Thus the pilasters of the second story are of the baluster type, emulating, that is to say, the forms which can be obtained in wood by turning on a lathe; the ornament is lavishly expended over the whole front in a rich encrustation, and, as in the case of Salamanca, already alluded to, increases in boldness of relief toward the top. Moreover, the vivacity is enhanced by the intricate mitreing of the courses of the entablatures, broken round the projection of the pilasters. The handsome patio is double-storied, respectively in the Doric and Corinthian orders. The sumptuous marble staircase was added in the eighteenth century, during the reign of Charles III.
Classical Style.—Even while the plateresque style was flourishing a more direct invasion of Italian influence was in progress.
Palace of Charles V.—The earliest example of this is in the Palace which Charles V began to build on the hill of the Alhambra. The work was entrusted to Pedro Machucha, who, like Berruguete, his assistant in the design, had studied in Rome. The plan is a square, enclosing a circular court, and the style is Palladian. Each façade, measuring 207 feet in length and 53 in height, is composed of rusticated masonry and pilasters in the first story and, in the second, of an order of Ionic pilasters, supporting a Doric cornice. In both stories occurs a mezzanine floor lighted by circular windows. The circular court, nearly one hundred feet in diameter, is surrounded by a lower and an upper open colonnade, respectively of the Doric and the Ionic order. A tribute exacted from the Moriscoes or survivors of the Moors, who were permitted to remain after the expulsion of the majority, defrayed the cost; but their insurrection in 1568 interfered with the work, which dragged on during Philip II’s reign, until it was abandoned before completion. The roof was never built; nor the octagonal chapel, crowned with a dome which, at the northeast angle, was to dominate all the buildings of the Alhambra. The unfinished building further suffers from the competition of the Alhambra, which is the chief attraction to every visitor, so that insufficient justice has been done to the grandeur and dignity of the design.
The Escoriál.—Philip II’s cessation of work upon his father’s palace may have been largely due to his preoccupation with the memorial to his own memory—the Escoriál. By the terms of his inheritance he was bound to erect a mausoleum for his father. He enlarged the scheme to be a burial place also for himself and succeeding Catholic Kings and added a church, a monastery, and palace.
Situated thirty-one miles from Madrid and overlooking the intermediate landscape, this prodigious congeries of buildings occupies a rocky plateau that juts out from the precipitous side of the Guadarrama Sierra and is extended by immense foundations. Its plan, which tradition says was to reproduce the gridiron on which St. Lawrence suffered martyrdom, is a gigantic rectangle, 675 feet by 530, from which projects the handle, a small rectangle. One enters on the mountain side, the Patio of the Kings. Along the right extends the monastery, terminating in the cloistered Patio of the Evangelists; while along the left is the College, terminating in the Palace. But the chief feature is in front of us, the vestibule of the church.
The latter is built over the mausoleum-crypt, in the form of a Greek cross, after the original plan of S. Peter’s, Rome. Its Capilla Mayor adjoins the small projecting annex, which contained the private apartments of the royal family: the King’s small, cell-like bedroom, commanding a view of the High Altar, so that, unseen, he could participate in the service of the Mass.
The work was begun by Juan de Bautista and continued by Juan de Herrera. But Philip himself perpetually supervised the design, which reflects his character not only in the ambitiousness of its dimensions but also in the grim plainness of the façades. Constructed of grey granite, cut in large blocks, they are composed of five stories, the windows of which are square headed, without dressing of any kind, and ranged in rows, without any attempt at grouping, so that the façades present a bare and barrack-like appearance. Meanwhile an effect of grandeur is produced by the immense scale of the whole mass, while the sky-line is rendered imposing by the towers, crowned with lanterns, which flank the façade of the church, and by the noble dome and lantern, built entirely of stone, on which rises in sequence a pyramid, a hollow ball, and a cross. The interior of the church, designed in the Doric order with flattish vaulting, is again of majestic scale and of extreme simplicity, which, however, is contradicted by the extravagant paintings on the ceilings. A feature of the church is the removal of the coro from the floor to a gallery so that there is less interference than usual in a Spanish church with the impressiveness of space.
The severely classical style of the Escoriál was a reaction from the luxuriousness of the plateresque and the extravagance of the so-called “Grotesque Style,” which Berruguete, a pupil of Michelangelo, introduced into his sculptural decorations. The absence of embellishment and reliance upon a strict use of the orders caused the classic style to be known as Griego-Romano, though, as a matter of fact, it was in nowise Greek.
Churrigueresque Style.—By the seventeenth century Spain, denuded of her foreign possessions by Holland and England and impoverished with war and corrupt government, had reached a condition of national exhaustion. In consequence no new buildings of importance were created, and such additions as were made to existing ones were chiefly in the nature of sculptural embellishments, which reflected the prevailing taste for the baroque. This, toward the end of the century, passed into the glaringly ostentatious and vulgarly meretricious Churrigueresque style, called after its principal perpetrator, the sculptor Churriguera.