Isabelline (architectural style)

After the Catholic Monarchs had completed the Reconquista in 1492 and started the colonization of the Americas, imperial Spain began to develop a consciousness of its growing power and wealth, and in its exuberance launched a period of construction of grand monuments to symbolize them.

References to classical antiquity in the architecture of Spain were more literary, whereas in Italy, the prevalence of Roman-era buildings had given 'Gothic' a meaning adapted to Italian classicist taste.

The Gothic style in the Iberian Peninsula had undergone a series of changes under the influence of local tradition, including much smaller windows, which allowed the construction of roofs with substantially less pitch.

The development of classical architecture in the Iberian Peninsula, as elsewhere, had been moribund during the centuries of building construction done in the Gothic tradition, and the neoclassical movement of the Italian Renaissance was late to arrive there.

Isabelline architects clung to the Gothic solution of the problem of how to distribute the weight burden of vaults pressing on pillars (not on the walls, as in the Romanesque or Italian Renaissance styles): that is, by propping them up with flying buttresses.