http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/sandamichaela-1680369-valladolid-colegio-sangregorio/

Valladolid is the capital city of the autonomous region of Castile and León and the Province of Valladolid in north-western Spain. It has a population of 313,437 people, making it Spain's 13th most populous municipality and northwestern Spain's biggest city. Valladolid was originally settled in pre-Roman times by the Celtic Vaccaei people. The Catholic Monarchs, Isabel I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, married in Valladolid in 1469 and established it as the capital of the Kingdom of Castile and later of united Spain. Christopher Columbus died in Valladolid in 1506, while authors Francisco de Quevedo and Miguel de Cervantes lived and worked in the city.

The Colegio de San Gregorio is a historical building in Valladolid, Spain, currently housing the National Museum of Sculpture. It is one of the best examples of architecture in the period of the Catholic Monarchs in Spain (late 15th-early 16th centuries), and was founded as a Theology College for the Dominican order.

He designed the Franciscan Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes, Toledo (from 1476), which incorporates muqarnas under the springing of the vaults. His style can best be seen at the castle of El Real de Manzanares, near Madrid (1475–9), with vigorously modeled muqarnas cornice, and at the Palace of El Infantado, Guadalajara (1480–3), where the façade is enriched with projecting diamond-shaped stones arranged in a rhomboid grid all over the wall. He worked at the Cathedrals of Segovia and Toledo, and designed the Chapel of the Dominican College of San Gregorio, Valladolid (1487–9).

Pórtico del Colegio de San Gregorio de Valladolid; León Auguste Asselineau; 1842. Litografía a lápiz

Juan Guas, also spelled Was (born in Saint-Pol-de-Léon—died c1496, Toledo), the central figure of the group of Spanish architects who developed the Isabelline style, a combination of medieval structure, Mudéjar (Spanish Muslim) ornament, and Italian spatial design. One of the greatest architects working in late-Gothic Spain, he drew on Flemish medieval elements imaginatively mixed with Moorish themes from Toledo. He was a major influence on the Isabelline style.

San Gregorio, commissioned by the prelate of Palencia, Bishop Alonso de Burgos, confessor to Queen Isabella, was built between 1488 and 1496.

The Colegio de San Gregorio, the remarkable, incredibly ornate (Jan Morris called it "almost edible"), late 15th-century Isabeline-Gothic building in which the Museo Naciónal de Escultura is housed

In main eardrum and on the threshold decorated with Flower of lily appears the dedication and the offering of the School on the part of the Dominican friar Alonso de Burgos to San Gregorio in the presence of San Pablo and Santo Domingo .

The most extraordinary sculpted facade of all in Valladolid is that of the Colegio de San Gregorio, adorned not just with coats of arms and crowned lions, but sculpted twigs, naked children clambering in the branches of a pomegranate tree and long-haired men carrying maces. Considered to be from the workshop of master sculptor Gil de Siloé, it’s very much like icing on a cake. The collegiate church was built by the Bishop of Burgos – Chancellor of Castile and confessor to Queen Isabel – as a theological college, and was richly endowed, most obviously with a gleaming two-tier courtyard of twisted stone columns, and an upper gallery that’s a sculpted flight of fancy of heraldic, mythic and regal symbols.

The facade looks like a giant florid Gothic altarpiece, except that the figures, including the huge heraldic emblem of Castile and León, are largely secular. The delicacy and intricacy of much of the stonework, obviously an exceptionally laborious accomplishment, is amazing.

San Gregorio's architect was Juan Guas, but the decoration of the facade has been attributed variously to Enrique de Egas; Simón de Colonia, who planned the splendid La Cartuja de Miraflores and Capilla de los Condestables in Burgos, and executed the facade on the church of San Pablo in Valladolid; and to the great Gil de Silöe, believed to have been a native of Antwerp, who worked on both Miraflores and the Cathedral of Burgos with Simón, and is believed to have worked on the church at Aranda de Duero with him as well.

Opt for a collaboration between these foreign artists, for whom, as Sacheverell Sitwell describes, "It is the 'Espagnolade' of a foreigner, as much so as the drawings of Gustave Doré or the music of Carmen."

(gerrydawes@aol.com)

Hombres silvestres en la Fachada del Colegio de San Gregorio

Inside, too, the building has been majestically restored and now contains the unmissable religious art and sculpture collection of the Museo Nacional. The National Museum of Religious Sculpture is part of the College of San Gregorio, and is the best sculpture museum in Spain.

The great patio of San Gregorio is exceptionally rich.

Beautifully turned barley-sugar columns support a second-floor gallery of archways filled with profusely-decorated, intricately-carved stone balconies, each with three short columns supporting a double-arched, heavily-decorated panel.

Running below the gargoyle-studded roofline is a frieze decorated with a repetitive yoke-and-arrows (the symbol of Isabel and Ferdinand) motif that is broken at each corner by the coat-of-arms of the unified kingdoms of Castilla, León, and Aragón. 

The patio of the School is of square plant and represents one of style jewels hispanoflamenco. Their two floors rise on helical pillars decorated their separated capitals with average balls and lilies both by the subject of the chain.

The area is in the middle of the famous Castilian plateau, the Meseta Central, which also means that the climate of Valladolid is subject to the same extremes–bitterly cold in winter, blazing hot in summer - as the rest of Castile.

Valladolid was the site of a number of significant events in Spanish history, including the wedding of Isabel and Ferdinand; the death of Christopher Columbus; the births of Philip II, Philip IV, and Anne of Austria (mother of Louis XIV of France); and a three-year sojourn by Cervantes, during which Don Quixote was published (1605).

On the morning of October 19, 1469, the marriage took place between Isabella and Ferdinand, heirs respectively to the thrones of Castile and Aragon that would have far-reaching consequences. 

they were both teenagers, the older, Isabella, being 18 years-old and her husband, Ferdinand,  17; since they were cousins they married in secret and required special papal dispensation, which turned out to be a forgery concocted by Ferdinand and his supporters;

Together, Ferdinand and Isabella laid the foundations of Spain’s Golden Age (Siglo de Oro), a period during which it became the largest empire the world had ever seen. The term “Golden Age” tends to view Spain’s achievements during this period through Castilian eyes (Catalans nowadays, for example, have a different view of the period).

An added bonus to the fame of the Reyes Católicos (Catholic Monarchs, a title conferred on Ferdinand and Isabella by the Pope Alexander VI in 1494) was the achievement of Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor who set out from the south of Spain for India and found America, or Las Indias as they called it.

Chapel of the College of San Gregorio

Staircase

Staircase

Later, in the 19th Century, Valladolid had the unfortunate distinction of having served as Napoleon's headquarters during the Peninsular War

The heraldic emblem of Bishop Alonso de Burgos, confessor to Queen Isabella (San Gregorio was commissioned by this prelate of Palencia)

The church today houses a very good museum of wood carving and sculpture, as well as a monument to Christopher Columbus, who died in Valladolid on May 20, 1506.

Claustro San Gregorio Jenaro Pérez Villaamil (1807–1854)

San Miguel Arcangel Felipe de Espinabete (1719-1799)

Santo Entierro (hacia 1540) Juan de Juni (1507-1577)

Text & Pictures: Internet

Copyright: All the images belong to their authors

Presentation: Sanda Foişoreanu

www.slideshare.net/michaelasanda

Cecilia Bartoli - Maurice Ravel - Chants populaires, song cycle for voice & piano (or orchestra)- Chanson espagnoleCecilia Bartoli - Maurice Ravel - Chants populaires, song cycle for voice & piano (or orchestra)- Chanson espagnole