CATALAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, 9: 45-70 (2016) Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona DOI: 10.2436/20.1000.01.121 · ISSN: 2013-407X http://revistes.iec.cat/chr/ Architecture and the arts in Catalonia during the Renaissance Joaquim Garriga* Universitat de Girona Received 20 March 2015 · Accepted 10 April 2015 Abstract This is an overview of the process of transformation of the architecture, sculpture and painting of Catalonia during the Renaissance. It attempts to reconstruct the fundamental era of changes when the late Gothic models were replaced by the new Renaissance paradigm gestated in Italy, thus ushering in the modern cycle of arts in the country. Despite the relative dearth of a Catalan historiographic tra- dition that studies and explains the cultural heritage from this period – which was decimated by the massive destruction in the 19th and 20th centuries, which particularly targeted religious works – we begin to trace the major outlines of the process of assimilating the Renaissance which got underway in the 16th century and did not culminate until well into the 17th century. What emerges is the no- table volume of artistic output undertaken, the main agents and factors in the transformation, the slow yet steady pace of the incorpo- ration of changes, the long phase of hybridisation and the uneven acceptance of Renaissance features depending on the different pa- rameters of architecture or figurative arts considered. Keywords: architecture, sculpture, Renaissance, Catalonia * Contact address: Joaquim Garriga. Universitat de Girona, Facultat de Lletres. Plaça Ferrater Mora, 1. 17071 Girona. Tel. +34 972418213. E-mail: joaquim.garriga@udg.edu The artistic output of the 16th century in Catalonia re- flects processes of structural change which, just like in so many other national territories in Europe, took place and can be explained through the import of models originat- ing in Italy. These models were gestated around the hu- manist movement and developed diversely over the course of the 15th and 16th centuries in Florence, Rome, Venice and other dynamic centres on the Italian Penin- sula. However the term Renaissance – “arts of the Renais- sance” – coined by Giorgio Vasari (Le vite, 1550 and 1568) to describe, from his viewpoint, the specific phenomenon of the discovery and revival of classical antiquity, with the vast cultural regeneration which also entailed a reworking of artistic activity as a referent, cannot be extrapolated to the situation of the arts in our country or in any other country in modern Europe without substantially adapt- ing its meaning. Despite the fact that from the formal standpoint the architectural and figurative changes com- ing from Italy became a profoundly deep trickle which would end up wholly replacing the entire traditional Gothic model in place until then, they reflected the adop- tion of stylistic modalities – “Renaissancisms”, let us call them – that were at first bereft of most of the cultural im- plications with which they were indissociable at first. Thus, instead of calling the works made in Catalonia fol- lowing the new model the “arts of the Renaissance”, per- haps we should call them something more neutral and simpler, like “art from the Renaissance period”. 1 However, the changes noted in 16th-century Catalan arts are quite significant and broad in scope not only in relation to these imported Renaissance models but also, and more importantly, in relation to internal factors from the same society which was digesting them, beginning with those who were the most directly responsible for the creation and use of the works: both the clients that pro- moted them and defined the commissions and the arti- sans or artists who designed and executed them and the audience for whom they were meant. We should also con- sider the influence that the general political framework and the ideological, economic and symbolic factors in- volved in it had on the different aspects of production. They include the projection of the institutional powers and social leaders on the artistic commissions; the demo- graphic and economic dynamism of the population, which is a crucial factor in earmarking resources and fi- nancing systems; the evolution of religious sentiment; and the doctrinal and institutional upheaval caused from the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic response to it, along with its strategies, which led to an intensification in the creation of works and to a streamlining of the de- sign criteria and means of execution in terms of icono- graphic options and formal configuration.