Altarpiece of Alella
[1] It became known by a drawing preserved in the parochial archive found in 1959, delineated with India ink in two colours and showing Gaudí's signature, published for the first time in the same year.
[2] A reproduction was included the book Gaudí by George R. Collins the following year[3] which was transcendent for the worldwide diffusion of the work of the architect of Reus as it was the first monograph dedicated to him in English language.
The altarpiece has a flat panel shape with marked Gothic inspiration, sculptural figures ahead and the main motif representing the crucifixion guarded under a canopy.
Neither the altarpiece nor the chapel designed by Gaudí came to be built although the project was approved on by the Bishop of Barcelona, Jaume Català Albosa.
The altarpiece is a square table placed over a decorated with pointed arches pedestal with a frieze of medallions representing vegetal and angels figures.
In the centre is the sculpture of the crucifixion surrounded by an almond-shaped figure from which rays emerge, under a canopy of fine gothic design in the form of a temple rotated 45 degrees, where guardian angels are placed.
The invocation of the Sanctus had been used shortly before by Gaudí in the watercolor drawing of a reliquary, preserved in the Reus museum, and the following year he will repeat it in the stained glass windows of the crypt of the Sagrada Familia temple.
As a result, he spent many summers of the 1880s in the residence that the Vicens family had in Alella, at the Carrer de Dalt (today Anselm Clavé street).
It is the first section of the staircase of the romanesque bell tower, considered the most notable of its style in the coastal area of Catalonia,[11] which received a modification in its initial section on the ground floor giving it curved shape with broken triangular floor steps so that each step allows to gain two heights, according to the Gothic system described and illustrated by Viollet-le-Duc that allows stairs with slopes of up to 45 degrees.
