An Architect's Note-Book in Spain: principally illustrating the domestic architecture of that country.Wyatt, M. Digby (Matthew Digby), Sir
History
An Architect's Note-Book in Spain: principally illustrating the domestic architecture of that country.
Wyatt, M. Digby (Matthew Digby), Sir
Architecture -- Spain
IN noticing my ninety-first sketch I took occasion to comment on the
difference which existed between Spanish and Catalonian architecture,
and Spanish and Catalonian character. Both are pressed upon one's
attention in looking over a house which, like the one I have sketched in
the Calle de Moncara at Barcelona, appears to have been the comfortable
home of a well-to-do merchant, with roomy stores and warehouses on the
ground floor facing the entrance, domestic offices to the left, and
counting-house and living rooms on the first floor, with bedrooms above.
As is becoming in the house of one welcoming alike buyer and seller, we
find a total absence of that almost Asiatic privacy which the Spaniards
generally, and especially the Andalusians, appear in their homes to have
adopted from Moorish models. Under the old Counts of Barcelona the
architecture of the city had no doubt been mainly French. After the
annexation of the city to the crown of Aragon, the architecture became
tinctured with detail corresponding with much yet to be seen at
Saragossa and elsewhere in Aragon, and finally after the consolidation
of the whole monarchy by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, and
the expulsion of the Moors, Barcelonese architecture fell under the
Plateresque revival and the subsequent Greco-Roman mania which affected
all Spain. The date of erection of the house of which I now give a
sketch, appears to have brought it under the second of these two sets of
conditions. In the twisted column, its cap and base, and some other
features, we may recognise the Aragonese style, while in the staircase
and some of the windows there is to be traced, I consider, a decided
French influence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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