Professional Artisans in the Hispanic Southwest: The Churches of San Antonio, Texas

Abstract

The rediscovery of classical civilization and the rapid spread of Humanism through the writings of Erasmus, ushered in the Renaissance. The reawakening turned people outward from the involuted, mystically oriented outlook of the Medieval era. It was a time of rapid change, the period of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The new philosophic outlook was manifested in the arts, and the Gutenberg press and copperplate engraving disseminated new ideas along with classicism. The discovery and publication in 1511 of the Roman builder, Vitruvius, was the catalyst to the renewed interest in Greco-Roman forms. These classical forms, however, were for the most part, an external expression of classic Roman “orders” (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite) imposed upon structural innovations formulated in the Gothic period. Since highly skilled craftsmen such as Cellini, Ghiberti, Donatello and Brunelleschi worked as painters and sculptors as well as architects, buildings tended to be treated as surfaces and backdrops for embellishment.

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