The drawing of the bell tower of the church of San Félix of Gerona

MIGUEL ÁNGEL CHAMORRO TRENADO Y ARTURO ZARAGOZÁ CATALÁN

The drawing of the bell tower of the church of San Félix of Gerona is the oldest architectural plane of Spain. This is a scale plan on paper. This is simple but interesting, and served to project the bell tower. The difficulty of this project was to reuse pre-existing constructions. Probably the plan is part of the contract. Informations about the church, the mason master, and the workshop help to understand the drawing. Reference to other contemporary designs allows us to understand its function.

“She said it was not without reluctance that she let her portrait be painted”: The modesty and invisibility of Queen Isabel of Bourbon (1635-1643)

LAURA OLIVÁN SANTALIESTRA

The aim of this article is to show how political changes in the Madrid court affected the image of Isabel of Bourbon. Production of her portraits ran in parallel with political fluctuations and the desire of her main rival for the King›s affection, the Count-Duke of Olivares, to be visible. Between 1635 and 1638 the Queen appeared only in collective portraits, forming part of an odd triangle of power with Philip IV and the royal favourite. From 1642, Isabel of Bourbon occupied the post of regent to the monarchy while her husband was away in Aragon owing to the war against Louis XIII. It was during this period that the Count-Duke became more invisible. This was in contrast to the greater visibility of the Queen, whose image succeeded in displacing that of the favourite following his fall from grace in February 1643.

Andrés García de Quiñones: His start in the proffesion and his activity in Portugal and Ciudad Rodrigo

Mª NIEVES RUPÉREZ ALMAJANO

The work of the architect Andrés García de Quiñones in his first years as a professional has been the object of conjecture until now. The information we contribute here helps to clarify his professional development and delays the date of his intervention in the Jesuit College in Salamanca. In 1731, while still very young, he moved to Viseu to direct the construction of the convent of the Néris, with its famous suspended stairway, a powerful display of architectural mastery. Upon returning home he made his way by working in different royal works begun in the Concepción Fort and in Ciudad Rodrigo, among them the arsenal and the gunpowder storehouse, which created many problems for him. Also attributed to these years are two designs of his of the New Cathedral in Salamanca, which have turned out to be an exceptional graphic document for knowledge of the early dome and the tabernacle-altarpiece.

The fires in ‘the Lights’: Visual cultures in Enlightened Spain

JULIÁN VIDAL RIVAS

Participating in the visual spectacular baroque scopic regime itself, fireworks devices were part of cultural representation in eighteenth century Spain, throughout the change from the great visual apparatus of the reins of Felipe V and Fernando VI to its disappearance with the arrival on the throne of Carlos III. The identification of fireworks with the political, cultural and economic practices of the old regime, their visual kinship with other types of fires, the high risk of accidents and the enlightened interest for savings and regularization of expenses led to its obsolescence in institutional practice. Its playful usefulness and the implication in devices of political representation were substituted by participatory sociability practices, with which a new visual culture of modernity and social progress grew, economically sustained by the momentum of public usefulness.

Geometry in architecture and art of the 20th century: The cube as reference shape

EMILIO CHAMORRO FERNÁNDEZ

At the beginning of last century, the thinking was connected with the analytical reason, that based on logical and mathematical processes tending toward abstraction. The Cartesian method, instigator of a world subdivision into elementary parts, found its modern correspondence in the decomposition of bodies and objects in elementary geometries. The principle of shapes regularity became the identity of a new era in architecture and art that breaks away from ornamental and figurative language. On this basis, the text proposes a cross-reading, which analyzes the “cube” as conceptual and seductive volume, that many professionals have chosen for their creative production in the last hundred years.

· BIBLIOTECA·

GILEX KNOX — Las últimas obras de Velázquez. Reflexiones sobre el estilo pictórico (José Riello)

MARKO DANIEL Y MATTHEW GALE (EDS.) — Joan Miró: La escalera de la evasión (Joan Robledo Palop)