TWO EPHEMERAL ARCHITECTURE DESIGNS OF CAYETANO VÉLEZ FOR THE TOWN HALL OF SEVILLE

Abstract

This paper analyzes two ephemeral architecture designs for the gallery and the south side of the town hall of Seville in the Plaza de San Francisco, whose author was the chief architect of the city Cayetano Vélez. These drawings are preserved at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid and are dated in 1816. These were created in order to decorate the town hall of the city for the entry in Seville of the princesses Maria Isabel de Braganza and María Francisca in a step in their way to the court for the bridal double bond with Fernando de Borbon, the reigning monarch, and his brother Carlos Isidro. These designs, which did not came to be built, show their relationship with neoclassical architecture of the Academy in this time. In these ephemeral structure are emphasized the purely architectural motifs and the autonomy of the decorating details, with the search for archaeological references to antiquity and the construction of an innovative symbolic language in many of its formal and significant features.