San Miguel del Celanova Location: Orense, Spain 936-942 Smallest documented Mozarabic church, with dimensions consisting of  8.5m long, 3.85m wide and maximum of 6m in height. “What lends this small chapel a special importance in the study of Mozarabic architecture is the fact that the covering in each one of the three bodies, the three of them vaulted, different styles have been used, what turns it in an authentic showcase of the vaulting methods used in that style. The main chamber is covered with a groin vault in brick, supported by a stilted arch that starts from corbels in scrolls, raised enough so as to open the two windows we have referred to in the eastern and western walls. The vault of the vestibule is a horse shoe , leaning upon a base moulding and the apse is covered by a vault formed by the intersection of eight spherical caps, so that, although its external shape is a square, the internal one forms a very enclosed horse shoe, of a radius of 1.35m, which reminds more an Arabic mihrab than a Christian apse, since it leaves a very small space around a small altar of a much later period.” •Excerpt taken from http://www.turismo-prerromanico.es/arterural/smcelanova/celanovaficing.htm Image taken from University of Wisconsin Art History Department San Miguel del Celanova Location: Orense, Spain 936-942 Smallest documented Mozarabic church, with dimensions consisting of  8.5m long, 3.85m wide and maximum of 6m in height. “What lends this small chapel a special importance in the study of Mozarabic architecture is the fact that the covering in each one of the three bodies, the three of them vaulted, different styles have been used, what turns it in an authentic showcase of the vaulting methods used in that style. The main chamber is covered with a groin vault in brick, supported by a stilted arch that starts from corbels in scrolls, raised enough so as to open the two windows we have referred to in the eastern and western walls. The vault of the vestibule is a horse shoe , leaning upon a base moulding and the apse is covered by a vault formed by the intersection of eight spherical caps, so that, although its external shape is a square, the internal one forms a very enclosed horse shoe, of a radius of 1.35m, which reminds more an Arabic mihrab than a Christian apse, since it leaves a very small space around a small altar of a much later period.” •Excerpt taken from http://www.turismo-prerromanico.es/arterural/smcelanova/celanovaficing.htm Image taken from University of Wisconsin Art History Department

San Miguel del Celanova

Location: Orense, Spain

936-942

Smallest documented Mozarabic church, with dimensions consisting of  8.5m long, 3.85m wide and maximum of 6m in height.

“What lends this small chapel a special importance in the study of Mozarabic architecture is the fact that the covering in each one of the three bodies, the three of them vaulted, different styles have been used, what turns it in an authentic showcase of the vaulting methods used in that style. The main chamber is covered with a groin vault in brick, supported by a stilted arch that starts from corbels in scrolls, raised enough so as to open the two windows we have referred to in the eastern and western walls. The vault of the vestibule is a horse shoe , leaning upon a base moulding and the apse is covered by a vault formed by the intersection of eight spherical caps, so that, although its external shape is a square, the internal one forms a very enclosed horse shoe, of a radius of 1.35m, which reminds more an Arabic mihrab than a Christian apse, since it leaves a very small space around a small altar of a much later period.”

•Excerpt taken from http://www.turismo-prerromanico.es/arterural/smcelanova/celanovaficing.htm

Image taken from University of Wisconsin Art History Department

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