Guide to Spanish Pre-Romanesque Art: SAN SALVADOR DE PRIESCA    Phase/Style: Asturian/Alphonse the Third                        Period: Tenth century    State: Good                                                                        Location: Priesca (Asturias)

Located on a hill very near Villaviciosa, San Salvador de Priesca is the last building of Asturian Art that has survived until now. It was consecrated in 921, when Alphonse the Third had already died, the court had moved to León and the Mozarabic style had been imposed in all conquered territories. In spite of that it is considered to belong to the artistic period of this great Asturian monarch, although it shows a clear decline of a style in extintion, because it was unable to renovate its structures while showing elements of the new Mozarabic art in some painting and in the horseshoe arches of some of the windows. As a great part of the Asturian churches, it was burnt in 1936, although in this case only the roof burned (it was still the original one). After being restaured it is in good shape having kept all of its sculptured decoration and some original paintings.

Very similar to the church of San Salvador de Valdediós, located at some 20Km. distance, but without keeping its vaulted cover, which allows a greater width of the main nave; its structure is the tradictional one according to the normalization that affected the Asturian religious buildings during the periods of Alphonse the Second and Alphonse the Third. Externally, it is a three nave church, with a later attached portico at the southern side and four big rectangular windows, with a discharging arch in brick and lattice work at each side of the main nave, upon the roofs of the aisles. It has a flat chevet with three apses separated by buttresses, a window on each of them, and another one of two horseshoe arches upon a central pilaster, in the main chapel's upper plan, upon a high chamber not accessible from the inside. The main façade is also flat with a central door in round arch upon decorated imposts, buttresses on the separation line of the naves and a lately introduced belfry at the end of the western wall. There are aslo some buttresses irregularly deployed on the lateral walls that had, as in most Asturian churches of those two periods, two compartments at the level of the last stretch of the naves, that do not any longer exist.

At its interior, the iconostasis has disappeared and the church is formed by two pillars and two decorated boards. It stood up until the middle of last century. It is also totally traditional: basilical plan with three naves separated by round arches in brick upon squared ashlar pillars, with molded imposts that divide it in four stretches. The first one corresponds to a portico as wide as the main nave, and two lateral compartments to access a higher tribune built in wood. The naves were covered with a flat wooden roof in the shape of scissor framework, forming a continuous cornice; a cover that seems to have existed in its original state until the fire of 1936. The chevet is a very interesting one, formed by the three apses of the same width than the naves and covered by a barrel vault. The central one has one triumphal arch supported by columns and capitals of veined leaves, similar to those

of Valdediós, and decorated with blank series of arches, formed in the lateral walls by three arches of equal size, upon a plinth and under an impost that supported the vault, different in height to the central one; all of them upon columns and capitals with simple but very beautiful vegetal decoration. At the sides, the arch leans on impost capitals upon pillars and, though they did not count with blank series of arches, they keep the decorated impost in the vault's base.

Rests of the original painting is preserved in the apses and on the walls. The kind and colours are very close to those in San Julián de los Prados and the mosaics in Veranes, that include big ovals around the arches decorated with concentric circles between them in the chevet's blank arches; and the rest, located on the chevet's walls and on the southern wall, with geometrical drawings, though there are also some human figures within a box that seem to be related already with the Mozarabic painting.

The comparative analysis of this last Asturian Pre-Romanesque monument and the way to have come to it from the first churches of Alphonse the Second's period; for example, San Pedro de Nora, stopping to consider intermediate works like San Miguel de Lillo and San Salvador de Valdediós, clearly show the reason for the disappearace of an artistic trend so rich and important in the medieval European panorama, that besides extinguishing with its own limitations, it set an important part of the bases of all the Romanesque Art. In fact, we are before a very interesting monument for its intrinsical worth, both interior and exterior, its volumes' design, its sculptoric and pictorial decoration. However, it is at the same time the demonstration of a comeback to the initial model, or expressed differently, over one hundred years have been wasted, neglecting the roads open in the Ramirense period that remained suffocated in Valdediós maybe because the technical kowledege had been lost or, according to our point of view, neither the effort nor the risk of planning vaults that forced to reduce the width of the naves was worth it, breaking thus the established model, as they were compelled to stick to fixed structures designed for buildings with flat cover.

OTHER INFORMATION OF INTEREST Access: Exit Oviedo by A-66 to Langreo/Santander. Take A-64 until the exit to Villaviciosa/Rodiles. After three roundabouts take N-632 until VV-15 and continue to Priesca. Total distance: 56.1Km. Information telephone:Oficina de Turismo de Villaviciosa: 985 89 17 59 or parish priest of Priesca: 985 97 67 12 Visiting hours: Call the parish priest. Usually it can be visited on Sundays after the mass.