Spanish-American Architecture - mexico, buildings, churches, religious, spanish, type and temples

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SPANISH-AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE. A brief study of architecture in Spanish-America must include a glance at the monumental and impressive architecture of the Mayas made up of receding terraced pyramids flanked with stairways and sur mounted by temples of delicate proportions, of pure and refined design, with richly carved ornament decorating their surfaces. In Chichen Itz5, the temples and buildings, 15 to 30o ft. high, square or rectangular in plan, were built of limestone, with walls, bases, cornices, doors and windows, typically Maya corbelled arches and rich ornament with sculptural carving. In the valley of Teotihuacan, about 20 m. from Mexico City, the Toltecs built two pyramids of imposing height and grandeur : one dedicated to the sun and the other to the moon. The former is larger than that of Mycherinus in Egypt. In Teotihuacan the structures are symmetrically laid along the main axis of the city called the Street of the Dead. The outstanding characteristics in the build ings and in the decoration are the use of straight lines, geometric figures, balance of masses, repetition of the same colours and the conventionalized design of plants and animals. The base of the "Ciudadela," the citadel, was 1,300 ft. on the side.

Spanish Colonization.

The outstanding and dominating feature of all architectural work in Spanish-America during the i6th, 17th and 18th centuries is the number, quality and character of the religious buildings that rose from the fertile land conquered by the Spaniards. At first the influence of the Italian Renaissance (see RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE) is evident. Then, gradually a fusion of the European arts, especially the Spanish and Italian Baroque, with the technique and the sentiment of the natives takes place. Finally, in the i8th century—and more so in Mexico than elsewhere—there springs the Ultra-Baroque of Spanish America.

In Peru and Bolivia the native art, which had grown free from all exotic influence and which was unknown to Spain, was un doubtedly a fully developed art that, in spite of persecution and almost total destruction at the hands of the conquerors, had enough vitality left to rise again to influence the architecture and decorative arts of the Spaniards, and to leave in the archi tectural works of these centuries a trace of the lives and very souls of the natives.

This is also true of Mexico, whose architecture has very marked plastic and constructive characteristics which distinguish it from its Italian and Spanish inspirations, and which give it individuality in its arbitrary and flighty but effective ornamentation based on polychromic work. In Mexico, native architecture did not in fluence the colonial religious architecture ; on the other hand, decorative sculpture and carving, among the most vigorous ex pressions of the aboriginal art shown in the native motives, did.

Monks of the Franciscan Order arrived in New Spain in 1523, of the Dominican Order in 1526, and the Augustines in 1533.

The first type of construction used by the missionaries for their churches, in 1564, is that of the basilica (q.v.). The principal part of the convent is the church, and the church's exterior has the aspect of a fortress. This combination of temple and fortress in one building is a characteristic of 16th century religious archi tecture in Mexico. Religious buildings in Mexico may be divided into five types : primitive churches as provisional temples; (2) the basilica type; (3) open chapels; (4) great fortified churches with single nave and no crossing, Romanic buttressing, Gothic vaulting and Renaissance or Baroque ornamentation in the portals ; (5) cathedrals. The Augustines excelled the Franciscans in magnificence. The perfect type of Augustine churches of the middle of the 16th century is the church and convent of St. Augustine Acolman (1539), which had a single nave, no tower, fine frescoes, a beautiful cloister and a Plateresque (q.v.) portal that is the most notable example of this style in America. The Franciscans oriented their buildings from east to west. The con vent of San Francisco in Mexico City was a monument of unusual grandeur and the most remarkable example of its type, covering originally an area of 33,00o square feet. The Dominicans were less sumptuous than the Augustines, but more so than the Francis cans in their buildings, and they tended to make their facades after the severe and sober Herrerian style of the Escorial.