PERIOD 15th - 17th century

DESCRIPTION

This church is a Marian centre dedicated to Our Lady Virgen de la Victoria, Patron Saint of Malaga with origins that go back to the time of the Catholic Monarch's siege of Malaga.

The temple, inaugurated in 1700, has a Latin-Cross design, two chapels, elevated choir stalls on the back wall and, between the pilasters, small balcony-platforms that are open to the central nave. Its floor plan is typical of the Counter-Reformation period, with a central nave much wider and higher than the lateral nave, directed light, interconnected nave chapels, and the transept and the luminous space behind the altarpiece.

One of its main features is the crypt-vestry-inner sanctum ensemble within which the Pantheon of the Counts of Buenavista is located.

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The victory of the Catholic Monarch was attributed to the divine intervention of the Virgin, and so an image of the Virgin that King Fernando apparently had in is oratory was given this name. Delivered to the city a its patron saint, a chapel, entrusted to the care of a hermit, was built to worship the image of the Virgin on the site of the King's military camp.

In 1493, when the Order of the Minims was founded, they requested the chapel, request that was granted on 25th May of that same year. Next to the chapel a convent and a church were built. From this original architectural ensemble only the cloister patio has been conserved, where the Mudejar style chosen for the construction can clearly be seen in the capitals of the columns supporting the arches, in the frames of the arches, and the tiles on the parapets of the upper floor. In the chronicles of Brother Lucas de Montoya, written in 1619, the convent garden is described as another area where great care is taken with the aesthetics, with an alabaster fountain in the centre. In the present day, this patio is located within a building that is currently operating as a private clinic (Clínica Pascual), and which, from the 19th century until a few years ago, had been a Military Hospital.

Little is known about the original church, on which work began at the beginning of the 16th century and went on until the end of the 17th, though it is thought that it occupied an area similar to the current building and probably had a similar layout. Its ruinous state at the end of the 17th century made it advisable to build a new church from scratch, which took place between 1693 and 1700, when the new church was inaugurated.

This Latin-Cross church has a half-barrel vaulted ceiling with lunettes and a false vault ceiling in the transept. The central nave opens onto four interconnected chapels on the left-hand side of the main altar and two on the right. There are also another two under the choir stall at the back wall and one on the right-hand side of the central altar next to the south facing door that gives access to a spacious portico.

The central nave is bordered by a platform, illuminated by soft light that is brighter at the central point at the opening to the inner sanctum, which shows the statue of the Patron on display inside. The contrast between the more hazy light in the central nave and the transept and the more powerful illumination in the inner sanctum is designed to highlight the church's most important area, that which houses the Virgin. This type of setting is typical of the Counter-Reformation spatial concept, where the central nave, transept and main altar are given precedence.

From an architectural point of view, the most interesting feature of this ensemble is the inner sanctum tower, one of the first built in Spain and which resembles that of Guadalupe or Our Lady Virgen de los Desamparados in Valencia.

This one is divided into three spaces on three floors. The square ground floor houses the pantheon of the Counts of Buenavista, and is one of the most lugubrious in Spain, with décor of white plaster skeletons and figures representing the different stages of death on a black background. This area is connected to the inner sanctum via a staircase, illuminated on its south side, with the ceiling decorated with images of the Almighty and the Apostles. On the east wall there is a huge relief, in plaster also, which represents Saint Francisco de Paula rejecting the office of Pope. The second flight accesses the octagonal-shaped inner sanctum, attributed, because of its characteristic plaster adornments, to the master sculptor Felipe de Unzurrúnzaga, an artist who was working in Malaga at the time and who also intervened in other works sponsored by the Count of Buenavista.

The pantheon should be interpreted as a display of the Baroque concept of death. The Count and Countess, portrayed in their youth and kneeling on their coffins suggest reincarnation after death through Christ, means of salvation for the faithful, expressed in the central altarpiece in which the cross, made of precious metals, signifies triumph over death, represented by the skeleton with the attributes of life and death, in the centre of the altarpiece. On the ceiling, walls and architectural elements, the presence of death or its effects on mankind, as well as phrases carved on plaques, lead one to reflect on the ephemeral quality of life and its banalities.

Many hypotheses have been put forward on its conceptual interpretation. One of these links the lower space (pantheon) to the upper floors (staircase and inner sanctum), taking them as a materialisation of the spirituality of Saint Ignacio. Without rejecting this, other experts link the relief carvings on the wall, which represent the soul chained by sin and liberated through death, to the engraving of Hugo Hermann and the "Pía Desideria". Finally, based on the decoration of the inner sanctum, a third theory is that the different scenarios represented by the succession of spaces lead from death to glory, through the Virgin Mary.

Linking this ensemble to its surroundings, in its context, it is possible to observe how in the urban layout the same Salvation/Death philosophy materialised in the tower is repeated.

At the axis and to the south of the church stands San Lazaro hospital, a leprosy hospital that was re-built in the 18th century, in which once again in the crypt of its church, the skeletons of death and the decaying bodies of leprosy maintain the dismal theme of the Dance of Death in Baroque tones. At the north axis the limit is Mount Calvary with its hermitage, an area of curative springs, recognised and used from Antiquity: health and salvation associated with the sacrifice of the Passion, re-interpreted as the maximum exponent for practising Charity and the best means of salvation, the same concept displayed by Miguel de Mañara in the 17th century in the Seville Charity Hospital.

In Malaga, the practice of Charity was already represented in the fourth vow of the Order of the Minims, owners of the church. Associated to conserving the Patron, the message is transformed to make the Virgin an intermediary, a step further to overcome death and reach salvation, and to make the church the link between Saint Lazaro and the Calvary.

This scenario is repeated in the tower-inner sanctum, reaching its maximum expression in the inner sanctum, where it culminates in an extraordinary representation, through the plaster decorations that frame the Marian emblems (presided over by a mirror), and creating a space for all that is marvellous and celestial; a space that houses Our Lady Virgen de la Victoria and which, through its decoration, messages and conceptual content, is transformed into one of the most exceptional exponents of Spanish Baroque.

In the interior of the church there are also sculptures and painting of great interest. The most important piece is the image of Our Lady Santa María de la Victoria, patron of Malaga, presented to the city by the Catholic Monarchs following the Re-conquest. It is a sitting polychrome Virgin, carved in red pine wood with a hollow core and in the rigid late Gothic style of the central European School. It dates back to the end of the 15th century, beginning of the 16th. Hollow and with no carving on the back, it was originally an image attached to an altarpiece, however, later treatment applied using pasted material and wooded transformed it into a rounded figure. Despite its Late Medieval style structure; the colours of the volutes in the mantle are of Renaissance inspiration.

The author of this image is unknown, however, comparing styles it is thought that it could have been the work of sculptures from the Seville workshops, and in particular, Jorge Fernández Alemán, who worked in Cordoba during the 15th century and participated in the creation of Seville Cathedral's altarpiece. The Virgen de la Victoria bears a striking resemblance to Our Lady Virgen de la Epifanía in that altarpiece. Brother of painter Alejo Fernández, Jorge carried out many works for the Catholic Monarchs, and there are other Marian images by this artist, similar to the one in Malaga, to be found throughout Andalusia.

Attached to the skirt by an iron bolt, the image carried a figure of the Christ child, as can be seen in 17th century engravings. One of these, from the 18th century, is kept under an urn in the altar dedicated to Saint Francisco de Paula. The figure currently used was carved in the fifties at the workshop of José Risueño, a local 20th century sculptor.

The next most interesting feature is the altarpiece dedicated to Saint Francisco de Paula, which acts as a frame for the inner sanctum. Dedicated to the founder of the Order of Minims, through nine relief carvings distributed in two aisles, pews and attic, the most important moments of the life of the Saint are narrated, from his miraculous conception to when he was received by King Charles VIII, who, in turn, received the grand cordon of the Order, and his extraordinary renunciation of papacy, the miraculous healing of a blind person, the resurrection of a deceased and the expulsion of the devil from a possessed woman. In the attic there is a depiction of the moment in which the Brothers are received by the Catholic Monarchs, and a pew on the right-hand aisle shows the death of the saint.

The author of these works was Luis Ortiz de Vargas, a Seville sculptor who came to Malaga to work on the choir stalls of the Cathedral. Luis de Zayas, who came from a family of sculptors, applied the colours and the relief carvings were carried out by José Micael y Alfaro, author of the Apostles on the Cathedral choir stalls, and by Jerónimo Gómez de Hermosilla. There is documentation dating back to 1570 on the first monetary donations for its construction, under the orders of the Count of Casapalma, and building began in 1620. In the centre, in the form of a reliquary altarpiece, there is an opening to display the image of the Virgin, standing triumphant in the centre of the inner sanctum and facing the congregation.

The transept is closed by an apse with two 18th century gilded altarpieces/altars, today dedicated to Saint Francisco de Paula on the left-hand side and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the right-hand side. These sculptures are contemporary, created by the Valencia artist José Vicent to replace the others, lost during the 1931 - 1936 conflict.

From the apse to the back wall there are a series of chapels adorned with polychrome wood and gilded altarpieces that date back to the 18th century. Though the authors are unknown and no documentation as to their origin has come to light, they have certain similarities with others carried out at the end of the 17th century by Jerónimo Gómez de Hermosilla and his workshop for the churches Iglesia del Sagrario and Iglesia de Santiago, as well as those by the Primo family who worked in different Andalusian localities, or the artists from Antequera, who specialised in altarpieces.

The most interesting sculptures and paintings in these chapels, starting from the back end of the church, are the figure of Christ, Crucificado del Amor and that of Our Lady La Dolorosa by Fernando Ortiz. They came from the Augustine Nuns convent, close to the church, and have formed part of the Good Friday processions since 1924.

There is an interesting link between these sculptures and the Neo-Baroque works of Buiza Fernández and Álvarez Duarte, as well as with the image of La Dolorosa by Pedro de Mena, situated on the altar named The Calvary. There is certain aesthetic similarity to the 17th century works of Mena, the best local sculptor of that century who worked in Malaga, and one of the best of the century in Spain and in whose works contained emotion is materialised in the expression of pain on the face of the Virgin, masterfully interpreted through the arching of the eyebrows, the red polychrome on the eyelids and the smoothness of the forms that suggest the crystal tears that trickle gently down her cheeks, a subtle Trentino touch. Then there is the more ample movement and expression of the 18th century works of Ortiz. This sculptor was more restrained in his interpretation of the figure of Christ and less so in that of the Virgin, showing locally aesthetic similarities with the works of the previously mentioned artist. In opposition to this there is the importance given to form over content in the processional images, emphasising the use of stylemes, such as inertia, in contrast to the sincerity and coherency of the models realised within a dynamic of conceptuality.

Other pieces worth mentioning are the figure of Our Lady Virgen de las Ánimas, by Niño de Guevara, the Malaga exponent of 17th century painting from the Granada school of Alonso Cano, and that of Our Lady Virgen de Belén by Jerónimo Gómez de Hermosilla, a sculptor from the second half of the 17th century whose work, in this piece, approached that of Mena, even though he had consolidated his style before the latter arrived in Malaga in 1658.

Recently an exhibition hall has been set up in an area next to the inner sanctum to house the treasures of the Virgen de la Victoria, where all the Patron of Malaga's complements and accessories are on display, including the processional canopy and mantle, donated by Anita Delgado, Maharaní of Kapurthala. The museum is accessed through a side door of the church and, in order to keep the tourist visits separate from the religious services, the tour consists of a visit to the Counts of Buenavista Crypt and the Virgin's Inner Sanctum, as well as the museum itself.

Text: Teresa Sauret Guerrero.

HOW TO FIND IT

Address: PL SANTUARIO s/n,  29012  Málaga
Telephones:     Centralita: 952252647
Webpage: http://www.santamariadelavictoria.com/