A Fifteenth-Century Plan of the Cathedral of Seville

This article focuses on a recently identified and hitherto unpublished drawing of Seville Cathedral, recently located in the Bidaurreta convent (and thus described in this article as the ‘Bidaurreta drawing'). This document is of international importance as it constitutes a rare example of a medieval drawing of a Gothic cathedral, and is indeed the oldest known complete ground plan of any Gothic cathedral. It is also the only plan preserved intact that depicts any fifteenth-century Gothic building in Castile. The drawing, which this article suggests dates from the third quarter of the fifteenth century, is a modified copy of a 1433 plan of Seville Cathedral. It records the building as it was in 1433 and some of the subsequent changes, undertaken as part of a building campaign that ultimately lasted until 1506, by means of which the cathedral took on its present form: 126.18 m in length, 82.6 m in width and 30.48 m high (Figs 1-2). This article traces the reconstruction work in detail by examining the original documentary sources, many not previously discussed in English, together with the evidence of the drawing itself.