Francisco Bautista
(1594 - May 20, 1679) |
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Art Work
| Name: |
Francisco Bautista |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Murcia |
| Nationality: |
Spanish |
| Birth: |
1594 |
| Death: |
May 20, 1679 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
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Quick Facts
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Architect |
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Biography
| He entered the Jesuit Order at 16 as a lay brother and began his career as a carpenter and assembler of retables. His earliest work included the Mannerist retable in the church of the Jesuit college of Alcala de Henares and the tabernacle in Juan Gomez de Moras Bernadine church (c. 1624-30) in the same city. The latter is an empty, free-standing feature, placed on the altar, quite distinct from the traditional Spanish retable, which rests against the rear wall of the sanctuary. In 1633 he replaced the lay brother Pedro Sanchez (1568-?1633) as master of the works at the church of the Colegio Imperial in Madrid, now the cathedral of S Isidoro. There he built the vaults and the dome over the crossing, the latter being the first instance of the cupula encamonada, a dome constructed using a timber frame (camon), roofed in slate and plastered inside, with a brick drum. The ease of construction of this type of dome, its low cost and its structural stability made it the prototype of Madrid domes in the Baroque period. Bautista reduced the height and width of the nave arcades in S Isidoro and replaced the capitals and entablatures of the facade columns and paired pilasters of the nave with others of his own particular invention. The capitals featured Corinthian foliage surmounted by an egg-and-dart moulding, while the entablatures displayed paired triglyph consoles. Bautista supervised the construction of the churches of the Noviciado in Madrid and of the novitiate house in Toledo, begun by Pedro Sanchez, with details similar to those of San Isidoro. He designed the parish church of the Assumption at Valdemoro (Madrid) in 1654, which was built by his follower Melchor de Bueras, as were also the courtyard, staircase and facade of the Colegio Imperial. The chapel of the Third Order of St. Francis in Madrid, which he also built, isadespite its small sizeahis masterpiece. He did not abandon his first metier as retablist but designed many altarpieces in the church of the Colegio Imperial (San Isidoro) and, especially, in collaboration with Pedro de la Torre, the retable and camarin in the sanctuary of Fuencisla in Segovia, the prototype of many others that were made in the Baroque period in Madrid. This type of retable, the encamonada cupola and the particular order invented by him had much influence in Madrid and hence in other Spanish regions. By the end of his career he had progressed from a late classical style, adorned with Mannerist decorations of a somewhat abstract, diffuse nature, to a Baroque style, characterized by the unified and well-spaced composition of its elements, and an ornamentation of vegetable and naturalistic motifs that emphasized the essential points of the structures. |
Samples of Work
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