A century after he was fatally struck by a tram, Barcelona’s famed Antoni Gaudí is on track to reach heights never achieved by a modern architect. Earlier this year, the late Pope Francis recognized Gaudí’s “heroic virtues,” moving the creator of Sagrada Familia one step closer to sainthood, the holiest of client endorsements.

While the canonization of the designer known as “God’s architect” must still clear several hurdles (including the pesky issue of miracles), Gaudí’s prospective sainthood adds a new twist to his legacy as an architect and designer. And it raises inevitable questions about the relationship between art and faith. If Gaudí was simply operating as “God’s servant,” does his work have less relevance in the terrestrial world? Was he performing miracles? Or was he simply a great designer plying his craft?

Even before Gaudí’s consideration for the Celestial Pritzker Prize, scholars debated the influence of God’s role in his work. His religious fervor doesn’t fit the image of the “King of Modernism.”

“In certain important respects, Gaudí was not a modernista architect at all,” wrote the art critic Robert Hughes in his 1992 opus, Barcelona. “His religious obsessions, for instance, separate him from the generally secular character of modernisme.” 

Sainthood would shatter many of the myths surrounding Gaudí, who is often seen by tourists as some sort of quirky hermit who designed quaint hobbit homes and slightly creepy churches. Tour guides emphasize Gaudí’s beautiful expressions of nature and his passion for the organic world, presenting the architect as a lovable naturalist. That sounds great, and it’s a more palatable image for postcards and keychains than the picture of a devout fanatic who thought he was channeling God’s change orders. 

Long before anyone coined the term “starchitect,” Gaudí’s celebrity diverged from the reality of his life and work. The mythology generates an image of the man who designed Barcelona, a 1900s version of Steve Jobs, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Frederick Law Olmsted all rolled into one. Columbus discovered America, George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, and Gaudí was a lovable rogue who designed a modernista urban wonderland.

If nothing else, sainthood would change the Gaudí brand. For better or worse, any discussion of his work would be viewed through the lens of his religious zeal. “St. Gaudí” would be a constant reminder that Barcelona’s star moved away from the humble world of Earth-bound architects. He was operating on a different cosmic plane, focused on a single, highly specialized client with unlimited resources and very specific tastes. (Finicky, one might say.)

For a glimpse of what might have been, if Gaudí hadn’t signed his memorandum of understanding with God, Barcelona visitors can tour his early work, when he was designing for mortal clients. They show the young Gaudí considering his client’s interests and pulling together inventive influences to shape comfortable places for real people to live.

His first commission, Casa Vicens (above), a small house in Barcelona’s Gràcia neighborhood, was opened to the public in 2017 after 130 years in private hands. Designed as a summer home for a wealthy resident, the compact, multilevel home is a mishmash of Moorish, Asian, and traditional Catalan styles, and includes one of the city’s first rooftop gardens. Gaudí was in his early 30s and working in the constraints of site and function (but maybe not budget). 

Examples of Gaudí’s days as a working architect can be found throughout Barcelona. On a side street off of Gran Via, Casa Calvet, a home he designed in 1898, looks almost ordinary, with a façade of symmetrical rows of wrought-iron balconies, until you notice the busts of three saints that appear to explode from the ornate rooftop. (Casa Calvet has occasionally been called Gaudí’s “least audacious” project.) 

Off La Rambla, the little-visited Palau Guell, designed for his chief benefactor, industrialist Eusebi Güell, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Every detail is an example of stunning glass, brick, and iron work. (Gaudí owes much of his success to Catalan craftsmen, who were among the best in the world.) The house reflects the designer and client’s shared faith, yet Gaudí was still focused on making the palace a place to live, from the placement of the lanterns to the entry for the livery stable. 

The association with Guell led to Park Guell, one of the world’s best-known urban parks. Set on the site of a failed Guell real estate development, Gaudí’s ode to nature is full of spaces that don’t look like the creation of a saint. The mosaic lizards, dragon stairs, and strange, fairy-tale forms that mimic nature create a sense of whimsy and fun—attributes that people now associate with Gaudí, even though the scripture-reading, teetotaling designer was nowhere close to whimsical or fun. 

As he aged, Gaudí veered away from the humble interests of his human patrons. By the time he started renovating Casa Batlló, his signature home of undulating floors on Passeig de Gracia, he was losing interest in the moorings that keep most architects from building the crazy shit that pops into their heads. With wealthy benefactors that shared his religious fervor, there was no need for him to take on clients who didn’t want their project to be a “hymn of praise to God.” 

To Hughes, the architect’s obsession and arrogance became prevailing characteristics of his work. “In Gaudí,” Hughes wrote, “one sees flourishing the egotism achieved by those who think they have stepped beyond the bounds of the mere ego and identified themselves with nature, becoming God’s humble servant but copying their employer.” 

His last residential project was Casa Milà, better known as La Pedrera, completed in 1912. A can-you-top-this response to Casa Batlló, Casa Milà was also Gaudí’s final foray into the pedestrian concerns of secular architects. He went over budget, fought city regulations, and battled a reluctant client, who didn’t want a massive statue of the Virgin Mary on the roof. In the end, he had to sue to get paid. 

With Casa Milà finished, Gaudí turned his full attention to Sagrada Familia, throwing off the confines of petty commissions. In total, he spent 43 years devoted to the basilica. When pressed about progress, Gaudí famously replied, “My client can wait”—something no architect would ever say (out loud, at least).

By the time of his death, Gaudí was considered something of a loon. He was famously unconcerned about his appearance and grooming, and prone to long periods of fasting and prayer. He lived in the crypt of the cathedral and refused to speak to the press or allow his photo to be taken. When he was hit by a tram on June 7, 1926, no one recognized him. He was taken to a pauper’s hospital, where he died three days later at the age of 73. He is buried in Sagrada Familia’s crypt, a popular part of the tour, a reminder to all of his piety and obsession. 

The push to make Gaudí a saint reflects three decades of lobbying by the Diocese of Barcelona and a passionate advocacy group, the Association for the Beatification of Antoni Gaudí. The Vatican officially took up the case in 2003, and advocates produced a 2,000-page positio, with studies and documents supporting the application. 

Pope Francis was a fan, calling Gaudí “a great mystic.” His decision earlier this year classifies Gaudí as “venerable.”

The next step toward sainthood, which could take years, is “beatification,” the declaration of the subject as “blessed.” The final step is canonization, which usually requires proof that the person brought about a miracle. There is some speculation that a miracle may be attributed to Gaudí after his death, but it is also possible that the pope can waive the miracle requirement, according to published reports.

Supporters of Gaudí’s enshrinement as “God’s servant” point to Sagrada Familia, the “last cathedral,” as a saint-worthy achievement. They see the clear influence of a heavenly hand in his work. “Can anyone acquainted with [Gaudí’s] work believe that all which one contemplates could possibly have been produced only by cold thought?” said Barcelona’s then-Cardinal Ricardo María Carles Gordó in 2003.

But there are some obvious speed bumps to canonization. For one, while Gaudí was undoubtedly a man of piety and faith, he was no Mother Teresa. Most of his work was at the behest of wealthy patrons spending money on icons to personal glory. And there are concerns that anointing an artist creates a tricky precedent. Many artists (and cities) could claim God’s involvement in their transcendent work, to one degree or another.

Sainhood might actually diminish perceptions of Gaudí’s achievements. “It would be a shame … to confuse mastery of the mechanics of materials for divine inspiration,” wrote engineering speaker and teacher Oliver Broadbent about Gaudí’s sainthood application. He notes that the same could be said of other “divinely inspired” designers, like Christopher Wren or Michelangelo. “They may have prayed a lot, but they are also all great engineers.”

To the generations of students who decided on their life calling when they first gazed at Sagrada Familia’s soaring spires and catenary arches, the discussion of Gaudí’s sainthood stands apart from his accomplishments. You don’t need religion to appreciate the genius of geometry and symbolism.

As Gaudí mania has grown, his work has been embraced by many groups that have little interest in his faith. Japanese tourists see his buildings as an expression of Shinto, a nature-based religion that is far removed from Gaudí’s actual beliefs. He is hailed as the guiding light of modernism, a progressive movement that didn’t interest the ultra-conservative Gaudí. Surrealists liked him for his nonconformity and distrust of straight lines—as well as the implied eroticism of his curves, a connection that certainly would have appalled the designer.

Even Gaudí’s signature work, the unfinished church that stands as the icon of Barcelona, is not what it seems. As tour guides endlessly explain, Gaudí’s plans and models were destroyed by anarchists in 1936, leaving future generations of designers to make informed guesses about what the notoriously picky Gaudí would have wanted for his white whale of a church. There have been many protests and debates about design decisions. “What they are constructing has little to do with the spirit of Gaudí,” said Manuel Borja-Villel, the former director of Madrid’s Reina Sofia art museum, to a reporter in 2008. “It has more to do with building a tourist attraction and for propaganda purposes.”

In many ways, Sagrada Familia represents the sum of Gaudí’s arrogance, craziness, and contradictions. It’s been labeled as “terrifying” and “hideous”—and also one of the wonders of the world. American architect Louis Sullivan called it “spirit symbolized in stone.” 

One of the beauties of Sagrada is not its Gaudí-ness, but its evolution as something more than simply one zealot’s hallucination. It has grown into a collective work, involving artists and ideas far beyond the original plan. When it is finished—and authorities vow it will be finished—it will stand as a landmark to a city’s persistence, a tremendous achievement of craftsmen and visionaries. To the throngs that wander through Sagrada every day, the debate about the source of his inspiration—saint or a sinner, Gaudí or God—won’t really matter.

Featured image: Casa Batlló, Barcelona. All photos by the author.