San Juan el Real, Calatayud

Historia

San Juan el Real, in translation, St John the Royal is a Baroque-style, Roman Catholic church located in Calatayud, region of Aragon, Spain.HistoryThe church was commissioned by the Jesuit order, and dedicated to the Virgen del Pilar. However, in 1769, after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain, the parishioners converted this into a parish church to replace the ruined 12th-century San Juan de Vallupié church. They changed the dedication to San Juan el Real.Art and ArchitectureThe brick facade is sober and surmounted with slender pyramidal pinnacles. The layout is of a Latin cross, with interior stucco decoration.The mudéjar-style tower was not built until 1774 - 1777; the architectural style, while atavistic matched other towers in the city and was pursued by the designs of Mosén José Jimeno of Ateca. As typical for that style, the degree of decoration increases with the height.The interior decoration was still incomplete in 1769. The main Retablo is a Baroque work of Gabriel Navarro.The pendentives, just below the dome at the crossing, contain oil canvases by a young Francisco de Goya, depicting the four Fathers of the Church: Saints Augustine, Ambrose, Hieronymus, and Pope Gregory the Great(1766). The project was initially assigned to Francisco Bayeu, but he was recalled to Madrid by Anton Raphael Mengs, and the commission passed to a twenty-year old Goya, who based his work on Bayeau's designs. They had darkened with time, and only recently restored.