Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain

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] ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 41040
Author: Street, George Edmund
Release Date: Oct 13, 2012
Format: eBook
Language: English