Church of La Compañía, Quito

The Jesuit Order arrived in the city of Quito on July 19, 1586, with the purpose of establishing a church, a college and a monastery in this city. In the first group of Jesuit priests were Juan de Hinojosa, Diego González Holguín, Baltasar Piñas and Juan de Santiago.

Most of the lots for the construction of churches had already been granted by the cabildo to the Franciscans, the Mercedarians, the Augustinians and the Dominicans. However, in 1587 the chapter gave the Jesuits a piece of land in the northwest corner of Plaza Grande, but the Augustinians showed their disagreement with the decision; for this reason the cabildo chose to establish them in another lot located in the south direction of the Cathedral. Little by little, and with the passing of the first years, the order acquired several neighboring plots through purchase until completing an entire block of great proportions, which extended from the south side of the current Palacio de Carondelet to what is now called Calle Sucre. and from Calle de las Siete Cruces (today García Moreno) to the east to the current Calle Benalcázar to the west.

The problem with the acquired land is that it was crossed by the Zanguña ravine, which descended from the Pichincha volcano and crossed behind the Quito Cathedral, so priest Marcos Guerra built several brick arches on it, in such a way that the ground remain at the same level and later the buildings of the College, the University, the residence of the Fathers, the House of the Students, the Hospital for the Elderly and the Procurement Center of the Mainas Missions in the Amazon could be raised without major problems.

In 1622 they inaugurated the University of San Gregorio, in the building attached to the church and which today constitutes the Centro Cultural Metropolitano, with the authorization of Pope Gregory XV, King Philip III of Spain and the authorities of the Audiencia. The university was endowed with modern laboratories, a library of 20,000 volumes that even admired the members of the French Geodesic Mission of 1736, and a first-rate faculty that included brilliant minds such as Juan Bautista Aguirre, Bernardo Recio, Caledonio de Arteta, Juan de Velasco and Francisco Sanna, among others. In 1630, the new Bishop of Quito, Friar Diego de Oviedo, wrote to King Philip IV: "In this province there has been a University and General Studies of the Society of Jesus, with very eminent subjects who have run their chairs. There are many notable ingenios, and the professors and teachers that the Company has in it are so great that they could be professors at Alcalá...".

It is therefore, in the midst of this scenario of knowledge and arts, that the church of La Compañía de Jesús de Quito was taking shape from its earliest sketches, until it became one of the masterpieces of world baroque.

Domes of La Compañía seen from San Francisco.

The plan of the church of La Compañía de Quito, commonly compared with that of the Church of the Gesù, in Rome, is that of a Latin cross inscribed in a rectangle, typical of the second stage of the Renaissance. It has a transept and three naves without galleries along the chapels: the central one, which is high and covered with a barrel vault, and the lateral ones, which are low and covered with domes. It is these details that precisely differentiate it from its Roman counterpart, since the Gesù has a single nave and galleries along the chapels; in fact, the only thing that resembles each other is in the dome over the croissing of the vaults that cover the nave of the Latin cross.

The central nave, 58m long by 26.5m wide, rests on solid square pillars that support the transverse arches joined laterally by semicircular arches, it also exhibits a balustrade and lunettes. The lateral naves, smaller in width and height, are enriched with small cupolas and airy cupolas that filter the light in a sacred semi-darkness. These naves house six side chapels or altarpieces, smaller than those of the transept, but of delicate elegance, unrepeatable variety and an exultant Baroque, already Plateresque and Churrigueresque. These are dedicated, in the north nave, to Saint Joseph, The Calvary and Saint Aloysius Gonzaga; while in the south nave to Virgin of Loreto, the Immaculate Conception and Saint Stanislaus Kostka.

The side chapels, covered with domes, are lit by small openwork windows, through which the light filters in dimly. Large flying buttress unload the thrust of the central vault on the strong exterior walls of lime and stone that delimit the church. The three naves are separated by two rows of pilasters, on which arches rest and on these, the walls of the central nave with the necessary windows for lighting. The material used is stone for the walls and pilasters, and brick for the arches and vaulting.

The transept, 26.5m wide, boasts an imposing dome 27.6m high and 10.6 in diameter, internally decorated with paintings, ornaments, medallions with figures of archangels and Jesuit cardinals. The twelve windows joyfully illuminate the decorations and the balustrade that the tholobate runs through. At the two ends of the transept rise the twin altarpieces, of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Francis Xavier, of enormous size and exquisite Baroque workmanship.

Interior view of one of the domes.

The domes, from the outside, seem crushed because they are not raised by folding the cap, as was the custom widely used by the architects of the second period of the Renaissance. However, the one in the transept is graceful on a fretwork tholobate with zigzag arch windows, separated by twin Ionic pilasters, crowned with its elegant twelve-light lantern and standing out on a roof adorned with barbicans, a curious medieval reminiscence widely used in Quitoan architecture in the 17th and 18th centuries, when she was not remembered in Spain.

Detail of the facade of La Compañía de Quito..

Door of the portal.

The characteristic exterior façade of La Compañía de Quito is carved entirely in Ecuadorian andesite stone, and began in 1722 under the orders of Priest Leonardo Deubler, but the work was suspended in 1725 and then resumed in 1760 by priest Venancio Gandolfi, who it finished in 1765. According to José María Vargas: "The simple comparison of dates explains the difference in styles between the body of the church and the façade. While the structure of the temple betrays the Renaissance influence, which Priest Marcos Guerra brought to Quito from Italy; in the disposition of the frontispiece, it pays attention to the Baroque dynamism of the 18th century, which Bernini began with the twisted columns of the baldachin of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome".

The columns, statues and large decorations were executed in the quarry that the Jesuits had in the Hacienda de Yurac, in the nearby parish of Píntag; the rest of the material was brought from a quarry on the western slope of El Panecillo hill, next to the city. The facade, as it has come down to us, has more of the Italian Baroque than the Spanish Plateresque and, in the high pilasters, with a certain French Baroque accent.