Speak the Culture: Spain: Be Fluent in Spanish Life and Culture

High times: the Renaissance in Andalusia

Although a sizeable chunk of early Renaissance

architecture fell within the bounds of Plateresque,

clawing back at Isabelline Gothic with one hand and

across to Italy with the other, another portion explored a

purer Renaissance mode. It was more reserved and, as

the symmetry and solemnity of classical style began to

find wider appreciation from the late 1520s, formed the

main thrust of Spain’s take on the High Renaissance.

While Plateresque appeared mostly in Castile y León,

the purer style rooted itself in Andalusia. Michelangelo’s

former student Pedro Machuca shaped the Palace of

Carlos V in 1527. Despite its parasitical location,

devouring Granada’s Alhambra from within, the building

is an important High Renaissance palace with its two-

storey, circular, colonnaded courtyard. Nowhere else in

Spain, or indeed Italy, better captured the movement’s

classical sense of decorum. Across town, a year later,

the architect and sculptor Diego de Siloé (best

remembered for the earlier Plateresque Escalera

Dorada (Golden Staircase) of Bugos cathedral) got to

work on Granada’s Gothic cathedral, adding classical

columns, round arches and a dome. In Úbeda, north-

east Andalusia, de Siloé’s pupil, Andrés de Vandelvira,

created a town-sized tribute to pure Renaissance

style. He designed for the town’s wealthy patrons,

contributing the monumental Hospital de Santiago and

Palacio de las Cadenas to the finest collection of civil

Renaissance architecture in Spain.

The Renaissance ends with self-discipline

Spain’s love for the pure Italianate style was fleeting and

a new Iberian twist on the architectural aesthetic of the

day soon took shape.This third phase gathered the

restrained aplomb of Machuca, Vandelvira and de Siloé

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“WHO HAS
LANGUAGE TO
SPEAK OF THE
CHURCH OF TOLEDO?
AND OF THAT OF
SEVILLE? AND OF
THAT OF LEÓN?
ABOUT WHICH THE
LATTER THEY SAY
THAT MIRACULOUS
CRAFTSMEN IN
SILVER COULD
NOT CONTRIVE
BETTER?”
Cristóbal de Villalón,
author writing in 1539.
Was it a first, tenuous
reference to Plateresque?

What a dump
Escorial translates
roughly as ‘dump’.
Apparently Felipe II’s
palace-cum-monastery
was built atop the
slagheap of a long
defunct iron mine.

Juan de Herrera’s
uncluttered style, best
seen at El Escorial, is
described in his
homeland as theestilo
desornamentado,
referring to its lack of
decoration.