Felix Granda

Félix Granda was born on 21 February 1868 in Mieres, in the Spanish principality of Asturias. He was the oldest of the six children of Wenceslao Granda, a physician, and his wife Elvira. He began studies for the priesthood at the minor seminary in Oviedo at the age of ten, and refined his skills in draftsmanship, painting, sculpture and metalwork by studying with artisans. He spent many summers in Muros de Nalon with a group of painters that included Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida and Cecilio Pla y Gallardo. He founded Granda one of the world's leading Catholic liturgical art and design studios, in 1891 in Madrid.

He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Madrid in 1891.

Religiosity

Félix Granda's second principle was religiosity; he wrote of his desire [t]o use art as we use language, to speak and to teach about Christ - not to teach about ourselves, and much less to boast of our luxury and vanity. As a devout priest, Granda's imagination was saturated with the images of Holy Scripture, which he described as an inexhausible treasury of motifs and figures. Zurbitu commented:

Scripture, doctrine, liturgy, tradition... are the perennial fonts from which spring his artistic ideas; the arsenal of his decorative themes. An altarpiece designed by Father Granda is not merely a set of architectural elements... The great altars built in Talleres de Arte are truly poetic, each developing an entire cycle of liturgical and theological ideas, full of doctrine and religiosity.

As an example, Zurbitu explained the symbolism of a monstrance that Granda designed for Nocturnal Adoration in Madrid. Figures of the Four and Twenty Elders who worship the Lamb in St. John's Apocalypse are placed around the base, separated into three groups; eight kneel, eight bow profoundly, and eight lift bowls of smoking incense according to their degree of spiritual perfection. Around the base of the monstrance's throne, men of the Old Testament prefiguring the Eucharistic sacrifice stand as caryatids. Abraham and Isaac walk to Mount Moriah, recalling the sacrifice of Calvary. Moses and a snakebitten Israelite represent salvation through the Holy Cross. Melchizedek presents his offering of bread and wine, and Isaiah and David proclaim their messianic prophecies.

Between them are sculpted warriors keeping watch. An inscription from identifies them: Behold threescore valiant ones of the most valiant of Israel surrounded the bed of Solomon. All holding swords, and most expert in war: every man's sword upon his thigh, because of fears in the night (Song of Songs 3.7). This is an allegory for Nocturnal Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Around the monstrance holding the Divine Solomon (Christ), the chosen men of Israel (Christians), armed with prayer and mortification, stand guard against the fears in the night (the traps that the Prince of Darkness has prepared in the shadows against the Church Militant).

On another monstrance, Granda fashioned the base in the likeness of the City of God, with twelve gates guarded by angels bearing the names of the twelve tribes. The monstrance stands on seven pillars that rise from this base, which recall the Proverb: Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars (Proverbs 9.1).