Sunday, October 22, 2017

A suspicion confirmed

In Santiago de Compostela we marked completing our pilgrimage by taking a tour of the roof of the Cathedral of St. James. We noticed that several of the towers looked like this one, a 15th century improvement on a Romanesque original. This did not seem to accord with the usual architectural style of the period; where might the Spanish architect have gotten his inspiration? Our guide suggested he might have been influenced by Spain's new world conquests in Mesoamerica.

At the Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire exposition at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, we encountered this artifact. The similarity of decorative form leaps out to me.

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