ALBERT BORGUNY I CASTELLÓ

Palma 1707-1770

 

Borguny i Castelló studied Fine Arts and taught as a lay monk in the Dominican monastery in Palma. As well as being a writer, he was an engraver, painter and Baroque sculptor.

 

Within the field of sculpture he devoted himself, in the most part, to making altarpieces, the most important of which is that of the high altar in the Church of Santa Eulària in Palma. He also made the altarpieces for the Parish Churches of Santa Maria del Camí, Santa Eugènia, Binissalem and the Roser Chapel in the Parish Church of Algaida. He is also attributed with making the high altar of the Missió de Ciutat and of Sant Pere in Sencelles.

 

He restored the pictorial and sculptural decoration of the Roser Chapel of Sant Domingo, which brought him fierce criticism from authors such as Jovellanos and Josep Maria Quadrado. The casework he made for the famous organ of the same Sant Domingo monastery, built by Jordi Bosch i Bernat and which we now have in the Parish Church of Santanyí, garnered the same critical opinion.

 

The Coronation of the Virgin deposited in the Museu de Mallorca is one of the few of his paintings to be conserved.

 

He is considered the best Majorcan engraver of the 18th century, being the creator of several iconographies such as La Immaculada, La Mare de Déu, Ramon Llull, saints, coats of arms and coins.

 

His literary work alternates between devout and satirical themes, but very little of it has been preserved as after his death another monk from his monastery burned everything he believed to be dishonest.

 

Criticised and lauded in equal measure, his work cannot fail to move anyone. Bernat Vidal i Tomàs, on more than one occasion, labelled the façade of our organ as “a little 18th-century Gaudí.”