Spanish Baroque architecture

Spanish Baroque is a strand of Baroque architecture that evolved in Spain, its provinces, and former colonies.

History
As Italian Baroque influences penetrated across the Pyrenees, they gradually superseded in popularity the restrained classicizing approach of Juan de Herrera, which had been in vogue since the late sixteenth century. As early as 1667, the facades of Granada Cathedral (by Alonso Cano) and Jaén Cathedral (by Eufrasio López de Rojas) suggest the artists’ fluency in interpreting traditional motifs of Spanish cathedral architecture in the Baroque aesthetic idiom.

In Madrid, a vernacular Baroque with its roots in Herrerian and in traditional brick construction was developed in the Plaza Mayor and in the Royal Palace of El Buen Retiro, which was destroyed during the French invasion by Napoleon’s troops. Its gardens still remain as El Retiro park. This sober brick Baroque of the 17th century is still well represented in the streets of the capital in palaces and squares.

In contrast to the art of Northern Europe, the Spanish art of the period appealed to the emotions rather than seeking to please the intellect. The Churriguera family, which specialized in designing altars and retables, revolted against the sobriety of the Herreresque classicism and promoted an intricate, exaggerated, almost capricious style of surface decoration known as the Churrigueresque. Within half a century, they transformed Salamanca into an exemplary Churrigueresque city.

The development of the style passed through three phases. Between 1680 and 1720, the Churriguera popularized Guarini’s blend of Solomonic columns and composite order, known as the “supreme order”. Between 1720 and 1760, the Churrigueresque column, or estipite, in the shape of an inverted cone or obelisk, was established as a central element of ornamental decoration. The years from 1760 to 1780 saw a gradual shift of interest away from twisted movement and excessive ornamentation toward a neoclassical balance and sobriety.

Three of the most eye-catching creations of Spanish Baroque are the energetic facades of the University of Valladolid (Diego Tome and Fray Pedro de la Visitación, 1719), the western façade (or Fachada del Obradoiro) of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela (Fernando de Casas y Novoa, 1750) and Hospicio de San Fernando in Madrid (Pedro de Ribera, 1722), whose curvilinear extravagance seems to herald Antonio Gaudí and Art Nouveau. In this case as in many others, the design involves a play of tectonic and decorative elements with little relation to structure and function. The focus of the florid ornamentation is an elaborately sculptured surround to a main doorway. If we remove the intricate maze of broken pediments, undulating cornices, stucco shells, inverted tapers and garlands from the rather plain wall it is set against, the building’s form would not be affected in the slightest. However, Churrigueresque baroque offered some of the most impressive combinations of space and light with buildings like Granada Charterhouse (sacristy by Francisco Hurtado Izquierdo), considered to be the apotheosis of Churrigueresque styles applied to interior spaces, or the Transparente of the Cathedral of Toledo, by Narciso Tomé, where sculpture and architecture are integrated to achieve notable light dramatic effects.

The Royal Palace of Madrid and the interventions of Paseo del Prado (Salón del Prado and Alcalá Doorgate) in the same city, deserve special mention. They were constructed in a sober Baroque international style, often mistaken for neoclassical, by the kings Philip V and Charles III. The Royal Palaces of La Granja de San Ildefonso, in Segovia, and Aranjuez, in Madrid, are good examples of baroque integration of architecture and gardening, with noticeable French influence (La Granja is known as the Spanish Versailles), but with local spatial conceptions which in some ways display the heritage of the Moorish occupation.

In the richest imperial province of 17th-century Spain, Flanders, florid decorative detailing was more tightly knit to the structure, thus precluding concerns of superfluity. A remarkable convergence of Spanish, French and Dutch Baroque aesthetics may be seen in the Abbey of Averbode (1667). Another characteristic example is the Church of St. Michel at Louvain (1650–70), with its exuberant two-storey facade, clusters of half-columns, and the complex aggregation of French-inspired sculptural detailing.

Six decades later, the architect Jaime Bort y Meliá, was the first to introduce Rococo to Spain (Cathedral of Murcia, west facade, 1733). The greatest practitioner of the Spanish Rococo style was a native master, Ventura Rodríguez, responsible for the dazzling interior of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza (1750).

The architecture of the 17th century

In the Court, during the seventeenth century, an autochthonous Baroque with Herrera roots was cultivated, based on the traditional construction with brick and granite, and the use of steep spiers or slate roofs, which is traced in the so-called Madrid de los Austrias. The main representative of this line was Juan Gómez de Mora. The friars also highlighted Fray Alberto de la Madre de Dios, Pedro Sanchez, author of the church of San Antonio de los Alemanes, brother Francisco Bautista, inventor of a fifth architectural order, composed of Doric and Corinthian and introducer of the themed red domes by Fray Lorenzo de San Nicolás, who is owed, among others, the church of Calatravas. Good examples of the moment are the Plaza Mayor and the Buen Retiro Palace. The latter, the work of Alonso Carbonel, was almost completely destroyed during the War of Spanish Independence, although its gardens are still partially preserved in the Parque del Buen Retiro and some of the surviving parts became the Casón del Buen Retiro and the Museum from army. Other examples of this sober baroque style of the seventeenth century are the Casa de la Villa, the Palace of Santa Cruz, the Palace of the Councils, the churches of San Martín, San Andrés, San Ildefonso de Toledo, Montserrat, San Isidro and the Jesuit Studies annexed, the Monastery of the Incarnation, the Descalzas Reales, the convent of the Calatravas, the Comendadoras de Santiago, etc.

In Castile and the Court stood out a family specialized in the design of altarpieces, the Churriguera, of which José Benito is its most outstanding exponent. Between 1680 and 1720, the Churriguera popularized the combination of Guarini known as “supreme order”, which combined Solomonic columns and compound order. An emblematic work is the monumental major altarpiece of the convent of San Esteban de Salamanca. In Salamanca, Alberto Churriguera designed the Plaza Mayor, which was finished by Andrés García de Quiñones. The Churriguera, with its variegated and monumental style, represent a counterpoint to the sobriety of the Herrerian classicism and opened the doors to the decorative Baroque, to the point that they generically went on to designate a phase of the style, the Churrigueresque, a term coined by academics in the eighteenth century with clear pejorative connotations.

In Andalusian architecture of the seventeenth century, the façades of the Cathedral of Jaén stand out, the work of Eufrasio López de Rojas, inspired by Carlo Maderno’s façade for Saint Peter of the Vatican, and the Cathedral of Granada, designed in his last days by Alonso Cano. Its modernity, based on its personal use of plates and elements with a clear geometric accent, as well as the use of an abstract order, place it at the forefront of Spanish Baroque.

In Galicia, the patronage and influence of the canon of the Cathedral of Compostela, José de Vega y Verdugo, prompted the introduction of full baroque forms in the cathedral works which led to the new style spreading throughout the region. It involved the transition from the classicism of architects like Melchor de Velasco Agüero to a Baroque characterized by a great ornamental wealth whose first and outstanding representatives were Peña de Toro and Domingo de Andrade.

The architecture of the 18th century
In the eighteenth century there was a duality of styles, although the caesuras are not always clear. On the one hand there was the line of traditional Baroque, Castizo or Mudejar (according to the author) cultivated by the native architects and, on the other hand, a much more European baroque, brought by foreign architects at the initiative of the monarchy, which introduces a French taste and Italian in the Court. To the first trend belong prominent architects and altar-builders such as Pedro de Ribera, Narciso Tomé, Fernando de Casas Novoa, Francisco Hurtado Izquierdo, Jerónimo de Balbás, Leonardo de Figueroa, Conrado Rudolf.

Good example of the survival of the traditional baroque in the Court during the eighteenth century was Pedro de Ribera, whose most outstanding work is the Royal Hospice of San Fernando in Madrid. Of the Tomé (Narciso and Diego) highlights the famous Transparent Cathedral of Toledo and, as a strictly architectural work, the University of Valladolid. The Galician focus was masterfully represented by Fernando de Casas and Novoa, whose work summit is the facade of the Obradoiro of the Cathedral of Compostela. In Andalusia, two focuses stood out: Granada and Seville. In the first, the Lucentine architect Francisco Hurtado Izquierdo, author of the tabernacles of the Carthusian monasteries of Granada and El Paular (Rascafría), and also related to one of the most dazzling works of Spanish Baroque, the sacristy of the Carthusian monastery. In Seville, Jerónimo Balbás, who spread the use of stipes in Andalusia and New Spain, and Leonardo de Figueroa, author of the remodeling of the San Telmo School and a group as outstanding as the Jesuit novitiate of San Luis de los French Another focus that enjoyed great vitality during the baroque was the Valencian. A prominent architect was Conrado Rudolf and a paradigmatic facade is that of the Palace of the Marquis of Dos Aguas (1740-1744), designed by the painter Hipólito Rovira. In Murcia, the great renovator of the architecture was Jaime Bort with the powerful imafronte or facade of the cathedral (1737-1754).

From 1730, the impact of the French Rococo is perceived in the Spanish Baroque. Retablistas and architects incorporate rockery as a decorative motif, although they use it in structures with a marked Baroque character. Therefore, except in a few examples, it is risky to talk about the existence of an authentic Rococo in Spain, despite the fact that the eighteenth-century decorative waste of this style has often been associated.

To the second line, that of the most Europeanized baroque fostered by the Bourbons, belongs the Royal Palace of Madrid, built during the reign of Felipe V. This palace, which was built in the line of the great classicist palaces like Versailles, came to replace Alcázar, destroyed in the fire of 1734. Its construction was entrusted to Italian architects: Filippo Juvara, Juan Bautista Sachetti and Francesco Sabatini. Other palatial examples are the royal palaces of La Granja de San Ildefonso (on the Segovian slope of the Sierra de Guadarrama), and that of Aranjuez (on the banks of the Tagus more accessible from Madrid, existing since the sixteenth century, but substantially reformed to mid-eighteenth under Fernando VI and Carlos III). Both are good representations of the integration of architecture and baroque gardens in environments far from the city, which show a remarkable French influence (La Granja is known as the Spanish Versailles). In the 18th century, some churches erected on the Court by Italian architects, such as Santiago Bonavía, who designed the church of San Antonio in Aranjuez or the church of San Miguel in Madrid, moved to Spain proposals of the Italian Baroque in their complicated warped floors. Also it emphasizes the convent of the Real Salesas, founded on 1748 by Bárbara de Braganza, and some works of Ventura Rodríguez, faithful follower of the Roman baroque in churches like the one of San Marcos, in which it fuses the Bernini’s contributions (San Andrés del Quirinal ) and Borromini (San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane).

The rise to the throne of Carlos III in 1759 would bring about the liquidation of the baroque. In the Court, the king carried out a series of urban reforms designed to sanitize and ennoble the unhealthy Madrid of the Austrias. Many of these works were undertaken by his favorite architect, the Italian Francesco Sabatini, in a quite refined and sober classicist language. This academic classicism, cultivated by him and other academic architects, is preparing the foundations of the incipient Spanish neoclassicism. The enlightened ones abhorred the preceding Baroque forms, appealing to the senses and being affected by the people; instead, they advocated the recovery of classicism, by identifying it with the style of reason. The pressures that, from the Royal Academy of San Fernando, his secretary, Antonio Ponz, transferred to the king, led to a series of Royal Decrees from 1777, which prohibited the realization of altarpieces in wood and subordinated all architectural designs of churches and altarpieces to the opinion of the Academy. In practice, these measures were the death certificate of the Baroque and the liquidation of its regional variants, to impose an academic classicism from the capital of the kingdom.

Spanish/Hispanic America
The combination of the Native American and Moorish decorative influences with an extremely expressive interpretation of the Churrigueresque idiom may account for the full-bodied and varied character of the Baroque in the American colonies of Spain. Even more than its Spanish counterpart, American Baroque developed as a style of stucco decoration. Twin-towered facades of many American cathedrals of the seventeenth century had medieval roots and the full-fledged Baroque did not appear until 1664, when the Jesuit shrine on Plaza des Armas in Cusco was built. Even then, the new style hardly affected the structure of churches.

The Peruvian Baroque was particularly lush, as evidenced by the monastery of San Francisco in Lima (1673), which has a dark intricate facade sandwiched between the yellow twin towers. While the rural Baroque of the Jesuite missions (estancias) in Córdoba, Argentina, followed the model of Il Gesù (also the case of the Jesuit Church of St. Paul in Lima, provincial “mestizo” (crossbred) styles emerged in Arequipa, Potosí and La Paz. In the eighteenth century, the architects of the region turned for inspiration to the Mudéjar art of medieval Spain. The late Baroque type of Peruvian facade first appears in the Church of Our Lady of Mercy, Lima (1697–1704). Similarly, the Iglesia de La Compañia, Quito (1722–65) suggests a carved altarpiece with its richly sculpted facade and a surfeit of spiral salomónica.

To the north, the richest province of 18th-century New Spain — Mexico — produced some fantastically extravagant and visually frenetic architecture known as Mexican Churrigueresque. This ultra-Baroque approach culminates in the works of Lorenzo Rodriguez, whose masterpiece is the Sagrario Metropolitano in Mexico City (1749–69). Other fine examples of the style may be found in the remote silver-mining towns. For instance, the Sanctuary at Ocotlán (begun in 1745) is a top-notch Baroque cathedral surfaced in bright red tiles, which contrast delightfully with a plethora of compressed ornament lavishly applied to the main entrance and the slender flanking towers (exterior, interior). The true capital of Mexican Baroque is Puebla, where a ready supply of hand-painted figurines (talavera) and vernacular gray stone led to its evolving further into a personalised and highly localised art form with a pronounced Indian flavour. There are about sixty churches whose facades and domes display glazed tiles of many colours, often arranged in Arabic designs. Their interiors are densely saturated with elaborate gold leaf ornamentation. In the 18th century, local artisans developed a distinctive brand of white stucco decoration, named “alfeñique” after a Pueblan candy made from egg whites and sugar. Earthquake Baroque is a style of Baroque architecture found in the Philippines, which suffered destructive earthquakes during the 17th century and 18th century, where large public buildings, such as churches, were rebuilt in a Baroque style. In the Philippines, destruction of earlier churches from frequent earthquakes have made the church proportion lower and wider; side walls were made thicker and heavily buttressed for stability during shaking. The upper structures were made with lighter materials. Bell towers are usually lower and stouter compared to towers in less seismically active regions of the world. Towers have thicker girth in the lower levels, progressively narrowing to the topmost level. In some churches of the Philippines, aside from functioning as watchtowers against pirates, some bell towers are detached from the main church building to avoid damage in case of a falling bell tower due to an earthquake.

Source From Wikipedia