Sagrada Família: Modernity Edified in Tradition
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Antoni Gaudí became the lead architect of the Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família project in Barcelona, Spain, in 1883. For the remaining years of his life, the basilica became Gaudí’s chief interest, that which he considered to be his magnum opus. Contrary to the Gothic revival design of the basilica’s first architect, Gaudí would create a church which reflected his unique artistic genius while remaining grounded in the tradition of Catholic sacred architecture. While Catholic churches around the turn of the 20th century tended to follow conventions of revivalism and eclecticism popular in the preceding century, and while churches built through the middle of the 20th century and into the 21st often abandoned traditional forms in preference for those of brutalist or industrial styles, there is “[p]erhaps no better example of synthesizing history and tradition with innovative design and modern technology” than the Sagrada Família.[1]
Unlike many famous Catholic architects in history, such as Abbot Suger and Bernini, Gaudí was not a practicing Catholic when he began working on the Sagrada Família. However, the intensity with which he applied himself to the project led to a deeply mystical devotion to God, whom Gaudí saw as his primary client, and he would eventually live at the site of the church.[2] Like the designers of the great Gothic cathedrals, Gaudí knew his work would not be completed in his lifetime, but he once remarked, “my client is in no rush”.[3] For his service, Gaudí, called “God’s Architect” by some,[4] was proclaimed a Servant of God, the first step to canonization, by Pope St. John Paul II in 2003.
Gaudí borrowed from many historic styles in his design. Like Gothic architecture, the Sagrada Família is a “forest of stone,” transforming classical columns into bulging organic boughs which branch into the hyperbolic paraboloid nave vaults (which mirror the hollow of the human back when twisted at the waist)[5] and harkening to the traditional imagery of the nave as an image of the Garden of Eden. He also borrowed the synthaesthesia[6] of architecture, painting and intricate, bold sculptural ornamentation of Baroque as an “emotional stimulus to piety”[7] with tones and textures reminiscent of Spanish colonial churches in the New World, while Catalan modernism and Art Nouveau inspired Gaudí’s use of natural lines and figures and asymmetry as well as modern materials like ceramics and concrete which, unlike industrial buildings, Gaudí hid behind decoration or ornamentation. However, Gaudí’s personal vision, characterized by a “biological style”,[8] guided his use of other styles, seen for example in his representation and casting of real people and animals he encountered for his façade sculptures, his application of entasis through leaning columns, including those resembling bones in the Passion porch, and his use of parabolic arches.[9] As Pope Benedict XVI noted in his dedication Mass for the Sagrada Família:
Gaudí desired to unify that inspiration which came to him from the three books which nourished him as a man, as a believer and as an architect: the book of nature, the book of sacred Scripture and the book of the liturgy. In this way he brought together the reality of the world and the history of salvation, as recounted in the Bible and made present in the liturgy.[10]
Alongside his unique innovations, Gaudí adhered to tradition in many ways. Retaining the Roman basilican form whose narthex, nave and sanctuary pointed to the three divisions of the Jerusalem Temple, he also incorporated the use of transepts with three portals and a semicircular apse, as well as the ambulatory, radiating apsidal chapels, rose windows, pointed arches and multiple spires from Gothic. As Paul Goldberger wrote, the Sagrada Família is “surely the most extraordinary personal interpretation of Gothic architecture since the Middle Ages.”[11] Gaudí also maintained the traditional image of the Church as the fulfillment of the Tabernacle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon by imitating the natural world to sacramentally communicate the mysteries of the Faith, just as the Ark and the Temple applied floral imagery to recall the Garden of Eden and included symbolic sculptures of angels. This can also be seen in the 36 interior columns which, although made to resemble trees, are twisted like the columns of the Tabernacle and Temple and symbolize saints ascending to Heaven and angels descending to meet them. Each column is anthropomorphized with capital lamps representing the four evangelists, the apostles and other figures. With the basilica’s great height, columns and spires, Gaudí demonstrated transcendent verticality as his overriding theme: “The dominant aspect of the whole concept from the start was the emphasis on verticality, the linking of heaven to earth.”[12]
The Sagrada Família’s three facades, which Gaudí considered “the bible of the poor”,[13] are both symbolic and catechetical, representing scenes from salvation history and future eschatology, as well as abstract concepts, such as the virtues and vices, time and change. For example, the Passion and Nativity facades are divided into three portals for each theological virtue and are colored and sculpted accordingly.[14] Like the New Jerusalem described in the Book of Revelation, the Sagrada Família, colloquially called the Temple, is diffused with gem-like multicolored light from its plenitude of stained-glass windows, providing an numinous quality pointing to the Mass as the sacramental participation in the Heavenly Liturgy and an image and foretaste of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in the New Heaven and Earth.
The Sagrada Família fulfills the three Thomistic qualifications for beauty – integrity, consonance and clarity[15] – both through its adherence to tradition and its innovative use of Gaudí’s unique design. By its traditional basilican shape, its structural and material permanence and its incorporation of emphatic elements developed throughout Christian history, it is complete and legible as a church, avoiding the ugly deception of churches which do not look like churches (integritas). By its clear designation of the sanctuary through raised steps and a visible altar, it makes clear the purpose and end of the church as the holy sacrifice of the Mass, the intersection of Heaven and Earth in the Eucharist and the divinization of the faithful through its participation (consonantia). Finally, with these first two elements of beauty, as well as the luminescence of its stained-glass windows, its hierarchical distinction from the buildings in the surrounding area, its prominent symbolic spires and its magnificent size, the Sagrada Família’s ontological reality and the truth it reveals are made intelligible (claritas).
Although the altar could be critiqued for its bare, table-like aesthetic, the sanctuary does include many beautiful and significant elements, including flanking columns dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul which hold up a golden baldachin, whose heptagonal shape points to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and whose symbols of wheat and grapes evoke the Eucharist. The golden dome above the altar includes a Trinitarian symbol of an earthly circle inside a triangle, its color pointing to the gold of the New Jerusalem, while the Crucifix, together with the statues of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph overlooking the transepts, completes the Holy Family, reinforced by anagrams of JMJ diffused throughout the basilica. The seven apsidal chapels are decorated with stained-glass windows which include seven names for Christ and whose initials, taken together, form the Latin phrase Ero Cras, meaning “Tomorrow I will arrive,” emphasizing the eschatological meaning of the Eucharist. In this way, the basilica can be considered “a complex system of Catholic symbolism and a visual explication of the mysteries of faith.”[16] A theological criticism of the basilica is the fact that it is not oriented in the traditional eastern direction, though this is similar to some Baroque churches.
In conclusion, the Sagrada Família is a work of great love, service and creative genius by Antoni Gaudí for God and the Church. It maintains the traditions of sacred architecture, both from its earliest origins in the Tabernacle and Temple through the developments of Christian history and pointing forward eschatologically to the End Times, while also, like Gothic and Baroque, allowing for artistic creativity and the incorporation of contemporary styles and technical advancements. The Sagrada Família is thus one of the great Catholic churches of the world and an inspiration for future servants of sacred architecture. Benedict XVI offered these words in his dedicatory homily:
I consider that the dedication of this church of the Sagrada Familia is an event of great importance, at a time in which man claims to be able to build his life without God, as if God had nothing to say to him. In this masterpiece, Gaudí shows us that God is the true measure of man; that the secret of authentic originality consists, as he himself said, in returning to one’s origin which is God. Gaudí, by opening his spirit to God, was capable of creating in this city a space of beauty, faith and hope which leads man to an encounter with him who is truth and beauty itself. The architect expressed his sentiments in the following words: ‘A church [is] the only thing worthy of representing the soul of a people, for religion is the most elevated reality in man’.[17]
(Credit for cover photo: By Canaan - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113178605)
[1] Michael S. Rose, In Tiers of Glory (Cincinnati: Mesa Folio Editions, 2004), 93.
[2] Rose, In Tiers of Glory, 97.
[3] David Mower, Gaudi (Oresko Books: London, 1977), 73.
[4] Rose, In Tiers of Glory, 93.
[5] Mower, Gaudí, 87.
[6] Mower, Gaudí, 87.
[7] Carlo Borromeo, quoted in Rose, In Tiers of Glory, 74.
[8] Rose, In Tiers of Glory, 94.
[9] Mower, Gaudí, 77, 86-87.
[10] Pope Benedict XVI, Homily for Holy Mass with Dedication of the Church of the Sagrada Família and of the Altar (7 November 2010).
[11] Paul Goldberger, “Barcelona,” National Geographic Traveler (28 January 1991).
[12] Mower, Gaudí, 78.
[13] Mower, Gaudí, 74.
[14] Mower, Gaudí, 76.
[15] Denis R. McNamara, Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2009), 24.
[16] Rose, In Tiers of Glory, 97.
[17] Pope Benedict XVI, Homily for Holy Mass with Dedication of the Church of the Sagrada Família and of the Altar (7 November 2010).
Great article! I am looking forward to seeing this Basilica in September after walking the English Camino.
All I can say that this is on my bucket list to see one day.