Art Of The Day Weekly

Ventura, an architect

MADRID – A subway station in the Spanish capital carries his name. It is on line 3, near Plaza de España. But Ventura Rodríguez (1717-1785), who was almost a contemporary of his Scottish colleague Robert Adam, remains mostly unknown. Yet this architect contributed to give Madrid its present aspect, in particular in the colossal works of the Palacio Real. He did not limit himself to the capital; he also worked in Zaragoza, with the Basilica del Pilar. The exhibition in honor of the tri-centennial of his birth is organized in an institution of which he was one of the pillars for forty years, the Academia de San Fernando, where Picasso studied briefly in 1897. We see this great scholar of Italian architecture, and lover of the Baroque period, at the center of a true cultural network that included in particular Goya. We discover that he not only left behind a remarkable number of buildings, but of writings, and drawings as well. His project of a cathedral in 1748, when he had not yet built anything, opened the way to his election to the Accademia di San Luca, in Rome.
• Ventura Rodríguez, arquitecto de la Ilustración, at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, from 21 December 2017 to 8 April 2018.

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