Hospital de la Caridad

So I've decided to try and do one cultural thing a day (and now that I dropped my literature class and have my afternoons open, I am able to do that! Yay! I am taking another advanced Spanish language class in its place, which is in the morning.) Today my cultural activity was Hospital de la Caridad which I went to with Cherise and Audra.

Hospital de la Caridad (The Charity Hospital) was founded in 1674 to care for the sick by Miguel de Mañara. Now it is still a facility for the elderly and infirm. From the outside it seems like a plain building in downtown Sevilla, but it has a spectacular and ornate chapel that was really interesting to tour (which we did by little radios that we held up to our ears-- no formal tour.)

The chapel focuses around the theme of hospitality. It has exquisite paintings from some of the most famous artists of Sevilla, including Juan de Valdés Leal and Murillo. It also has incredible sculptures which come out from the walls and the front of the church.

I was fascinated by the two angels holding up aumbry candles at the front side of the church. They popped out from the wall and I didn't understand how they were attached, or how their tiny little hands could hold up the hanging candles.

The ceiling was beautiful

Along the top of the walls on the side of the church were four paintings by Murillo, who was a friend of Mañera's (Mañera was the godfather of Murillo's children.) The first one depicts three angels appearing to Abraham, who welcomes them into his home, demonstrating to the Brothers of the Caridad to welcome the stranger. The next shows the prodigal son returning home dressed in rags, a reminder to clothe the naked. The next is Jesus healing the lame man, saying we should help the sick and the next is an angel freeing Peter from prison, saying that we should visit the imprisoned. "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

The two paintings you see as you enter the chapel are very morbid. One shows a skeleton standing on a pile of gold and jewels, etc., to show that possessions are meaningless when you die. The other shows two skeleton/corpses, one is a pope and one is a king, to show that no one can conquer death and that in death we are all equal.

Me standing next to the front of the church, which is carved from gold and shows elaborate figures depicting carrying Jesus to the tomb, I think. It specifically shows Jesus as helpless.

It was a good little trip, I really enjoyed it (as you can probably tell.) As Cherise said, it gave us our dose of spirituality for the week. I'm thinking about possibly using some of the paintings as a topic for the 10-page paper (in Spanish, which makes it 10x harder,) that we have to write for Fernando's Art and Culture class.

Side note for food of today: Lunch today we had hot dogs (minus the bun,) rice (arroz,) eggs and salad. She didn't tell us the spanish name for any of it... but I will have to ask later. We ate with the maid who cleans the house every Monday, Carmen. For dinner we had a salad-rice mix and pork, which was pretty good. Also for breakfast usually Inés is rushing out of the house and Ana has already gone, so she always leaves us cereal, which I love although it isn't a lot to tie you over until 3:00 in the afternoon!

More tomorrow! Hasta luego!