|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| A nave for men | The nave of the Sagrada Família that Benedict XVI has dedicated to the worship of God on November 7, 2010, fulfills one of the biggest bets of Cardinal Francesc Vidal i Barraquer (Cambrils, 1868 - Freiburg, 1943), known as the "cardinal of peace "and died in exile for his peacemaking efforts during the Spanish Civil War, including not having signed the Collective Letter of the Bishops, 1937.
Vidal i Barraquer solemnly blessed the first stone of the nave on December 11, 1921. There he was, holding respectfully his shabby hat of bohemian artist in his hand, the great architect Antoni Gaudí. He was sixty-nine years, he had spent thirty-eight to the Sagrada Família. Beginning, youth, with momentum, when he calculated construction in ten years; more calmly later when he saw did not give alms to this, making compatible with other works; and exclusively for ten years, knowing that could not finish his work and leave it in the hands of Providence. Had only managed to lift the apse and much of one of the two side façades.
In the 1910, global project of the Sagrada Família definitely would have failed for lack of funding and the Bishop of Barcelona had used the existing to make a parish church, if Antoni Gaudí, against the decision of the Board of Works, the Bishopric, intellectuals of “Noucentisme” Catalan mouvement and anticlericals, had not personally committed, giving up their fees and out to beg alms each afternoon to bring along a week's pay for the few workers who remained. Many normal people had thought crazy, but always had the support of ordinary people and the brightest personalities of the Catalan Church: first, the poet Fr. Jacint Verdaguer; then, Dr. Torras i Bages, Barcelona priest and later bishop of Vic; and, finally, Dr. Vidal i Barraquer, who in 1919 was appointed archbishop of Tarragona, then the only Archdiocese of Catalonia, including all its dioceses, including Barcelona, and in 1921 made a cardinal.
Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer was the great protector of Gaudí in the last stage of his life. To lay the foundation stone of the nave, both were an act of faith in the Christian future of Catalonia and Europe. The architect, when some people objected he was building the last of the cathedrals, expressed thus: "What may be the first of the second stage." The decision of Cardinal Martínez Sistach opening to worship the Sagrada Familia, the first tourist attraction in Catalonia, in times of religious coldness, is an act of faith in the belief and the words of Antoni Gaudí; it repeated, almost eighty-nine years later, faith of Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer in the person of the great Christian artist Antoni Gaudí.
The nave of the Sagrada Familia, by architect Jordi Bonet, comes fully in the history of religious architecture and universal architecture, next to the pillared hall of Karnak, the Parthenon, the Constantinian basilicas, the interior of Hagia Sophia and the cathedral of Chartres. If only for its hyperbolic paraboloid, hyperboloid, double helical twist and other forms for the first time in history the great architect Gaudi extracted from Nature, whose book read directly and he called Creation.
However, these new art forms which architectural space define, for its location, size and relative distances? Gaudí stated categorically: "I have come to take the architecture at the point where lend it Byzantine style"; the style of Christianized Greeks. He said of himself that he was a Greek architect.
In effect, the interior space that Benedict XVI has dedicated to the cult has the most exquisite Greek proportions, only knew in Barcelona, although with less intensity, in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar. It isn’t the abode of a divinity that crushes with his omnipotence, or away from the men with their ascent, or hidden in fragmented spaces, full of drama and mystery. And there is not a box for storing precious decorations, but the continent is so precious. Is a unique space with a single body construction, full of harmony, serenity and grandeur. It is not the abode of an inaccessible God, but the airy setting for the conversation of God humanized with his human people. Like the Parthenon, is made to the measure of man and God humanized. Has clarity, the solemnity and the proportionality of the human body, the qualities of Byzantine: Greek elevated to Christian .
Vitruvius wrote, and illustrated by Da Vinci, that "if you take the measurement from feet to head and compared with the distance between the outstretched hands, was the same, so that the area will be perfectly square" He added that especially "the buildings of gods are to be distributed in perfect order. (...) The ancients considered the perfect number ten, because it corresponds to the number of fingers. And since both hands naturally consist of ten fingers, placi Plato it was the perfect number. "
Santa Maria del Mar has a width of 100 feet, the "hecatompedon" of Greek temples, and the Sagrada Família has a width at the crossing of 100 steps (one step = 75 cm.). The interior of this crossing is made up of two squares of 40 steps aside. It intersects the nave, formed in turn by two squares of side 60 steps, ie greater than the crossing on 3-2.
The columns are square with each other and the walls. If the man drawn by Da Vinci model in a supine position with outstretched arms raised at the floor of the Sagrada Família, find the enlargement percentage of his human area ten times between the columns of the nave, a dozen times between the columns and walls nave, three times between the columns of the transept and twelve times between them and the walls.
If he is lifted vertically, the height would be among the knots of the tree-columns of the nave and the width of the nave, forming a square 20 x 20 steps, such as Santa Maria del Mar.
He find it a second time between the height of the vaults of the two interior aisles and width of the entire colonnade (the sum of the nave and such vessels) that form a square of 40 x 40 steps, as in Santa Maria del Mar.
And in a triple expansion than don’t hapens in Santa Maria del Mar, find it a third time between the height of the vault of the nave and the width of wall to wall, forming a squareof 60 x 60 steps.
The relationship between these three squares is 3-2-1.
Moreover, the height of the nave is three squares with width, height of each of the four squares form four aisles with its own width, like Santa Maria del Mar; and, on each side, height of the two aisles form two squares with the width of the sum of both naves.
The ratio of these heights of the ships is the same 3-2.
From the very entrance of the Temple, the man Da Vinci model will have seen something that don’t exists in Santa Maria del Mar: the domes, with the representation of the Eternal Father, covering the candelabrum of the Holy Spirit falling on the altar of Jesus Christ. If you walk towards him ten steps -one for each finger of the hands, the number of human and divine Plato-cross a row of columns and tour a section of the Temple. The first six sections are the square base of a cube of length, width and height of 60 steps of human proportions, where the man prayed.
If you continue moving toward the altar, will enter the second square of length and width of 60 steps, but whose vertical dimension of human proportion rises to the divine proportion, to the domes of Mary and Jesus Christ.
The altar is in the exact center, the navel of the second square of side 60 steps, distance three-quarters of the main entrance. The altar is the place of transubstantiation: the bread and wine become Jesus Christ, the God-Man, the Logos of the Greeks. All the functionality of the building is arranged exclusively and fully to this event, the center and summit of the liturgy. Because for Gaudí Liturgy was the "supreme law" of the architecture of the Temple, beginning with its geometry. Thus, the altar is the first point of the geometry of the Sagrada Família, from which the great architect drew the whole church, as the Logos is the beginning of creation and remains immanent in it.
Antoni Gaudi was a genius Mediterranean, of the classical tradition.He said that his temple, without denying its direct affiliation with the great works of medieval Christian art, would have, "Hellenic grace, balance of form and content, size and location, divinely human and humanly glorious." (Reprinted from "The Newspaper", 4-XI-2010).
| Josep Maria Tarragona, Nov 7, 2010
|
|
|
|
HOME
Principal works
Grating of the Ciutadella
El Capricho
Català
