Colegio de San Gregorio

About

The Colegio de San Gregorio is an Isabelline style building located in the city of Valladolid, in Castile and León, Spain, it was formerly a college and now is housing the National Museum of Sculpture. This building is one of the best examples of the architectural style known as Isabelline, which is the characteristic architectural style of the Crown of Castile region during the Catholic Monarchs' reign (late-15th century to early-16th century). Among other sections highlights its courtyard and its facade for its refined decoration, elegant proportions and the number of symbologies. It was founded as a teaching institution. Aimed at College of Theology for Dominican friars, it has acquired a doctrinal authority and acted as a spiritual and political hotbed in the Central region of Spain's Renaissance and Baroque periods.

The University of Valladolid was founded in the 13th century during the Alfonso X of Castile the Wise 's reign; as in other countries, the emergence of college centers was potentiated, then belatedly was created the Colegio de San Gregorio, who performed in parallel or complementarily in relation to university life. In Valladolid the Colegio Mayor Santa Cruz was also created also in late 15th-century.

The creation of the college, under the title of the Doctor of the Church Saint Gregory the Great, was work of Dominican Alonso de Burgos, the Catholic Monarchs's confessor and Bishop of the dioceses of Córdoba, Cuenca and Palencia. The foundation of the college was confirmed by with papal bull of Pope Innocent VIII in 1487, and accepted as Royal patronage by Queen Isabella the Catholic in 1500, after the founder's death.

It attached to the Convento de San Pablo, which Friar Alonso had been its prior, its foundation was subject to the assignment of the Capilla del Crucifijo ( Crucifix's chapel ), attached to the Epistle's arm of the Dominican church, to become his own funeral chapel, which later acquired dual function to also serve as a chapel for college.

Work began in 1488 in a process from the inside to outside, being the main facade the last in lift. The Royal shields in the corners of the Large courtyard still do not present the Granada's symbol suggests that this part would be completed before 1492. The building is assumed to completed in 1498.

Very little documentation has been localized on its construction, without knowing conclusively who were their creators. It seems that were incorporated the most famous stonemasons and carvers who at that time were working in Castile, making the set conform as a paradigmatic example of the various trends of Castilian stonework in late-15th century, with Juan Guas and Juan de Talavera responsible for traces and construction of the Friar Alonso's funerary chapel, Simón de Colonia for its main altar, the founder's sepulcher, later replaced by another commissioned to Felipe Bigarny, without being known the causes, and other works at the college, or Gil de Siloé and Diego de la Cruz as commissioners for the chapel's altarpiece.

In 1524 the building was expanded with the addition of a wing to the west as traces of Gaspar de Solórzano, the so-called Edificio de las Azoteas, jutting out from the rest because it had four floors high. There remains of this building's section.

Since its founding, the college became a focus of influence of the Early-Modern Age, in which were formed theologians, men of letters, universities's founders, bishops, king's advisers or jurists, like Bartolomé de las Casas, Melchor Cano, Luis de Granada or Francisco de Vitoria, and in which took place in 1550–1551, for example, the famous Valladolid debate, in which Friar Bartolomé de las Casas defended the indigenous peoples of the America's rights, against Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda supporter of the rights for the dominion of the conquerors towards the Indigenous, whom he considered inferior beings.

In 1577 due to the beneficence of Spaniard Juan Solano, O.P., former bishop of Cusco, Peru, the College of San Gregorio served as a model for the transformation of the Dominican studium at Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome into the College of St. Thomas, forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum.

But with the 18th century and the arrival of the Enlightenment, the opposition to the ruling Bourbon dynasty exercised by the colleges as debilitating elements of the absolutism implanted, San Gregorio was losing its influence.

It arrived 19th-century, during the Napoleonic French invasion it was used as a barracks, with the suppression of the Regular orders of 1820 it was abandoned, although in the Absolutist Restoration of 1823 was reoccupied, was for a very short period and again abandoned. Finally, the confiscation and expropriation gave way to its use as a prison, a dependencies for the Civil Government, National Institute, the Normal Schools of Teachers, etc.

In 1884 it was declared a National Monument, as also in the following years lost some of the roofs and disappeared the Metaphysics classroom and the corridor attached to the (from internal) facade leading to the chapel.

Main facade of the Colegio de San Gregorio, circa 1850, by Jenaro Pérez Villaamil

Main facade of the Colegio de San Gregorio, circa 1865, by Francesc Parcerisa

Patio Grande's cloister of the Colegio de San Gregorio, circa 1850, by Jenaro Pérez Villaamil

Isabelline windows in the Patio Grande's cloister, circa 1850, by Jenaro Pérez Villaamil, Philippe Benoist and Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot

Library of the Colegio de San Gregorio by Valentín Carderera, circa 1837. Museo Lázaro Galdiano

The structure of the Colegio de San Gregorio is today classified into seven elements: Portada monumental (main facade), Visitor reception area, Chapel, Patio de los Estudios ( Courtyard of the studies ), Patio Grande ( Large courtyard ), Monumental staircase, and ruins of the Edificio de las Azoteas ( Building of the roofs ).

Its architecture, which include, above all, the facade and the courtyard, is considered as one of the best examples of Isabelline art developed in Crown of Castile region during the Catholic Monarchs 's reign, which begin to shows strongly the new ideas that came with the beginning of the Early-Modern Age.

The facade, plain facing and topped with a crest, stands out above all for its spectacular main facade, which by its stylistic features it sets regarding the workshop of Gil de Siloé, a Flemish origin artist, who was at that time in Burgos dealing with the royal sepulchers of the Miraflores Charterhouse and is known to have been commissioned to make the defunct altarpiece of the chapel, very in connection with which the sculptor had made in the Conception's chapel or of Bishop Acuña in the Cathedral of Burgos and has obvious similarities to the upper of the main facade of San Gregorio.