Holy Child of La Guardia - in Art and Literature

In Art and Literature

Yepes mentioned that there was an altarpiece, now lost, in the chapel of the Holy Child of La Guardia in the town,which Alonso de Fonseca, archbishop of Toledo, had ordered to be painted, representing the scenes of the abduction, prosecution, scourging and crucifixion of the child, as well as the apprehension and execution of his murderers. The central panel of this altarpiece showed the crucifixion and removal of the child's heart.

In the National History Archives in Madrid there is a painting of the second half of the sixteenth century representing the same scene, which seemingly testifies to the antiquity of the cult of the Holy Child of La Guardia.

There is a mural Bayeu attributed to the representation of the crucifixion of the Holy Child of La Guardia in Toledo cathedral. It can be accessed through the door called "del Mollete". Currently, the humidity and exposure to inclement weather found in the interior of the cathedral cloister have led to the painting deteriorating.

Lope de Vega's play El niño inocente de La Guardia (The Innocent Child of La Guardia) was possibly inspired by the legend recounted by Fray Rodrigo de Yepes. This work from the Golden Age of Spanish Literature is renowned for its cruelty in the last act, portraying the crucifixion of the child. The scene was imitated by José de Cañizares, author of La viva imagen de Cristo: El Santo Niño de la Villa de la Guardia (The Living Image of Christ: The Holy Child of Villa de la Guardia).

In one of the legends of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, called La Rosa de Pasión (The Rose of Passion), a Jewess named Sara, whose boyfriend was a Christian, confronts her father, Daniel, on his hatred of Christians, and dies in a ritual very similar to the Santo Niño de la Guardia (in fact, seeing the preparations, she thinks about the history of the Holy Child).