thedral's many biographers agree as to its
architects, its historic precedents or what part of the work was
actually inspired by earlier Spanish architecture and national builders.
Naturally Spanish writers attribute workmanship, precedents and builders
all to their own Peninsula, while the different foreign authorities vary
in their estimates. Distinctly Spanish features of construction as well
as ornamentation are found side by side with others which unquestionably
came from masters trained beyond the Pyrenees. In various places
vaulting is found thoroughly German in its complexity and florid detail.
Several authorities point out the resemblances between Milan and
Seville, not that the ornamentation of the frosted and encrusted Italian
misconception can be intelligently compared with the Plateresque
carving, but there is a certain mixture of local and foreign feeling in
both. In Seville French and German feeling seems to be struggling under
Spanish fetters, just as in Lombardy the German seems to be laboring
with Italian comprehension of Gothic, finally abandoning the inorganic
scheme for a lovely, riotous, and marvelous attempt at carving to which
the material no longer placed any limitations.

The Spanish architect of the middle ages was placed in a novel
situation, and his art had very peculiar and unusual influences bearing
upon it. Gothic methods of construction and ornamentation had slowly
spread over the country with the growing sovereignty of Aragon and
Castile, and in spite of the corresponding decline of the Arab kingdoms,
Moorish art began to work hand in hand, as far as was possible, with the
forms of the Christian invader, although the hostility between the races
hindered any extensive fusion of the two. They began, however, to
influence each other for good or bad and to flourish side by side. The
result might be called architectural volapuek. In Seville it is certain
that, whatever the nationality of the original architect and however
incongruous and expressionless the exterior may finally have become, the
interior is less exotic, less unquestionably a French importation, than
in either of the great Gothic churches of Toledo or Burgos. When we
recall the organic completeness, the truthful exterior expression, of
interior lines and construction in the greatest Gothic cathedrals of
France, we turn with sadness to the outer form of so fair a soul as that
of Santa Maria of Seville, the work of the most famous