Brief history of the Spanish Golden Age – History Archives

The term “Golden age” It evokes a time, from the beginning of the 16th century to the middle of the 17th, hegemonic in the political panorama of the Hispanic Monarchy, especially the first, as well as in the artistic, cultural and literary fields.

One of the causes of this artistic boom in the Peninsula is due to the arrival of precious metals coming from the recently conquered American lands that bore fruit in sculpture, painting, goldsmithing, In addition to architecture, Spain became a very important artistic center that not only demanded native artists, but also foreign ones (Flemish, Burgundians, French and Flemish since the fifteenth century, Italians in the sixteenth, French also in the seventeenth). We can highlight, for example, the works of the Italians Leone and Pompeo Leoni, father and son executors of the praying figures of the families of Carlos V and Felipe II in the monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, the great work of Spanish architecture from the 16th century, built between 1561 and 1583, according to the designs of Juan de Herrera.

This artistic development, which encompasses the Renaissance and part of Baroquefavored by the positive economic situation until the last decade of the 16th century and sustained by the influx of American metal which, in turn, increased the patronage capacity of the monarchy, the Church and the elites, responded in part to the royal need to exalt the Crown and the Habsburg dynasty, at a time of “evolution towards absolutism” (Bennassar, 1983, p. 229), in addition to being an instrument of legitimation and exaltation of the Catholic Church after the Trento council.

In this way, artistic production would become the first industry in Spain at the time, producing wood, stone, marble, brick… in the peninsular territory, which required a significant amount of labor.

Apart from the monastery of El Escorial, the great architectural enterprise of the Spanish Golden Age was the construction of the Palacio del Buen Retiro in Madrid, beginning its construction in 1630 at the request of the Count-Duke of Olivares and Philip IV who wanted to have a space for playground away from the Alcázar. Destroyed during the War of Independence, its space is currently occupied by the Prado Museum.

In addition to the aforementioned Herrera, with regard to the great architects of the Spanish Renaissance, we can highlight Diego de Siloe (Cathedral of Granada), Alonso de Covarrubias (Puerta Bisagra of Toledo), Juan Gil de Hontañón (cathedrals of Segovia and Salamanca), Juan Gómez de Mora (Madrid’s Plaza Mayor), Pedro Machuca (Charles V Palace in Granada)…

As for painting, we can highlight numerous painters since the 16th century, such as El Greco, who developed a large part of his work in Toledo, Juan Fernández de Navarrete el Mudo, Francisco Herrera el Viejo, Alonso Cano (also a sculptor and architect) , Juan Pantoja de la Cruz… to Bartolomé Murillo, José Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán and Diego de Velázquez, who developed their work in the following century.

Spatially, the Spanish artistic explosion of the Golden Age can be located mainly in cities such as Seville, with great development in all the arts, favored by its monopoly on American trade and the birthplace of Velázquez and Murillo; Valladolid, the great sculpture center of the Peninsula; Valencia, which spread Italian artistic currents and exported Ribera to Italy (The Spagnoletto), Toledo, Granada, Salamanca or Madrid, conditioned by the presence of the Court, basic in the artistic development of the capital.

The theater of the Golden Age

The Spanish It was one of the most developed languages, since, at the beginning of the 16th century, it was closer to the current Castilian than the French or German of the same period with respect to the current ones. The diffusion of Castilian was already notable in areas such as the Kingdom of Valencia, due to the influence of the nobility, Aragon… although “it continued to be, instead, a foreign language in Catalonia, in the Balearic Islands, and in the Basque provinces, it was little and poorly known by the Galician peasants” (Bennassar, 1983, p. 271).

Most of the culture came from the oral tradition, with an important presence of the religious character. In addition, 75-80% of the population did not know how to read or write, this proportion varying according to the region, standard of living, rural or urban habitat, profession, sex…

It was a popular culture very rich in proverbs, songs, stories… that is not separated from written culture due to the influence of autos sacramentales, allegorical religious representations; the “devotional comedies”, sometimes performed inside the cathedrals themselves; and comedy. Within the religious acts we can highlight the figure of Lope de Rueda (mid-16th century).

Lope de Rueda would be the antecedent of the greats of the Spanish theater of the following century: Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Tirso de Molina….

The literature it will be an instrument of some minorities to convince others intellectually, theater being at an intermediate level due to its dual nature: on the one hand, written text, and on the other, a fully visual didactic spectacle.

The Golden Age theater will be one of the main intermediaries between popular and intellectual culture, above all, because the public had no need to read or write. The performances took place in the comedy penswhich welcomed a very varied public, from popular sectors to aristocrats, passing through bourgeois, lawyers… although they also aroused criticism because part of the population abandons their obligations to attend theatrical performances, whose tickets were cheap.

Another of the keys to its success among the popular classes was the use of romance, popular songs, short compositions, love stories… in short, the theater encompassed an important folkloric “heritage”.

The professionalization of the theater and the construction of corrals occurred thanks to “the systematic arrival of Italian companies to perform in the street, not in the palace (…), permanent companies are formed, the technique is complicated” (Navas Ruiz, 1991, p. 45) … These Italian comedians will not only provide materials to the Spanish theater, but also archetypal characters.

From the third decade of the 17th century, closed theaters arose to compete with the corrals, such as the Valencian La Olivera (built in 1619) or the Madrid Buen Retiro (1632), built on the initiative of the Court.

Regarding the debate on whether it was the appearance of the comedy corrals that caused the flourishing of the theater of the Golden Age or vice versa, the aforementioned author Ricardo Navas Ruiz argues that “the existence of a popular hobby was taken advantage of and channeled by certain charitable organizations , centralizing it in the pens” (Navas Ruiz, 1991, p. 46). These were brotherhoods that rented courtyards of houses to obtain funds to maintain their hospitals.

When the theater falls under ecclesiastical and state control, it will lose its autonomous character and will be used for social purposes, which affects its literary content and the restriction of shows, since the theaters were closed in case of mourning at Court or in Lent, also because the morality of works was questioned. In fact, between 1608 and 1615 the Church caused those especially immoral works to be prohibited. Surely, these limitations would have been stronger had the charitable organizations not mediated. In spite of everything, it could be said that the theatrical comedies of the Golden Age were the “bread and circuses of the Spaniards of the time” (Navas Ruiz, 1991, ibídem).

Apart from comedy, other themes stand out in the Spanish theater of the 16th – 17th centuries, such as: human passions (jealousy, honor, faith…) in Lope de Vega, the study of profound human characters through comedy in Tirso de Molina and Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, metaphysics with Calderón and Tirso, in addition to honor, which “appears as a national claim, both individual and collective” (Bennassar, 1983, p. 281). For example, in the case of Calderón’s works, The life is dream either The mayor of Zalameawe observe that the “divine origin of existence, total subordination to the supreme design, personal honor and submission to the king manifest a social ethic based on the honor of the landowner” (Floristán, 2002, p. 334).

On the other hand, the development of written culture was favored by the significant increase in printing during the Golden Age, in addition, especially during the reign of Felipe II, the fact of knowing how to read and write was an important means of promotion. although, however, the levels of literacy in the overall population did not increase in a particularly significant way. In Madrid, for example, the levels of literacy were similar to those of the rest of Europe, where the lawyers belonged to the aristocracy, the Church, bureaucrats…, with literacy being a barrier in the popular classes.

Finally, we can assure you that the Spanish theater of the Golden Age, together with the contemporary Elizabethan theater in England, created modern European theater.

In the other great literary genres of the time (prose and poetry) we can highlight other great literary figures of universal renown, such as Francisco de Quevedo, whose work shows great concern for the decline that was glimpsed in the Hispanic Monarchy, a great figure of poetic conceptism against the culteranism of his “archenemy” Luis de Góngora, while in prose, we must point out the recovery of the picaresque novel in Mateo Alemán (Guzman de Alfarache) and in Quevedo himself (the buscon) and Miguel de Cervantes with his brilliant The Quijote (1605), “hardly classifiable” (Floristán, 2002, ibídem) in a certain literary style.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bennassar, B. (1983). The Spain of the Golden AgeBarcelona: Grijalbo.

Floristan Imízcoz, A. (2002). World Modern HistoryBarcelona: Ariel.

Kamen, H. (1983). A conflictive society: Spain, 1469 – 1714Madrid: Publishing Alliance.

Navas Ruiz, R. (1991) “The corrals and the comedy of the Golden Age”, AEPE Newsletter, 38 – 39, p. 45 – 52.

Zalama Rodriguez, M.A. (2016). The Renaissance: arts, artists, patrons and theoriesMadrid: Chair.