Juan de Herrera

Juan de Herrera, who lived from 1530 to 15 January 1597, was a Spanish architect, mathematician and geometrician, one of the most outstanding Spanish architects of the sixteenth century and a representative of the peak of the Renaissance in Spain. His sober style, which reached full development in the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, gave its name to the Herrerian style of the Spanish Empire of Philip II. Trained as a humanist scholar and mathematician rather than as an architect, he began his architectural career in 1561 with the Royal Palace of Aranjuez and from 1563 worked under Juan Bautista de Toledo on El Escorial, becoming its main architect after Toledo's death in 1567. His Discurso sobre la figura cúbica shows his notable knowledge of geometry and mathematics, and he took part in the military campaigns of Charles V in Germany, Flanders and Italy.