Search

This article shows the relationship between the Xàtiva stonemasonry manuscript "Secretos de Arquitectura" and other documentary sources. This manuscript, produced in the 18th century, belongs to the Spanish treatise tradition, and consists of a collection of drawn traces with accompanying explanatory text. However, it has been detected that some of the texts and traces drawn correspond to earlier documentary sources of different origins. This has made it possible to establish relationships and to determine a specific context of knowledge transfer. However, within the manuscript, there is one particular case in which the enclosed text has been preserved, but not the drawn trace. This is entitled "Capialzado del arco por una frente y por el otro capialzado". It has been detected, on the other hand, that the enclosed text preserved corresponds in part to a capial tracing proposed by Vicente Tosca in his treatise. The article unravels the text of this lost trace, graphically restores the proposed layout, and exposes the problems that this entails, taking as a reference a case that already has certain geometric incongruities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the most characteristic elements of the Béjar Ducal Palace courtyard is the magnificent staircase made up of a large linteled arch that rests on Ionic columns with skewed capitals following the slope of the lintel. One of the capitals shows a different shape as it is bent. It consists of two halves, one of them in the common shape and the other one in a skewed shape. We deduce that there was a first project of the staircase that had to be modified. Master stonemason Pedro de Marquina's (author of the first conditions of the Project) knowledge of stone stereotomy suggests he was; the project architect, the execution director and the architect that modified the project during the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the realm of the Spanish stonework, the staircases represent one of the most coded typologies. In the field of southern Gothic, the first examples of stairway sections, located in courtyards of noble houses, appear towards the 12th - 13th centuries. These are supported by arches, and between the 14th - 16th centuries, a complex evolutionary process takes place concluding, already in the 16th century, with the box stairs (Fig. 1). The present article raises a reflection on this evolution, not so much for chronology, but for architectural and constructive characteristics, and especially for features that define a singular terminology appearing in the documentation, such as: "capialzada" stairs or tapering stairs, "engauchidas" or skewed, "encuentros en redondo" or rounded encounters", etc. Terms referring us to design processes changing over time. This article aims to systematize these concepts in order to clarify the confusion created in this domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]