Good Stuff: Masterpiece

Imi spusesem mai demult ca poate ar trebui sa postez la un moment dat despre Catedrala Sagrada Familia din Barcelona, pe care am avut ocazia sa o vizitez in urma cu mai multi ani. Chiar si dupa atata timp tot nu reusesc sa-mi gasesc cuvintele potrivite pentru a descrie sentimentele pe care le-am avut in momentul acela cand privirea mea a intalnit majestuoasa cladire, iar corpul mi s-a oprit brusc in mijlocul strazii in fata acelei frumuseti. Era luna decembrie, zapada nu-si facuse inca simtita prezenta, doar stropii mari de ploaie imi sagetau fiecare por al fetei si frigul acela meditarean de iarna imi strapungea pielea. Simturile mele tactile insa nu mai raspundeau. Altceva imi atrasese atentia si-mi taiase respiratia si toata fiinta mea traia la maxim acel sentiment.

De 126 ani, catalanii asteapta sa vada terminata Catedrala Sagrada Família (Sfanta Familie) din orasul Barcelona. Uriasa constructie este inca neterminata, desi se lucreaza la ea din 1882. Continuarea lucrarilor este finantata din bani publici, asa cum se obisnuia in Evul Mediu.

Numele oficial este "Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família" (in dialect catalan). Proiectul original al Catedralei Sagrada Familia a fost facut de arhitectul Antonio Gaudi, care si-a dedicat aproape toata viata construirii acestei minunatii. Estimarile initiale, bazate pe tehnicile de constructie ale inceputului secolului al XX-lea, preconizau un termen de cateva sute de ani pentru finalizarea proiectului.

Gaudi ar fi comentat, in legatura cu impresionantul termen de finalizare a lucrarilor: „Clientul meu nu se grabeste”. In prezent termenul estimat este anul 2026. Dupa moartea lui Gaudi, in 1926, lucrarile au continuat sub conducerea lui Domènech Sugranyes, pana in 1936, cand au fost intrerupte din cauza razboiului civil spaniol.

Catedrala are 18 turnuri, in ordinea inaltimii reprezentandu-i pe cei 12 apostoli, pe cei 4 evanghelisti, pe Sfanta Fecioara si pe Iisus Hristos. Turnul central - reprezentandu-l pe Iisus - va avea montata pe el o cruce uriasa. Inaltimea acestui turn este de 170 de metri, cu un metru mai mica decat a unui deal de langa Barcelona, deoarece Gaudi nu considera ca lucrarea sa ar trebui sa fie mai mare decat cea a lui Dumnezeu.

Catedrala are trei fatade: a Naşterii (spre est), a Gloriei (spre sud) si a Patimilor (spre vest). Cupola naosului a fost terminată în 2000 iar în prezent se lucrează la turnul lui Isus.

The expiatory church of La Sagrada Família is a work on a grand scale which was begun on 19 April 1882 from a project by the diocesan architect Francisco de Paula del Villar (1828-1903). At the end of 1883 Gaudí was commissioned to carry on the works, a task which he did not abandon until his death in 1926. Since then different architects have continued the work after his original idea. The building is in the centre of Barcelona, and over the years it has become one of the most universal signs of identity of the city and the country. It is visited by millions of people every year and many more study its architectural and religious content. It has always been an expiatory church, which means that since the outset, 125 years ago now, it has been built from donations.

The origins of the Expiatory Church of La Sagrada Família go back to 1866, the year when Josep Maria Bocabella i Verdaguer founded the Spiritual Association of the Devotees of St Joseph, which from 1874 promoted the construction of an expiatory church dedicated to the Holy Family. In 1881, thanks to generous donations, the Association bought a plot of land with a surface area of 12,800 m² between Carrer de Marina, Carrer de Provença, Carrer de Sardenya and Carrer de Mallorca for the site of the church.The foundation stone was laid on 19 March 1882, the feast of St Joseph, at a solemn event presided by the bishop of Barcelona, Josep Urquinaona. Building then began with the crypt beneath the apse after a neo-Gothic design by the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano. A short time later, owing to disagreements with the promoters, he resigned and the commission was handed over to Antoni Gaudí.

After undertaking the project in 1883, Gaudí built the crypt, which was finished in 1889. As he started work on the apse (and the cloister), everything went at a good pace thanks to the donations. When he received a large anonymous one, he thought of doing a new, bigger work: he discarded the old neo-Gothic project and proposed a more monumental and innovatory one in terms of both forms and structures and the construction. Gaudí’s project consisted of a large church with a Latin cross ground plan and high towers; it carried a major symbolic load, in both architectural and sculptural form, with the ultimate aim of being a catechistic explanation of the teachings of the Gospels and the Church. In 1892 he began work on the foundations of the Nativity façade because, as he said himself, “If, instead of making this decorated, ornamented and swollen façade I had begun with the Passion, hard, bare and as if made of bone, people would have stepped back.” In 1894 the apse façade was finished and in 1899 the Roser door, one of the entrances to the Nativity cloister. Alongside these works, at the south-west corner of the church, in 1909 Gaudí built the Temporary Schools, designed for the children of the workers on La Sagrada Família and the local children who were members of its parish. The following year, in 1910, a model of the Nativity façade was exhibited at the Grand Palais in Paris on the occasion of an exhibition of Gaudí’s work, promoted by his friend and patron Eusebi Güell.

After 1914, Gaudí devoted himself exclusively to building La Sagrada Família, which is why there are no other major works from the last years of his life. He became so involved that he lived his last few months right next to his workshop, a room beside the apse used for making scale models, doing sketches and drawings, as a sculpture studio and a space for photographic work, amongst others. In 1911 he planned the Passion façade and in 1923 the definitive solution to the naves and roofs. The works advanced slowly, though, and Gaudí said: “There is no reason to regret that I cannot finish the church. I will grow old but others will come after me. What must always be conserved is the spirit of the work, but its life has to depend on the generations it is handed down to and with whom it lives and is incarnated.” On 30 November 1925 the construction of the first bell tower of the Nativity façade, dedicated to St Barnaby and 100 m high, was finished. This is the only one that Gaudí lived to see built, since on 10 June 1926 he died as a result of a tragic accident three days earlier, when he was run over by a tram. On 12 June he was buried in the Carmen Chapel in the crypt of La Sagrada Família, where his remains still lie today.

When Gaudí died, the management of the works was taken over by his close associate Domènec Sugrañes, until 1938. Later directors were Francesc de Paula Quintana i Vidal, Isidre Puig i Boada and Lluís Bonet i Garí, all associates of Gaudí, people who knew the master and who directed the works until 1983. After that Francesc de Paula Cardoner i Blanch became director and then Jordi Bonet i Armengol, who has occupied the post since 1984. In 1929 the bell towers of the Nativity façade were finished and in 1933 the Faith door and the central cypress.In July 1936, at the time of the military uprising and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, revolutionaries set fire to the crypt, burned the Temporary Schools of La Sagrada Família and destroyed the workshop. At that time the original plans, drawings and photographs were lost, and some of the scale plaster models were smashed. We should point out, however, that since Gaudí’s intervention in 1883 and in spite of those acts of vandalism the building of the church has never stopped and has always respected the will of the architect’s original design.

After the Spanish Civil War the construction of La Sagrada Família began again and the church continued to rise slowly. From 1939 to 1940, the architect Francesc de Paula Quintana i Vidal, an associate of Gaudí since 1919, restored the burnt crypt and reconstructed many of the damaged models, which were used to continue the construction according to Gaudí’s original idea. In 1952 the XXXV International Eucharistic Congress was held in Barcelona, and a number of events were organised in the church on that occasion. The same year the Nativity staircase was built and the façade illuminated for the first time; from 1964 it became permanent at the decision of Barcelona Council. The works continued strongly in 1954, when the foundations of the Passion façade were begun, based on the many studies done by Gaudí between 1892 and 1917. After the foundations came the crypt, where in 1961 a museum was opened to explain to visitors the historical, technical, artistic and symbolic aspects of the church. On that façade the four terminations of the bell towers were erected in 1976; they were finished the following year. One important date is 1955, when the first ‘collection’ was made, a whole day devoted to collecting funds to pay for the works, an initiative that was maintained in the following years as a way for society to take part in the construction of the church. On 19 March 1958, the feast of St Joseph, the sculptural group representing the Holy Family, done by Jaume Busquets, was placed on the Nativity façade. From 1978 the foundations of the nave and the crossing were done and the columns, vaults and façades of the main nave and the transepts were erected. Since 1986, the sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs has been in charge of the sculptural work for the Passion façade, which he has carried out in his personal style over a period of twenty years.

In 2000 the vaults of the central nave and the transept were built and work began on the foundations of the Glory façade. That year, on the occasion of the new millennium, a mass was held inside the church which provided an opportunity to grasp the grandiosity of the work.In 2001 the central window of the Passion façade was completed with the installation of a stained glass window dedicated to the resurrection, the work of Joan Vila-Grau. The four columns of the centre of the crossing were also finished. The figure and work of Gaudí were especially remembered in 2002, when Barcelona Council promoted International Gaudí Year on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth. La Sagrada Família took part with different events, such as the restoration, removal and opening of the Sagrada Família Temporary Schools as a new exhibition space, or the ‘Night of Light and Fire’, a show held on 1 June which, with its special illumination and a spectacular castle of fireworks, was the highlight of the commemoration. In 2002, the sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs did the project for the wall of the prophets and patriarchs which Gaudí located in the porch of the Passion façade, and in 2005 the sculpture of the Ascension was placed between the towers of the façade. At the same time, the eucharistic symbols of bread and wine were placed on the windows of the central nave, the work of the Japanese sculptor Etsuro Sotoo. In 2006 the Glory façade choir was built according to Gaudí’s models. The vaults of the ambulatory of the apse were finished in 2008. Between 2008 and 2010 the vaults of the crossing and the apse are scheduled for completion; on them the tower of the central lantern crowned by a cross 170 m high will be erected, and the apse tower, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The central tower will be surrounded by four others, dedicated to the evangelists. The church will be complemented with the construction of the main façade, the Glory façade.

Christian symbology is to be found in all Gaudí's work, but the most evident example of its application is the church, which tells the life of Jesus and the history of the faith. To that end the church has been built over the years according to Gaudí's original idea, which expresses the Catholic faith in the architecture: Jesus and the faithful, represented by Mary, the apostles and the saints. That can be seen in the eighteen bell towers, which symbolise Jesus, the Virgin, the four evangelists and the twelve apostles; on the three facades, which represent the human life of Jesus (from birth to death), and in the interior, which suggests the celestial Jerusalem, where a set of columns, dedicated to Christian cities and continents, represent the apostles.

Sculpture is a vital element in Gaudí’s work, since he did not see it as an isolated or secondary part, but as integrated into the architecture.For the church, and more specifically for the Nativity façade, which is the one he began and lived to see almost finished, Gaudí needed a large number of sculptures, and so he developed a work method that allowed him to model figures of all kinds.This method included different procedures which were carried out in the workshop located beside the church, where he had his work director’s office and the space where he experimented with techniques and materials. He also made wire skeletons which he stuffed with straw and clothed to try out the forms the sculptures would have. Later, in the modelling studio, he covered them with plaster to make the model which, once approved, was sculpted in stone in the sculpture workshop.

DETALII de pe fatadele catedralei:

TURNURI vazute dintr-un corp al catedralei:

SCARA interioara intr-unul dintre turnuri:

When work began on the church, in 1882, the architects, the bricklayers and the labourers worked in a very traditional way. When Gaudí took over the direction he was aware that the works were complex and difficult and tried to take advantage of all the modern techniques available. And so, among other resources, he had railway tracks laid with small wagons to transport the materials, brought in cranes to lift the weights and had the workshops located on the site to make the work easier. Today, 126 years later, the building of the church follows Gaudí's original idea and, just as he himself did, the best techniques are applied to make the building work safer, more comfortable and faster. It is some time now since the old wagons gave way to powerful cranes, the old manual tools have been replaced by precise electric machines and the materials have been improved to ensure excellent quality in the building process and the final result. The present Church Technical Office and the management are charged with studying the complexity of Gaudí's original project, doing the calculations and the building plans and directing the works as a whole.

The church is located in a zone which in the 19th century, when development began, was far from the historic city centre, with fields of crops and just a few houses. The plot on which the church is built is set in a block of Eixample houses, the well-known grid or urban weft conceived by Ildefons Cerdà in 1860. It is bounded by Carrer de Mallorca, Carrer de Marina, Carrer de Provença and Carrer de Sardenya. In 1905, when the town-planner Lleó Jaussely produced his City Plan, a set of links known as the Jaussely Plan, he asked Gaudí to make a proposal for the surroundings of the church so as to include it in his project. So that there could be a proper view of the church and its main parts, and so that it would be possible to see the group of volumes and masses in their full expressiveness, Gaudí thought of the ‘optimal viewpoints’, in other words, the distances and perspectives advisable for a proper view. The result was a star-shaped structure free of buildings; hence the concept of ‘starred ground plan’. He made a first model with eight points that turned out to be ideal but excessively expensive, since the amount of land that had to be bought pushed up the price of the project. And so Gaudí made a second proposal, more limited and adjusted to the possibilities of the local administration of the time. Once again, the structure was star-shaped, now with four points and four different viewpoints that showed the four façades.In 1907, Jaussely incorporated the solution proposed by Gaudí into his City Plan, but it never went ahead. In 1916 Barcelona Council asked Gaudí for fresh proposals and an estimate of the cost involved in the acquisition of plots of land with a view to the new City Plan of 1917. Gaudí presented his new star-shaped ground plans, signed in October 1916 and on a scale of 1:2000. Barcelona Council never carried out any of the projects proposed by Gaudí, but they did open a diagonal avenue from the Hospital de St Pau to the apse of the church. That solution pleased the architect because it almost coincided with one of the viewpoints he had proposed. It was named Avinguda de Gaudí. In 1928, two years after Gaudí’s death, a large square in front of the Passion façade, named Plaça de la Sagrada Família, was developed and in 1980 a second one was created in front of the Nativity façade, called Plaça d'Antoni Gaudí. In the seventies a particular building was erected in front of the Glory façade, the place where Gaudí had planned to build a great staircase leading up to the church. The present Barcelona City Plan proposes to leave a free space sixty metres wide in the central part of the two blocks of houses which separate the Glory façade from Avinguda Diagonal.