Chapel of the Holy Sacrament of Alella (1883)

The house Vicens was constructed in Gràcia among 1883 and 1888, and during these years Anton Gaudí passed some seasons in the house that his customer and friend, Manuel Vicens i Montaner, had in Alella (el Maresme). In Alella, in July of 1883, he plotted the project of Chapel of the Holy Sacrament of the parish church of Sant Feliu, which did not have express chapel for the Holy Sacrament. Gaudí conceived a new building, attached to the existing temple. The constructive system of the new chapel was the one characteristic of the Gothic Catalan, for example of the chapel of Santa Àgata of Barcelona: gothic diaphragmatic arches on which they rest the small beams of wood that hold the cover on two waters. In the symbolism, Anton Gaudí made evident another time his obsessive knowledge of the book of the Apocalypse, which he had used in his schoolar project of Cemetery Door and in the reliquary. In the front of the arch of the presbytery seven large windows turn up, with the seven angels who are standing in front of God and to which seven trumpets have been given, described in the Apocalypse, chapter VIII, versicle 2. Under, there is the altar with its altarpiece. In the center of the altarpiece, under a Gothic canopy, there is a representation of Christ in the Cross between the Virgin and Saint John, as saint John portrays in his gospel, chapter XII, versicles 26 and 27. The three figures are surrounded in a compound of almond form -oriental symbol of the apotheosis and the glory- for rays of light and cherubs. To under there is the tabernacle, in the form of Mystical Lamb, image taken of the chapter XIV of the Apocalypse. The background of the altarpiece is inspired in the chapter IV of the Apocalypse, which narrates the vision of four living beings, the king of the jungle (the lion), of the herds (the bull), of the air (the eagle) and of the creation (the man), known by the Greek noun Tetramorfos, that day and night repeat the imprecation "Saint , Saint, Saint is the Lord Omnipotent, the that he was, the that he is and the that he will be". Gaudí ordered four vertical streets -one for each Tetramorf-, in each one of which is read nine times -three for each one of the three persons of the Holy Trinity- the word "Sanctus". Thirty-six, in total, four times three repetitions of the triple short prayer, which go up to the sky and will have its echo in the "Sanctus" that will ascend in the same number for the four belfries of the Façade of the Nativity of the Holy Family. The work was approved by the Bishop of Barcelona, Dr. Jaume Català i Albosa, the 11 March of 1886, but it never managed to be built. This project of Gaudí is delineated on Indian ink in two colors, at scale 1:25, and it keeps on the parish archive of Sant Feliu d’Alella.