a consideration of
75,000 maravedis "of current white Castilian money, which is worth two
old white ones and three new," promised to complete the painting "from
top to bottom." On a rich blue background the Supreme Judge stands in
the centre; to the right, is a regiment of the dead clad in white
raiment, graciously welcomed by angels with trumpets; on the left, the
damned are being hustled into hell by devils. As a well-preserved
example of very ancient Spanish painting, it certainly is of intrinsic
value and interest and recalls the naive representations of early
Italian artists.

It is unusually well lighted for a Romanesque church, which is naturally
owing to the dome and not to the various windows or roses. There is no
triforium, but the side walls, transepts, and apses are pierced by
openings of true Romanesque type. The thick masonry has been most
timidly pierced for narrow, round-headed slits of light, with splayed
jambs and colonettes engaged to their sides carrying the typically
ornamented archmolds enframing the whole. The stone mullions of the two
remaining roses are equally timid and typical, but have not suffered
like the windows from the encroachment of the new edifice.

The pavement undulates like that of Saint Mark's. High above the
crossing of nave and transepts rises the tower flooding the church with
light and internally as well as externally expressing one of the
grandest architectural conceptions of the Spanish Peninsula.

Superlatives can alone describe the Torre del Gallo,--truly a product
and glory of Spanish soil. Many writers have argued its similarity to
the domes of Aquitaine churches, to Saint Front of Perigueux and others,
but it is distinctly different from and far superior to those with which
it has been compared in the magnificently interposed members of the
drum, which shed light into the church through their openings and raise
the cupola high enough to make of it a finely proportioned, crowning
member. The cupola alone, certainly not the general disposition, may be
regarded as a copy of earlier examples.

The internal and external cores have been admirably managed, the outer
one being much higher to be in correct proportion to the surrounding
masonry which it crowns. The interior transition from the square to the
round base, twenty-eight feet in diameter, is rather clumsily managed.
The successive masonry courses of the angles step out in Byzantine
fashion in front of each other. T