Capilla del Colegio de Oviedo, templo de la ciencia y de la virtud

Abstract

The author analyzes the iconographie program of the chapel dedicated to saint Toribio of Mogrovejo, the central motive of which was the representation of the sciences. Through this cycle the Colegio de Oviedo, in clear rivalry with thé University, assumed the role corresponding to the latter institution, and offered an ideal image of the college as generator of wisdom and the virtuous life. José de Churriguera's intervention in the selection of the specific allegories helps to explain the presence of Architecture among the liberal disciplines and the apparent arbitrariness of the symbolic images, which essentially illustrate the original faculties of the University of Salamanca in the Early Modern Age.