The King Felipe VI will inaugurate on June 29 the XXV edition of The Ages of Man in one of its five venues, the Burgos cathedral, has informed the Foundation that organizes the exhibition, which on this occasion will have a triple headquarters. In addition to the exhibition in the Cathedral, on the occasion of its VIII Centenary, there will be exhibitions of The Ages of Man in Sahagún (León) and Carrión de los Condes (Palencia), two emblematic points of the Santiago’s road, as a commemoration of the Aña Santo Jacobeo.
The XXV edition of The Ages of Man “Lux“, with the exhibition” Faith and art in the time of the cathedrals (1050-1550) “, will bring together 120 works in the Burgos cathedral, most of them from twenty-six other Spanish temples, according to Juan Álvarez Quevedo, one of the two curators of the exhibition in this seo.
Burgos Cathedral will be one of the three venues (in five spaces) of this special edition of The Ages of Man where the eighth centenary de la seo Burgosa (1221-2021) and the Camino de Santiago in this Jacobean Year, in the municipalities of Carrión de los Condes (Palencia) and Sahagún (León).
In the Burgos exhibition, presented in the chapel of the Constables, although works of sacred art will be displayed in the area of the cloisters of the temple and the Valentín Palencia Room, to give a vision of everything related to the cathedrals in their maximum period of splendor, between the years 1050 and 1550. The exhibition will be accessed through a replica of the door that in its day gave access to the cathedral of Burgos from the archiepiscopal palace, demolished around 1900.
It will not be the only piece of the Burgos cathedral that will be exhibited, among which Álvarez Quevedo, curator together with René Jesús Payo and diocesan delegate of Heritage, has highlighted the Chalice of the Constables and the tomb of Don Mauricio, bishop who placed the first stone on July 20, 1221.
The last of the five chapters of the exhibition will be a kind of prologue to invite the other venues of this edition of Las Adades del Hombre, in Carrión de los Condes and Sahagún.
The general secretary of Las Adades del Hombre, Gonzalo Jiménez, explained that this edition will be the most extensive of those that have been mounted so far in this series dedicated to the sacred art of Castilla y León for 33 years.
He has insisted on the added difficulty of organizing the montage in five spaces of three dioceses of Castilla y León -Burgos, León and Palencia- and to do so in the midst of a pandemic, although he has expressed his wish that “Lux” be “an impulse to return to normality and reunite with loved ones.”
The Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Junta de Castilla y León, Javier Ortega, highlighted in the presentation of the exhibition the effort of the regional administration, which has contributed the 2.2 million euros necessary to launch this edition of Las Ages of Man, to which should be added the contributions for its tourism promotion.
In the case of the Cathedral of Burgos, a significant investment has also been made to recover the reliefs of the trasaltar, the work of Vigarny, which were badly damaged by humidity.
The recovery and consolidation of this part of the temple, which began in 2018, has required just over one million euros, an amount that has been covered in equal parts by the Junta de Castilla y León and the Cabildo of the temple itself. It’s about the second time that the cathedral of Burgos hosts an exhibition of The Ages of Man, since in 1990 it was the headquarters of the second edition, dedicated to documents.
For its part, the Jacobean town of Palencia of Carrión de los Condes will house more than 50 religious pieces of great artistic and religious importance by Pedro and Alonso Berruguete, Alejo de Vahía and Gregorio Fernández in two venues.
In Sahagún, the first Leonese town on the French Camino de Santiago and declared a Historic-Artistic Site, the headquarters of Las Adades del Hombre will also be double: the Sanctuary of the Pilgrimage and San Tirso.
In the twenty-four editions of the Ages of Man that have been celebrated so far, there have been recorded 11.7 million views and 4,791 pieces have been shown, of which approximately 30 percent have been restored.
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