Iglesia y Convento de la Merced
Baroque temple whose gilded altars and frescoed vaults were painted by a rotating circle of nineteenth-century Cuban artists.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Iglesia y Convento de la Merced in Havana follows a father-and-son apprenticeship inside the Lourdes Chapel, where painter Miguel Melero Rodriguez worked alongside a circle of Cuban artists decorating the rebuilt church through the eighteen sixties. His teenage son Miguel Angel toured European museums with him before picking up a brush here himself, training formally and marrying a fellow painter before sailing for Paris in eighteen eighty-five to study under Leon Bonnat. Look up at the vaulted ceiling of the Lourdes Chapel, still carrying the work of that same circle of painters.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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