Life leading to the temple

The Cathedral of the Holy Family, Sagrada Familia – the most uncoated construction in all senses on Earth – is already built over the century. Once the Architect Antoni Gaudi conceived to give his native Barcelona.

Three quarter of a century passed from the day when the ill-fated tram of the presets of the terrestrial life of the architect, and he from that world seems to continue to lead the construction, which is not visible. And this is understandable if you remember that Gaudi was planted to build the temple of the redemption of all sins of human. He and then, at the end of the XIX century, swung on the unattainable, – and who could have foreseen how many more of them, these sins would be added for the next century. But the city, which in different times treated Gaudi, how much to the greatest genius, then as a dangerous madman (and, most likely, was right in the first, and in the second), as if he was ashamed of the former ungratefulness, continues to build his temple. It is enough to visit Barcelona once to make sure that this is the city of Gaudi.

Enough in Barcelona and other architectural attractions: Roman ruins, monuments of gothic, statue of Columbus in Porto, Catalan music Palace, Magic Fountain in Square Spain, Museum Picasso and Museum of Juan Miro on Mount Montjuic, Church of the Saint Heart of Christ on Mount Tibidabo. Any of these treasures could be "Face" Barcelona – If he had not lived and did not work, Gaudi.

Never architects were not entered so high as he. In his exorbitant pride, the stubborn Catalan ranged to create a truly universal musical body, in which heavenly music in the openings of openwork pipes will be launched the wind from the pyrenees. Skeptics Cathedral Gaudi resembles a sandy lock, which children are pushed on the seashore, the fruit of a hidden childish fantasy, but who died 170 meters! Crowds of dumbfounded tourists who loss after carrying out the incentive spiers for Barcelonians have not been not new for Barcelonians. Drivers entering the Cathedral Square, instinctively reduce speed – otherwise victims do not.

But the main shock is not even those who limited to the external inspection of Sagrada Familia. Captures the Spirit when you find inside the layout of the finished structure – how it saw Gaudi. Only after that you realize that the current building, because of which millions of people from around the world go to Barcelona – only one tenth of the future of the Grand Construction! One of the side adhesives is no more.

Anthony Placido Guillermo Gaudi-I-Kornet was born on June 25, 1852 in the town of Reus in the seaside province of Tarragona. His parents – offacarious boilers – made copper boilers for wine production. Red-haired and blue-eyed Anthony, the fifth child in the family, never was distinguished by strong health – since childhood suffered from rheumatism and on the advice of doctors for all his life remained a convinced vegetarian and an avid pedestrian.

In school, he always kept mansion, – constant pain in the joints prevented participating in active peer playing. But the boy had a lot of time reading and surveillance. Noticing the son of the book to the Book Wisdom, the parents gave 11-year-old Anthony to a church school, where he was very successful, and not only in the disciplines of spiritual, but also in the items of the most important. However, it would be strange if the creator "steaming" The temple was not in freaks with geometry!

After graduating from church school, Gaudi went to Barcelona to enter the university. Already then he realized that he would certainly become an architect. Barcelona boiled ideas and artistic styles, in her, as in the ancient Athens, all the young dating were flocked, sought to declare themselves. Municipal authorities, it is necessary to give him due, in every way greeted any innovations, including the most extravagant. Even if it was necessary to go "On the carpet" To the Palace – Royal or Cardinalsky.

That the son can get a decent education, the Father sold a family business, – the rural boilerhouse has already argued that his offspring is designed for something more than the continuation of the paternal "Boiler business". The University of Gaudi was fond of philosophy, history, economy and aesthetics, stating surprised professors and fellow students that the difference in architectural styles to the greater extent depends not from aesthetic ideas, but from the social and political atmosphere, in which the artist creates. And he also hit the mentors with his drawings and projects.

During his studies in the provincial architecture school in Reus, one of the teachers, presenting the graduation project Gaudi to the court examination commission, said: "Lord! Before you work or genius, or madman".

The unique style of Gaudi is to follow all the great samples and anyone separately. He greedily took everything he liked, and at Gothic, and at Renaissance, and in classicism, and at modern, after which it fused all this in some unimaginable boiler of his own personality.

Personality, by the way, was still ta, – like all genius, he was not a gift for others. Behind the external restraint and asceticism of religious fanatics was boiling mad Catalan temper. Gaudi was intolerant, irritable, scattered, bearing, and therefore infinitely alone. He did not marry, did not get friends (except for faithful customers and patrons) and just a few times in his entire life left Barcelona.

However, he became Mizanthropy immediately: at first, Gaudy loved to be taken, rotated in the highest light, and at one time he even became interested in politics, having stuck to the nationalist movement of Catalans. It is said that he even cared for a beautiful teacher, but received a refusal – she was already engaged. There was still a short-term novel with a caring American. But then all the joys of life moved to his background, pushed out by the only passion – he wished to build buildings, which for all the canons taught at the architecture faculty, was simply impossible to build!

Glory came to the architect in 1878, when one of his projects caused Furore at the World Paris Exhibition. On her, Gaudi met one of his patrons – industrialist Eisabio Gyel. Thanks to him, Barcelona today can boast by several more works by Gaudi: fantastic in all senses Park Gueel and two palaces of the most poles – urban on the street Nou de la Rambla and countryside on Pedralbes Avenue.

In 1883, an event that determined all his remaining life occurred in the fate of the architect. When one of the university professors Francisco de Paula del Villar, who headed the construction project of the new Barcelona Cathedral, caught up with his colleagues (the dispute came out on trifles – what building material to use!) and refused to continue working, to take his place offered Gaudi. He, without thinking, agreed.

Over the years of construction of the Cathedral, Gaudi managed to build a few more famous Barcelona buildings. Although all these masterpieces were ordered by private individuals – after at the beginning of her career, the young architect launched a unheard of the fee for his lights at the municipality (by the way, and today they decorate the Royal Square – Plaza Rayal), the city authorities were forever refused its services.

Houses of Gaudi caress the traveler by surprise: Casa Mila’s mansion with a whole forest of intricate chimney on the roof resembles the coral (or baobab, or the ease of the shipwreck of the vessel, or the bones of the fossil dinosaur – everything that your fantasy will tell!). Tile of another house, Casa Batllo, – a poured glazed cake, coated with pearl wall of which resemble fish CCS. And there is still a strict mosaic country house Casa Vicens, Casa Calvet Mansion, BellesGuard Manor.

And, of course, Park Gueel: It is difficult to understand where wildlife ends in it and architecture begins. It seems that in this miracle park the stone comes to life, and the grass, trees and flower beds, on the contrary, frozen the bizarre stone sculptures. Like the famous cathedral, Gueel Park has no analogues. The only Association is, perhaps, "Garden of the joys of the earth" Jerome Boscha. Gaudi and Mallorca was noted (in total on his account – 18 buildings, all in Spain, 12 of them – in Barcelona), where the restoration of the local Cathedral of the XIII century was held under his leadership. However, she almost led to a radical restructuring of the entire structure. Who knows, in which this monument to culture would turn around if Gaudi had not been removed from work on time and he would again not engage in his Barcelona Cathedral.

By 1910, the lifetime glory of Gaudi reached apogee: after the personal exhibition of his works, arranged with the support of Gyel in the Paris Palace Grand Palais, all Europe spoke about Barcelona Zodch. Even self-sufficient Americans were worried: he having heard about the new star of European architecture, they hurried to order Gaudi the unprecedented 300-meter hotel-skyscraper in New York. It is not known how this grandiose project ended – and others who sprinkled on the head of Gaudi, as from the horns of abundance, if the fever did not pick up. The Master who prone to constantness decided that he had come his death hour. He wrote the will and gave vow: if he survives, then until the end of the days it will only work on his cathedral.

And the vow was adopted, – after that, the architect has lived for another 16 years. All these years, the most important thing was the temple, who became also home, – in 1925, Gaudi finally moved to one of the premises of the Cathedral built and lived there in complete loneliness. The cathedral gradually acted and more fantastic figures and details, – amazing, but all of them were drawn and saying Gaudi from nature! As a truly religious person, he did not consider himself entitled even in thoughts like the Creator. Gaudi believed that a terrible court in his performance should be quite realistic, and therefore has gained in hospitals and morgue, where there have been enough living and dead "Natureshchikov".

The face of the most famous Barcelonets was known to few people – Gaudi avoided photographers and interviewers. When, on June 7, 1926, the Barcelonian tram shot down the old man’s heated on the rails in poor worn clothes, no money and documents affected by no one recognized, and the taxi drivers refused to bring him to the nearby hospital (later the municipal police even fined them for non-appealation of the wounded help). Dying nevertheless brought to the hospital, where they recorded the name. When Barcelonians learned who dies on the hospital bed, Gaudi managed to confess.

June 12 he died. The body of the architect, for the farewell to which Poliorod came out, forever remained in Kripte – the underground chapel of the same unfinished cathedral. Probably there is some kind of higher justice in this: who is better to take care of the construction, as not the architect himself.