Juan Bautista de Herrera
Herrera, Juan Bautista de
Born circa 1530 in Mobellán, Santander Province; died Jan. 15, 1597, in Madrid. Spanish architect.
A leading representative of the Late Renaissance in Spanish architecture, Herrera studied in Brussels from 1548 to 1551. In 1559 he was appointed assistant architect at the Escorial, a complex containing a monastery and royal palace; in 1567 he became head architect. In his designs, such as the Exchange in Sevilla (1582–98), he developed Herreran, or desornamentado, style, which remained typical of Spanish architecture until the mid-17th century. Herrera’s style is marked by an ascetic severity of architectural shapes, a lack of ornamentation, and laconic artistic form.