The archbishop Mrs. Martín de Ascargorta (1693-1719) and his patronage for the triumph of Faith. The Triumph of Santiago altarpiece of the Cathedral of Granada

Abstract

Archbishop Mrs. Martín de Ascargorta has transcended the History of Art as one of the most important patrons in baroque Granada in the late seventeenth century. This patronage is not arbitrary but responds to a manifest theological intentionality: the vindication of the triumph of the Faith. Related to the original siloesco context of the Cathedral of Granada, the altarpiece of the Triumph of Santiago or the Faith, promoted by Ascargorta, It stands as a plastic synthesis of the main ideas that define ascargortian thought and patronage. From a purely Trentinian commitment, Ascargorta assimilates the early Christian past of Granada and redefines it from the codes of the Catholic Reformation, where the idea of triumph prevails over sin –represented so much in the “Mohammedan heresy”–. This postulate is applied by the prelate in the Immaculate defense of the Virgin, a mystery criticized by the reformers and that Ascargorta vindicates through his patronage, as a proclamation of the soteriological ministry of Mary.