Description

 

Located on Calancha Street, which precedes the Carrera de la Virgen, it is next to the Picture of the Virgin.

 

The Capuchin Mothers settled in Andújar in 1682. The founders of the convent came from the city of Córdoba, and probably the cause of their arrival was due to the presence in the city of their male branch of the order since 1622.

 

His first convent house was located on Santa Clara Street according to testimony of Terrones Robles or in the hermitage of Dulce Jesús, according to Madoz, who says: "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, of Capuchin nuns, was founded in 1682, extramural, in the hermitage of Sweet Jesus and in 1685 he moved to Calacha street". (1)

 

The abbess mother explained to the cabildo, who had the patronage of the convent, the need for change for "being very sick today" (2) and asked her to write to the bishopric to authorize it. This request was well received, as Madoz states, since a few months later they were established in their definitive location. The economic difficulties of the council prevented him from helping the Mothers. Capuchins in the necessary expenses to condition their new convent house, which "lacks the most necessary and even adequate church", according to the testimony of his abbess mother (3), so she requested that the council "give up the right to patronage to a pious person so that she can with her alms give the convent whatever she needs." From this moment the relations between the order and the bishopric, on the one hand, and the council were not fluid.

 

The matter of patronage was placed in the hands of the Nuncio and a short time later the Bishop of Jaén, Don Antonio de Brizuela and Salamanca, gave the council a period of fifteen days to answer if he would continue with patronage and if he committed to the construction of the convent church (4). The council would end up giving up its right of patronage that would pass to Don Juan Moreno Ponce de León.

 

In December of 1983 the Capuchin Mothers opted to go to their convent house in Córdoba. This transfer obeyed a double motive. On the one hand, the poor state in which the Andujar convent was located; on the other, the small number of nuns in the convent and the high age of the same. All the sacred objects, relics, altarpiece of the church and other artistic elements, left the city with the march of the mentioned order before the absolute passivity of the majority of its neighbors. The convent house was acquired by the local promoter Mr. José Rodríguez Bueno and a block of flats was built there. The facade, somewhat altered, the cloister and the church persist in the old convent.

 

The church has a single nave covered with a cannon decorated with lunettes and a hemispherical vault over pendentives in the main chapel. In the pendentives four tones decorated among fleshy vegetable decoration in plaster that housed the iconography of St. Antonio, St. Francisco and shields of the order: the five wounds and the embrace of Jesus and St. Francisco (5), disappeared after the remodeling begun in 1993 by the Workshop School. The facade, built in brick, follows the model of the convent facade of the Carmelites: vertical rectangle topped by a pediment. The cover, made of stone, with a semicircular arch on pilasters of Tuscan order, crowned by a cornice and on it the shields of the order between a niche topped with a triangular pediment. A lintelled window, sheltered by a semicircular arch, between Tuscan pilasters topped by a cornice, arranged on the axis of the niche, completes this facade project.

 

It is currently the headquarters of the Museum of Plastic Arts Antonio Gonzalez Orea, local sculptor, recently deceased.

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Association of Friends of the Patrimony of Andujar