Designs for a Burial Vault by the Enlightened Architect Agustín Sanz (1775) Kept in the Museum Drawings Cabinet of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando

Abstract

This article looks at the designs for a burial vault or crypt presented in Spring 1775 to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando by the distinguished enlightened architect from Aragón, Agustín Sanz Alós, in support of his candidature to become an architecture member of the Academy. He was to obtain this honour on 7 May 1775, partly on the strength of the sheer quality and refinement of these designs, reflecting a Classicist Baroque aesthetic of Italian inspiration, the zeitgeist of academic teaching at that time.