Cartuja, Granada

 

Cartuja of Granada (
Germán Póo-Caamaño from Victoria, Canadá, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I wonder how many visitors to the Alhambra in Granada have also gone to see the Cartuja? The remarkable sacristy in this former Carthusian monastery may have been an 18th century attempt to emulate its more famous Granada landmark. And there is more than just the sacristy...this is an outstanding Spanish baroque masterpiece!

The above video is excellent : short and atmospheric. 

The monastery building started in 1516 and there were monks there until 1835. The Napoleonic War and general neglect have seen the loss of the great cloister and the monks' individual  cells. However the refectory,  the chapter house and a few other rooms around the cloister  survive  as a museum.

The church served both public, lay brothers and monks. It was started in the mid 16th century but not completed until the first third of the 17th century. The interior decoration by Diaz de Rivero in 1662  used favourite Mannerist motifs from Andalusia and here they appear true baroque, The presbytery with the high altar is highly decorated. It contains four sculptures of a Carthusian bishop, St John the Baptist, St Bruno and St Hugo and  large paintings by Sanchez Cotan and Bocanegra. The large baldocchino of the altar  (1710)      features a wooden statue of Our Lady by Jose de Mora.

Beyond the sacristy is the Sagrario or Holy of Holies, a remarkable High Baroque section by Hurtado. Porphry and jaspar walls surround a central tabernacle with Salomonic columns. (cf the Sagrario at El Paular). The decoration is florid, rich and the conception of the room is unlike anything outside the Hispanic world.

The Sagrario with the tabernacle with Salomonic columns in the centre.

However I must admit it is the sacristy that I remember from my visit. I had never seen anything like the Sagrario so had not understood it. The sacristy was different : here was a riot of decoration that could have been an 18th century attempt to rival the Alhambra. 

The sacristy  
Palickap, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 The sacristy was designed by Hurtado, constructed 1727 to 1764 with the stuccoist Luis Cabello worked there from 1730. James Lees-Milne in his "Baroque in Spain and Portugal"  (1960)calls the decor  wildly outrageous and compares it to fluttering foliage on a breezy day! I see it as beyond the rhythm of Roman baroque and in the fantasy world of rococo. It is not a church or chapel but a place for storing sacred vessels and vestments : there are cupboards of of ebony and tortoiseshell inlaid with silver and Mother of pearl and with silver handles. It seems so over the top, yet the monks who used it were likely highly reverent and used  the place with deep devotion. Let's hope so! The altar is later : from 1770 by Arevalo and with its red marble  veined with pink and white is quite classical in style. 

The church is the central section with
the nave culminating at the high altar
behind which is a Venetian glass gate
and a circular Sagrario (or Holy of 
 Holies).The sacristy is the protruding
 structure on the left/