Unknown to many residents of Madrid, this beautiful chapel inside the Hospital of the Venerable Third Order (the oldest hospital still in use in Madrid), is an authentic masterpiece, like the whole hospital, inside a historic-artistic building that was built between 1679 and 1697 on the site of the home of the famous Don Gil Imón de la Mota.
The hospital chapel, which was completed around 1699, has a Latin-cross layout with a single nave divided into sections, whose interior is decorated with an entablature and overhanging cornice. It maintains its Baroque façade with a rectangular structure and divided into three bodies with huge concave pillars. It has a dome over a drum and pendentives, where the Franciscan coat of arms is depicted. The main altarpiece (18th century), the work of Patricio Rodríguez, a disciple of Ventura Rodríguez, is in stuccoed wood imitating marble. It holds several paintings and sculptures from the 18th and 19 centuries.
The Venerable Third Order built this hospital after having completed the Cristo de los Dolores Chapel and the San Francisco el Grande Basilica. The building consists of a quadrangular courtyard, two floors and a garden at the rear. The upper floor has a gallery with granite pillars which was originally open but is now covered with glass. It has an impressive double staircase with vaults decorated by Teodoro Ardemans and Tomás García, created in 1683. The building's façade enjoys much movement, which is not common in Madrid’s architecture.
The hospital stands out for the large number of works of art in its interior, including sculptures, such as the bust of Saint Francisco de Agustín Querol, or that of Don Juan José de Austria, by the Flemish artist, Francisco Diesussart, and paintings by artists of the likes of Carreño de Miranda, the great portraitist in the court of Charles II, or Van Dyck, whose painting “Christ and the Adultress” presides over one of the sections of the hospital’s staircase.
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