RODRÍGUEZ, Ventura
Spanish architect. He was the son of a bricklayer. In 1727, he collaborated with his father in the work at the Royal Palace of Aranjuez. He was trained by Filippo Juvarra and Giovanni Battista Sacchetti, among others. His work followed the transition from Baroque architecture in the academic mold to the classical building styles of the later eighteenth century. Until the death of Ferdinand VI he enjoyed great respect as court architect and later worked as professor of the Academy.
Of the innumerable designs he created for the court, the Academy, and for private commissions, about fifty were actually realized. While his early work was still completely under the influence of the Italian Baroque of Bernini to Guarino Guarini, by the end of the 1750s the influence of French architecture was evident in his academically classical style. The discovery of the Greco-Roman remains, however, caused Rodríguez to look again the work of Juan de Herrera and thus brought about his break with his own architectural heritage.
His first major work, still entirely in the Baroque idiom, was the parish church of San Marcos in Madrid (1749-53) In 1750 he undertook the difficult task of converting the pilgrimage church of El Pilar in Zaragoza. His design for the church of the monastery of the Augustinian missionaries to the Philippine Islands in Valladolid (1760) was based on a clear and functional concept, directly in the tradition of Herrera’s unornamented architecture. The façade of Pamplona cathedral was executed in 1783 in style which anticipated the nineteenth-century romantic movements.
