Silvestre Perez and Martinez

Silvestre Pérez: project of chinesco masks with two proposals of elevation and plant. Drawing to feather and water. National Library of Spain.

Silvestre Pérez y Martínez (Épila, Zaragoza, 1767-Madrid, 1825) was a Spanish architect with neoclassical character and training.

Biography

Educated by Agustín Sanz from 1777 to 1781, a disciple of Ventura Rodríguez from 1781 to 1785, his subsequent stay in Rome as a pensioner (1791-1796) coincided with the spread of French ideas and the crisis of the classical mode —especially in concerning Vitruvianism—because the questions to which the new archaeological knowledge of the Greek world led were revealing. His research in Rome focuses on making plans of Roman ruins, with the intention of defining the space of the ancients, and taking advantage of this learning, outside of decorative displays and focused on spatial issues that he would apply in his later compositions..

Our Lady of Assumption in Motric.

Puerto de la Paz, Bilbao, Silvestre Pérez, 1807.

He formulated a series of exercises, which he called minimal constructions, in which one can observe the sacralization of previously profane themes, such as the library. These interferences are also palpable in the built architecture. For example, in the church of Motrico (1789), he translated the idea of a classical temple into a Christian parish and years later, in 1807, in the church of Santa María de la Asunción (Bermeo) (which remained unfinished in 1820) Pérez achieved clearly differentiate the baroque temple from the classic, thanks to the fact that the façade does not become a transposition of the altarpiece, but of the plant. Although these two churches belong to the Basque area, Pérez has a fruitful activity in the intervening years. At the Academy, apart from his teaching work, he is secretary of the architecture commission from 1800 and simultaneously carries out an activity as urban planner and architect, which fills his work with suggestions. In the Basque Country he traced the project of Nuevo Bilbao or Puerto de la Paz (1807).

Some of his outstanding work coincided with the French occupation. As King José Bonaparte's architect, he created the triumphal arch at the Puerta de Toledo in Madrid, a commemorative work in which his taste for Roman architecture can be appreciated.

In 1810 he was appointed municipal architect of Madrid and he planned some ambitious projects that would have meant a great reform of part of the city, such as a viaduct that saved the slope of Segovia street with which he tried to unite the Royal Palace with the church of San Francisco el Grande and thus achieve an image of the city as a courtly façade towards the river. The new sense that it would acquire would represent the union of the executive and legislative powers (the church of San Francisco was the seat of the Cortes at that time), being an alternative to the axis of Paseo del Prado. But economic limitations prevented the work from being carried out and forced Silvestre Pérez to confine himself to more modest projects, such as the layout of the Plaza de Santa Ana (1810), in which he already raised the urban theme of the landscaped space, and that of San Miguel (1811).

Once José Bonaparte fled Spain, collaboration with his regime forced him to follow in his footsteps and went into exile in the neighboring country. This event marked his career. At the beginning of the reign of Ferdinand VII he returned, already exculpated from his Frenchified position, and joined the Spanish artistic scene, although he was neglected in favor of less creative but more politically faithful architects. In the Basque Country he carried out the Vitoria Theater, the old San Sebastián City Hall and other projects that would not materialize, such as those of the Plaza Nueva or the Bilbao City Hall. In Seville he would make a report on certain structural problems of the Temple of the Tabernacle, as well as the layout of the bridge that would connect Triana with the city, to replace the existing boat bridge.