Neoclassicism in Spain
The replacement on the Spanish throne of the Habsburg dynasty by that of the Bourbons, with the arrival of Felipe V, was a determining factor for the entry of foreign artistic currents and the change of taste in Spanish arts.. The artists called to work in the royal palaces, mainly French and Italian, brought to Spain the artistic manifestations of French classicism and Italian classicist baroque, while Spanish artists were immersed in a national baroque that would survive until the end of the century.
Another decisive event for the introduction of the imported artistic style was the fire, in 1734, of the old Alcazar of Madrid, residence of the Habsburg family. Felipe V requested the presence in Madrid of the architect Filippo Juvara (1678-1736) to draw up the plans for the new royal residence. With Juvara first and, after his death in 1736, with Giovanni Battista Sacchetti (1690-1764) came the Italian classicist Baroque. Many of the future Spanish architects were trained in the work of the Palace and many sculptors and painters worked on its decoration.
In any case, it is the kings who sustain this artistic renewal, making use of an institution, the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts, which promotes while exercising control over the arts. Little by little, enlightened reformism was established, relying on the help of notable Spanish enlightened figures such as Aranda, Campomanes, Floridablanca, Jovellanos or Antonio Ponz for its renewal projects.
The San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts was officially created in 1752 thanks to the wishes of King Ferdinand VI. The Preparatory Board of the Academy, established a few years earlier, already showed in its composition the presence of foreign artists who worked on the royal works, such as its main promoter and president, the sculptor Giovanni Domenico Olivieri or some of its directors such as the sculptor Antoine Dumanché, the painter Louis-Michel van Loo and the architect Giovanni Battista Sacchetti. To them, however, Spanish artists were immediately added, such as Felipe de Castro, director of the sculpture section since its foundation, with a classical training acquired in Rome that distanced him from the late Baroque practiced by the previous ones. The orientation of the Academy, always entrusted to its direction to the artists, was marked from the beginning by the king who, with an enlightened concept of the function of art, wanted the renewal and control of artistic production so that it could serve as decoration and exaltation to the Crown. In the image of the Madrid Academy, those of the rest of Spain emerged.
With the accession to the throne of Carlos III in 1760, the leading role of the king and of the Academy became clearer. The new monarch had supported the excavations of the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii in Naples, his enthusiasm for architecture and the other arts, his interest in the classical past and his support for the edition of the Antiquities of Herculaneum. In 1783 he published a Royal Order by which the professions of the Noble Arts of Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture and Engraving were declared free, since then being able to be practiced without the need to be part of a guild. With this, the Academy became the only instance authorized to issue titles or rationalize the learning of the arts, controlling the orientation of artistic production, to which pensioners in Rome contributed to outstanding students.
The process of introducing neoclassical currents in Spain has in common with the rest of Europe the deep analysis that is made of the sources of classicism, the interest in archaeology, the study of treatises, the criticism of tradition and the rejection of the last baroque. Although the development of Neoclassicism in the three arts did not coincide in time, it can be said that it had its first manifestations during the reign of Fernando VI (1746-1759), flourished under Carlos III (1759-1788) and Carlos IV (1788- 1808) and still continues, after the War of Independence, with Fernando VII (1808-1833), although already coexisting with other more innovative currents.
Architecture
It was in architecture where the renewal impulse was appreciated before, with the handiwork of the Royal Palace of Madrid, where the most notable architects of the second half of the century emerged XVIII. In this environment, first, at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts, later, the architectural conceptions were reviewed, all agreeing, despite the different existing postulates, in contempt for the traditional Baroque, contemptuously labeled churrigueresque, which was wanted to be associated with popular ignorance and bad taste.
From the Enlightenment project, architecture should not be limited to specific interventions, but was part of a whole that had the mission of achieving an adequate framework for the lives of citizens. Thus, the cities had to improve their sewerage services, water connection, cleaning up streets with lighting and cobblestones, hospitals, gardens, cemeteries, etc. In summary, there was great interest in endowing the towns with a more noble and luxurious appearance that could reflect the greatness of the sovereign and the well-being of his subjects. It was also necessary to improve the road infrastructure, to easily communicate the different areas and thus speed up trade and industry. The foundation of new populations served to colonize sparsely populated areas and thus control the territory. Hydraulic works are also promoted, such as canals and aqueducts, to facilitate the transport and distribution of the water necessary for irrigation of the fields and for consumption.
Within these enlightened companies is the colonization of Sierra Morena and Nueva Andalucía with the foundation of towns such as La Carolina, La Carlota, Almuradiel, etc. along the Camino Real de Andalucía, or the creation by military interests of the new coastal towns of Ferrol or Isla del León (San Fernando). It is also important to highlight the construction of canals, such as the Castilla or Imperial de Aragón, which were considered an important means of irrigation and transportation. All these works were carried out with the work of architects but, above all, of military engineers.
The Academy undertakes the task of finding an ideal model for architecture. It is about reviewing and criticizing all the previous treatises, from Vignola to Palladio or Serlio, trying to go directly to the sources of the past with trips to see the ruins, catalog and study them, in order to draw conclusions of universal validity.
Diego de Villanueva (1715-1774), director of Architecture at the Academy, published in 1766 in Valencia the Collection of different critical papers on all parts of Architecture, where he shows knowledge of the theories Laugier or Algarotti rationalists then in fashion in Europe. Among his built work, the reform of the Goyeneche Palace on Calle de Alcalá in Madrid stands out for its symbolic meaning, for the headquarters of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (1773), a reform that consisted of mutilating the richly ornamented baroque façade that years before it had been built by José Benito Churriguera.
The architect Ventura Rodríguez (1718-1785) also stood out during these years, notable for the number of works he built and for the control he exercised over architecture throughout Spain from the Academy and the Council of Castilla. His work is the remodeling of the Basilica del Pilar in Zaragoza, with the construction of a free-standing chapel for the worship of the Virgin inside the great temple. The chapel is designed as a huge canopy built in colored marble and bronze very much in line with the late Roman Baroque that he had learned in the work of the Royal Palace in Madrid. He is also the author of the convent of the Agustinos Filipinos de Valladolid (1759 ff.) Which, although it brings memories of Escurial to the outside, has echoes of Juvara's work in Turin on its floor. The plans for the façade of the Pamplona cathedral (1783) are of a more rigorous classicism, the curtain behind which the primitive Gothic building is hidden. The architectural designs for the monumental fountains in the Salón del Prado also belong to him.
With the arrival of Francesco Sabatini (1721-1797), who arrived from Naples with Carlos III with the mission of addressing the king's reformist policy in the field of architecture, Ventura Rodríguez found himself relegated in royal favor. Sabatini designed the main staircase of the Royal Palace of Madrid (ca. 1761) and was involved in the construction of monumental works for Madrid, representative of royal power, such as the Puerta de Alcalá (1764-1776), which commemorated the entry of Carlos III into the capital, the building of the Royal Customs House of Madrid (1761-1769), today the Ministry of Finance, on Alcalá street, and the General Hospital (1781), current Reina Sofía Museum, started by Rodríguez, all inside of the rationalized design of the classicist Baroque that he had known in Naples. Sabatini's activity covered the field of civil architecture and military engineering; He directed numerous works throughout Spain, from the cathedral of Lérida to the arms factory in Toledo or the layout of the new town of San Carlos on the Isla del León (Cádiz).
After a few years of enormous critical and theoretical work from the Academy, a new generation of architects began to work whose most representative figure is Juan de Villanueva (1739-1811), brother of the aforementioned Diego. He is the architect who best reflects the achievement and codification of an authentic neoclassical language, while his work as a royal architect makes him the translator of the king's tastes. He was the author, in the Royal Site of El Escorial, of the houses of Offices in front of the monastery and also of the Casitas de Arriba and de Abajo, buildings with a totally classicist appearance. Included in the enlightened cultural program of the government of Carlos III are three of Villanueva's most emblematic works: the Prado Museum, the Botanical Garden and the Astronomical Observatory. The current Museo del Prado was thought of as an Academy of Sciences or Cabinet of Natural History and began in 1785; its architecture of perfectly refined classical forms, made up of independent volumes connected to each other, is a sample of the neoclassical way of combining pure forms.
A contemporary of Villanueva was Ignacio Haan (1758-1810) who stood out for his works in Toledo under the enlightened patronage of Cardinal Lorenzana; He is the author of the University building (1792) with a patio with Ionic columns and a lintelled structure, a true manifesto of Neoclassicism.
The Basque Country was an admirable focus of classicist architecture. Justo Antonio de Olaguíbel (1752-1718) built the Plaza Nueva in Vitoria, with which he reflects a Spanish tradition of a porticoed main square with austere and uniform elements, a model that will later continue in Bilbao, with the Plaza del Príncipe, and in San Sebastián, with the Plaza de la Constitución, built by Pedro Manuel de Ugartemendía.
Due to contacts abroad, through the theoretical texts that have been translated and the architects' trips to Rome or Paris, around 1790 Spanish architecture lived a moment similar to that of other European countries. Isidro González Velázquez (1764-1840), a disciple of Villanueva, created in the Casita del Labrador del Real Sitio de Aranjuez (1794), with the collaboration in the decoration of the Platinum Cabinet of the architects Napoleón Percier and Fontaine, a work that combines rationality, a taste for antiquity and French fashions. On the contrary, Silvestre Pérez (1767-1825), more in the line of visionary architects, bases all his architecture on the use of pure and independent volumes, as in the parish of Motrico (1798) or that of Mugardos in La Coruña. (1804).
Sculpture
Neoclassical sculpture had a particular and less visible development than in other arts. The tradition of images weighed heavily on it, with works in polychrome wood, which had been habitual in the devotional customs of the Spaniards, for which reason there was hardly a monumental sculpture that was not linked to religious needs. For this reason, the first signs of change are directed towards the French Baroque brought by courtly sculptors.
From the Academy, artists such as Francisco Gutiérrez (1727-1782) or Manuel Álvarez de la Peña (1727-1797) created sculptures in noble materials, in many cases destined for urban decoration. Gutiérrez is the author of the Cibeles Fountain (1780-86) and collaborates in the sculptural part of the Puerta de Alcalá, both in Madrid. Álvarez sculpted the Fountain of Apollo or of the Four Seasons and Juan Pascual de Mena (1707-1784), a precursor of the new trends, the Fountain of Neptune, both on the Paseo del Prado in Madrid.
But the imagery did not disappear and the sculptors, taking advantage of the teachings of the Academy, came to make a high-quality polychrome sculpture. One example is José Esteve (1741-1802), trained at the Academy of San Carlos in Valencia, author of beautiful images such as the Immaculate Conception of Valencia Cathedral. José Ginés (1768-1822) collaborated with Esteve in the preparation of the Príncipe's Nativity Scene (Royal Palace and San Fernando Academy), a genre that is still common.
With Juan Adán (1741-1816), who trained at the Academy of Zaragoza and was a pensioner in Rome, the definitive step towards Neoclassicism took place. Appointed chamber sculptor in 1795, he made portraits of Carlos IV and María Luisa de Parma (1797, Royal Palace); they have the bombast of the apparatus portraits but with the severity in the faces of the Roman statuary. His is the Venus of the Alameda de Osuna, a truly faithful interpretation of Roman models.
José Álvarez Cubero (1768-1827) from Córdoba is an example of Spanish Neoclassicism who, although he had received an initial education in the Baroque, later competed in Rome for clientele with sculptors such as Canova. He was the sculptor of Fernando VII's chamber and his famous group The defense of Zaragoza is very representative of this Hispanic Neoclassicism that owes both to classical statuary and to the lesson of Canova.
In Catalonia, the teachings of classicism from the Llotja de Barcelona school are manifested in the sculptor Damià Campeny (1771-1855); his Dead Lucrecia (1804, Lonja de Barcelona) has all the serenity of classical sculpture but some hints of romantic melancholy. Neoclassical sculpture had a long epilogue in the work of Antonio Solá (1787-1861), author of Venus and Cupid (1830, Art Museum of Catalonia) and the group of Daoiz and Velarde (1830, Madrid, Plaza del dos de mayo), a conventional use of classicism to portray romantic heroes.
In the Canary Islands, the personality of Fernando Estévez (1788-1854), the highest representative of classicism in the Canary Islands, stood out. His work consists mainly of religious sculpture, although he also made pictorial compositions, was a skillful urban planner, and designed commemorative monuments. An admirer of Canova and defender of everything that meant progress, he held the position of Professor of Drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts of the Canary Islands. He is known for having made the image of Our Lady of Candelaria (1827), Patroness of the Canary Islands and the magnificent carving of the Nazareno (1840) of Santa Cruz de La Palma.
Painting
The monarchs Felipe V and Fernando VI had called on French and Italian painters, such as Louis Michel van Loo, Jacopo Amigoni or Corrado Giaquinto, who began decorating the Royal Palace. Later Giambattista Tiepolo, the great Venetian fresco painter, decorated three of the vaults of the royal residence with his decorative and colorful painting.
But the regeneration of Spanish painting occurred with the arrival in Spain in 1761, called by Carlos III, of the bohemian artist Anton Raphael Mengs. His arrival disrupted the order that had existed until then because his guidelines were faithfully followed by the King, who granted him all imaginable honors, exercising from the Academy, as a painter and as a theoretician, an authentic artistic dictatorship that influenced the the training of Spanish painters. Mengs made decorations for some of the vaults of the Palace, predominating in all of them a precise drawing and a lack of expressiveness; in The Triumph of Dawn or Hadrian's Apotheosis , the calculated simplicity of composition recalls The Parnassus that he painted in the Albani villa in Rome. He collaborated with him in the Royal Palace Mariano Salvador Maella (1739-1819), who also made decorations for the palaces of Aranjuez, El Pardo and El Escorial; His distant style and his somewhat strident coloring did not prevent him from making splendid portraits such as that of Carlos III (1785) with cold colors and patent varnishes. José Vergara Gimeno (1726-1799), founder of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia (1768), is the most important figure in the introduction of neoclassical postulates in the city of Turia.
Many painters worked as cartoonists for the Tapestry Factory that Mengs directed, such as the Bayeu brothers, José del Castillo or Francisco de Goya. For the tapestries, Mengs preferred customs or hunting themes often related to Dutch painting, and he encouraged traditional customs with genre scenes. José del Castillo stood out with his exquisite hunting scenes such as those that adorn the Prince's room in the El Escorial palace. The Bayeu cultivated the fresco, especially Francisco (1734-1795) who collaborated in the decoration of the basilica of Pilar in Zaragoza and in the oratory of the Royal Palace of Aranjuez (1791); Ramón, less brilliant, specialized in cartoons for tapestries that he solved with a loose and precise technique. He also worked at the Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) Tapestry Factory, Francisco Bayeu's son-in-law, but his work, due to its breadth and variety, exceeds the narrow limits of Neoclassicism and deserves a broader study.
After the War of Independence, other younger painters emerged who followed orthodox Neoclassicism, to later move towards more eclectic styles. Prominent among them are José Aparicio (1773-1838), José de Madrazo (1781-1859) and Juan Antonio Ribera (1779-1860), who learned the international style in Rome and admired the great Jacques-Louis David, but who later they evolved and occupied an important position in Spanish art. His works show the perfect knowledge of the classical world, the balance between color and drawing in his compositions, but also a capacity to adapt to the bourgeois art that Romanticism imposed.
Literature
Criticism against baroque excesses in the literary field arose during the second decade of the XVIII century and grew with the passing of the years At the same time, a new ideal was outlined that rejected recreational and fictional literature, proposing a credible, rational and didactic literature. While Luis de Góngora was accused of being the main architect of the destruction of poetry, the works of Garcilaso and his followers were valued, considered as a model of clarity, order and harmony. Literary genres such as the essay or the epistolary genre gained new momentum at this time, while others, such as the theater, were renewed. Some of the authors who led this period in Spain were José Cadalso, Benito Jerónimo Feijoo and Leandro Fernández de Moratín. Classical rules such as meter, rhyme and rhythm are respected. Real events are reported. It had to have a didactic purpose, that's why fables arise; the critical and scientific spirit also arise.
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