Palacio del Infantado

Main facade of the Palacio del Infantado

Patio de los leones ("Courtyard of the Lions") in the Palacio del Infantado

The Palacio del Infantado (Infantado Palace) or Palacio de los Duques del Infantado (Palace of the Dukes of El Infantado) is a Gothic- Isabelline style palace with Renaissance elements in the Spanish city of Guadalajara . It was built at the end of the 15th century at the request of Íñigo López de Mendoza y Luna, the 2nd Duke of El Infantado .

history

The Palacio del Infantado is in the same place as the casas principales of Pedro González, the first Mendoza of Alcarreño. In 1480 the second Duke of El Infantado, Íñigo López de Mendoza, had the old family house demolished and decided to build a new palace “to increase the fame of his ancestors and his own”. The facade was already completed in 1483, a short time later the patio and at the end of the 15th century the whole ensemble was basically finished. The building shone in all the splendor of the Spanish Gothic, its coffered ceilings and magnificent furnishings. The construction management is assigned to the architect Juan Guas from Toledo .

Plateresque decoration and Mendoza coat of arms above the main entrance of the Palacio del Infantado

In 1560 the wedding celebrations of King Philip II with Elisabeth of Valois took place in the palace .

In 1569, the fifth Duke del Infantado had a series of renovations carried out under the direction of Acacio Orejón in order to keep the palace on par with Philip II's residence near Madrid. For this reason, a number of Renaissance elements were built into the facade - new windows were opened, old window openings were walled up and Gothic pinacles removed . The floor level in the patio has been raised, and the lower halls have been decorated with ceiling paintings by Italian artists such as B. Romulo Cincinato , who worked in the Escorial . A mythological garden was also created.

In 1738 Maria Anna von Pfalz-Neuburg , the last Queen of the Spanish Habsburgs , retired to the Infantado Palace after her exile in Bayonne , where she died two years later.

In the centuries that followed, the Mendoza left Guadalajara and their palace to live at court. At the end of the 19th century, the 15th Duke del Infantado, Mariano Téllez-Girón y Beaufort Spontin, ceded half of the palace to the city. Later the ducal house and the city administration set up a home for orphans of military personnel.

The palace was bombed and destroyed during the Spanish Civil War (1936). After the war, the handover to the War Ministry ended . The owners of the palace, i.e. the eighteenth Duke del Infantado, reserved part of the building as an apartment and for the family archive , and together with the Guadalajara City Council left the rest of the building to the Provincial Council, which initiated a major museum project from 1961. The derelict palace has been rebuilt and restored to restore its former glory, but the once famous Mudejar- style coffered ceilings are forever lost.

In 1972 the Provincial Historical Archives and Public Library of Guadalajara Province were established in the palace; the latter was later moved to the Palacio de Davalos (2004) .

The Palacio del Infantado is currently the seat of the historical archives and the Museum of the Province of Guadalajara ( Museo Provincial de Guadalajara ).

Detail of the upper gallery of the main facade

Diamond cuboid on the main facade

description

The style of the palace can be considered typically Spanish (or Iberian ). Although part of the decoration, the structure of the balconies or portals is in the Flemish Gothic tradition , many other decorative elements, such as the arrangement of the openings in the facade, including the ornamental theme of the protruding “points” ( diamond blocks ), are Moorish heritage . It is an exquisite example of Mudejar art, surpassing both styles and merging with the Isabelline or Hispano-Flemish Gothic manuscript, which, as mentioned above, was altered with traces of the Renaissance in the second half of the 16th century.

The main facade facing west is considered a jewel of the Isabelline style. The most striking decorative elements are the diamond tips, which are distributed over the entire facade. On the top floor, which crowns the facade, there is a gallery above a frieze with muqarnas decor , which is accentuated by watchtowers, all of which is decorated with the finest mudejar decor. Behind the gallery was the reading room of the provincial library, which is kept with great sobriety in a classical style, crowned by a coffered ceiling. According to Ruiz Sousa, the language of the facade reflects Andalusian influences on the Toledo School, with the aim of creating a model for the modus vivendi of the nobility. Egas Cueman designed the elaborate sculptural furnishings of the palace.

The main entrance to the building is on the left side of the main facade and leads directly to the inner courtyard, the patio . The portal is flanked by two thick cylindrical columns , which are decorated with two interwoven collars made of braided cord. Above the door, two fauns or hairy " wild men " hold a round chain made up of 20 different shields, which represent the states, titles and lordships that were in the hands of the House of Mendoza up to this point. In the middle of the framing chain appears the coat of arms of the Mendoza family with a ducal crown and various other symbols, crowned by a griffin-headed eagle.

First floor of the Patio de los Leones

The central Patio de los leones (“Lion Courtyard”) impresses with its Isabelline decor: it is rectangular, the long sides in the south and north have seven arches, the transverse sides in the east and west have five arches. In two superimposed galleries there are mixed linear arcs. On the ground floor the columns that support the arches are of Tuscan order , on the upper floor there are twisted columns with foliage decorations. The famous pair of lions (emblem of Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza) appear as panels for the walls above the arches on the ground floor, and winged griffins in the upper gallery instead . Above each column on the ground floor there is a coat of arms , always alternating with the symbols of the Mendoza and those of the House of Luna (among other things, a crescent moon because of the Latin luna = moon) - and all of them with the corresponding ducal crown. Along the arches appears a long tape on which the following sentence is carved in Gothic letters:

" El yllustre señor don yñigo lopes de mendoca duque segundo del ynfantazgo, marqués de santillana, conde del rreal e de saldaña, señor de Mendoca y de la Vega, manda fa (ser esta) portada (año del nascimiento del nro de salvado MCCCCCL) XXXIII años ... seyendo esta casa edificada por sus antecesores con grandes gastos e de sumptuoso edificio, se (pu) so toda por el suelo y por acrescentar la gloria de sus proxenitores y la suya propia la mandó edeficar otra vez para mas onrrar la grandeza (de su linaje) año myl e quatrocientos e ochenta y tres años.

The illustrious Señor / Don Yñigo Lopes de Mendoca / Second Duke del Ynfantazgo / Marqués de Santillana / Conde del Rreal and von Saldaña / Señor de Mendoca and de la Vega / gave the order to build this portal / in the year of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ MCCCCLXXXIII (= 1483; translator's note). / This house, / built by his ancestors at great expense / and as a magnificent building, / was completely destroyed. / To increase the fame of his predecessors and his own, / he had it built a second time / in honor of his house. / In the year one thousand four hundred eighty-three. "

Lorenzo de Trillo's gallery on the garden facade of the Palacio del Infantado

The garden gallery was built by Lorenzo de Trillo around 1496 ; it consists of a double row of arches.

Inside, the Mudejar coffered ceilings, which were destroyed in the civil war, were famous. The grotesque ceilings and decorations in the halls on the ground floor have been preserved , made by Italian painters in the 16th century on the orders of the fifth Duke del Infantado. Below is the hall of Kronos ( sala del Crono ), with the image of this god and the symbols of the zodiac ; the great battle hall (sala de las batallas) , with various moving scenes from the military history of the Mendozas; the room of Atalanta with five scenes from the legend of this goddess represented with Hippomenes; In this room there is also a fireplace made of Carrara marble , created by the Italian artists Juan Bautista (= Giovanni Battista) and Domingo (= Domenico) Milanés (Milanese or da Milano = from Milan). Romulo Cincinato created the paintings between 1578 and 1580.

Room with grotesque decor
Ceiling in the Sala de Atalanta , Palacio del Infantado

Museo Provincial de Guadalajara

Paintings in the Museo de Guadalajara, Palacio del Infantado

The museum was established in 1838 and contains a. Collections of art, archeology and ethnology . There are also temporary exhibitions. The focus of the art collections is on religious art, with more than 200 objects including paintings , sculptures, and antique furniture from the 15th to 21st centuries. The main works stand out: the tomb of Aldonza de Mendoza (15th century); Paintings by Alonso Cano , José de Ribera , Juan Carreño de Miranda , Bartolomé Román , and Luis Tristán , as well as terracottas by Luis Roldán . Archaeological objects include: A woman's sculpture of Zenon of Aphrodisias from the 2nd century, Celtiberian weapons, fragments of plaster stucco in Mudejar style from the synagogue of Prao de los Judíos in Molina de Aragón (14th – 15th centuries); and representative pieces of folk culture from the Guadalajara province, such as B. Botargo masks (máscaras de botarga) from Arbancón or a beehive made from a tree trunk and covered with slate from Roblelacasa .

Tomb of Aldonza de Mendoza (15th century), Museo de Guadalajara (in the Palacio del Infantado)

literature