Plateresque

Facade of the University of Salamanca.

Portada del Hospital de los Reyes Católicos, en Santiago de Compostela.

The Plateresque, also called Plateresque Gothic, Proto-Renaissance, Isabel style, Catholic Monarchs style (the latter two in reference to its first phase) and Príncipe Felipe style (referring to its Renaissance phase), was an artistic trend, especially architectural, developed by the Spanish monarchy in the peninsula Iberia and the imperial territories of America and Asia, which appeared between the late Gothic and the Renaissance, at the end of the XV century, extending over the next two centuries, it is recognized as a genuinely Spanish style.

Results from a modification of the Gothic space and an eclectic fusion of Mudejar, Flamboyant Gothic and Lombard decorative components, as well as early Renaissance elements of Tuscan origin.

Examples are the inclusion of shields and pinnacles, the facades divided into three bodies (while the Renaissance ones are divided into two) and the columns of the Renaissance tradition. It reached its maximum expression during the reign of Carlos I, especially in Salamanca, although it also flourished notably in other cities of the Iberian Peninsula such as León and Burgos and in the territory of New Spain that is today Mexico. Sometimes considered common Renaissance and other styles of its own, it is sometimes called Early Renaissance and First Renaissance as a refusal to consider it a style in itself.

The style is characterized by a prolific decoration that covers the facades with plant elements, chandeliers, festoons, fantastic creatures and all kinds of figurations. The spatial configuration, however, more clearly followed a Gothic reference. This fixation by specific parts, without structural modifications with respect to the Gothic and barely spatial, make it often classified as a variation and not as a style. In New Spain, the Plateresque acquired its own configuration, clinging strongly to its Mudejar heritage and mixing with influences indigenous.

In the 19th century, with the rise of historicism, Plateresque architecture revived under the names of Monterrey style and Spanish style.

Etymology

The Plateresque name refers to the profession of silversmith. The Sevillian historian Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga used it for the first time in the XVII century, applying it to the description of the Sacristy of the Seville Cathedral in the 3rd volume of his Annals, some authors have erroneously linked this qualifier with the Royal Chapel, which Ortiz de Zúñiga mentions in his work later, in the 4th volume.

Problems of geographic extension and consideration as style

Casa de los Montejo in Merida Mexico

Plateresque Altar of the Cistercian monastery of Santa Maria del Salvador, in Cañas (La Rioja).

Sepulchre of Juan de Ortega in the church of the convent of Sta. Dorotea, Burgos.

Fachada del Ayuntamiento de Sevilla a la Plaza de San Francisco obra de Diego de Riaño.

Alonso de Villaseca tomb in the church of San Miguel arcángel of Mexico City, Mexico

Home of the House that killed the animal in Puebla de Zaragoza, Mexico, decorated with hunting scenes and caves

Traditionally it has been considered an exclusively Spanish style (or current), understanding by Spanish the territories that were in the hands of the Crown between the 15th and 17th centuries. However, in the middle of the XX century, this geographical delimitation was questioned under the arguments of various authors, especially Camón Aznar (in 1945) and Rosenthal (in 1958), who, by defining Plateresque generically as a unitary amalgamation of found elements (Gothic, Muslim, Renaissance), stop considering the first a style to include it in the Renaissance, and warn the second its association with certain buildings in other European countries, mainly France and Portugal, but also in Germany and others.

This problem highlights the inappropriateness of the name Plateresque and its classification as a style, inclining to consider it a period of confusion and transition between styles, characterized by decorative profusion as architects were unable to develop new spatial or structural trends. Sometimes this is even reduced to treating Plateresque as the substitution of Gothic decoration for Serlian-inspired Italian grotesques.

Whatever the thesis, however, Plateresque or Proto-Renaissance is admitted as an art that responded to the demands of Spain, a country that had just concluded the Reconquest and arrived in America, beginning to perceive its riches, and entering into a spiral of large constructions that today we consider monuments.

Features

Spanish Plateresque

The altarpiece-facades were typical, made as if they were careful goldsmith works, prolifically decorated. The decoration, although it obtained diverse inspirations, was fundamentally vegetal, although it also had a profusion of medallions, heraldic elements and animal figurations, among others. There is also a richness in the materials: gold sheets on crests and finials, vases, etc. At the end of the first third of the XVI century, greater polychromy is observed and historically based crests and balustrades appear, in addition to decoration more verbose.

The extension of the decoration throughout all the architectural surfaces results in the creation of new surfaces and subspaces, fundamentally decorative of the place where they are located, which in turn are profusely decorated, such as niches, niches and aedicules.

Likewise, Italian elements were progressively included as decoration: padding, classical capitals, Roman arches and, above all, grotesques.

The decoration used had specific meanings, and could not be read only descriptively. Thus, laurels, warlike motifs and an abundance of horns were placed in the homes of prominent soldiers. For the same reason, the staging of Greek and Roman fables abstracted humanist ideals, with which decorative logic became a means to express and disseminate Renaissance ideas.

Certain spatial aspects were also implemented and preferred. In this way, open-box caustral stairs were built. However, there were hardly any spatial modifications with respect to the Gothic style.

American Plateresque

In the Americas, especially in present-day Mexico, certain indigenous cultures were in artistic phases that can be considered baroque when the Spanish brought Plateresque with them. This mixed symbiotically with local traditions, so that Gothic architecture did not arrive in America as such, but through a Plateresque that quickly moved first with indigenous influences and later with African ones, evolving into what came to be called a American Baroque.

History

Plateresque follows the line of the Isabel style, where decorative elements from Iberian and Italianate traditions form complex ornaments that are superimposed on Gothic structures. Subsequently, one can speak of a Plateresque that retained Gothic forms as a base until 1530. After that date, although Plateresque ornaments continued to be used and evolved, they became part of an architecture that was already beginning to assume Renaissance ideas. In 1563, with the beginning of the construction of the monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Renaissance architecture was refined thanks to the interventions of Juan de Herrera, putting an end to the splendor and extension of Plateresque in the Iberian Peninsula. In Mexico without However, it was not forgotten, giving rise to a Neoplateresque in the 18th century.

In any case, Plateresque, considered or not as a style and exclusively Spanish or otherwise European, represents the transition between Gothic and Renaissance styles.

Elizabeth style (15th century)

In the XV century, a tendency to decorate with flamboyant motifs from Flanders began to develop in the Crown of Castile, and Islamic Castilian architecture, which received the name of Elizabethan style because most of the orders came from Isabel la Católica. These ornaments, which became progressively more complex, did not influence the internal structure of the buildings.

Something similar happened around the same time in Portugal, in what came to be called the Manueline style.

Plateresque Gothic (late 15th century-1530)

At the end of the XV century, Gothic buildings began to be masked, especially with grotesques, without these changing in principle their spaces or their structures. This process began when the Renaissance elements arrived in Spain, which are applied by copying them, figuratively, but without understanding them; that is to say, without getting rid of medieval ideas and forms.

In fact, many of the Plateresque buildings were already built, with which only layers of Renaissance ornamentation were added, especially around the openings (windows and doors), and in general, with exceptions, to all elements not tectonic.

Although the name Plateresque is often applied to architecture, the act of superimposing new Renaissance elements on forms governed by medieval parameters is also visible in Spanish painting and sculpture of the time.

Plateresque Renaissance (1530-1560)

Plateresque cover of the parish church of La Garrovilla (Badajoz, early 16th century).

Period in which the Renaissance had already been fully assumed in the Iberian Peninsula, although it had not yet reached its maximum expression. This will be the modifications of Juan de Herrera and Felipe II in the plans of the El Escorial monastery, whose construction began in 1563.

In these dates the decoration, although profuse, follows completely Italianate parameters and is applied to constructions designed according to Renaissance logic.

Monterrey style (19th century and first third of the 20th century)

The Monterrey Palace.

In the XIX century, the Monterrey style appeared —name given by the palace of Monterrey (Salamanca)—, Spanish style or Neoplateresque, a historicism centered on the Plateresque, understanding this as a national style.

The style survived until the first decades of the XX century, immersed in national revivals and regional, widely spread although hardly accepted, being able to find some examples on the Gran Vía in Madrid.

Mexico also produced a new expression of Plateresque, the success of which spread to the southwestern United States, beginning in the first half of the century XVIII. Do not confuse this Neoplateresque with that of Spain at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, the so-called Monterrey style.

Examples

Plateresque architects and artists

• From the first plateau.
  • Diego de Alcázar
  • Alonso de Covarrubias
  • Martin de Gainza
  • Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón
  • Gil de Siloé
  • Andrés de Vandelvira
  • Diego de Riaño
  • Diego de Siloé
  • Vasco de la Zarza
  • Juan de Talavera
• Neoplater.
  • Eduardo Adaro
  • José López Sallaberry

Architectures and other Plateresque works

• The main cover of the Cathedral of Piura, Peru.
• The facade of the convent of San Marcos (Leon).
• The tower of Guadramiro (Salamanca).
• The castle of Maqueda.
• The western facade of the Torrijos Colegiata.
• The facade of the Palace of Santa Cruz (Valladolid).
• The facade of the University of Salamanca.
• The Hostal de los Reyes Católicos Santiago de Compostela.
• The minor Royal Basilica of Saint Mary the Major in Pontevedra.
• The facade of the New Cathedral of Salamanca.
• The facade of the convent of San Esteban de Salamanca.
• The cloister of the Convent of Dueñas in Salamanca.
• The facade of the church of Sancti Spiritus in Salamanca.
• The facade of the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso, of the University of Alcalá.
• La Casa de las Conchas de Salamanca.
• The first two bodies of the tower and the cover of the chains of the cathedral of Murcia.
• The Town Hall of Seville.
• The facade of the Pardon and the Balcony of the Relics of the Cathedral of Coria.
• The Gate of the Pellejeria of Burgos Cathedral.
• The King of Burgos Hospital.
• The trascoro and antecripta of the Cathedral of Palencia.
• The main cover of the Cathedral Primada de América in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
• The University of Oñate
• The Charles V Gate in Vivero.
• La rejeria de la Casa de Pilatos Sevilla.
• The facade of the church of St. Thomas in Haro.
• The pulpit of the Church of Saint Andrew the Apostle of Villanueva de los Infantes (Real City).
• The cover of the church of the Assumption of Manzanares.
• The Velarde Palace in Santillana del Mar (Cantabria).
• Portada del Alhorí en Alcaraz (Albacete).
• The cloister of the Royal Monastery of San Zoilo, Carrion de los Condes, Palencia.
• Alonso de Villaseca tomb in the church of San Miguel arcángel of Mexico City, Mexico.
• Facade of Casa de los Montejo in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico.