The missions of California are arguably the state’s greatest architectural resource, influence and inspiration. They connect modern California with Mexico, and in turn with Spain and its Islamic and Catholic architectural traditions, and ultimately with ancient Rome.
Here is a similarity that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere before in California mission literature, including various architectural surveys, popular guidebooks, and local histories.
Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa (Saint Louis Bishop of Toulouse) was founded September 1, 1772 on the central California coast. The mission's most outstanding guiding hand was Father Luis Antonio Martinez who remained at the mission for thirty-four years.
Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa (Saint Louis Bishop of Toulouse) was founded September 1, 1772 on the central California coast. The mission's most outstanding guiding hand was Father Luis Antonio Martinez who remained at the mission for thirty-four years.
The church of Santa Maria del Naranco, near Oviedo, Asturias in northwest Spain, is an example of Asturian Pre-Romanesque architecture, and dates from 848 A.D. Located on the slope of Mount Naranco just 1.9 mi from Oviedo, it was built by Ramiro I of Asturias as a royal palace and was converted to a church in the 12th century, says Wikipedia.
(Wikipedia photo)
Padre Martinez, who arrived at Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa in 1798, was responsible for much of its construction until his departure from California in 1830. Although the church was built in 1793, it was in fact Martinez who was responsible for the addition of the mission’s most notable and distinctive feature, its vestibule and belfry, completed in 1820.
“The Mission church of San Luis Obispo is unusual in its design in that its combination of belfry and vestibule is found nowhere else among the California missions,” notes the popularly used Wikipedia, echoing similar observations made for almost two centuries.
According to Hubert Howe Bancroft, Padre Martinez was born in 1771 in Briebes, Asturias. Modern Brieves is just 55 miles from Oviedo, the largest nearby city of the region. The church of Santa Maria del Naranco is a mere three miles from Oviedo, Asturias, Spain.
(Wikipedia photo)
It is more than likely that the energetic Father Martinez recreated in adobe in far off California, the stone details of the church he was undoubtedly familiar with in Asturias. A glance at the two buildings reveals their shared similarities – the vestibule, the belfry, the arches, the moldings. The details are shared on the sides of the buildings as well.
Photographs dating from the 1860s, before the quake-damaged vestibule was removed (and restored in the 1930s), were taken at a time when the roofline of the church had no overhang, offering an easier comparison with Santa Maria del Naranco, whose stone exterior also had no overhang. Of note is the prominent molding detail that surrounds the belfry openings at San Luis Obispo, echoing the detail around the corresponding openings at Santa Maria del Naranco.
“The Palace of Santa María del Naranco, involved a significant stylistic, morphological, constructive and decorative renovation of Pre-Romanesque, supplementing it with new, innovative resources, representing a leap forward with respect to immediately previous periods… What marveled the chroniclers for so many centuries were its proportions and slender shapes, its rich, varied decoration and the introduction of elongated barrel vaults thanks to the transverse arches, allowing support and eliminating wooden ceilings.”
The California mission link to Ancient Rome, specifically the architectural suggestions of Vitruvius, can be seen in the façade of Mission Santa Barbara. Likewise, Moorish traditions, expressed in the great mosque of Cordoba, were reproduced at Mission San Gabriel. The Dutch influence on Spanish architecture is evident in the facades of San Diego and San Antonio, among others.
Perhaps we should now add Mission San Luis Obispo to that list of missions with notable architectural antecedents, and whose Asturian Romanesque predecessor has been hiding in plain sight for 1300 years.
The observation came about by accident. The college where I taught, recently closed its doors, and so I have plenty of time on my hands. I was surfing the Web and decided to look up Asturias because I recalled a lecture about the Visigoths from a 1984 Cal State Hayward Spanish class. One link lead to another and up popped a photograph of Santa Maria del Naranco. I immediately made the connection. Next, I researched the names and backgrounds of San Luis Obispo's padres in my volumes of Bancroft's History of California and discovered that Padre Martinez was indeed from Brieves, Asturias, just miles from Santa Maria del Naranco. And there you have it.
The observation came about by accident. The college where I taught, recently closed its doors, and so I have plenty of time on my hands. I was surfing the Web and decided to look up Asturias because I recalled a lecture about the Visigoths from a 1984 Cal State Hayward Spanish class. One link lead to another and up popped a photograph of Santa Maria del Naranco. I immediately made the connection. Next, I researched the names and backgrounds of San Luis Obispo's padres in my volumes of Bancroft's History of California and discovered that Padre Martinez was indeed from Brieves, Asturias, just miles from Santa Maria del Naranco. And there you have it.
