Un modelo funerario del tardogótico castellano: las capillas treboladas

Abstract

Trefoil chapels constitute the most innovative centralized model of all those developed in late-Gothic Spain. The brilliant unfolding of the great funerary chapels covered by astonishing vaults of star-shaped ribs at the end of the 15th and the first decades of the 16th century, created by artists who had emigrated from the other side of the Pyrenees, has long been recognized. Thus arise the great funerary chapels of Toledo or Burgos, in imitation of which appear an endless number of small chapels in churches and monasteries throughout the Peninsula, for all those nobles or ecclesiastics desirous of becoming a part of history. Only a few architects (pertaining to the Segovian region and to the influence of Juan Guas) and patrons (belonging to the upper Castillian nobility and high clergy), distanced themselves from this model to venture for the trefoil. The result was a highly homogeneous group of structures errected within a limited span of time.