José Benito de Churriguera

José Benito de Churriguera (1665-1725) was a famous author and architect of Spanish Baroque retablos. He worked for most of his life in Madrid and was appointed court architect by Charles II. He was responsible for the “churrigueresque style”, characterized by that excess of decorative elements typical of the last phase of the Baroque and which extended between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, throughout Spain and the Americas. He was the author of important retablos such as those of the Cathedral of Segovia (1689) and the Dominican convent of San Esteban (Saint Stephen) in Salamanca (1692), which contain Solomonic columns of great dynamism.