Enlightenment Erasure: The Lost Seventeenth Century in Spanish Architectural History

Abstract

This article addresses the curious absence of seventeenth-century buildings in traditional histories of Spanish architecture. Beginning with the Noticias de los arquitectos y la arquitectura en España, a foundational work published in 1829, the article traces the legacy of a Spanish Enlightenment myth about the seventeenth century as a time of a weak monarchy whose overly ornamental architecture can be understood as a reflection of political decadence. The article surveys nineteenth and twentieth-century responses to the Noticias by Spanish, German, and English-language scholars, proposing that the existing scholarship’s overriding concern with style be replaced with a renewed focus on the institutions and individuals who shaped architectural undertakings in the transatlantic realm of the Spanish Habsburgs.