Casa, torre, árbol, muro: hacia una morfología del escenario urbano en las ediciones antiguas de Celestina

Abstract

This article is a morphological analysis of the urban and architectural settings in the illustrations of the first Spanish editions of Celestina (Burgos 1499, Sevilla 1502 / c. 1518, Valencia 1514). They are compared with the engravings from the German translation published in Augsburg (1520). After considering potential German antecedents the study extends the possible influences to other sources in addition to dramatic editions. The article also discusses in morphological terms the urban models that the German sources of the Spanish woodcuts could have used. These include the urban scenery visualized from dramatic texts, paintings, the pictorial manuscript tradition, the Gothic tradition of architectural drawing and, particularly, the cityscapes illustrated in popular editions, such as travel books and chronicles. Due to several reasons, including artistic ones, the evolutionary status of all these sources and, therefore, of the Spanish illustrations, fit a Pre-Renaissance spatial and architectonic design. This statement is confirmed through the analysis of their morphological components in contrast to the ones deployed by Hans Weideitz in the German translation, which already show a Post-Burgkmair and Post-Dürer perspective.