is made to live in aiid that it must act as a frame for furnishings and a foil for its human inhabitants.
Spanish architecture, all of it, whether religious or secular, has much to teach us, particularly at this time when the temptation is great to be led away by unnecessary wealth into too much architecture for the case in hand ; where a certain pedantry and scholastic purism lead on to dead archaeology and when the human impulse to ‘‘show off” is being stimulated by so many new and powerful forces. Greece and Rome have taught us much, the Middle Ages could teach us more if we were disposed to listen. France has taught us most of all—some of it good—but I rather fancy that Spain, sympathetically known and reasonably accepted, might act as a very potent corrective of the excesses into which our
other mentors have sometimes led us, and to our own undoing. In any case, one thing is sure : until the architect has seen Spain he knows only the half of architecture.
Following is a list of some books on Spain that architects will find useful :
Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage
Roads Arthur Kingsley Porter Gothic Architecture in Spain
George Edmund Street Picturesque Spain Kurt Hielscher Spanish Architecture of the XVIth Century
Arthur Byne Spanish Interiors and Furniture Arthur Byne Decorated Wooden Ceilings in Spain
Arthur Byne The Renaissance Architecture of Central
and Xorthern Spain Austin Whittlesey
BIELSA, IN THE PYRENEES
(From “Picturesque Spain.” By permission of Brentano’s)