Aesthetics and incidence of the rose window in the santos juanes church, Spain

Abstract

Gothic architecture represents one of the most attractive moments of sacred architecture. In this context, some architectural elements act as leading characters, which are known as Gothic aesthetics. One of these is the rose window. It is a set element filled with marked symbolism that arouses considerable interest, and Spain has plenty of examples. In Valencia (Spain), the Santa Catalina or San Nicolás churches are extremely relevant temples. A coetaneous building of these churches is the Santos Juanes Royal Parish church, located next to the city’s Central Market. Today it presents traces of this gothic origin, although the building has undergone complete Baroque modification, as evidenced by the huge “O” of San Juan. An element, according to all the traces, might be a big rose window that it is blocked today. Therefore, given the uncertainty of this particular element being present in the set of this church, this article aims to analyze the current aesthetics showing this well-known oculus in not only its historic and constructive forms, but also its structural one. To do so, we collected and analyzed historic and technical documentation, and studied the incidence of this element on the building’s stability as a whole.