then extend both arms of the transept to the outside, giving them new covers and spectacular rosettes.
This model radiate from the hand of certain architects, also to Burgundy and France towards the south, which was developed in the late thirteenth century, a very original architecture, based on radically different approaches. Weeping on Christ-The Death Lament for the Dead Christ in the register contained less Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. The composition focuses on the naked body of Jesus, the horizontal provisions in the other characters. The event takes place in an open landscape where even angels come to join the pain of the moment. The group suffering from the extreme left, right, is worth raising the other hand, the solid rock on the right. The attitudes of the holy women of Nicodemus, of St. Joseph of Arimathea, or the Evangelist, are a reflection of the extreme pain of Mary, who raises his arms to his son died. Women who presented his back to help give the viewer the sense of spatiality, with colors that are distributed in several layers. But all this is figured to illustrate more clearly the real reason of the table: the expressions of pain, tragedy and drama placed at the service of composition, to show the human suffering before death. Never before in the painting was presented as a vivid expression in the art of Giotto. The scene of the Resurrection continues the narrative development.
The Annunciation, the figures on what seems to have a section of the last Gothic church, with its pinnacles and arches and polilobulats. The main stage is flanked by Saints Ansan, patron of Siena, and Margarita, possibly made by Memmi, and the upper part we see, in circles, four prophets, about the miracle of the Incarnation. From left to right, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah and Daniel, the gap may tondo was occupied by an image of God, related to the representation of the Holy Spirit represented below. The main scene speaks of sophisticated style within the International Gothic painting that reached by Simone Martini. A highly decorative style in the use of colors and the use of busy lines rolling makes the angel and the Virgin figures flat. Watch Mary tattoo and frightened as a young princess, the dynamic presence of the angel are the rags esvalotats for his recent arrival. The angel fund shares yellow hue, which makes him a figure especially flat and lack substance, perhaps increased its supernatural aspect.