In a fair and fruitful land lies the city, and her spires pierce a smokeless, unspotted sky.
In the heart of the city, set down in the very centre of her life of song and laughter and childish simplicity, surrounded by crooked streets and great airy courts, in the widest sunlit square, lies her Cathedral.
The first impression made by a building is generally not only the most distinct but the truest. That produced by Seville's Cathedral is its immensity of scale.
Toledo la rica, Salamanca la fuerta, Leon la bella, Oviedo la sacra, Sevilla la grande,
runs the Spanish saying. The size is overpowering. Each of the four side aisles is nearly as broad and high as the nave of Westminster Abbey, while the arcades of Seville's nave have twice the span. To the impressionable sensitiveness of Théophile Gautier it was like a mountain scooped out, a valley turned topsy-turvy. Notre Dame de Paris might walk erect under the frightful height of the middle nave; pillars as large as towers appear so slender that you catch your breath as you look up at the far-away, vaulted roof they support.
Here are the first impressions of two early Spanish writers. Cean Bermudez finds that, "seen from a certain distance, it resembles a high-pooped and beflagged ship, rising over the sea with harmonious grouping of sails, pennons, and banners, and with its mainmast towering over the mizzenmast, foremast, and bowsprit." Caveda is struck by "the general effect, which is truly majestic. The open-work parapets which crown the roofs; the graceful lanterns of the eight winding stairs that ascend in the corners to the vaults and galleries; the flying buttresses that spring lightly from aisle to nave, as the jets of a cascade from cliff to cliff; the slender pinnacles that cap them; the proportions of the arms of the transept and of the buttresses supporting the side walls; the large pointed windows to which they belong, rising over each other, the pointed portals and entrances,--all these combine in an almost miraculous effect, although they lack the wealth of detail, the airy grace, and the delicate elegance that characterize the cathedrals of Leon and Burgos."
Such are the varying impressions of ancient critics. To the student's question, "To what period of architecture does the Cathedral of Seville belong?" we must answer, "To no period, or rather to half a dozen." Authorities and writers will give completely different information, and Seville has found more willing and loving chroniclers than any other of Spain's churches. Gallichan classes it as the "largest Gothic cathedral in the world," and Caveda calls it "a type of the finest Spanish Gothic architecture."