CONVENT OF LAS DUEÑAS

The Convent of Santa María de la Consolación, popularly known as Las Dueñas, was founded in 1419 by Juana Rodríguez de las Varillas in the houses that her first husband, Juan Sánchez de Sevilla, had ordered built. The founder's intention was to create a beguinage where noblewomen could retire, which is why it received the nickname "Convent of Las Dueñas" from the people of Salamanca.

Originally, it was an ancient Mudejar palace belonging to the Chief Accountant of Castile, Juan Sánchez de Sevilla. He, a Converso Jew and a member of the Abravanel family of financiers, held important positions at the Castilian court during the time of John I and Henry II. His move to Salamanca must have occurred after his appointment as chief accountant at the end of the 14th century, where he married Juana Rodríguez de las Varillas.

Juan Sánchez acquired a plot of land in the ward of San Adrián, where he commissioned the construction of a new palace following the model of Sevillian residences of the time. For this, he brought master builders from Seville.

Upon his death, his widow, Doña Juana Rodríguez, donated the palace and other properties she owned to the Order of Preachers with the purpose of founding a female monastery. After the cession, no new building was erected: the nuns occupied the palace dependencies, adapting them to conventual life. It was, undoubtedly, an authentic stately residence.

The convent received numerous favors and privileges from monarchs and nobles, favored by the high number of nuns of illustrious lineage who professed there and brought substantial dowries. Thanks to these donations —among which the inheritance of Ana de Paz stands out—, from 1530 onwards the Dominican nuns were able to undertake the construction of the current church and cloister, integrated into the ancient Mudejar palace, which explains the irregularity of the cloister's floor plan.

In 1921, the complex was declared a National Monument, and in 1962, the opening of the cloister to the public was authorized. In 1966, the collapse of a wall inside the enclosure accelerated the renovation of the old mansion, an intervention directed by the architect Fray Coello de Portugal. This marked the beginning of the disappearance of what had been the oldest preserved palace in Salamanca, with more than six hundred years of history, and one of the most significant monuments in the city.

The scarce Mudejar elements that have survived to this day are a roof with heraldic paintings, the coffered ceiling preserved in the Museum of Salamanca, two doors decorated with tiles —now located in the cloister— and several plasterworks ornamented with the arms of Castile.

Upon entering, a small garden courtyard, porticoed on one side, leads us along the cobbled path to a door with a small roof, allowing access to the convent's visitable area through an old entrance hall where the convent's parlor is located. Here is the ticket office from which we can proceed to the cloister and several rooms converted into a museum:

CLOISTER
At the center of the monastery is the cloister, whose irregular plan is strikingly noticeable. This uniqueness is due to its later construction, adapting to the layout of the old palace. Its irregular pentagonal plan features two superimposed galleries, both richly ornamented.

The lower gallery features slender columns supporting depressed arches, decorated with 23 medallions carved in the spandrels —15 male and 8 female—. In the west wing, a Mudejar-style door with beautiful tiles, originating from the palace of Juan Sánchez Sevillano, has been installed. After the collapse of part of the monastery in 1963, the door was reduced to rubble, which explains the loss of tiles in several areas. It was reconstructed on a metallic structure and placed on the ground floor of the cloister as a museum piece.

From the center of the courtyard, the best perspective of the upper cloister is obtained, which doubles the number of columns of the lower gallery. Stone corbels profusely decorated with grotesques rest on the capitals, supporting a lintel adorned with medallions, rosettes, and shields of the Order of Preachers. The proximity between the corbels creates the optical illusion of false arches.

Each side has 53 medallions, and a particularity is that each figure on the exterior has its corresponding counterpart on the interior, as do the rosettes and shields. The iconographic reading begins in the east gallery, where the precursors of Christ —Saint John the Baptist and King David— appear, as well as martyrs like Saint Lawrence and Saint Bartholomew, in addition to other saints. The south side begins with the scene of the Annunciation and continues with representations of Dominican friars —Saint Peter Martyr and Saint Dominic— and apostles like Saint Andrew and Saint James the Pilgrim. The west gallery presents seven medallions difficult to identify due to the lack of attributes on their figures.

Access to the upper gallery is through the museum, entering the cloister via a Mudejar door with a brick horseshoe arch decorated with fine white, green, and black tiles. From the western corridor, the cathedral can be seen, majestically outlined against the city sky. Capitals and corbels display exuberant decoration, intermingling human figures, animals, monsters, hybrid beings, skulls, angels, and demonic creatures. Their foreshortenings and forced postures provide remarkable dynamism, reinforced by the expressiveness of the faces. The authorship of the ensemble is unknown, although it reveals clear Italian influences and affinities with artists such as Juan de Juni and Alonso de Berruguete.

In the tour of the upper cloister, there is a small room dedicated to the memory of Chikaba and a magnificent walnut door from the Monastery of Santa Catalina in Valladolid. This door arrived in Salamanca with the nuns in 2014. It dates from the third quarter of the 16th century and features 24 compartments with saintly reliefs.

MUSEUM
The historical-artistic legacy of Santa María de las Dueñas, formed by both donations and commissions made by the convent itself, gathers a valuable collection of painting, sculpture, ivories —partly from the Dominican expeditions in the Philippines—, goldsmith's pieces, and textile works. Among the latter, two chasubles donated to the monastery by the House of Alba stand out.

Added to the convent's collection are the works brought by the nuns from the Monastery of La Encarnación in Lejona, Bilbao, in 2004, and those from the Monastery of Santa Catalina de Siena in Valladolid.

CHURCH
The construction of the church is attributed to the Dominican friar Fray Martín de Santiago, with the collaboration of Martín Navarro. It features a single, narrow Gothic-style nave, covered by seven tierceron rib vaults resting on corbels. At the foot, the nave extends into the choir. The temple culminates in a straight apse presided over by a Rococo altarpiece made in 1774.

The altarpiece consists of a large central body articulated in three sections, an attic, and a predella. The attic is presided over by a relief of Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles/la Consolación. In the dressing room, a 16th-century seated Virgin is preserved, flanked by the images of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic de Guzmán. In a side altarpiece, a delicate image of the Virgin of Milk, also from the 16th century, is venerated.

The choir is separated from the church by a large metal grille and retains its wooden choir stalls inside. Several 16th-century painted panels hang on its walls, and a precious ivory Virgin is preserved in a niche.

On the exterior of the church, of great sobriety, only the Plateresque portal stands out, of the suspended type so characteristic of Salamanca. The lower body features a door with a semicircular arch and a profusely decorated archivolt with Plateresque-style grotesques. On both sides, between the pilasters, two niches housed the images of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic de Guzmán. The second body includes a niche that holds a carved wooden image of a seated Virgin.