The Career of Juan de Mijares and the Reform of Spanish Architecture under Philip II

Abstract

king himself and his court architect, Juan de Herrera, played the leading r61le in its development. Herrera's career as an architect, however, has been difficult to assess, partly because many architects were employed at the Escorial and on later royal buildings, and partly because Herrera's training and later career are so atypical of Spanish practice. Not so long ago, Portables Pichel could assert that, on the basis of a careful study of the documents, Herrera never designed a single building. Pichel saw him as an amateur of architecture and favorite of Philip II who had mistakenly received the credit for the work of other architects. Other scholars, using stylistic evidence, defended the traditional view of Herrera as the greatest Spanish architect of the sixteenth century. Today, no one doubts Herrera's stature as an architect but the interpretation of the documents and analysis of his style remain a serious problem.' We do not know, for example, why Herrera remained so aloof from the practical side of architecture; and, on the other hand, it has not been possible to evaluate the contribution of his assistants to his buildings because we know almost nothing of their independent work. Some of these questions can be clarified if we understand the special conditions under which Herrera worked. The character of the Spanish architectural profession in the later sixteenth century and Herrera's peculiar relationship to it can be traced in the career ofJuan de Mijares, who served as Herrera's chief assistant for over twenty years. From the documentary evidence, we would suppose that Juan de Mijares (d. 1599) was an active, even successful, architect. He moved in the circle of architects at the royal court and the brief notices of him published by Llaguno and Portables Pichel traced his activity in the royal programs from the 1570s to the end of the century.2 In spite of this, Mijares is scarcely more than a name in the documents and not a single work has been attributed to his own designs. From the published documents, it would seem that Mijares's career was always linked to his great contemporary Juan de Herrera. The first notice of him is in 1573, the year Herrera arranged for his appointment as aparejador de las obras at Aranjuez.3 The supervisor of construction on such an important project may have done very little designing himself but Mijares was established in the royal workshops in a position just below that of the architect in charge and we can assume that he was launched on a career as a court

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