Description
Monument of the Historical-Artistic Set. Declaration 04 / 02 / 1955. In the mid-16th century, the regior Francisco Vela de los Cobos ordered the construction of a palace close to that of Vázquez de Molina, known in the city with the name of its owner. Andrés de Vandelvira is the racist of the same, although the material execution was carried out by the bartender Jorge Leal.
In the magazine Don Lope de Sosa (1924) Don Manuel Muro García published a document of great interest on the conditions developed by Andrés de Vandelvira to make the gallery high, complemented by some explanatory drawings on the margins, which are practically the only drawings, so far, that have come from his hand.
The document is dated May 3, 1561, and - although the architectural forms of the work of the gallery are essentially written in it - Vandelvira, of course, was responsible for much of the building, from which at present the facade has arrived intact. V.M. Ruiz Fuentes provides new data on the constructive process, as it states that the cover and the second body of the facade are already up before 1561, date of the beginning of the upper gallery, finished about 1563.
The palace does not keep the courtyard, which was perhaps also designed by Vandelvira, from which we know that its construction was started by 1564. The large facade of quarry stone, of marked horizonality, is articulated on three floors; on the bottom and centered is the cover, inintered and with two Corinthian columns (with the alternating sticks) on pedestal; on the axis with it is raised in the middle the main balcony stacked and with triangular front, covered with the familiar heraldic held by "savages," to the ends are opened two more balconies with jonic columns with heavy arches and triangular frontons.
Special protagonism acquires the windows in the corner of the noble or intermediate plant, in the way of the palace of the deán Ortega, with central column of white marble, pilasters and triangular front. The gallery on the last floor is made up of a series of arches of half-point on pillars, repeating in the corners the design with a column. This piece is the most plastic part of the whole, due to the wise compagination of hollow and solid, because the rest of the facade is a bit heavy, the isolated elements of it being the ones that give it a loan.
An interesting fact is the use of the balcony, which will slowly be imposed on the window. Finally, it is repeated in this palace the cornisa-internamento, used in the nearby palace of Vázquez de Molina, of a marked Italian accent, in which Andrés de Vandelvira also intervenes and is responsible for much of his factory. Mr Fernando Chueca Goitia said - in the monograph dedicated to the life and work of Andrés de Vandelvira - that the structure of the façade of the house of Vela de los Cobos is radically Spanish and is located in the line of the mature works of Alonso de Cobarrubias, the real architect.
In any case, what was done in this palace by Vandelvira will be taken as a reference point in other Ubetens palaces, such as that of the Marquis de la Rambla (16th century), that of Mancera (from the end of the 16th century), in which the gallery opened in the last body of its tower, or that of the Count of Guadiana, in whose tower, raised in the first two decades of the 17th century, is repeated the model of the sintered balcony with marble column, while reciting in the last body the composition of the gallery. But the gallery of the Vela de los Cobos palace will not only accommodate the large buildings, but will not be used frequently in the popular vernacular architecture of the city of Ubeda throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
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