Project for a window of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, ca. 1900.

Project for a window of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, ca. 1900.
Plaster.
Collection of the architect Isidre Puig Boada, art historian specialized in Antoni Gaudí.
On the back there are some old traceries made in pencil.
Measurements: 36 x 23 x 2 cm.

This Project for a window of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, made around 1900, is of great artistic and historical importance because it is a direct testimony of the creative and constructive process of Antoni Gaudí's temple in one of the decisive moments of its evolution. It is an architectural model or study linked to the design of the Gothic and naturalistic windows that characterize the Sagrada Familia and that show the transition from the initial neo-Gothic to Gaudí's fully personal language.

The piece stands out for the geometrization and ornamental purification of the forms: the pointed arches, the trilobate motifs and the small traceries recall the Catalan Gothic tradition, but reinterpreted through a structural and symbolic simplification typical of Gaudí's universe. The vegetal and geometric forms are integrated into an organic composition where decoration and structure merge, one of the fundamental principles of Gaudí's architecture.

This type of model was essential in the architect's working method. Gaudí developed many of his ideas directly through models and plaster studies, rather than through conventional plans. For this reason, the projects and fragments preserved related to the Sagrada Familia have enormous documentary value, especially considering the destruction of much of the original material during the Spanish Civil War.

In addition to the interest of the piece is its exquisite provenance: Isidre Puig Boada (1891-1987) was a Catalan architect closely linked to the Sagrada Familia and one of the main continuators of Antoni Gaudí's work after his death in 1926. A direct disciple and collaborator of the modernist architect, Puig Boada played a fundamental role in the preservation, interpretation and continuation of the Gaudí project during much of the 20th century. His importance for the Sagrada Familia lies, first of all, in having worked alongside Gaudí in the last years of the master's life, which gave him first-hand knowledge of his methods, ideas and symbolic conception of the church. Thanks to this experience, he became one of the greatest specialists in Gaudí's work. After the Spanish Civil War, during which numerous plans, drawings and models of Gaudí's workshop were destroyed, Puig Boada was a key figure in the reconstruction and recovery of the original project. Together with other collaborating architects, he was in charge of compiling documentation, reinterpreting models and guaranteeing the continuity of the works while respecting Gaudí's thinking as much as possible. In addition to his practical work on the temple, Puig Boada was of great importance as a disseminator and scholar of Gaudí's architecture. He published several fundamental writings for understanding the technical, symbolic and religious dimension of the Sagrada Familia, among them El templo de la Sagrada Familia and Gaudí's Thought. His texts helped to transmit Gaudí's architectural and spiritual philosophy to later generations.