On 14 April, the late Pope Francis declared the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí a Venerable Servant of God, recognising his heroic virtues. In doing so, he honoured a mightily talented creative spirit and much revered eccentric.
Gaudí, who died a century ago, blended natural imagery and piety with extreme gusto, most unforgettably in the looming, asparagus-like towers of Sagrada Família in Barcelona. He absorbed stylistic precedents through descriptions of East Asian art by Walter Pater, John Ruskin and William Morris, as well as Islamic art – especially the Alhambra, the palace-fortress in Granada – as studied by the architect Owen Jones.
The result was careening, vertiginous imagery, with forest-like interiors in which stone appears to melt or ripple unexpectedly. Straight lines and right angles became anathema; small wonder that Gaudí has been likened to another Catalan artist of instability, the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.
More linked to genuine natural imagery than Dalí, Gaudí strove to translate exalted spiritual lessons from study trips to Montserrat, the caves of Mallorca, the saltpetre caves in Collbató, the Fraguerau gorge in the Prades Mountains and Pareis in northern Mallorca.
The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner asserted that Gaudí’s buildings appear to grow “like sugar loaves and anthills” and their lively ornamentation with shards of broken pottery was possibly in “bad taste” but presented with “ruthless audacity”. Belated comparisons to the works of Dante Alighieri and JS Bach miss the point that the traditionally structured creations of these masters were far more symmetrical than the ever off-kilter Gaudí.
A lifelong one-off in <a href="https://thecatholicherald.com/amazonian-rite-to-draw-on-500-years-of-catholicism-and-natures-special-role-for-indigenous-peoples/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">identifying nature as holy creation</mark></a>, Gaudí was reportedly handed a diploma at Barcelona Architecture School by the director Elies Rogent, who murmured: “I have accredited either a genius or a loon. Time will tell.”
Will Gaudí’s essential weirdness be diluted by standardisation and the official status of sainthood, which is reportedly forthcoming?
Naturally, hagiographies are replete with lists of unusual behaviour by other holy persons, so few expect saints to behave like average folk. In any case, there is time to prepare for any incongruence, as no <em>santo subito</em> movement is underway; discussions have brewed for over three decades about Gaudí’s worthiness.
On Good Friday 1992, Fr Ignasi Segarra, a priest of Opus Dei, was a leading promoter, alongside a group of architects, of opening the process. “It’s necessary to beatify Gaudí,” Segarra declared.
Despite some ironical naysaying in response from the local popular press, Gaudí epitomised some virtues prized by Opus Dei, an institution whose stated mission is to help lay and clerical members seek holiness in everyday occupations.
One such virtue was self-mortification. In his later years, Gaudí was prone to extreme fasting; he once began a complete Lenten fast, and only desisted when Bishop Josep Torras i Bages advised him that his health was being comprised by the effort.
More routinely, the typical lunchtime repast for the aging Gaudí would be a few lettuce leaves dipped in milk. A posthumous aspect of Gaudí that coheres with Opus Dei priorities is conversion, as a number of East Asians, especially from Japan and Korea, have announced that they were received into the Church after being inspired by visits to Sagrada Família.
These adherences have been cited among the miracles surrounding Gaudí, as well as the claim that during the 143 years, so far, of construction of the Sagrada Família, there have been no serious injuries to the construction crew or visitors.
The very notion of St Antoni Gaudí echoes the 1982 beatification of the painter Fra Angelico by St John Paul II, who sought a great artist to celebrate for the calendar. Angelico, born Guido di Pietro, was a Dominican friar, whereas Gaudí was entirely nonclerical.
Indeed, his temperament was notoriously choleric. Late in life, Gaudí admitted that he never managed to conquer his temper, because he felt that he was more clear-sighted than others, who usually needed a harsh talking-to. This scolding sternness was captured in a portrait of Gaudí concealed by his contemporary, the painter Joan Llimona, in an image of St Philip Neri situated in Barcelona’s church of Sant Felip Neri.
Among Gaudí’s anti-ecclesiastical notions was a loathing of Gothic cathedrals, which he scorned as requiring constant propping up by buttresses, like a “defective body held up on crutches”. Gaudí added that the real proof that Gothic cathedrals are inadequate is that they are most emotionally impactful when ruined, ivy-covered and partly hidden by moonlight.
Like most architects, Gaudí squabbled with patrons, as in a project for renovating the main façade of the shrine of Our Lady of Mercy in Reus, his hometown. Church authorities rejected his plan as too costly, irking Gaudí so permanently that thereafter on all public occasions he claimed another birthplace, Riudoms.
A utopian socialist in his youth, Gaudí planned a never-to-be-realised restoration of the Royal Abbey of Santa Maria de Poblet, a Cistercian monastery located at the foot of the Prades Mountains.
He sought to refashion it into a community building as inspired by the French socialist philosopher Charles Fourier, linking military and monastic duties.
Gaudí’s eventual canonisation may focus a spotlight on controversial efforts to complete the unfinished Sagrada Família with what architectural experts have repeatedly scorned as lifeless, un-Gaudíesque imagery – with the word “kitsch” frequently bandied about.
Already over-visited, according to many, some 4.5 million annual tourists frequent the basilica and surrounding neighbourhoods each year. Worse, there are rumours of plans to construct a vast stair way leading up to the basilica’s main entrance, potentially requiring the demolition of three city blocks and the displacement of 1,000 residents.
Gaudí, devoted to helping impoverished families, would probably have been irate. Another concern is Alta Velocidad Española (AVE), a high-speed rail service operated for the past dozen years by the Spanish state railway company through a tunnel underneath Barcelona city centre.
Spain’s Ministry of Public Works claimed that the ironically named AVE posed no risk to the building’s stability, but Sagrada Família engineers and architects disagreed. So the future of his eye-catching creation, honoured as a UNESCO World Heritage landmark (but only those areas completed during the architect’s lifetime), may be in doubt.
In any case, perhaps Gaudí’s piety may be better appreciated in unadulterated humbler creations such as the Bocabella Altar (1885) designed for the oratory of a family home. The varnished mahogany mensa has a white marble slab in its centre for relics. It is decorated with typical Gaudí-style plants and images of St Francis of Paola, St Teresa of Ávila and the Holy Family, and crimson embroidery.
This quiet, intense object, like many buildings and other artworks created by Gaudí, form an enduring powerful legacy of his resolute inner spirit, deserving of all honours.<br><br><em>Photo: Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, Barcelona. (Credit: iStock.)</em>
<em>Benjamin Ivry has written biographies of Ravel, Poulenc and Rimbaud.</em>
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