Plateresque. Intricate highly decorative style of early C16 Spanish architecture, supposedly resembling fine silversmith's work, with enrichments derived from Classical, Gothic, Moorish, and Renaissance sources, extravagantly applied to the walls of late-Gothic buildings and generally unrelated to any expression of construction.

Bibliography

Kalman & and Sturgis et al. (1959);
Lampugnani (ed.) & Dinsmoor (1986);
H. Osborne (1970)

plateresque (especially of Spanish architecture) richly ornamented in a style suggesting silverware. The term comes from Spanish plateresco, from platero ‘silversmith’, from plata ‘silver’.