6. Chapel of Saint Joachim
Video guide
6. Chapel of
Saint Joachim
The Chapel of Saint Joachim, located at the foot of the central nave, was built at the expense of Canon Martín Andrés, whose coat of arms appears on the entrance arch and the top of the grille. This funerary chapel, intended for the canons of the collegiate church, is distinguished by its rich decoration and stylistic coherence.
The doorway of the chapel is organised with a semicircular arch, flanked by two stucco pilasters on pedestals made of black stone from Calatorao and jasper from Alhama de Aragón. The entablature and the curved pediment with scrolls are decorated with children carrying horns of plenty. A niche in the attic with a shell-shaped profile houses an image of Saint Joachim with the Virgin Mary as a Child, flanked by Saint Íñigo de Oña and Saint Prudencio at the ends. Crowning the attic, a triangular pediment houses a pelican, symbol of the Eucharist.
The grille that closes the chapel has a gilded wooden frame, iron bars with gilded bronze knots and a spectacular gilded and carved wooden finial with the arms of the commissioning canon. The construction of the chapel is documented between 1641 and 1644 and has a square floor plan covered by a dome with a lantern raised on pendentives. These pendentives are decorated with reliefs of the fathers of the Church and a profuse Baroque decoration of plaster cut with vegetal and geometric motifs and angels.
The altarpiece, made by the Bilbilitan sculptors Pedro Virto and Bernardino Velilla around 1643, consists of a bench, a single-aisle body flanked by double Corinthian columns with the lower third of the shaft carved and the upper two thirds scaled, and a curved split pediment that houses an attic with a curved pediment. The pictorial programme is varied and rich. The large main canvas, the work of the Madrid painter Bartolomé Román, shows the Child Virgin with Saint Anne and Saint Joachim. In the background, the Annunciation to Saint Joachim and the Embrace before the Golden Gate are depicted. The scene is presided over by a break in glory in which God the Father appears with two musical angels playing the viola and harp, accompanied by singers and cherubs. On the bench, four canvases depict the Annunciation, the Flight into Egypt, the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple and the Visitation. In the attic, there is an image of Saint Martin parting his cloak with a beggar.
The side walls of the chapel are decorated with two enormous landscape canvases, painted in 1684 by Pedro Aibar Jiménez, depicting the Adoration of the Kings and the Adoration of the Shepherds. Above these canvases, two large paintings show the full-length images of Christ and the Virgin. A silver votive lamp, dated 1647 and bearing the coat of arms of Pedro de Luna, stands in front of the altarpiece with the motto: «Mengua y crece pero nunca desfallece» (It wanes and waxes but never falters).
