Gothic arrived in Spain from France at the end of the twelfth century, as the Reconquista moved south, and lasted until the sixteenth century, mixing with Islamic and Renaissance influences.
The Castilian cathedrals
In the thirteenth century, under Ferdinand III, three great French-style cathedrals were begun, all still fully in use:
- Burgos (from 1221), a UNESCO site, with openwork spires added in the fifteenth century by Juan de Colonia, the Condestable chapel and the tomb of El Cid.
- Toledo (from 1226), seat of the primate of Spain, with a very rich treasury, the Baroque Transparente and a sacristy that is a picture gallery with works by El Greco and Goya (see Toledo).
- León (from the mid-thirteenth century), the most French and luminous, with almost 1,800 square metres of medieval stained glass (see León).
Mediterranean Gothic
The Crown of Aragon developed a different, wider and plainer Gothic, with broad naves and little ornament: Catalan Gothic. Its masterpieces are the basilica of Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona, built in a few decades in the fourteenth century by the people of the seafaring quarter, Barcelona cathedral, the cathedral of Palma de Mallorca, La Seu, with one of the tallest Gothic naves and a huge rose window, and the cathedral of Girona, with the widest single Gothic nave. Civic buildings are splendid too: the Lonja de la Seda in Valencia, the merchants' exchange and a UNESCO site, the Llotja in Palma and the Drassanes shipyards in Barcelona.
Late Gothic
In the fifteenth century the cathedral of Seville, built on the site of the great Almohad mosque whose Giralda and orange-tree courtyard it keeps, became one of the largest churches in the world: tradition says the canons decided to build "a church so large that those who see it finished will think us mad". It holds the tomb of Christopher Columbus.
In the age of the Catholic Monarchs Isabelline Gothic emerged, lavishly decorated with coats of arms and heraldic motifs, as in the monastery of San Juan de los Reyes in Toledo, the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid and the Royal Chapel of Granada, where Isabella and Ferdinand are buried. The last great Gothic cathedrals, the new cathedrals of Salamanca and Segovia, were built well into the sixteenth century.
Painting and sculpture
Spanish Gothic painting, especially in the great altarpieces (retablos), moved from fourteenth-century Italian influence to fifteenth-century Flemish influence, with painters such as Bernat Martorell, Jaume Huguet, Bartolomé Bermejo and Fernando Gallego. See also Romanesque and Mudéjar art.