Enacting a Miracle: A New Chapel for the Virgin of El Sagrario in Toledo

• In Event: The Interaction of Art and Relics in Early Modernity I

Abstract

Embraced by the Virgin during her miraculous descent over St. Ildefonsus, the medieval wooden image of the Virgin of El Sagrario in Toledo was one of the most important relics of the Spanish Monarchy. In the early seventeenth century, Cardinal Sandoval reactivated the devotion towards this contact relic with the construction of a new chapel for its display, which was also to contain his own burial. Lavishly covered by polychrome marbles and decorated with paintings, the chapel garbed the Marian relic with a new framing device and conferred it a renewed identity and devotional dimension. This paper explores the role that the spatial and material qualities of the chapel and the texts issued at the time had on the development of an improved narrative for the Sagrario image.

Author

• Cloe Cavero de Carondelet Fiscowich, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München