Orduña’s House (Guadalest) – Entrance Hall and the Virgin’s Room

Entrance Hall and the Virgin’s Room

We can contemplate an Ecce-Homo of unknown author (oil on canvas) representing a double figure of Christ, with a reed in the hands intertwined and a red cloak slipping through his back. It is a figure provided without giving up anything to the drama of blood. It has the particularity of being painted on both sides. The back (visible thought a mirror) represents "The Sores of the Savior's Back", rare theme of religious art. It is presumed that it was a “Bocaporte” canvas, turned into a banner.

Facing this canvas a small oil painting(18th century) is displaced with a noticeboard referring to the tradition maintained by the Orduña’s family of having received from San Buenaventura a "Letter of Brotherhood " which linked them to the Franciscan family’s spiritual life.

The Virgin’s Room

We find in this room an urn containing the lying processional image depicting The Dormancy of Our Lady (Our Lady of the Assumption). It is a modern carving, a copy of the one destroyed in 1936, which was always guarded in the "House".

The panel painting (210 x 188 cm), placed on the front of the room, addresses the same theme: the end of the Mary’s worldly life as narrated in the Apocrypha Gospels. The perseverance on this Marian theme takes us back to the initial moments of the Christian conquest: Jaime I of Aragon was a devoted king of this Marian dedication, filling the Kingdom of Valencia and especially the border areas, with churches dedicated to the “Assumptionist” theme. This piece, undoubtedly the most important from the artistic point of view, should have been part of an altarpiece, being its central piece. It is attributed to the "Master of Alcira" and framed chronologically between 1527 and 1550. 

The pyx shown in its showcase (18century), is conceived as a radiant sun and its handle defines a figure holding Eucharistic symbols in his right hand and a cross on the left. The foot depicts allegorical reliefs.