Juanelo Turriano,
an engineer amid kings and legendary gods
On the south façade of the cornice of the Queen's tower, amid legendary gods and heroes of Spanish antiquity, there is a steeple dedicated to Osiris in which there is a bust of the 16th-century engineer, Juanelo Turriano.
Giovanni Torriani, known in Spain as Juanelo Turriano, was born in the early 15th century in Cremona (Italy) and died in total penury in Toledo; he was buried only thanks to the charity of his neighbours. He arrived in Spain on the summons of Charles I in the first quarter of the century, and built the Cristalino, an astronomic clock which made him a celebrity in his time. Philip II named him Court Mathematician and he then returned to Italy on the orders of Pope Gregory XIII to take part in the study for the reform of the calendar. Back in Spain, Juan de Herrera commissioned him to design the bells for the Monastery of El Escorial.
His best-known work -apart from his wooden automaton- was a hydraulic machine known as the Toledo device which was built in the city of Toledo to raise the waters of the Tagus up to the Alcázar or fortress, and covered a difference in height of over one hundred metres using only the energy produced by the river itself. This remained in operation for one whole century, until it was destroyed by old age.
Although the device had been requested by the town council, Turriano was never paid for his invention as the Alcázar refused to distribute the water to the city and the council therefore withheld all payment. The army, which owned the Alcázar, ruled that nothing should be paid as it had not been responsible for ordering the installation of the hydraulic device.
The steeple on the cornice of the Royal Palace was designed according to the instructions of Friar Martín Sarmiento, together with a bust of Osiris (in his human representation, with a bull's head). But when the extension was built to the Queen's tower during the reign of Charles III, the bust fell to the ground while it was being removed. The steeple remained empty for many years, until in 1978 it was filled with the bust of Juanelo Turriano. This was a larger copy of the sculpture presently in the Santa Cruz Museum in Toledo, the work of León Leoni and enlarged to three times its original size.
This is the curious history of the bust of the engineer which stands amid kings and legendary heroes on the cornice of the Royal Palace in Madrid.
