tecture with two
lofty, open-traceried spires, like Strasburg and other German
examples. Leon is remarkable for its lofty clerestory. Spanish Gothic
may be said to have culminated in the vast cathedral at Seville
(begun 1401), claiming to be of greater extent than any Gothic
cathedral in the world, larger, therefore, than Milan or Cologne. It
stands on the site of a mosque, and has never been completed
externally. The interior is very imposing and rich, but when it is
stated that it was not completed till 1520, it may be readily
understood that many of the details are very late, and far from the
purity of earlier examples.

[Illustration: FIG. 58.--THE CATHEDRAL AT TOLEDO. INTERIOR.
(BEGUN 1227.)]

In the fourteenth century an innovation, of which French architects
immediately north of the Pyrenees were also availing themselves, found
favour in Barcelona. The great buttresses by which the thrust of the
vaults was met were brought inside the boundary walls of the church,
and were made to serve as division walls between a series of side
chapels. Both here and at Manresa and Gerona, cathedrals were built,
resembling in construction that at Alby, in Southern France; in these
this arrangement was carried a step further, and the side aisles were
suppressed, leaving the whole nave to consist of a very bold vaulted
hall, fringed by a series of side chapels, which were separated from
each other by the buttresses which supported the main vault. These
large vaults, however, when bare of decoration, as most of the Spanish
vaults are, appear bald and poor in effect, though they are grand
objects structurally.

The Gothic work of the latest period in Spain became extraordinarily
florid in its details, especially in the variety introduced into the
ribs of the vaulting and the enrichments generally. The great
cathedrals of Segovia and Salamanca were neither of them begun till
the sixteenth century had already well set in. They are the two
principal examples of this florid Gothic.

[Illustration: FIG. 59.--THE GIRALDA AT SEVILLE. (BEGUN IN 1196.
FINISHED IN 1538).]

It will not be forgotten that the country we are now considering was
fully occupied by the Moors, and that they left in Southern Spain
buildings of great merit. A certain number of Christian churches exist
built in a style which has been called Moresco, as being a kind of
fusion of Moorish and Gothic. The towers of these churches bear a
close resembla