How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (free reads .txt) 📕

Papacy under the title of Alexander VI, drew Spain into close relations with Rome, while the absorption of the Kingdom of Naples into the Spanish monarchy by Charles V in 1522 involved the country more and more in the political intrigues of Italy. At the same time the immense wealth that was flowing into Spain from her possessions in the New World gave an impetus to her trade with Italy and fostered the enrichment of such families as the Mendoza, Fonseca, Miranda, Ribera, and Velasco, who rivalled the merchant princes of Genoa and Milan. Thus a new era of splendour and of lavish expenditure was promoted in which the influence of Italian art began to penetrate Spain. The date of this Spanish Renaissance may be reckoned from the beginning of the sixteenth century.

In Spanish painting the example of the Flemish School was abandoned for that of the Italian; especially for the Milanese School of Leonardo da Vinci and the works of Raphael and Michelangelo. The sculptors absorbed the Italian influence either through the example of Italian craftsmen invited to Spain or by direct study in Italy, while architecture became affected by the example first of Bramante and later of Michelangelo. But the reaction to Italian influence of these three arts was different.

Painting needed reinforcement; it went to school with the Italians to master principles of drawing, foreshortening, perspective, and composition, as well as the art of fuller and more refined expression. It had to serve an apprenticeship of imitation before it could develope its own individually native strength in the seventeenth century. But it was otherwise with architecture. The fundamentals of the art were thoroughly understood by the Spaniards through Gothic tradition and, when they came under the spell of the Italian, it was in the way only of modifying the design, especially the character of the decorative elements, in which they were assisted by their sculptors. In place of the flamboyant decoration of the late Gothic there grew up a new style of more refined ornament. And it was also a new style, both in its character and in the use made of it; a style created by Spanish architects and sculptors and confined to Spanish art, and known as estilo plateresco or silversmith’s style.

Plateresque Style.—The Spaniards had inherited from the Moors a consummate skill in metal-craftsmanship; and now the inflow of silver from the New World gave a stimulus to the craft of the silversmith. It reached extraordinary development in the making of church plate, particularly in the custodias or tabernacles, designed to hold the “Host,” which reached the magnitude of lofty structures, simulating towers and decorated with a wealth of intricate ornament of the most exuberant and yet delicate fancy. Foremost among these artists in silver was the family of Arphe, consisting of Enrique de Arphe, his son Antonio, and grandson Juan. Their work, which extended throughout the sixteenth century, began by being Gothic in character, but gradually reflected the Italian influence. It was so remarkable in its exuberant creativeness and so widely spread throughout the country—in Toledo, Cordova, Santiago, Seville, Valladolid—that its enormous effect upon architectural decoration is quite comprehensible.

The plateresque style is a combination of several elements: the freedom of the Gothic, the delicate profusion of Moorish ornament, and the ordered refinement of Raphael’s arabesques, mingled into a new and living medium of decorative expression by the vitality and fecundity of the Spanish fancy. And a corresponding originality was displayed in the manner of using it. It was massed chiefly around the doors and windows. Its earliest appearance is in the decorated portals, added to the Gothic cathedrals or to the newly erected secular buildings, of which a famous example is the doorway of the west façade of the University of Salamanca, in the province of Castile.

The earliest architect to apply this sculptural embellishment to the façades of buildings is said to have been Enrique de Egas, a native of Brussels, trained in the Gothic style, who was supervising architect of the Cathedral of Toledo. Among the gems which he contributed to the Early Spanish Renaissance are the College of Santa Cruz in Valladolid, built for Bishop Mendoza, and the Hospital of the same name, erected by Cardinal Pedro Mendoza in Toledo, which served as a model for the University of Salamanca. All three of these edifices are celebrated for the magnificent decoration of their principal portal: the one in Salamanca being specially notable for the device adopted to offset the effect of foreshortening in the ornament remote from the eye. For the depth of the cutting is graduated from flat relief in the lowest panels up to a bold enrichment of light and shade at the top. Another feature of these buildings, particularly fine in the two earlier ones, is the interior court or patio.

Patio.—The importance of the patio is a distinctive characteristic of Spanish architecture, deriving, not from the cortile of the Italian palace, but from the atrium of the Roman villa, preserved in the courts of Moorish buildings. The patio is surrounded on all four sides by colonnades of two stories into which all the rooms open, while approach to the second floor is given by a handsome staircase. A characteristic feature is the use of bracket columns, a well-known example being in the patio of the House of Miranda in Burgos. Sometimes, in the second story, an arcade is substituted for columns and entablature, as in the Casa de Zaporta, also known as the Infantado Palace, in Guadalajara.

Frequently the columns and surfaces of the patio are richly decorated with plateresque ornament, for the patio was the centre of the life and ceremony of the family. And this habit of domestic seclusion, inherited apparently from Moorish times, reacted on the exterior of the buildings; and, while the patio was luxuriantly decorated, a singular barrenness characterised the façades.

Thus the chief feature of the latter was the entrance doorway; the windows were few, small in size, and raised high above the level of the street, while occasionally a portico was added under the roof, where the inmates could take the air and view the outside life without themselves being seen. A famous example of this is seen in the college erected for Cardinal Ximenes in Alcala de Henares by the Castilian architect, Alonzo de Covarrubias, son-in-law of Enrique de Egas. He also designed the Archbishop’s Palace in the same city and the celebrated Chapel of the New Kings in the Toledo Cathedral.

Cathedrals.—Another northern centre of the Early Spanish Renaissance was Burgos. Here the master of the plateresque style was Diego de Siloe, sculptor and architect, who built the celebrated Golden Staircase in the Cathedral, to connect the higher levels of the old, thirteenth century Puerta de la Coroneria, with the floor of the north transept by a flight of 39 steps, which has a gilded balustrade, richly embellished and bearing the arms of Bishop Fonseca.

In 1520 Siloe was summoned to Granada to superintend the building of the Cathedral which had been designed in the Gothic style by Enrique de Egas. This, the earliest and most remarkable of the Renaissance cathedrals of Spain, represents an application of the Classic orders to the piers which support the vaulting. But its most distinctive feature is that the sanctuary or capilla mayor, instead of terminating in an apse, is fully circular in plan and crowned by a lofty dome, under which, in a flood of light, stands the high altar.

Two other important examples of Renaissance Cathedrals are those of Jaen and Valladolid, while amongst the Gothic edifices that were embellished with magnificent Renaissance portals may be mentioned the Cathedrals of Malaga and Salamanca and the Church of Santo Domingo in the latter city and of Santa Engracia in Saragossa. Also of the Early Renaissance period are the octagonal lantern of Burgos Cathedral, designed by Vigarni, called de Borgoña, because he was born in Burgundy, famous as a sculptor even more than as an architect; and the towers of the Cathedral del Pilar and of La Seo in Saragossa. The last named, octagonal in plan and consisting of four stories, diminishing in size and crowned with a lantern, bears some resemblance to the English steeples of Wren.

Casa Lonja.—The most splendid Municipal building of Spain is the Casa Lonja, or Exchange for merchants, in Seville, which was built in 1583-1598 by Diego de Riano from a design, not closely adhered to, by Juan de Herrera. The most highly decorated façade, which is on the side removed from the Square, shows a more than usual following of the Italian style in its system of pilasters and entablatures and the repetition and treatment of the windows. Yet the style is used with a decorative freedom, characteristically Spanish.

Thus the pilasters of the second story are of the baluster type, emulating, that is to say, the forms which can be obtained in wood by turning on a lathe; the ornament is lavishly expended over the whole front in a rich encrustation, and, as in the case of Salamanca, already alluded to, increases in boldness of relief toward the top. Moreover, the vivacity is enhanced by the intricate mitreing of the courses of the entablatures, broken round the projection of the pilasters. The handsome patio is double-storied, respectively in the Doric and Corinthian orders. The sumptuous marble staircase was added in the eighteenth century, during the reign of Charles III.

Classical Style.—Even while the plateresque style was flourishing a more direct invasion of Italian influence was in progress.

Palace of Charles V.—The earliest example of this is in the Palace which Charles V began to build on the hill of the Alhambra. The work was entrusted to Pedro Machucha, who, like Berruguete, his assistant in the design, had studied in Rome. The plan is a square, enclosing a circular court, and the style is Palladian. Each façade, measuring 207 feet in length and 53 in height, is composed of rusticated masonry and pilasters in the first story and, in the second, of an order of Ionic pilasters, supporting a Doric cornice. In both stories occurs a mezzanine floor lighted by circular windows. The circular court, nearly one hundred feet in diameter, is surrounded by a lower and an upper open colonnade, respectively of the Doric and the Ionic order. A tribute exacted from the Moriscoes or survivors of the Moors, who were permitted to remain after the expulsion of the majority, defrayed the cost; but their insurrection in 1568 interfered with the work, which dragged on during Philip II’s reign, until it was abandoned before completion. The roof was never built; nor the octagonal chapel, crowned with a dome which, at the northeast angle, was to dominate all the buildings of the Alhambra. The unfinished building further suffers from the competition of the Alhambra, which is the chief attraction to every visitor, so that insufficient justice has been done to the grandeur and dignity of the design.

The Escoriál.—Philip II’s cessation of work upon his father’s palace may have been largely due to his preoccupation with the memorial to his own memory—the Escoriál. By the terms of his inheritance he was bound to erect a mausoleum for his father. He enlarged the scheme to be a burial place also for himself and succeeding Catholic Kings and added a church, a monastery, and palace.

Situated thirty-one miles from Madrid and overlooking the intermediate landscape, this prodigious congeries of buildings occupies a rocky plateau that juts out from the precipitous side of the Guadarrama Sierra and is extended by immense foundations. Its plan, which tradition says was to reproduce the gridiron on which St. Lawrence suffered martyrdom, is a gigantic rectangle, 675 feet by 530, from which projects the handle, a small rectangle. One enters on the mountain side, the Patio of the Kings. Along the right extends the monastery, terminating in the cloistered Patio of the Evangelists;