Cabra – Escolapias Church

Escolapias Church, Convent-School of the Madres Escolapias in Cabra

The present convent-school of the Escolapias (Scolapias Church) is built upon the remains of the old Castle, i n the high part of the district of La Villa, and upon what also used to be the house-palace of Dukes of Sessa and Counts of Cabra.

The convent church of the Capuchins was finished in 1649 and dedicated to worship on the 6 of February of the same year. This temple consist of a single craft and it has a crossing of very short arms. The cover is made of a barrel vault with lunettes and arches. Above the cruise, there is a vault. In each one of the side walls there is an arch framing an alterpiece. Behind the greater altar is the old choir, which today has been turned into a sacristy. The simplicity of this temple keeps similarity with other churches from the Franciscan order.

In its interior, it is worth seeing its greater altarpiece. It is a pictorial work made up of eight canvases, distributed  in three rows and where the extraordinary life of it founding Saints is told in form of a didactic way and by means of paintings. It also tells about the magnificence of the Order: Santa Rosa de Lima, Santa Clara, San Francisco de Asís, Padre Eterno, San Juan Buenaventura, Transverberation of Santa Teresa, Santa Isabel of Hungary curing to the tiñosos, and San Francisco Vision.

The great central canvas with the Vision of San Francisco in the Porciúncula, is according to artistic critic one of most important pictorial works of the baroque in the province of Cordoba. It is signed and dated by Juan de Valdés Leal in 1672. It is a far-reaching picture that surprises by the amount of figures that appear in it.