Join us for the first seminar paper of 2021, part of our ongoing series co-supported by the Institute of Historical Research and organised in collaboration with the Oxford Architectural History Seminar. For more information on the series click here. Costanza Beltrami explores the long history of the cloister of Segovia cathedral. Shifting the analysis from the cloister’s construction to its conception and relocation, she will discuss such issues as collaboration, competition and conservation.
The old cathedral of Segovia underwent major improvements in the fifteenth century, notably the construction of a new cloister designed by Juan Guas, the leading architect of late-Gothic Castile. Commissioned to build the cloister in 1471, the master mason completed the main structure in just eight years, several months earlier than agreed in the contract. The rapid and successful completion of this well-documented structure is a testament to Guas’ ability to draw together craftsmen and resources in an effective and cohesive network.
However, according to a different reckoning the cloister took almost one hundred years to complete. In this longer perspective, Guas inherited the project’s conceptual groundwork from his predecessor Juan de Toro, who travelled across Northern Spain to evaluate drawings for the new structure. Moreover, the building we now see is the result of a total reconstruction. The cloister and the cathedral were originally located near the city’s Alcázar, a site which was judged unsuitable following the revolt of the Comuneros in 1520. When a new cathedral was begun elsewhere in the city, Guas’ cloister was moved stone-by-stone to the new site. This process entailed careful conservation, yet the structure was also updated for a new architectural setting. Thus, the long history of the cloister of Segovia cathedral reveals inheritance and critique across time.
Costanza Beltrami is Departmental Lecturer in Medieval and Renaissance Art History at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on Gothic architecture in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and on the coexistence, tension and transition between Gothic and Renaissance projects. She is particularly interested in the management and representation of buildings in accounts, letters, drawings, ornament prints and other media.
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