Part 1 of 2
NOTES TO THE TEXT
1. Such ideas run through Gaudi's discussions of architectural theory. For him even structural forms carried an iconographic meaning, as we observe in his likening of his favorite geometrical surface--the hyperbolic paraboloid--to the Holy Trinity. In speaking to a group of engineering students at the Sagrada Famlia church in 1915, he pointed out that the hyperbolic paraboloid is generated by one straight line moving over two others, and maintained that the latter two represent the Father and Son, the moving line being the Holy Spirit which establishes communication between Father and Son (Diario de Barcelona, 9 Feb. 1915).
2. See note 82 below, especially Martinell, op. cit., passim.
3. All the major books on Gaudi have dealt with this, and in particular two essays: F. Xavier Amoros i Sola, Presencia de Reus en l'obra de Gaudi [Reus, 1952]; Cesar Martinell, La raiz reusense en la obra de Gaudi [Reus, 1952].
4. The genealogy of the Gaudi family, going back to a merchant of Auvergne in the early seventeenth century, can be found in Bergos 1954, pp. 13014, 167. Further details are in El Mati (Barcelona), 21 June 1936, p. 8; Diario Espanol (Tarragona), 25 Sept. 1951; and Destino (Barcelona), 2 August 1952, p. 10.
5. This has been a matter of considerable speculation to his biographers, since Gaudi was prone to discourse on the virtues of married life to his young assistants. There are guarded references to a balked romance, and in "Elogio Preliminar" his friend the writer Maragall wove such a tale about an architect who is presumed to be Gaudi (the writer's son Jordi Maragall confirms this).
Gaudi has been likened to Michelangelo in this respect.
6. Much of our information about Gaudi's youth in Reus comes from his companion Eduardo Toda, who was interviewed by Gaudi's biographers (e.g., "Recuerdos de la infancia y primera joventud de nuestro Gaudi" in Calendario 1929, pp. 15-18) and also wrote his own recollections, "Records d'Antoni Gaudi a Reus, fins l'any 1870," El Mati (Barcelona) 21 June 1936, pp. 1-2.
7. Although the Academy in Madrid had been giving degrees for architecture for a long time, Barcelona employed the title of maestro de obras as awarded by the School of Industrial Arts in the Lonja of Barcelona. In 1869 the Escuela Superior de Arquietectura was established in the Lonja, and during Gaudi's student days it was moved to the new University which was being built by Elias Rogent, first director of the school.
8. His grades in his various schools are reported in Rafols 1952, p. 187-89, and in Bergos 1954, pp. 15-18, 168. Both authors relate incidents that arose between Gaudi and his instructors. That his attention occasionally wandered is attested to by a page of his Surveying class notes in the Reus Museum that is covered with "doodles," including a rather fine study for a capital (fig. 20).
9. La Obrera Mataronense (see Chronol. 1878-82) was one of a number of workers' cooperatives that sprang up in Catalonia from mid-century, apparently independent of the English cooperative movement. An idealistic enterprise, it underwent great difficulty, but by the 1870s had obtained a measure of success. Its early years are described interestingly by Joaquin M. Bartrina, 'La Sociedad Cooperativa Mataronense," in Obras en prosa y verso (Barcelona and Madrid: Texido y Parera, 1881) pp. 219-58. At the time of World War I it was bought out by an individual proprietor; its buildings are still in use.
10. For an informative discussion of the political situation in which Gaudi was immersed in Catalonia see Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth (Cambridge: the University press, 1950) pp. 24 ff. The account is well documented, and there is a general bibliography on pp. 348-9.
11. Calendario 1927, p. 27; and Martinell, Gaudi i la Sagrada Familia, p. 165, n. 43.
12. Sebastian Kneipp (1821-97), a German monk, devised the system to overcome his own youthful infirmities. In 1881 he established a curative center in Worishofen, publishing books that went through many editions. They were translated into Spanish, and his system seems to have achieved great popularity in the Peninsula.
Gaudi's frugal diet is often described (e.g., "Parlant amb el capella custodi del Temple de la Sagrada FAmilia, Mossen Gil Pares," Catalunya Social VI, 19 June 1926, pp. 3-4), and his extreme Lenten fasting was the subject of an article by Ricardo Opisso in Diario de Barcelona, 24 March 1951.
13. It should be noted here, because it coincided more or less with his withdrawal from commercial practice, that in 1911 he almost succumbed to an attack of undulant fever and retired to the Pyrenees with his physician and friend Dr. Pedro Santalo to convalesce. This episode is always emphasized by his biographers.
14. Being dependent on alms exclusively for support, the works of the Sagrada Famlia church were in constant crisis. One such occurred in 1905, at which time the Catalan writer Juan Maragall composed a series of pieces for the press of Barcelona, one of which, "Una gracia de caritat" (Diario de Barcelona, 7 Nov. 1905), suggested that Gaudi "go out into the street at midday with hat in hand, asking of all alms for the church." It later became Gaudi's practice to do so. However, Gaudi himself was poor only because he had distributed his own wealth and inheritances to the Catholic church on the one hand, and to the Mancomunidad of Catalonia on the other, the latter being an act of outright Catalanism (Calendario 1927, p. 27).
15. We know something of his library. Among his basic religious texts were Ano cristiano; Misal romano; Ceremonial de obispos; Proper L.P. Gueranger, Annee liturgique; and Thomas a Kempis (according to Puig Boada, S.F. 1929, p. 101, and Diario de Barcelona, 24 March 1951. p. 17.
Regarding secular books, Rafols tells us (1929, p. 32) that he had read the following treatises on social problems: A. Bock, Economie politique des Atheniens; L. M. Moreau-Christophe, Du probleme de la misere; and E. Lavasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrieres en France. (I am indebted to John N. Waddell, Columbia University reference librarian, for verifying these items.)
Architecturally, Viollet-le-Duc was his bible; one of his few trips outside Catalonia took him to Carcassonne where he was flattered to be mistaken for Viollet-le-Duc himself when he was examining the reconstruction (Rafols 1929, p. 22). Gaudi of course owned art books and periodicals.
Philosophically he is supposed to have been strongly influenced by his collections of Greek classics (Rafols 1929, p. 220), Goethe (Paul Linder in Mar del Sur, Lima, March-April 1950, passim), and Shakespeare (Arturo Llopis in Templo, LXXXVI, October 1951, p. 8).
16. To these important Catalan clerics should be added Father de Osso, founder of the Teresianas, the Bishop Morgades and the Cardinal Casanas of Barcelona and the Jesuit Ignacio Casanovas. Although a layman, Jose M. Bocabella, co-founder of the association responsible for the Sagrada Familia church, also had a spiritual influence on Gaudi.
17. Among articles attributing saintly virtues to Gaudi one might list: Manuel Trens, "L'arquitect de Deu," La Publicitat (Barcelona) 11 June 1926; Jose M. Gich, "Era un sant ...!," Catalunya Social VI (19 June 1926); J. Marti Matleu, "Un cristiano exemplar: Don Antonio Gaudi," Almanaque de las conferencias de San Vicente de Paul (Barcelona: Ormiga, 1927), pp. 82-86; and Octavio Saltor, "Vida para Dios: Antonio Gaudi, arquitecto del Senor," San Jose Oriol, IX Barcelona (May 1956)
18. I. Buckmann, "Antoni Gaudi: Ein pathographischer Versuch, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Genese des Genieruhms, Zeit. f. d. gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, CXXXIX (1932), pp. 133-157. Actually this is little more than an enumeration of the well-known events of Gaudi's life plus a few hackneyed efforts to point up psychoses in his behavior. The weaknesses of the analysis were the subject of an entertaining review by Oliver Brachfeld, "Una patografia d'Antoni Gaudi," in Mirador, Barcelona (6 April 1933).
19. The quantity of newspaper and magazine articles dedicated to or provoked by the death and burial of Gaudi is so large that they cannot be enumerated here. An almost hour-by-hour chronicle of the events is to be found in the special number of El Propagador for 1 and 15 July 1926. An anthology of short literary pieces that appeared in the Catalan press was collected in Antoni Gaudi: La seva vida. Informative full-page spreads describing the funeral were printed in the Barcelona papers from 13 to 15 June. Important necrologies appeared outside of Catalonia in at least six papers of Madrid, in Milan, Paris, etc.
20. Illustrated in Rafols 1929, pp. 14-19.
21. A camarin is a combination of chapel and dressing room for a cult image (especially for the Virgin) situated behind the altar and usually visible through it.
Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano (1828?-1901) was a Murcian active in Barcelona. It may have been through his work with this Gothicizing architect at Montserrat that Gaudi made the contacts that later provided him with so much ecclesiastical building. In his diary (lost) Gaudi claimed credit for the Montserrat design, and later he replaced del Villar as architect of the Sagrada Familia church. According to Anuario 1927, p. 58, the elder del Villar was aided in both these projects by his son Francisco de Paula del Villar y Carmona (1860-1926). Del Villar padre is the subject of an informative obituary in Anuario 1903, pp. 443-46.
22. Jose Fontsere Mestre (died 1897), maestro de obras, had won the competition for the construction of a public park on the site of the Citadel of Barcelona. This hated symbol of the authority of Castille over Catalonia had been almost entirely razed in 1841 and 1868, like the fortifications of many other European cities that had outgrown their old defensive boundaries. Gaudi, still a student, worked out the hydraulic calculations for the Cascade so cleverly that he was given credit for the corresponding course at the School of Architecture, although he had neglected to attend the lectures.
23. In Gaudi's papers. See Rafols 1929, p. 18, and J. M. Garrut in Diario de Barcelona, 5 Sept. 1959, p. 40.
24. Juan Martorell y Montells (1833-1906). His works, principally churches, are too many to list here, but certain of his projects had a direct bearing on Gaudi's career. Gaudi and Domenech y Montaner as young assistants helped him in the controversy over the Cathedral facade (see Chronol. 1882, and fig. 25), and it was Martorell who recommended Gaudi as new architect of the Sagrada Familia church. He was apparently assisted by Gaudi with the beginnings of the monastery and church of the Salesas (finished 1885) on the paseo de San Juan in Barcelona. Here occurred a mutual influence. Gaudi is considered to have used the Salesas interior as a point of departure for certain church projects of his own, while Martorell was probably influenced by Gaudi in employing a polychrome tile and rubble exterior for the Salesas. But perhaps the most fruitful interrelationship came in connection with the group of Catalan-style buildings constructed at Comillas (near Santander) for the Marqueses of Comillas. The first Marques (see note 27) commissioned a large neo-Gothic palace which Martorell carried out between 1878-90 (fig. 21). Beside this, and to have been attached to it by an arcade, Martorell constructed a pantheon-chapel, for which Gaudi was asked to design the future (plate 96, plate 97, plate 98 and plate 99). In 1883 Martorell started the huge Pontifical Seminary nearby for the Marques, a work that was finished by Domenech y Montaner. Meanwhile, in 1883-85 next to the chapel, Gaudi designed "El Capricho" for the family (plate 1, plate 13, plate 14). These buildings, along with a cemetery and some monuments about the town, form a veritable museum of Catalan Renaixenca architecture of 1875-90. A number of the works of Martorell are illustrated in Rogent Arquitectura and in Album Renaixensa.
25. The career of Luis Domenech y Montaner (1850-1923) paralleled Gaudi's in many ways besides the dates of their lives and the points of contact that have already been enumerated. He was an ardent Catalanist, taking an active political role. His early style of architecture was a medieval revivalism exemplified by the Exposition restaurant of 1888 (now a museum). He shared Gaudi's delight in lush polychromatic effects in brick and vitreous materials, and he produced some of the great monuments of Catalonia's Modernismo period, e.g., the Palacio de la Musica Catalan (1891-1908) built to house the musical society "Orfeo Catala." The extravagance of this building, inside and out, is indescribable in words--with its many-colored ceramics and mosaics, its transparent glass colonnettes, its flying horses of plaster and its stained glass skylight. However, Domenech was of a more practical disposition than Gaudi. He built in the mode of the time rather than fighting it, and he had the persistence to carry out a number of large institutional commissions such as hospitals and hotels. He was also known as a writer and editor of works on art. His buildings are illustrated in Rogent Arquitectura, Album Renaixensa, Cirici Modernista. For biographical details see his obituary in Anuario 1924, pp. 117-21.
26. Elias Rogent Amat (1821-1897) stimulated the revival of medieval styles, crafts and manners in Catalonia through his archaeological studies and other writings; by his reconstruction of medieval buildings such as the Monastery of Ripoll; and through his position as a teacher. Such a building as the new University of Barcelona which he began in 1859 in the Romanesque vein was, of course, influential. He was an impressive lecturer and was accustomed to deliver scholarly addresses during the collective visits of the Association of Architects to Catalonia's ancient sites. Gaudi regularly attended these excursions and must have been much impressed by that of 27 June 1880 in which Rogent, talking about his favorite site San Cugat del Valles, stressed the political and social basis of the Middle Ages as a way of life. (Elias Rogent, San Cugat del Valles, 2nd ed. [Barcelona: Lopez Robert, 1880], Gaudi listed as present on p. 5). Rogent's buildings will be found illustrated in his son's book, Arquitectura Moderna, and in B. Bassegoda y Amigo, El arquitecto Elias Rogent (Barcelonia: Farre y Asensio, 1929).
27. This chapel was constructed by Martorell (see note 24) as a burial place for the family and descendents of Antonio Lopez y Lopez (1817-83), first Marques of Comillas. The Marques was a self-made man and a perfect example of the new nineteenth-century aristocracy of Spain. As a youth he had emigrated from Comillas to Andalusia to Cuba to Barcelona, parlaying his small earnings into the Compania Trasatlantica (Spain's biggest shipping line), a tobacco monopoly, banks and a variety of other enterprises. He was ennobled by Alfonso XII in 1878. He and his son Claudio, the second Marques, played an important role in Barcelona life and patronized such Catalan artists as Martorell, Gaudi, Domenech y Montaner, the sculptors Vallmitjana, Llimona, etc. The seminary that they had erected facing their palace in Comillas was turned over to the Vatican in what appears to have been a politico-religious maneuver. The palace still contains a remarkable regional museum, although it was looted during the Civil War.
28. See note 9.
29. Besides Martorell and Domenech y Montaner, already mentioned, a pioneer in the new coloristic brick architecture was Jose Vilaseca y Casanovas (1848-1910), one-time collaborator with Domenech and a leading architect of the Renaixenca. He constructed the triumphal arch for the 1888 Exposition of Barcelona in such materials and is also known for his use of oriental motifs. The Catalans were toying with the same flat, floral Egyptian patterns that attracted Louis Sullivan. Vilaseca had a splendid open touring car decorated in the Egyptian style!
Vilaseca's buildings will be found illustrated in Rogent Arquitectura, Album Renaixensa and Cirici Modernista. His daughter-in-law, the Senora Escobedo Sanchez, has deposited a collection of his original drawings with the Columbia University archive.
30. (plate 11). Actually this detail is of a sketch of the fence around the corner on the Avenida Principe de Asturias, to which de Serra Martinez extended the enclosure in the reform of the 1920s. It is identical with Gaudi's original bit of iron fence and was apparently produced by the maker of the original, Juan Onos (see note 91).
31. Conversation with Juan Bautista de Serra Martinez 15 July 1959.
32. Illustrated in Rafols, 1929, p. 26. Later a quantity of building was done at Garraf for the Guells by Francisco Berenguer, Gaudi's closest associate. It consisted of an unusual stone building of triangular section which served as a residence, chapel and warehouse (fig. 22), and a gatehouse with brick and remarkable wrought iron work (fig. 23). Gaudi admired it (Salvador, Arquitecturai IX, 1927, p. 10), and it has been frequently mistaken for his own work.
33. Although he was usually fussy about the execution of each detail of his structures, Gaudi in this case sent the plans on and left their execution to the architect Cristobal Cascante, who supervised much of the Catalan work at Comillas. Apparently the building was never seen by Gaudi nor by most of his biographers, who frequently err in describing it. As it is so little known it might be worth observing that: (1) in the garden there is a small grotto with a ceiling of pendant rocks similar to those which Gaudi later employed in the galleries of the Park Guell (plate 71); and (2) the same tiles (obviously from Barcelona) had been used at the top corners of the verandah of the Casa Vicens (see plate 12). The ceramics that Domenech used for the seminary and its gateway at Comillas are also to be found decorating a number of buildings in Barcelona.
34. Gaudi's modifications to the Guell house were lost when that part of the estate was turned over by Juan Antonio Guell, son of Eusebio, to the royal family of Spain to make their residence in Barcelona. This appears to have been in accord with the centralist policies of the "Lliga," conservative Catalan party to which Gaudi and his patrons belonged. Of the walls that Gaudi constructed around the estate there exists now only an entrance gate, itself recently reconstructed by the University which occupies much of what was once the Guell estate.
35. This was worked out in great detail and with great beauty, according to his associates. Gaudi had apparently been prevented from preparing it immediately by the pressure of his work on the Sagrada Familia, the Guell palace, the Teresian school, the palace in Astorga, etc. Unfortunately the entire set of drawings was lost in 1936, and we have left only one photograph that had been made previously.
36. The modern cult of St. Joseph was developed under Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII. Pius encouraged his worship in 1847 and 1862, proclaimed him to be a patron of the universal church in 1870; Leo urged the formulation of a theology of Joseph in an encyclical of 1889, dealt with his importance to the family and the worker in his "Annum Sacrum" of 1899. In 1865 the Marist father Joseph Huguet of Saint Foy in Dijon had launched a periodical Propagateur de la devotion a Saint Joseph which came to Bocabella's attention. Worship of St. Joseph in the West started in late medieval times, had flourished in Santa Teresa's day (numbering eight monasteries in Catalonia), but had dwindled by the nineteenth century. Bocabella's association immediately won Papal approval, indulgences, apostolic benedictions, and in 1901 Pope Leo XIII began to return half of their annual donations to the Vatican in order to aid construction of the Sagrada Familia church.
For details of this movement in Spain consult El Dia Grafico (Barcelona), 19 Jan. 1915; Diario de Barcelona, 19 March 1915; El Universo (Madrid) 23 March 1915; La Vanguardia (Barcelona) 18 Jan. 1915, 2 Sept. 1921; Templo (April-May 1952) pp. 5-6, (Sept. 1954) pp. 6-11, (June 1955) pp. 2-11, (March 1959) pp. 10-11, Obra Mercedaria no. 41 (Jan.-March 1955), no. 47 (July-Sept. 1956).
Bocabella was a bookdealer, whose seventeenth-century establishment, Libreria Herederos de la Vda. Pla, still serves as headquarters for the Association and its church.
37. The simple structure illustrated here, apparently del Villar's first idea, was often reprinted in El Propagador. However, Rafols 1929, p. 42, shows a more sophisticated design by del Villar, seemingly the one he was carrying out when Gaudi took over from him.
38. A large collection of clippings of this nature is preserved in the archive of the Amigos de Gaudi of Barcelona.
39. Bocabella had said in 1881 on buying the terrain, "On this site will rise the sumptuous expiatory church of the Holy Family, surrounded by gardens for the recreation and enjoyment of children, and accompanied by Catholic schools and workshops with the object of uplifting those gangs of street urchins who wander about lost, and so to facilitate their moral and physical development" (La Vanguardia, 18 Jan. 1915). Gaudi described to a visitor the colony of artisans he envisaged clustered about his church, "from which will rise the noises of work, like the buzzing of bees, toward the sunlit church, a mystical hive ...," (Marquina in Art et les Artistes VI (1908) pp. 520-21). Schools for children were constructed on the site in 1909.
40. In "Una gracia de caritat," see note 14.
(Plate 6). The towers of the Sagrada Familia church are visible from nearly all of Gaudi's structures, although nowhere so neatly arranged as from the Casa Mila, his last building. There seems to be no question that Gaudi was so paying deference to the church which, as architecture, was to dominate Barcelona religiously, complementing the mountain tibidabo behind the city. The Tibidabo, whose name means literally "tibi dabo" ("to you I will give," Matt. 4:9), is believed to be the mountain on which the temptation of Christ took place.
41. Herman G. Scheffauer, "Barcelona Builds with Bold Fantasy," The New York Times Magazine (21 Nov. 1926), pp. 5, 17. Similar articles are to be found in the Illustrated London News for 17 Dec. 1927, 10 March 1928 and 23 Feb. 1929.
42. Bulleti del Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, XI (April 1901), p. 108.
43. Marquina, op. cit., p. 518.
44. Cf. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonne de l'architecture francaise du XI au XVI siecle (Paris: Bance, 1854-68) V, pp. 472 ff, "Fleuron."
45. American Architect and Building News, Boston, XXXVII (9 July 1892), p. 27; Decorator and Furnisher, N.Y., XIX (1892), pp. 145-6, 217, 219. Gaudi's assistant Juan Matamala suggests that Americans became acquainted with the Palace through the delegation that visited the Exposition of 1888 in Barcelona. They were there to help dedicate the monument to Columbus at the foot of the Ramblas, near the Palacio Guell. Eusebio Guell's brother-in-law, the second Marques of Comillas was a director of the Exposition and undoubtedly showed Americans the richly-marbled rooms of the new palace under construction. The same furniture maker (Francisco Vidal) worked for Gaudi and for the American exhibit at the Exposition.
The only monograph on this building is a short one written by Joseph Puiggari for the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya in 1894: Monografia de la Casa palau y Museu del Excm. Sr. D. Eusebi Guell y Bacigalupi (Barcelona: "L'Avenc"). Informative articles have been published on the Palace by I. Puig Boada, in Cuadernos de Arquitectura (Nov. 1944) and by M. Baldrich and by L. Bonet Gari in San Jorge, Barcelona (July 1954).
46. In retaining Gaudi as his architect, Eusebio Guell y Bacigalupi (1846-1918) showed himself to be the most radical and open-handed Maecenas of the Catalan Renaixenca. No account books were kept between them, and Gaudi seems never to have lacked funds during Eusebio's lifetime. The Guell fortune had been established by Eusebio's father Juan Guell y Ferrer (1800-1872) who, like the first Marques of Comillas, rose from simple beginnings to a position of wealth in the Antilles. On his return to Catalonia he started spinning mills ("Vapor Vell") which exploited recent Catalan inventions; he invested in agriculture, became director of numerous financial enterprises. As a writer and a senator he fought for tariffs, against Castillian opposition, in order to protect the young Catalan industries. He married into a well-known Genoese family, Bacigalupi. Eusebio, a worthy son, administered a variety of enterprises, served in politics, was active in the Catalan movement and patronized the arts. Like his father, Eusebio spoke out on full production and protective tariffs to encourage Spanish industry and to raise the standard of living. By the development of his own suburban properties (Finca Guell, park Guell, etc.) Eusebio tried to direct the expansion of Barcelona into rational, modern form. He was made gentilhombre del Rey in 1884, count in 1910. Through marriage or by their own exploits (including heroism), the Guells came into more aristocratic titles than we can list, their relatives de Comillas and de Castelldosrius being also patrons of Gaudi.
The following may be consulted for biographical information on the family: Jose de Argullol y Serra, Biografia del Excmo. Sr. D. Juan Guell y Ferrer (Barcelona: Succesores de Ramirez, 1881); P. Miquel d'Esplugues, El Primer Comte de Guell (Barcelona: Poncell, 1921); P. Rodon i Amigo, Eusebi Guell industrial (Badalona: "Cataluna Textil," 1935); Pedro Gual Villalbi, Biografia de Eusebio Guell y Bacigalupi (Barcelona: Velez, 1953); Jose M. Pi y Suner, Gaudi y la Famlia Guell (Barcelona: Amigos de Gaudi, 1958).
47. Salvador, op cit., p. 16.
48. Useful articles on the Astorga palace include: Amos Salvador, "Gaudi (Impresion de viaje)," Pequenas monografias de arte, Madrid, I (Nov. 1907), pp. 1-4; Angel Salcedo Ruiz, "El Palacio Episcopal de Astorga," El Universo (Madrid) XV, 21 June 1914, p. 1; Luis Alonso Luengo, "Gaudi en Astorga," Revista (Barcelona) 16 Sept. 1953, p. 14, and 23 Sept. 1953, p. 8 (reprinted in pamphlet form in Astorga, 1954); Enric Casanelles, "Gaudi en Astorga," Distincion, Barcelona, no. 16 (Dec. 1957), pp. 69-71.
49. For bibliography on this building see note 110.
50. Gaudi respected the ancient ruins in several ways. The remaining walls he built into a type of terrace in front of the new house. And the access road (now called calle Bellesguard) was moved well away to the front, overhanging a gully. This necessitated the construction of a retaining wall and viaduct (fig. 24), which he made with inclined piers of rough stone work similar to those of the contemporary Park Guell. Curiously enough, this bit of engineering has passed unnoticed, never having been illustrated in connection with his works.