Renaissance
In Spain, Renaissance began to be grafted to Gothic forms in the last decades of the 15th century. The style started to spread made mainly by local architects: that is the cause of the creation of a specifically Spanish Renaissance, that brought the influence of South Italian architecture, sometimes from illuminated books and paintings, mixed with gothic tradition and local idiosyncrasy. The new style was called Plateresque, because of the extremely decorated facades, that brought to the mind the decorative motifs of the intricately detailed work of silversmiths, the "Plateros". Classical orders and candelabra motifs (a candelieri) were combined freely into symmetrical wholes.
In that scenery, the Palace of Charles V by Pedro Machuca, in Granada, supposed an unexpected achievement in the most advanced Renaissance of the moment. The palace can be defined as an anticipation of the Mannerism, due to its command of the classical language and its rupturist aesthetical achievements. It was constructed before the main works of Michelangelo and Palladio . Its influence was very limited, and, misunderstood, Plateresque forms imposed in the general panorama.
As decades passed, the gothic influence disappeared and the research of an orthodox classicism reached high levels. Although Plateresco is a commonly used term to define most of the architectural production of the late XV and first half of XVI, some architects acquired a more sober personal style, like Diego Siloe and Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón.
Examples include the facades of the University of Salamanca and of the Convent of San Marcos in León.
The highlight of Spanish Renaissance is represented by the Royal Monastery of El Escorial, made by Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera where a much closer adherence to the art of ancient Rome was overpassed by an extremely sober style. The influence from Flanders roofs, the symbolism of the scarce decoration and the precise granite cut were established as the basis of a new style that would influence Spanish architecture for a century: Herrerian. A disciple of Herrera, Juan Bautista Villalpando was influential for interpreting the recently revived text of Vitruvius to suggest the origin of the classical orders in Solomon's Temple.
Read more about this topic: Spanish Architecture
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