MUSEO DIOCESANO DE ARTE JESUÍTICO

This museum of religious art occupies a magnificent colonnaded building with thick adobe walls and a beautiful architectural perspective. It is the oldest ^17th-century building still in use in Paraguay. It still belongs to the Jesuits, who returned to San Ignacio in 1933 after their expulsion in 1767. Inside what used to be the Jesuit college, there's a chapel, with the altarpiece from the former church, one of the most imposing in the region, which collapsed in 1921. The museum is divided into four rooms, each with its own religious theme (Creation, Redemption, the History of Christ in the Church, and the Society of Jesus), and features some 30 polychrome sculptures in cedar wood. These statues of Christ, the Immaculate Conception, archangels and saints (Francis of Assisi, Paul, Ignatius of Loyola, etc.) were saved when the building collapsed, and were carefully preserved by the local inhabitants, who later returned them to the monks. These sculptures, dating from the ^17th and ^18th centuries, are in the Spanish-Guarani Baroque style and in the transitional Baroque period. Carlos Bedoya, the museum's curator, will show you the differences, and make you understand the priceless historical and cultural value of these pieces carved in the middle of the jungle by the Guaranis. Note the finesse of the work, the delicate details of these magnificent images, of similar value to those in the Santa Maria de Fé museum.