Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ANTONI GAUDÍ: GOD'S ARCHITECT?
Begun in 1882 by public subscription, the
SagradaFamília
was originally intended by its
progenitor, the Catalan publisher Josep Bocabella, to be an expiatory building that would
atone for the city's increasingly revolutionary ideas. Bocabella appointed the architect
Francesc de Paula Villar to the work, and his plan was for a modest church in an orthodox
neo-Gothic style. Two years later, after arguments between the two men,
Antoni Gaudí
- only 31 years of age - took charge and changed the direction and scale of the project
almost immediately, seeing in the Sagrada Família an opportunity to reflect his own deep-
ening spiritual and nationalist feelings. He spent most of the rest of his life working on the
church. Indeed, after he finished the Parc Güell in 1911, Gaudí vowed never to work again
onsecularprojects,buttodevotehimselfsolelytotheSagradaFamília,whichbecameper-
haps the most daring creation in all Art Nouveau. His church design displayed apparently
lunatic flights of fantasy, yet it was always rooted in functionality and strict attention to
detail - Gaudí himself, living in a workshop on site, carried on adapting the plans cease-
lessly right up to his untimely death. Run over by a tram on the Gran Via on June 7, 1926,
he died in hospital three days later - initially unrecognized, for he had become a virtual
recluse,rarelyleavinghissmallstudio.HisdeathwastreatedasaCatalannationaldisaster,
and all of Barcelona turned out for his funeral procession. Following papal dispensation,
he was buried in the Sagrada Família crypt, a fitting resting place for an architect whose
masterpiece was designed (he said) to show “the religious realities of present and future
life … man's origin, his end”. Everything from the Creation to Heaven and Hell, in short,
was included in his one magnificent sacred ensemble.
The building
The size alone is startling - Gaudí's original plan was to build a church to seat over ten thou-
sand people, while the iconic
towers
rise to over 100m high. A precise symbolism pervades
the facades, each of which is divided into three porches devoted to Faith, Hope and Charity.
Gaudí made extensive use of human, plant and animal models, as well as taking casts and
photographs, in order to produce exactly the sculptural likenesses he sought - the spreading
stone leaves of the roof in the church interior, for example, were inspired by the city's plane
trees.Theeastern
Nativityfacade
(facingc/delaMarina)wasthefirsttobecompletedandis
alivewithfecunddetail,itsverycolumnsrestingonthebacksofgianttortoises.Contrastthis
with the Cubist austerity of Subirachs' work on the western
Passionfacade
(c/de Sardenya),
where the brutal story of the Crucifixion is played out across the harsh mountain stone. Al-
though parts of the interior still resemble a giant building site, and the
Gloryfaçade
remains
unfinished, the whole church will be roofed in due course, with a 170m-high central dome
and tower to follow (which will then make the church the tallest building in Barcelona).
