Painting discovered in the original convent of Santo Cristo dos Milagres – News

“During the intervention at the Arc de Triomphe [no convento] and after removing the carving, a painting was discovered under a board, with musical angels, which represents a glorification of the virgin”, explained to the Lusa agency, David Silva, from the company Acroarte, responsible for the restoration of the Convento da Caloura, in the village of Água de Pau, on the island of São Miguel.

According to the expert, this is a “rare representation of musical iconography for the artistic context of the archipelago, with this painting dating back to the “end of the 17th century and beginning of the 18th century”.

Since 2019, restoration work has been underway at Convento da Caloura, by decision of the Jácome Correia family, which owns the space, with its own capital and official support, as the property has been considered regional heritage since 2008 and showed signs of degradation.

The Caloura Convent, now deactivated and consisting of a hermitage and recollection, gave way to a hermitage invoking Our Lady of Conceição, and after a volcanic eruption recorded in Vila Franca do Campo, in 1522, it was transformed into a convent by nuns clarissas.

David Silva explains that, at the end of the 18th century, without it being possible to pinpoint a precise date, a “new intervention in which a gilded carving is applied to the triumphal arch” had been promoted over the original, while in areas where this did not exist “a red color was applied”.

“What we suggested to the owner, at the time, was to come up with a proposal that would allow the visualization of both periods, that is, the painting and the carving”, says the restoration specialist.

According to the restorer, “in this way, the hermitage, the Caloura Convent and the Autonomous Region of the Azores are more valued from a heritage and artistic point of view”.

David Silva points out that “normally, glorifications are found in dressing rooms and main altars, but in a triumphal arch it is very rare”, and supposes that “it is unique in the Azores”.

The Caloura Convent is inseparably linked, according to the available historical elements, to the image of the Holy Christ of Miracles, which was offered by Pope Paul III, to the Clarissa sisters, who had asked the pope for an apostolic bull to live in that space.

The Clarissa sisters would leave in 1540 for the Convento da Esperança, in Ponta Delgada, due to pirate incursions on the Caloura coast, taking with them the image of the “ecce homo”, today venerated by thousands of Azoreans in the Azores and in the diaspora and whose festivities take place next weekend.