The Sanctuary of Mercy Church (Articule Project 1)

The Sanctuary of Mercy Church

The Sanctuary of Mercy is a church located in the town of Borja, in the province of Zaragoza in Spain. The church is located about 6 miles from the center of Borja and surrounded by vast pine forest. It is a vacation spot during the summer and weekends.

Mercy Sanctuary is located in the foothills of Mount of Muelta Alta, in the foothills of the Sierra del Moncayo. Initially Mercy chapel was built in 1415 to house the image of the Virgin Mary until the work in the cloister of the church of Santa Maria was finished. The image of the Virgin with the inscription “Mother of Mercy” was buried there for protection during the Arab invasion. After the image was discovered in 1539, on the site of an older church, Santa Eulalia. The chapel was completed in 1546. The chapel has a single nave with three sections with aisles, a chancel and a polygonal apse. The church is covered with lunettes, except in the apse. There is a late Gothic starry vault with complex tracery and key pendants decorated with polychrome. The sacristy is located laterally to the presbytery and is an almost square newest accomplishment.

The Church shows two defined stages of construction. The first corresponds to the 16^th century in the chancel and apse. Where it is covered with a starry vault with side buttresses and a single nave, lower in height than the current one. In the 17^th century, the current lunette vault was added, and the space between buttresses was covered to transform them into side chapels. The interior of this section was decorated in the Baroque manner.

 The fresco entitled “Ecce Homo” was painted on a wall of the church in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, the work of artist Elias Garcia Martinez. The fresco was "restored" in 2012 on the initiative of 81 years old Cecilia Gimenez a parishioner. She improvised and botched the restoration. The Internet center in Borjanos released a picture to the internet and the media gave extensive coverage to the event, showing both the original. World-famous mural painting and the new resulting work.