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position as page to C
HARLES
I. His intelli-
gence and enthusiasm won him appoint-
ment as one of his sovereign's most trusted
aides de camp. Garcilaso's good looks,
charm, and wit became legendary, and his
early death in a reckless attack on the
French fortress of Nice enshrined him in
the patriotic pantheon. But Garcilaso's
claim to fame rests on more distinctive and
enduring achievements, for he was the
principal exponent of the literary tech-
niques of Renaissance Italy in a Spain that
was still old fashioned and somewhat stolid
in its poetry at the beginning of the 16th
century. Garcilaso's mastery of all the major
Italianate forms was demonstrated in a slim
volume of his work published a few years
after his death and guaranteed his position
as the first poet of the S
IGLO
D
E
O
RO
. He
was not merely an adroit versifier, with a
gift for transforming the new Italian style
into the Castilian language, but also a mas-
ter of deeply felt emotions and images. All
the great writers who followed him, down
to C
ERVANTES
and beyond, acknowledged
their debt to him and the inspiration pro-
vided by his life and work, however brief
both of these were.
sions during the late 19th century. Para-
doxically the man who many regard as the
greatest Spanish architect of the 20th cen-
tury not only opposed many characteristic
manifestations of Spanish culture but stood
apart from the mainstream of Spanish life.
All of Gaudí's work was executed in or
near B
ARCELONA
, frequently under the
patronage of wealthy Catalan families who
committed themselves to the support of an
individual who might, by conventional
standards, be considered eccentric. Gaudí
passed through several stages of architec-
tural inspiration, drawing from neogothic
and, later, Middle Eastern models, and was
for a time influenced by the baroque. All of
these, however, were increasingly trans-
formed and dominated by his preoccupa-
tion with materials and forms derived from
nature, including plants, trees, and marine
life. Among his most notable and strikingly
“different” works were the Güell Estate
and the Palau Güell (from the late 1880s),
Casa Calvet (1890-1904), Casa Batlló
(1904-06), and Casa Milà (1905-10). Each
of these was designed by Gaudí down to
the last detail, including ornamentation,
lighting systems, and furniture, and could
be truly described with the much-over-
worked term
unique.
In 1883 Gaudí was selected to design
and build the church of the Sagrada Familia
(Holy Family), which was intended to be a
“penitential temple.” The building was
conceived by devout Catalans as a repara-
tion to God for the violence and irreligion
that they perceived to have dominated
much of modern Spanish history. Like the
medieval cathedrals that often required
centuries for completion, this project
would continue throughout the remainder
of Gaudí's life and remains to date unfin-
Gaudí i Cornet, Antonio (Antoni
Gaudí i Cornet)
(1852-1926)
Spanish architect
Born of an artisan family in C
ATALONIA
,
Gaudí obtained his diploma as an architect
in 1878. His early work was important in
preparing his understanding of the deeper
roots and broader meanings of architecture
in the modern world. At the same time it
enabled him to steep himself in the Catalan
nationalism that challenged Castilianism
both in the political and cultural dimen-
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