biography
| name: |
Churriguera, José Benito
|
pronunciation:
[chureegayra]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1665–1725)
|
| biography:
| Sculptor and architect, born in Madrid, Spain, the brother of Joaquin and Alberto Churriguera, who were also architects. He was the most renowned representative of a family of Catalan Baroque artists. He trained under his father in Madrid, and became famous in 1689 for winning a competition to design Queen María Luisa's catafalque. He also designed the reredos of the Church of San Esteban in Salamanca. Although it has not been possible to attribute many architectural works to him, he certainly designed the Palacio Goyeneche in Madrid (now the Academia de San Fernando), and the village of Nuevo Baztán (1709–13), which demonstrate his intention to return to the classicism of Palladio and Herrera, in an age when the official architects of the court, as in the rest of Europe, were tending towards a cosmopolitan Baroque which was to result in Rococo. It is ironic that the name of Churriguera - an architect concerned with accuracy and symmetry - has served to describe the most unbalanced and extravagant phase of the Spanish Baroque. |
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