Alegoría, emblemática y doctrina cristiana en un convento de clausura aragonés del siglo xvii: un programa pictórico inspirado en la Regia Via Crucis de Benedictus van Haeften

Abstract

In the cloister of the convent of the Purísima Concepción y San Blas in Miedes (Zaragoza) there are eight paintings dating from the last quarter of the seventeenth century, in all probability created by an Aragonese artist who was not unfamiliar with painting at Court. The importance of these works rests not only on their pictorial quality but on their unified iconography, in which doctrine imbued with baroque spirituality is directed to the nuns of the religious community. The source can be found in Benedictus Van Haeften's Regia Via Crucis, one of the most significant seventeenth-century doctrinal works. The eight prints chosen as models for the canvases constitute a perfect synthesis of the doctrine contained in the Regia Via Crucis, within the context of a female convent in which a cross given by the Virgin to the mother of sister Inés de Jesús y Franco was preserved as a precious relic and had effected miraculous healings.