EL CAPRICHO

Comillas, Santander

1883-1885

This summer villa for don Maximo Dias de Quijano, adjacent to the palace ofthe marques de Comillas, is contemporary to the Vicens house, exhibiting the same stylistic influences, Moorish in origin, but with a somewhat different programme, distributed over a half-basement, a main floor and an attic under roof. The entrance, located on one corner of the house, is clearly identifiedby a tall cylindrical tower made of brick an clad in glazed ceramictiles, the lower part ofwhich metamophoses into a porch with four columns, while the upper part is crowned by a belvedere, the most striking element of the whole composition.

Gaudi continues here to work on, and explore, this element ofthe corner belveder, at the same time playing with benches which are also balustrades, employing a smoother and more uniform decorative formalism than in the Vicens house. The simultaneous use of courses of hand-made brick and strips of glazed ceramic tile in higher relier completes the enclosure of the walls. Here the windows are set flush with the external facade, with a very pronounced vertical division, while on the inside the bays provide space for seating. Cristobal Cascante, a fellos student of Gaudi's at the Escuela de Barcelona, was the responsible for on-site supervision and direction of the construction of the house.

COMENTARIOS:Antoni Gaudi
[PICTURE GALLERY I] [PICTURE GALLERY 2] [EVALUATION FORM]

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