The old convent of Nuestra Señora la Merced has been declared an Asset of Cultural Interest in the Monument category since 2008.
History
Background
In the excavations carried out to build the garage between the years 1973-1974, remains of a Roman ashlar construction appeared , which provided abundant Aretina type H 8 ceramics. Previously, remains of a baptistery and a crypt had been found , which were identified with that of Santa Eulalia . Some historians have thought that it is a Visigoth construction from the time of Recaredo , although the possibility that it could be from the early Christian period is not ruled out .
La Merced Convent
Traditionally the origin and foundation of this convent is linked to the figure of San Pedro Nolasco , to whom King Ferdinand III of Castile donated the Basilica of Santa Eulalia after the conquest of the city. The convent was built between 1245 and 1262 and was dedicated to Santa María de la Merced, although no remains have been preserved, except for a carving of Cristo de la Merced in the modern church that belonged to it. 2 The navigator Christopher Columbus inhabited the old convent during the years he lived in Córdoba waiting to meet with the Catholic Monarchs . 3
Baroque reform
The current building is a work from the 18th century , ignoring to date the authors who intervened in the structuring of the complex. On the other hand, it can be affirmed that there were two phases in its construction. The first corresponds to the beginning of the 18th century , when the entire northern wing was built, that is, the secondary cloister and attached rooms. Of them only the patio and the staircase have been preserved. The latter was financed by Cardinal Salazar and made by Francisco Hurtado Izquierdo . Its layout is closely related to the secondary staircase that the aforementioned master made in those years for the Cardinal Salazar hospital .
In a second stage, the construction of the church, the main cloister, the staircase and the rooms that surround it are undertaken. The exterior façade of the convent is also transformed, giving the whole the greatest conjunction and unity. This is thus constituted by a large, beautifully assembled rectangle in which the horizontality of the main façade is broken by the verticality of the church.
The works were carried out between 1716 and 1760, under the patronage of Fray Pedro de Anguita, Fray Pedro González and Fray Lorenzo García Ramírez. The teachers who carried them out are unknown, although the collaboration of the brothers Francisco and Juan Aguilar del Río Arriaza, Tomás Jerónimo Pedrajas and Alonso Gómez de Sandoval is not ruled out .
Due to the Spanish Confiscation , and after a reform in 1850, it was assigned to a hospice . During the presidency of the Provincial Council of Córdoba of Antonio Cruz-Conde , it was decided to move the hospice and adapt it as the headquarters of the Council in 1960, acquiring its current physiognomy under the direction of the architect Rafael de la Hoz Arderius . Although the eastern façade retained its original shape, the rest included new elements, for example, a stone portal was added to the northern façade that comes from the goal of the church of San Pedro de Alcántara, a work from the 16th century, located at the express wish of the corporation's architect Rafael de la Hoz and designed by the Cordovan painter Miguel del Moral . Likewise, the south façade was elaborated at this time and was decorated with a large sundial , the work of this same architect, and topped by a sculpture of the Sun by the artist Tomás Egea Azcona. 4
In the early morning of January 29, 1978, the church suffered a great fire caused by Miguel López Toledano, a former hospician who destroyed the main altarpiece and all the furnishings that adorned it, as well as the theft of more than 100,000 pesetas from the palace printing press. that managed to be recovered after his arrest. 5 The restoration had a cost of more than 10 million euros, its inauguration being celebrated in December 2014 with the presence of President María Luisa Ceballos , after thirty-six years of work. 6
The exterior of the convent building has undergone various alterations over time, with the eastern façade being the one that has best preserved its original shape. The northern side, even when it shows the same formal characteristics as the main front, shows the incorporation of new elements. In 2014 the altarpiece of the church was inaugurated to restore it to the splendor it had in the 18th century, lost in a fire in 1978 . The main altarpiece was replicated from photos and the burned images were restored.
Structure
The church
The church is built between 1716 and 1745. It is located in the center of the complex and serves as a dividing axis between the two cloisters that articulate the building, whose link is made up of the gallery that surrounds the head of the temple.
On the outside it shows a façade structured in three streets by means of pilasters that separate the central part from the lateral ones, these topped by individual belfries . The central street coincides with the development of the main nave of the temple; It is formed by three bodies on which rests a triangular pediment crowned by the figure of San Rafael. In the center stands out the front of the church, in white stone, with great movement in the cornices and supports, highlighting in the second body a niche with the stone image of Our Lady of Mercy.
The church has a Latin cross plan inscribed in a rectangle. It has a flat apse - flanked by sacristies -, behind naves and transept . Above the former arches , along the arms of the cross, there are tribunes. The central nave is covered with a barrel vault with lunettes and the arms of the cruise do so with quarter spheres divided into three segments. The tectonic elements are decorated with polychrome medallions, where half-relief busts of the saints and blesseds of the Mercedarian order appear, framed by rich plasterwork. It has a huge chorushigh whose parapet is curved to incorporate the stands of the organs, unfortunately lost. The front of the choir sported a semicircular mural painting, which represented the Apparition of Saint Raphael to Blessed Simón de Sousa, carried out by José Ignacio de Cobo y Guzmán .
Around 1770 , Alonso Gómez de Sandoval was entrusted with the main altarpiece, unfortunately disappeared in the violent fire of 1978 and rebuilt in 2014. From the same years, the side altars of Santa María del Socorro and Santa Mariana, works made of stucco and also related to Gómez de Sandoval, although they have been highly restored. Here resides the Brotherhood of the Fifth Anguish and the Group of Faithful of the Soledad de Nuestra Señora.
The cloister and the staircase
Once the church was finished, the main cloister had to be built, completed around 1752. It has a quadrangular plan and consists of two floors; the ground floor is porticoed and has semicircular arches on pairs of Tuscan columns. The second floor is closed and has pilasters , decorated with plaques, and balconies in the intermediate spaces. In the center there is a large black marble fountain. The whole complex is profusely decorated, highlighting the cornice with pendants and the painting that covers the ornamental elements, which reinforces its baroque aesthetic .
At that time, the staircase that starts from the southern corridor of the patio and connects the two floors of the building was also built . It is of the imperial type with a quadrangular case. It shows a simple and focused first shot, which is divided into two parallel full-backs from a break, thus completing the squaring of the plant. It is made with marble of different colors, inlaid and inlaid, achieving a work of great excellence, related by its aesthetics to Gómez de Sandoval. It is covered with a hemispherical dome decorated with polychrome reliefs that represent scenes from the life of San Pedro Nolasco.
This institution keeps a series of artistic works from different periods. The oldest come for the most part from the convent; Others have come as proof of scholarships for retired artists paid for by the corporation. Finally, there is another group of works that come from contests and exhibitions sponsored by the council; Hence, along with mediocre works by local artists, there are also creations by outstanding masters of the national contemporary scene, such as Miguel Del Moral, Pedro Bueno, Emilio Serrano, Manchu Gal, María Antonia Dans, Luis García Ochoa, Antonio Zarco or José Duarte.
Among the oldest pieces are a beautiful union cup, adapted to a ciborium, probably a Flemish work from the 16th century , and the series of paintings on the life of San Pedro Nolasco, made by José Ignacio de Cobo y Guzmán in the first half of the century. xviii . Some of these canvases belong to the Museum of Fine Arts and are on deposit here. There is also a good number of anonymous works of both sculpture and painting. Among the first it is worth mentioning the group of Santa Ana and the Virgin, from the first third of the 18th century .
An interesting group of pictorial works made by the different artists who were pensioned by the council to study painting correspond to the 19th century. Among them it is worth mentioning Alfredo Lobato, Adolfo Lozano Sidro , Joaquín Martínez de la Vega - who painted in 1865 the enormous canvas of The hermits of Belén feeding the poor - José Muñoz Contreras, Agustín del Pino, Rafael Romero de Torres and Tomás Muñoz Lucena , to whom Plegaria en las Ermitas is owed , a work awarded with the first medal at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1901.
In the field of sculpture, the creations of Mateo Inurria Lainosa stand out , among which stand out Alegoría de Córdoba , from 1888, and Materia en triunfo , from 1889, one of his most important creations. Very interesting is the collection of engravings and lithographs of the main monuments of the city, made by famous artists such as David Roberts , Agustín François Lemaître, Genaro Pérez Villamil and Francisco Javier Parcerisa , among others. Some silver pieces from the old convent church are also preserved.
The painting of the 20th century is represented by a good group of local and foreign artists whose works reflect the multiple tendencies of the art of our time. Among the former, who are undoubtedly the most numerous, are Ángel Díaz Huertas , Ángel López-Obrero , Pedro Bueno , Rafael Botí , Miguel del Moral , Rafael Serrano, Teresa García Courtoy and Julia Hidalgo . In addition, it houses a large gallery of portraits of the different presidents of the institution made by different artists, including Pedro Bueno and Enrique Segura .
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