16th century art Spanish and Portuguese architecture of the 16th century

1. Architecture of the Pyrenees

As in all art, in the field of architecture, Spain and Portugal are still not represented by national movements, there remains a significant influence of works by Italian masters.

Works of art performed by visiting Italians or brought from Italy in finished form are found in Spain in even greater numbers than in France. The oldest Italian building of the early Renaissance on Spanish soil, Calahorra Castle in the "remote corner of Sierra Nevada" was executed by Usti between 1509 and 1512 Genoese architects. But the lion's share of the participation of the Italian masters were staged in the Spanish tombstones in this style. The tomb in the wall niche of Cardinal Pedro Gonzales de Mendoza in the Toledo Cathedral, of course, not at all owned by Andrea Sansovino, is followed by two magnificent Genoese monuments in the niches of the Seville University Church, one of which, the graceful monument to Catalina de Ribera, performed by Pacea Gagini, we already know , followed by a simple tombstone of Archbishop Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1510) of the Seville Cathedral, performed by the Florentine Mikkele, and finally free-standing tombs in the form of the Florentine sarcophagi of Domenico Fanchell Described Yusti: sarcophagus with excellent lying young Prince Don Giovanni in Church communication. Thomas in Avila, a large double sarcophagus with noble and strict lying figures of Ferdinand and Isabella in the Royal Chapel in Granada and a marble sarcophagus with the life and truthful image of Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros in the collegiate church in Alcala de Henares.

Spanish architects still in the full bloom of the XVI century church buildings were erected in the same lancet style. Juan Gilles de Hontanion, for example, in 1513 built a new cathedral in Salamanca in the form of a three-nave hall church in the style of a cheerful late Gothic, and in 1525 with his son Rodrigo the cathedral in Segovia in the form of a late Gothic basilica, with a crowned chapel on the east to the side. Only the domes over the mid-cross and the towers of these churches were later added in the Renaissance style. In the field of secular architecture, the Moorish style with its “azulejos” (glazed tiles), with its stalactite strips and horseshoe-shaped arches, was kept somewhere far in the 16th century, although already in the form of “estilo mudujar”, ​​i.e. mixed with gothic elements and the motives of the Renaissance, as it is in the "House of Pilate" and in the "House of Duenna" in Seville. But the buildings of this kind all predate.

Meanwhile, the real Spanish early renaissance, which began in the already mentioned buildings of the Brussels Spaniard Enrique de Egas, is even more curly than the northern style of that time. He mixes antique motifs with Gothic motifs and, adding to them sometimes Moorish memories, translates everything into a new fantastic whole known from the Spaniards under the name of chased style (Estilo plateresco). Although goldsmiths borrowed it from great architecture, it is still particularly fascinating in some works of Spanish jewelry art. The whole course of this development is clearly reflected in those monstrous for the feasts of the Body of Christ, called the “bush”, which the goldsmiths performed in the form of small church towers. The most famous goldsmiths who performed these works belonged to the surname Harp (Garfe), the founder of which, Enrique, moved from Germany to Leon. Enrique Harp performed his bush in Cordoba (1518) and Toledo (1524) in a rich late Gothic style. His son Antonio d'Arfe, whose bush in St. Yago de Compostela is one of his best works (1540), represents the early Renaissance-plateresco in its greatest splendor. Finally, the son of Antonio, Juan d'Arfe, who migrated to Valladolid, did his best things, namely, the horticultums in Avila (1571), Seville (1587) and Valladolid (1590), already in the pure style of the Italian high Renaissance, which he sang and their didactic verses.

The first and most significant representatives of the Spanish early Renaissance-plateresco in the great architecture were also foreigners; most of these architects were at the same time famous sculptors. After the already mentioned Brussels man Enrique de Egas is immediately Felipe Vigarni de Borgogna from Borgogne from Langres (died in 1543), whose main works are in Buryus. The masterpiece is his tower of chased style above the center of the cross of the cathedral, rising in new splendor after the collapse of the old one (1539–1567). After 1520, Enrique de Egas attached to his former buildings the project of a new cathedral in Granada, in the form of a five-nave basilica, whose royal chapel, still quite gothic, he had already built in 1506–1517. In place of Egas in 1528 is the Spaniard, Gilles de Siloe, the famous son of Diego de Siloe (died in 1563), the best early work of which was the “Gilt Staircase” (Escala Dorada), the profile-rich luxury staircase leading from the upper street down to the north transept of the cathedral in Burgos. In the cathedral in Granada, Diego solved the task of merging the dome over the center of the cross with the altar part (Capilla Mayor), reaching the brilliant eastern end of the transition from the quadrangle to the circumference, and revived all the pillars with rich Corinthian pilasters and semi-columns, the classical proportions of which were met by means of high socles and added antabolates. Behind the cathedral in Granada, whose façade and tower belonged to a later time, follows after 1538 the cathedral in Malaga, the three-nave church of the hall system, decorated with half-columns in two tiers, attributed by Diego de Siloye in exactly the same way, and after 1532 the magnificent Renaissance style Cathedral in Jaen, the main work of the architect Pedro de Valdelvira. One of the main creations of the chased style should then be called the choir and altar part of the cathedral (of the former mosque) in Cordoba (after 1523), which for obvious reasons used Moorish elements that had almost disappeared in the works of Diego de Siloe, and in 1520 known still in the Capilla Mayor Cathedral in Siguenz. The Spaniards contrasted the chased style with the cleaner style of the early Renaissance Diego, in which very well-known Roman ornaments appear - grotesques called Estilo grotesco.

More chic, than in church buildings, chased Renaissance style develops in Spanish semi-secular and completely secular buildings. The truly luxurious building of this style is the Town Hall (Casa de Ayuntamiento) in Seville, which began to be built in 1527 by Diego de Riano (died in 1553). The building richly decorated with stucco ornaments is dissected in the lower floor with lush Corinthian pilasters in the style, with arabesques, and in the upper floor with more lush Corinthian semi-columns decorated with arabesques. Rianio's successor in this building was Martin de Gainza, who according to his plans completed the luxurious sacristy of the Seville cathedral, but he gave his best chased work in 1541 in the Royal Chapel, where the thick candelabra columns are framed with rich sculptural decorations. In Alcala de Genares, the building of the collegium of Cardinal Ximenes and the Archbishop’s Palace, remarkable for its picturesque courtyard and even more picturesque staircase, are the main works of the great Alonso Covarrubias. In León, Juan de Badajoz already in 1510 began to decorate the facade of the Cathedral of Sts. Mark with such mixed forms of chased style imaginable. The façade of the University of Salamanca (1515–1530), with its still gothic details, is one of the earliest and most distinctive chased creations.

Purely Spanish fresh early Renaissance is also evident in the homes of private individuals, for example, in the lovely "Casa Port" in 1550 in Saragossa and in a similar house in 1560 in Barcelona.

Fig. 92. "Villa Madama" by Raphael

The false classic Italian high renaissance clearly knocked at the gates of Spain already very early. His first creation on Spanish soil is considered the remaining unfinished palace in the Alhambra near Granada, which Charles V commissioned to build Pedro Machuca (d. 1550) after 1526, as if the disciple of Raphael. The Tuscan-Doric order is in classical purity in the lower floor, and the Ionic in the upper floor not only of the open gallery, but also similar to the arena of a circular courtyard with columns, which, perhaps, is borrowed from Raphael's Villa Madama. Francisco de Villalpando (died in 1561), translator Serlio, is considered to be the builder of the grand staircase in the courtyard of Alcazar, the royal castle in Toledo, whose chased western facade is attributed to Covarrubias, and the south side with wide Doric pilasters (1571) in rustic is already significant the creation of the main master of the Spanish high Renaissance Juan de Guerrera (1530–1597), whose name is heavy, without ornaments, but the strict and typical Spanish high Renaissance is called the Herrer's style. Herrera received an initial art education in Brussels and was then in Madrid a pupil of Juan Bautista de Toledo (died in 1567), educated in Rome, the author of the first project of Escorial, a huge monastery-palace of Philip II, with performance and completion (1584 .) which is inextricably linked the name of Herrera. It rarely happened that in one step a colossal building was created in such a grandiose size as the Escorial Palace: with its 16 courtyards, 86 stairs, 2,673 windows, with its dedicated saint. Laurentia dome church, its monastery, its library, extensive rooms for housing and for guests, this palace is covered by a huge rectangle marked corner towers. Inside, behind the imposing five floors of bare walls, only at the entrance portal interrupted by a projection, covered with a strict pediment with eight Doric below and eight Ionic columns at the top, hiding the main halls with box-shaped vaults, a huge Doric domed temple, a prototype of a two-story modern court church; there is no lack of noble divisions; in the numerous courtyards with colonnades, with the Doric lower and Ionic upper floors, many charming rhythmic transitions are hidden, full of mood covered galleries and comfortable for contemplation corners. The subsequent best works of Herrera include a part of the pleasure palace of Aranguez, unfinished, unfortunately, the five-naved cathedral in Valladolid with Corinthian pilasters, with rows of chapels and empores, and especially the solid and luxurious Seville Exchange (1583–1598). Its appearance with very thin granite pilasters in the Doric type, in the form of lisins passing in the lower floor, seems to be poor compared to the courtyard, surrounded by beautifully arranged semicircular arcades, below Doric, and above Ionic.

2. Herrer's School

Herrer’s school dominated Spanish architecture until the end of the 16th century and later. If Herrera himself expressed at least one side of the Spanish national character in the powerful nobility of his best buildings, his students began to strive for the international baroque routine.

The Portuguese Renaissance, best known to us after the work of Raczynski, according to studies especially of Vasconcellos in Portugal and Haupt in Germany, went nevertheless here and there in our own ways. Vasari’s four-tower palace of the great Italian Andrea Sansovino, who lived from 1491 to 1499 at the court of John II, can probably be found out together with Rogge in Palacio da Bacalloya of the town of Aceitio. But the early Renaissance Andrea, which had appeared ahead of time, was also lost in Portugal. Gothic, Moorish, Indian-naturalistic and Italian antique elements are mixed in “Manuelevsk art” (Arte manuelina), from which, after the death of Emanuel I (1495–1521), a cleaner renaissance only gradually developed. João de Castillo (circa 1490 to 1550 and later), a great representative of the Manuel style, whose activities were magnificently developed in the monastery of Dos Geronimos in Belem, in the castle of the Knights of Christ in Tomar, in the Monastery of Victory in Batala, and perhaps also on the magnificent facade of the Conseisayo Velha church in Lisbon, only in his last authentic work, the Capellas Imperfeitas loggia in Batala (1533), moved on to the present, but whimsical forms of the Renaissance. In the Gothic-Moorish castle in Sintra, on his Manuel wing, there is a rich decoration in the form of natural wood branches; In the monastery of Santa Cruz and in Sevella in Coimbra, the French art colony already spreads a new style very early. The real Portuguese buildings of the early renaissance of the mid-century are the churches of the C-Milagre in Santarem and the cloister in Peña Longuet near Sintra.

The High Renaissance is in Portugal under John III, who commissioned to translate the works of Albert and Vitruvius and sent Francisco de Goland (1518 to 1584) to Rome to study the art of Michelangelo, which Francisco later defended in his dialogues. The true master of Portugal’s high renaissance, Filippo Terzi, was, however, an Italian who had worked in Lisbon since 1570. Possessing a great inclination towards powerful proportions, he knew how to breathe into ordinary forms, preferring the Doric order, his personal mood, admitting at first only more strict Baroque freedoms. His best Lisbon palaces were destroyed in 1755 by an earthquake. Of the churches, mostly double-decker, below the Doric, and above the Ionic, the facades of Saio Roque (1575), Santo Antonio (1579), Saio Vicente de Fora (1590), and in Coimbra Sanova are preserved in Lisbon. They are joined by cloister dos Filippos in Tomar. His successors followed in his footsteps. By the end of the century, a high renaissance and in Portugal achieved complete victory.