Arthur Melida

Arturo Mélida and Alinari. Spanish architect , sculptor and painter of the 19th century . Multifaceted artist who stands out for the singular personality of his artistic work, always creative and original, sometimes innovative.

Summary

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• 1 Biographical summary
  • 1 Carrots
• 2 Artistic life
• 3 Catalog of works
  • 1 Architectural and construction works
  • 2 Works of interior decoration, painting and sculpture
  • 3 Sculptural work
  • 4 Illustration of literary works, magazines and posters
  • 5 Decorative arts
• 4 Sources

biographical synthesis

Arturo Mélida Alinari was born in Madrid , Spain , on July 24 , 1849 . He was the fourth son of Nicolás Mélida Lizana and Leonor Alinari Adarve , a distinguished married couple from Madrid’s high society.

His father was an illustrious jurisconsult linked to Spanish politics, since for several years he held the position of Deputy in the Cortes, being Secretary to His Majesty with the exercise of Decrees, Minister of the Court of Accounts of the Kingdom, Superintendent of Finance. He had the most distinguished recognitions: he was Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of Saint Louis of Parma, Commander of the Royal American of Isabel the Catholic and Officer of the Legion of Honor of France.

His mother, Leonor Alinari, of Italian origin, belonged to an aristocratic family in Florence and her manor house in that city was considered one of the most beautiful palaces of the Renaissance period. Leonor was related by family to the Alinari brothers, famous art photographers of the time, whose photographic work is kept in the Alinari National Museum of Photography in Florence. It was probably she who transmitted her love for the arts to her children and was in charge of providing them with a solid artistic education.

Arturo Mélida was the fourth of eleven brothers, among whom he maintained a close family relationship with the archaeologist José Ramón and the painter Enrique. The three brothers dedicated their lives to the world of the arts, a fact that brought success and fame to each one in a different modality of art or knowledge.

The Mélida Alinari brothers: Enrique, Arturo and José Ramón, always maintained a close contact that led to a mutual enrichment of the artistic and intellectual environment that surrounded each one of them, expanding it with new technical, artistic and intellectual knowledge, as well as new relations with personalities of the intellectual and artistic elite of the time.

All three were linked to the Institución Libre de Enseñanza, as well as its most prominent members, such as Aureliano de Beruete or Manuel Bartolomé Cossío , who were the ones who, among others, promoted and spread French positivist thought in Spain as a result of its acceptance. after the political and social changes brought about after the Revolution of 1868 .

Arturo Mélida y Alinari obtained the title of Architect at the Escuela Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid in 1873 . The great capacity for work that characterized the Mélida brothers meant that Arturo was also the author of a formidable artistic production, despite the fact that his death occurred in full professional maturity, at 53 years of age.

Death

He died in Madrid on December 15 , 1902 .

Artistic life

The genius of Arturo Mélida lies in exercising and combining, throughout his life, the professions of Architect , Sculptor , Painter of church vaults and palace ceilings, Interior decorator of mansions and public body headquarters, Book illustrator , magazines and posters, Designerof furniture, stained glass, fans for royalty and goldsmiths, designer of sets and costumes for the theater, as well as teaching for more than thirty years at the Higher School of Architecture in Madrid, first as a teacher and then as a professor of Architectural drawing and modeling. In all these artistic disciplines he achieved the highest prestige, both in Spain and in other countries, many of his works being awarded prizes. Thus, for example, in France , the Spanish Pavilion at the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris , (that of the Eiffel Tower), gave her international fame, since the jury of the Exhibition awarded Mélida one of the only three prizes awarded to the participating countries. In addition, the French Academy awarded him with a Gold Medal and the Official Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. Likewise, he entered the Institute of France, being the first architect in the history of Spain to achieve such merit. For the well-known Monument to Christopher Columbus in Madrid, the King of Portugal awarded him the Cross of Santiago, created to reward scientific, artistic or literary work.

The Madrid architect always vehemently defended the Integration of the Arts around Architecture, as well as the creative recovery of medieval crafts, that is, the Applied and Decorative Arts, such as Sculpture , Ceramics , Glass , Ironwork , Carpentry , Furniture , etc. Mélida coincided in this sense with the thought of the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Arturo Mélida always had the conviction that the Architect should master, in addition to the technical knowledge of Architecture, the principles of Painting, Sculpture and Decorative Arts. He proposed that the architect should also be an artist-craftsman integrating the arts, a requirement that he himself put into practice. This artistic attitude of Mélida towards industrialized art, which anticipates Modernism, coincides with that of the late-romantic Arts & Crafts Movement promoted by his contemporary William Morris ( 1834 – 1896 ).

The figure of Mélida can be considered as a Total Artist, complete, a personality out of time that reminds outstanding Renaissance artists in regard to the concept of a versatile artist who dominates all the artistic disciplines of the Fine Arts , and in the which also reflects deep technical and historical-artistic knowledge.

Arturo Mélida was a famous and original artist whose personality was admired by the public and extolled by critics, standing out with extraordinary prominence in Spanish art of the time in which he lived. He enjoyed a reputation as an elegant artist and exquisite taste, endowed with a solid and vast culture, as well as a magnificent talent that was demanded by an extensive clientele of Madrid’s high society, as well as by the public administration.

On a human level, he was a man with a very attractive personality as confirmed by numerous written sources about him. He was a man with the soul of an artist, vehement and passionate, endowed with great sensitivity, as well as outstanding intelligence and ability for the technical issues of his profession. He had a reputation for being friendly and witty, an endearing person and a pure-blooded Madrilenian with that typically Madrilenian grace and ingenuity that made him so loved.

He was a great fan of bullfighting. In the Castillo de Higares , the estate owned by the Duke of Veragua in Toledo , the Madrid architect slaughtered several cattle in the presence of the best of the fans and the aristocracy. King Alfonso XIIHe was pleased to attend many of these festivities, in which Mélida, on more than one occasion, offered him a bull. On a certain occasion when King Alfonso XII awarded Mélida the Gran Cruz de Isabel la Católica for her artistic work, the monarch told her: “Here is the award for your work. I honor you as a Miguel Angel who is from our country”, to which Arturo Mélida replied with poise and burlesque grace from Madrid: “Sir, I am much more than Miguel Angel, because I, in addition to being an Architect, Painter and Sculptor, am a bullfighter, and the glorious Miguel Angel did not know how to kill bulls”.

The intense life of work and multiple activities of Arturo Mélida was parallel to a brilliant social life, being among his friends the most outstanding personalities of the time. He was a great friend of Benito Pérez Galdós and many other writers, architects, painters and journalists. Among his friends were the Dukes of Veragua, Count of Liniers , Velázquez Bosco , Aureliano de Beruete , Salaverry , Bartolomé Maura , Joaquín Sorolla , Madrazo, Concha, Picón, etc.

Mélida being one of the first men who claimed baroque art within the Academy. Mélida’s interest in the baroque as a means to regenerate architecture, to save it from the decadence to which it was doomed, had been brewing for years, since at the Ateneo he gave a lecture on1886 titled “Rodriguez and Villanueva. Architecture and decorative arts at the beginning of the 19th century”, in which he makes a defense of baroque architecture, for which his art was ornamental and decorative, to the detriment of the neoclassical architecture of Ventura Rodríguez or Juan de Villanueva , aseptic and pure and cold lines. It was the first time that a Spanish architect questioned the absolute validity, maintained until then, of the classical principles as a model and architectural canon. In addition, he established a structural comparison between classical and medieval architecture, prevailing in Mélida’s opinion the latter over the former.

Mélida was consistent with these principles in practice, and for this reason he chose the Gothic style of the Catholic Monarchs as the most valid as a source to regenerate the architecture of his time, which also presents an ornamental exuberance, a character that he defended in the Baroque.

The election of Mélida as Academician also meant, on the part of the Academy, the acceptance of the validity of these principles within an institution marked by tradition and classicism, and therefore, its conformity with the new direction it was taking. architecture at the end of the century, represented by Mélida and other architects who were professors at the School and would later become academics. For more than thirty years, Arturo Mélida devoted himself to the teaching of Architecture, a task worthy of praise as he shared it with so many technical and artistic activities of his profession, in turn training future generations of architects, in whom he instilled the value of plastic and ornamentation in architecture,

Arturo Mélida was preparing, months before his death, a manual on the history of the teaching of architecture in Europe , related to the memory “On the organization that should be given to the Teaching of Preparatory Drawing in the Special School of Architecture”, which could not see the light, like many other Mélida projects. Throughout his life, the Madrid architect had a constant relationship with the Ateneo de Madrid , a true center of cultural and artistic agitation in 19th-century Madrid , giving lectures on Architecture and Decorative Arts. He was a member of the institution with the number 3928 and was in permanent contact with what was then called the Fine Arts Section.

Catalog of works

Architectural and construction works

• Urban dwelling by Santiago Liniers( Burgos , 1877 ) and Hotel de la Quinta Tomé by Santiago Liniers (Burgos, 1879 ).
• Works of the Congress of Deputies: Double reading cabinet and the book deposit, and the decoration of the new ministers’ room, both in completely opposite styles. ( 1883).
• Restoration of the Convent of San Juan de los Reyes de Toledo( 1881 ).
• School of Artistic Industries of Toledo ( 1882).
• Restoration of the Toledo Transit Synagogue.
• Failed projects: Restoration of the Alcázar and the Santa Cruz Hospital.
• Monument to Christopher Columbus in Madrid.
• The Madrid Cattle Show.
• The Panteón Chapel of the Marquises of Amboage in the Sacramental of San Isidro in Madrid.
• The Spanish Pavilion at the 1889Universal Exhibition in Paris .
• The umbraculum of the Botanical Garden of Valencia.

Interior decoration works, painting and sculpture

• José Finat Hotel(Madrid).
• Mansion of the Count of Velle(Madrid).
• Palace of the Marqués de Molins(Madrid).
• House of the Marquis of Amboage(Madrid).
• Hotel of the Count of Muguiru(Madrid).
• House of Simeon Avalos(Madrid).
• Hotel of the Count of Benahavis(Madrid).
• Palace of the Bauer(La Granja, Segovia ).
• Palacete de Alfred Weil(Madrid).
• Decoration of the Assembly Hall of the Ateneo de Madrid.
• Refurbishment and decoration of the reading cabinet and the new Ministers’ Hall of the Palacio del Congreso de los Diputados.
• Decorative commissions for houses and palaces between 1884and 1902 .
• Restoration of the Castle of Peña Ramiro ( Villafranca del Bierzo).
• Palace of the Duchess of Denia(Madrid).
• Palace of the Duke of Veragua(Madrid).
• Decoration of the rooms of the Historical Natural and Ethnographic Exhibition (Madrid).
• Isabel II Room of the Prado Museum (Madrid).
• El Liberal building(Madrid).
• Bauer Palace(Madrid).
• Ministry of Finance (Madrid).
• Church of San Ignacio(Madrid).
• Bakery House (Madrid).
• Hotel of Luis de Ocharán( Castro Urdiales , Cantabria ).
• Church of Santa María de Alcoy( Alcoy , Valencia ).

sculptural work

• Sepulcher of the Marquis del Duero(Madrid).
• Tomb of Christopher Columbusfor the Cathedral of Havana .
• Commemorative monument to Cristóbal Colón.
• Monument to Isabel la Católicain Granada .
• Projects for the Monument to the Heroes of Dos de Mayoand the Equestrian Monument to Carlos III.

Illustration for literary works, magazines and posters

• Magazine of National and Foreign Architecture.
• Magazine of the Central Society of Architects.
• The Spell of Karnak ( José Ramón Mélida).
• The Daughter of the King of Egypt ( Georg Ebers).
• American Diamonds (José Ramón Mélida).
• Selected Works ( Nuñez de Arce).
• The National Episodes ( Pérez Galdós).
• Selected dramatic works ( José de Echegaray).
• On the banks of the Guadarza (José Ramón Mélida).
• The legends ( José Zorrilla).
• The Spanish and American Illustration.
• The Artistic Illustration.
• Modern Magazine.
• Black and White.
• comic Madrid.
• The Diana.
• bull posters.
• Drawings for the Spanish Union of Explosives.
• Advertising drawings for the Teatro de las Maravillas.

decorative arts

• Cartoons for the stained glass windows of the Capilla del Obispo (Madrid).
• Cartoons for the stained glass windows of the Wedding Chapel of the Church of Santa Cruz (Madrid).
• Medieval style demonstrators.
• Monstrance for the church of San Francisco el Grande in Madrid.
• Fan decoration for royalty.
• Furniture design for the office of Benito Pérez Galdós in the San Quintín estate, furniture design for the reading cabinets of the Palacio del Congreso de los Diputados, etc.
• Costume designs and theatrical sets.