October 24, 2007
Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series
IV CONFERENCE BAROQUE IN CORELLA
Conventual arts and devotions in Corella during the Baroque centuries
D. Ricardo Fernández Gracia
Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro
The programs of study dedicated by José Luis Arrese to the religious art of Corella and to the biographies of outstanding personalities of that city, showed the triumph of the Baroque arts in Corella, under the protection of circumstances of a political, economic and religious nature. Among the latter, we must highlight the presence of three outstanding religious orders -Barefoot Carmelites in their male and female branches, Mercedarians and Benedictines- that displayed in their churches and outside of them -throughout the urban spectrum- devotions that brought with them the development of iconographies, evident in images, paintings and pieces of sumptuary arts, still present in temples, private collections and other institutions of the town.
Particular interest was shown by those religious orders in spreading the invocations of the Virgin that were proper to them, in plenary session of the Executive Council period of the Catholic Reform, after the Council of Trent. The sons of Santa Teresa promoted the cult and iconography of the Virgin of Carmen, from the excellent sculptural examples of Carmen and Araceli, to the embroidered and engraved scapulars, through an endless number of canvases and chapels or windows that faithfully reproduce altars with all subject of ornaments. The Mercedarians did the same with the Virgen de la Merced and the Benedictines with the Virgen del Socorro, so popular in the monasteries of the sons and daughters of St. Benedict. As far as the Virgin of Carmen and the Virgin of Mercy are concerned, the Bull of Urban VIII of 1642, which prohibited Mary to be dressed in the habits of the religious orders, was of no use.
A Marian devotion of local character, the Virgin of Araceli, was associated with the Discalced Carmelites from the very moment of its foundation, in 1722, with which the nuns became "perpetual waitresses" of the image, watching over its adornment and worship. Engraved engravings, lithographs, primitive photographs, small altars, scapulars, novenas, music and oratory pieces give a good account of the whole festive world organized around that Marian simulacrum.
Other outstanding iconographies in the city derived from the devotional impulse given by the aforementioned religious institutes to their founders and foundresses. Thus, the Carmelites spread the cult and images of St. Teresa, St. Elias and St. John of the Cross, the Mercedarians did the same with St. Peter Nolasco, St. Raymond Nonnatus and St. Mary of Cervelló and the Benedictines with St. Benedict, St. Scholastica, St. Placidus and St. Gertrude. Top quality canvases imported from the Court, where the best art was consumed, from the brushes of Pedro Orrente, Claudio Coello, José Ximénez Donoso and Espinosa de los Monteros give a good account of the tastes and artistic levels reached in the city throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
All those images, those of great artists, those of others of lesser category and those of popular character, took on a special dimension, at a time when most of the social mass did not know how to read and the means of dissemination of culture necessarily went by the ways of plastic expression and oratory.
Together with the artistic pieces of figurative art, we cannot fail to mention a very important repertoire of musical scores -hymns, gozos or arias- dedicated to the exaltatio gaudium in the festivities of all those models of sanctity that, sometimes with skill, the religious established in Corella during those centuries of the Baroque that, as it is known, tries to captivate by means of the senses, always weaker than the intellect.