UNKNOWN MASTER, Spanish
(active in the 1530s in Salamanca)

Façade (detail)

1533
Stone
University, Salamanca

The upper part of the façade, divided into three registers and crowned by a frieze, brings to mind an altarpiece, or a shrine or jewel-box. The lowest of the three registers is decorated with a central medallion enclosing portraits of their Catholic majesties, Ferdinand and Isabella. On either side are panels of grotesques. The lavish and crowded ornamentation covers every inch of the stonework. The Spanish ornamentists hated empty spaces, and in the 16th century even more than in the Romanesque period, ornamental sculpture burgeoned at the expense of the monumental structure.