Charity in the Museum of Fine Arts: the splendor of the Sevillian Baroque

Seville,

The Church of the Hospital de la Caridad de Sevilla houses one of the most notable pictorial sets of Baroque art, gestated thanks to the project of Miguel Mañara, who had entered the Brotherhood of Holy Charity in 1662, after the death of his wife, he became a older brother the following year and held that position until his death in 1679. Messages of the 17th century Catholic ideology.

It was to largely the death of his wife the fact that took Mañara to reflect more deeply on the meaning of life, the proximity of death and the exercise of charity as a way to achieve eternal salvation, thoughts that he wanted to move as a life guide to the brothers of his institution and that overturned in writing in the rule of the Brotherhood and in the work Truth Speechin addition to the artistic program of this church. The best artists of the moment resorted to that goal: the painters Valdés Leal and Murillo, the tracist of altarpieces Bernardo Simón de Pineda and the sculptor Pedro Roldán, who also entered this brotherhood in order to reduce the costs of their work.

The set opens with works dedicated to death: two paintings on the end of the post -timeries in charge of Valdés Leal that were placed in access to the temple and that point to the moment of death and the particular judgment. Already in the ship, the importance of the practice of charity with the works of mercy was emphasized, in which Murillo represented different scenes in the walls and lateral altarpieces. Finally, the main altarpiece of Pineda and Roldán is chaired by the scene of the Burial of Christin allusion to the greater task of the brotherhood: to give eternal rest to the disinherited.

Since the Hospital de la Santa Charidad and its Church of Mr. San Jorge are currently under rehabilitation works, the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville hosts, for the first time outside its initial location, those compositions attending in their assembly to that iconographic discourse that will devise as Mañara. The exhibition is called “Art and Mercy. The Holy Charity of Seville” and is articulated in three sections that study, respectively, the production of Murillo, that of Valdés Leal and the sculptures created for the Church of the Brotherhood of Holy Charity. In total we can contemplate seventeen pieces: ten paintings and seven sculptures.

Starting with Valdés Leal, Sevillian by birth, entered as the brother of charity in August 1667 and for them he made paintings on canvas, wall decoration, polychromy and sculpture; He even ornament protocols and inventory books. In the Bajocoro of the Church he displayed his expressiveness and crudeness in which two of his best works would be: In Ictu Oculi and Finis Gloriae Mundithat are known as the Hieroglyphsbecause they refer to the prompt arrival of death that reaches everyone equally, they have been those that have been their worldly glories. Death, attending to the Christian faith and this iconographic program, is not the end, but the moment prior to those in which man will be judged by his virtues or his vices, rewarded or punished.

Apart from those easel paintings, the iconographic program that Valdés had to develop included the wall paintings of the vault and the walls of the presbytery, where Angels, the four evangelists and several saints of charitable life. He also embarked on the polychromy of the main altarpiece, in which the gold contrasts with the painted and stewed sculptures and is completed with the great bask of the background, in which a scene marks the perspective.

Once Mañara was died, Valdés made two posthumous portraits to preserve his memory and carried out the commission of the great work The exaltation of the Holy Cruzalso called Heraclio entering Jerusalem; His reading is that no rich will enter the sky without having practiced charity before. When Heraclio, Emperor of Byzantium, returned, after having rescued the cross of Christ that had been stolen, an angel demands to enter the city without boato, as Jesus had done. His last work for the Brotherhood would be a sculpture of the Virgen del Rosario, for nursing.

As for Murillo, who had entered the brotherhood a little earlier, in 1665, Mañara asked him for a series of paintings about the works of mercy, which he developed between 1666 and 1670, to serve that work of becoming a guide and example of behavior for the salvation of souls. These pieces spread in 1810, because of the Napoleonic invasion, but four of them can still be seen on the walls of this church: Santa Elizabeth of Hungary healing the tannial and San Juan de Dios transporting a patientthat they point out the care and transfer of the sick to the hospital, concrete obligations of the brothers of charity; and The multiplication of breads and fish and Moses and Horeb’s rockwhich refer to the works of feeding the hungry and drinking to the thirsty, with a Eucharistic meaning.

The other four paintings requisitioned in the War of Independence by Marshal Sault are exhibited today in museums outside Spain: The healing of the paralytic by Christ In the National Gallery of London, Abraham and the three angels In the National Gallery of Canada, The Return of the Prodigal Son In the National Gallery of Art in Washington and San Pedro released by the angel in the Ermitage of St. Petersburg; In Seville they were relieved by copies to maintain the iconographic sense of the set.

In the Museum of Fine Arts, Murillo’s first pieces are complemented by three others that are not linked to the iconographic program that Mañara raised and that are in minor altarpieces: a Child Jesús Salvador and a San Juanitoin two attic of two lateral altarpieces, and the canvas that presides over the altarpiece of the announcement, donated in 1686.

Art and mercy. The Holy Charity of Seville. Seville's Fine Arts Museum

The last great artist present is Pedro Roldán, who carried out the sculptures of the main altarpiece for the hospital of charity, chaired by the scene of the scene Burial of Christculmination of the Church iconographic program. It is shown as the work of mercy to bury the dead; We remember, the Brotherhood’s own mission since its creation in the mid -fifteenth century: to bury the finishes of which no one was responsible for having died without resources, executed or drowned. From Mañara, that function was extended to the care of helpless patients.

This altarpiece, fruit, as we pointed out, of the happy collaboration of the tracista Bernardo Simón de Pineda, the sculptor Roldán and the painter Valdés Leal, was carried out for two years and was conceived as an architectural scene, of an effective and theatrical nature. At its extremes, those closest to the spectator, José de Arimea and Nicodemus, presented as models for the brothers of charity, deposit Christ in the grave, while behind, as if it were a frieze, the figures of the Virgin, San Juan and the holy women are appreciated.

The bottom of the work is a view of the Calvary in which Bajorrelieve and Painting are confused. Valdés’ polychromy reinforces the expressiveness and illusionism of sculptures and bas -relief, thanks to the use of color and shadows. The central scene is surrounded by large Solomonic columns in which we see the sculptures of St. Jorge, patron of this Church, and San Roque, protector against diseases and epidemics; They highlight their monumentality and expressive intensity.

In the attic we are awaiting the theological virtues, infused by God for eternal salvation, chosen to crown the whole: faith and hope on both sides, while in the center charity is shown by accentuating its relevance, remembering the name of the brotherhood and the message of the new commandment of Jesus.