The Spanish 17th century has been harshly judged on the basis of its economic or political decline. However, its originality and richness with regard to arts and letters were never questioned. Furthermore, in both aspects it was a varied period, full of contrasts. In architecture it became progressively Baroque; in painting and sculpture it produced deeply realistic and human art. Spanish architectural baroquism was bitterly criticized by writers of the late 18th century.
We’ve seen when talking about the Baroque art in Italy, that international interest in the Baroque stems from the work of the Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin in his book “Renaissance and Baroque” (1888). From the point of view of architecture, in Spain this interest was not felt until well into the 20th century. At the beginning of this century the judgment and condemnation of the Baroque pronounced by the writers of the Neoclassical period was still in force. The terrible nonsense of the Spanish critics of the 18th and 19th centuries about the masters of the Baroque period is curious. Writer Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez didn’t include the architect José de Churriguera in his “Historical Dictionary of the Most Illustrious Professors of Fine Arts in Spain” (1800, 6 Vols.). For Neoclassical academics, the Baroque was an error, a degeneration, an unspeakable aberration. José Caveda y Nava (historian and art critique) not only condemned the Baroque in his “Historical essay on the various genres of Architecture used in Spain from Roman domination to the present day” (1848), but he wished that the Spanish had not participated in that great error. “It will not be, however, the Spaniards,” said Caveda y Nava, “who must answer to Europe for the corruption of the architecture of this era. Borromini deserved, as heresiarch of the arts, the disapproval of the good writers who survived him…”
Romantic writers and poets ignored the Baroque, because if they had paid attention to it, they would surely have been interested. All their enthusiasm and admiration was concentrated on Gothic cathedrals and buildings. The rehabilitation of the Baroque in architecture didn’t come until it was considered a parallel, complementary manifestation of the poetry of the 17th century. When the whole world began to show great esteem for “La Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea” (1612) by Luis de Góngora (1561-1627), the Spaniards realized that Baroque architecture and sculpture represented an identical escape from Classical logic and were not necessarily reprehensible. In the same way that ‘conceptism’ (‘conceptismo’) was given the imprecise name of ‘gongorism’ (‘gongorismo’) when referring to Baroque Spanish poetry, so the Baroque was called “Churrigueresque*”, derived from the name of the architect José de Churriguera, an unfortunate name because, as we will see later, it wasn’t even Churriguera responsible for this style in Spain, nor he was its most fervent cultivator.
There is no doubt that during the 17th century, in both Italy and Spain, the Baroque was in their environment. So if, in part, Spain imitated what was happening in Italy, Baroquism would have occurred anyway in Spanish art, even if artists like Bernini or Borromini had not existed. What it’s more, if anything, the Italian influence did nothing more than to delay an evolution that had already begun at the end of the 15th century. The first influence that came from Italy to interrupt this path was the most severe facet of Italian Renaissance art: the “Greco-Roman” architecture of Juan de Herrera.
Thus, once the direct Herrerian influence was over, the Baroque trend soon became apparent. The importance that was previously attributed, in relation to the entry of the Baroque, to the work of the Italian architect Giovanni Battista Crescenzi (1577–1635), who intervened in the Pantheon of the Kings of El Escorial, is today greatly diminished; Juan Gómez de Mora (1586–1648), Herrera’s disciple and nephew, had a greater part in this project. Crescenzi limited himself to taking care of its decoration, helped by bronzesmiths who had come with him from Italy.
Another significant figure of the time was Alonso Carbonel (1583-1660), author of the Buen Retiro Palace (1631-1633) and its dance hall (“Casón del Buen Retiro“) built in 1638. In any case, in these works, the Baroque is reduced to the decoration of the surfaces, without affecting the general conception of the buildings. However, in the middle of the 17th century, Andalusia was the Spanish region where “Baroque” was conceived and realized in a more original way.
The façade of the Granada Cathedral, by the versatile Alonso Cano (1601-1667) is nothing more than an outstanding testimony of that Andalusian Baroque style that is manifested in the floor plans and, above all, in the façades of many temples, and especially their interior decoration.
But the Baroque flourished in Murcia and Valencia during the second half of the century. In this city with examples as clear as the hexagonal tower of Santa Catalina, by Juan Bautista Viñes, built in 1688-1705, whose angles, on which the slender and graceful structure rests, are transformed into coiled columns (Solomonic columns) in the fifth floor. In Valencia itself we must mention the presbytery (High Altar) of the cathedral, a work that involved a Baroque remodeling of a Gothic interior, carried out in 1674-1682. Its author, Juan Bautista Pérez Castiel (1650-1707), who had been in Italy, achieved with this work a perfect camouflage of the medieval space. The Gothic vaults disappeared, as if they had never existed, under the Baroque ornaments and Solomonic columns.
The Baroque construction ardor extended northwards, along the Mediterranean coast, towards Catalonia. In Vinaròs (Castelló de la Plana) the façade of the Church of the Assumption, apparently also built by Bautista Viñes, in 1698-1705, is surprising for its striking mixtilinear cornice supported on corbels, and for the estípites* that appear on the second level. All of these are details that won’t be seen again until 20 years later in the Andalusian Baroque.
Slightly earlier (ca. 1701) is the rich façade of the church of Santa Maria de Caldes de Montbui (Barcelona), the work of P. Rupin and P. Sorell, with two triple groups of Solomonic columns decorated with tendrils and clusters of vine. Also in Barcelona is the Church of Our Lady of Bethlehem (1680-1732), the work of Josep Juli, whose sumptuous interior decoration was destroyed during the fire of 1936, but fortunately its rich stone exteriors survived almost intact. Here, certain details that remind us of the style of Borromini are visible.
But the authentic contribution of the Roman, Borrominesque and Berninian Baroque was the breaking of the façades’ plane, its composition through concave and convex surfaces. This happened for the first time in Spain on the main façade of the Valencia Cathedral and its ‘Iron Gate‘ (‘Puerta de los Hierros‘), begun in 1703 by Konrad Rudolf, a German who had studied in Paris and Rome, and who left Valencia in 1707, leaving only the ground floor of this façade finished. The rest was continued, following his project, by F. Stolf and Francisco Vergara, and completed in 1740. The date of its completion meant that its sculptural decorative elements are typically in the Rococo style, like the group of angels worshiping Mary placed above the door. But the concave and convex surfaces designed by Rudolf, which give the façade of Valencia Cathedral the quality of a membrane on which different pressures of internal and external forces are exerted, are purely Baroque in conception.
Another important center of Baroque architecture in Spain was Zaragoza, with the construction of the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar (‘Catedral-Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar‘) begun around 1675 by Zaragoza native Felipe Sánchez, with Baroque elements by Francisco de Herrera ‘the Younger’, beginning in 1680. The sanctuary, as is known, was not completed until the middle of the 18th century in a Neoclassical style, but from its appearance it is a typically Baroque monument.
Less Spanish (because of the author of its project, an Italian: Carlo Fontana) is the Sanctuary of Loyola. An advanced facet of Spanish Baroque (known as ‘Churrigueresque Baroque‘ or ‘Ultra Baroque’ because of its elaborate sculptural architectural ornamentation) is shown in this temple in its exterior decoration, which is due to one of the Churrigueras, Joaquín, in 1720.
But the great “deed” of Spanish Baroque architecture had to consist of the renovation (or more appropriate, of the ‘covering’) of other ancient center of devotion: the transformation of the Romanesque basilica of Santiago de Compostela. It was also a late achievement, although its construction began in the mid-17th century. Beginning in 1666, architects José de Vega y Verdugo and José de la Peña de Toro built the Porta Real da Quintana, in a corner of the cathedral transept, where the remodeling works of this temple began. Despite the extraordinary decorative ornamentation of this Portico -its only Baroque element-, its construction lines still obey the most classic schemes of the Renaissance. This portico was completed by Domingo de Andrade in 1700, who built some of the columns that span two floors of windows, the balustrade with large pinnacles, and an aedicula (small shrine) with an equestrian statue of Saint James (disappeared).
The magnificent and monumental Baroque façade of the Obradoiro, the main façade of the temple and the work of the Galician architect Fernando Casas y Novoa, was not started until 1738 although designed years before. The name Obradoiro alludes to the square in front of the façade (Obradoiro square), thus named because of the workshop (in Galician: obradoiro) of stonemasons who worked on the square during the construction of the cathedral.
Casas y Novoa was the great final figure of the purely Baroque tradition of the 17th century. Before him, chronologically, were the members of a family of architects of Catalan origin, the Churrigueras, who established in Madrid around 1650. José Benito de Churriguera was the main figure of the family, and in whom some have wanted to see the beginning of the most exaggerated (that is the most ‘ornate’) phase of baroquism, although, as we will see, this was in no way true. Born in Madrid in 1665, he competed with another Madrid native of German origin, Teodoro Ardemans, who in the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso demonstrated that he accepted French and Germanic tendencies. At the time, José Benito was his assistant.
In 1692 José de Churriguera moved to Salamanca with his brother Joaquín, author of the façade of the Colegio de Calatrava and the dome of the New Cathedral, that was destroyed in the earthquake of Lisbon in 1755 and was therefore replaced with a Neoclassical dome by the architect Juan de Sagarvinaga, which is the structure that can be seen today.
The year after his arrival in Salamanca, in 1693, José de Churriguera created the great Baroque altarpiece in the Convento de San Esteban, a magnificent example of rich imagination because of the combination of its details. In addition to the golden Solomonic columns, this altarpiece is enriched by curved elements that give relief to the central panel and by golden imitations of tapestries decorated with tassels. This gargantuan altarpiece has six large Solomonic columns, decorated with plant motifs, that run along its first level, in the center of which is the central tabernacle designed as a small temple and flanked by a pair of columns on each side. The second level of the altarpiece enshrines a painting by Claudio Coello depicting the martyrdom of St. Stephen. The altarpiece is completely gilded and covered with profuse decoration.
To José de Churriguera (or José Benito, as he was actually named) erroneously have been attributed many buildings and constructions, that made him to be considered as the creator of a style in turned called “Churrigueresque“. His nephew Alberto was, however, the author of the magnificent Plaza Mayor in Salamanca, so classic for the simplicity of its lines, begun in 1728, and which was not completed until 1755 with the façade of the Town Hall, a work by Andrés García de Quiñones.
The criticism of the “Churrigueresque” style by Neoclassicist advocates intensified particularly around the works of the Madrid-born Pedro de Ribera and his followers, due to the exacerbated ornamentation of their works. Such exaggeration took shape, however, especially on the façades. Born in 1683, in 1726 Pedro de Ribera succeeded Ardemans as “maestro mayor” (“master builder”) of the Madrid City Council. In the fine Chapel of the Virgen del Puerto he worked in a traditionalist way, while in its ornamentation he conformed to the “plain” style. Where his exuberance was manifested, was in the façade of the Church of San Cayetano (today the parish of San Millán and San Cayetano), in Madrid, and in the ornate façade that presides over the old Hospice, today the Museum of History of Madrid, as well as in the façade of the Cuartel del Conde Duque, both executed between 1720 and 1730.
Related to the trend (although not to the style) of Ribera is the famous “Transparente” of the Cathedral of Toledo, a work signed by Narciso Tomé in 1726, but that due to its continuous undulating lines it is included within the “rococo” style, which will be discussed in a later essay.
Another type of superabundance of decoration during the 18th century is located inside the sacristy of the Cartuja de Granada (‘Granada Charterhouse’). The building project started in 1516, but the sacristy was built between 1727 and 1764 by Luis de Arévalo and F. Manuel Vásquez.
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Churrigueresque: (from the Spanish: Churrigueresco). Also known as “Ultra Baroque”. The term refers to a style of the last phase of the Spanish Baroque characterized by an elaborate and profuse sculptural architectural ornament which also employed stucco decoration in the late 17th century and was used until about 1750. It employed extreme, expressive and florid decorative detailing, normally found above the entrance on the main façade of a building. Named after the architect and sculptor, José Benito de Churriguera (1665–1725), the origins of this style are said to go back to the architect and sculptor Alonso Cano, who designed the façade of the cathedral of Granada, in 1667.
Estípite: A type of pilaster typical of the Churrigueresque Baroque style of Spain and Spanish America used in the 18th century. The estípite is a reinterpreted column with the shape of an inverted cone or obelisk and with varied decoration. Its shaft is always wider in its middle part than the base and capital. It was widely used between 1720 and 1780.
The Artistic Adventure of Mankind 