Historical periods

On June 1503, Master Rodrigo de Santaella bought a plot of land next to the Postigo de Jerez ancient wicked gate to build there the Colegio de Santa María de Jesús College-University. One year before, the Catholic Monarchs had granted a royal decree at the request of the city council authorising the creation of General Studies in Seville.

On 12 July 1505, the papal bull signed by Pope Julius II authorised the foundation of this College-University, and one year later the chapel of the College was sanctified. Master Rodrigo commissioned the German painter Alexo Fernández to create a magnificent altarpiece reredos to commemorate the founding of the College-University. Master Rodrigo is portrayed in the reredos making the offering of the building to Saint María de Jesús. This masterpiece possibly coincides in time with the appointment of the first collegiate students in 1517.

When the Colegio de Santo Tomás College was created in 1516 thanks to the efforts of Friar Diego de Deza, the Colegio de Santa María de Jesús College University requested the city council to assign the institution the rights it had owned since 1502 in order to create the College-University. This was achieved after many years, specifically in 1551.

Little is known about the heritage that the College-University hoarded. The latest research shows that in this early history period, all the universities, especially the University of Seville, experimented economic difficulties; and they lacked the necessary support to flourish properly. This crisis situation occurred again in the 17th century.

Just as the Bourbon dynasty began to reign in Spain in the 18th century, the whole situation changed. It was precisely the inquisitiveness of the erudite personalities to improve the teaching systems that led to the desire to disassociate the College from the University.

The curriculum proposed by the assistant Pablo de Olavide promoted the Enlightenment spirit spread across the University Institution. This proposal was approved in May 1768 and it was included in a royal decree in 1769, in which the reform implementing was commanded to the Assistant of Seville.

Two years earlier, the Jesuits had been expelled from Spain by the law of 2 April 1767, known as the Pragmatic Sanction, issued by King Charles III. This law allowed the expropriation of the immense and extremely valuable Jesuit heritage. Consequently, the heritage’s ownership was transferred to the Crown. Following the opinion of Olavide and others, the new use of the expropriated buildings was set out in the royal order of 31 May 1768.

One of the main goals of the reform proposed by the Assistant was the exploitation of buildings that had belonged to the Jesuit order. This was not only to fill the gap left in teaching by the expulsion of this order, but also to make easier the disassociation of the University from its College, as unoccupied buildings were available.

The administrative union of the College and the University remains until the creation of the ancient Literary University in December 1770. Nevertheless, the two institutions coexist in the same building in Puerta de Jerez until 1771. The order of 3 December, issued the same year, stated that Lieutenant Gutiérrez de Piñeres would be in charge of the decisive execution of the Olavide Plan.

It was decided to move the University to a new headquarters. The consequence of the disassociation was that all heritage, including those of an artistic nature, remained in the College. In exchange, the University acquired the right to enjoy certain revenues: the ones from Casa Profesa de los Jesuitas Jesuits professed home and from vacant episcopal dignities of San Hermenegildo, in addition to those already acquired from the College.

The move into the new university headquarters took place on 21 December 1771. The building that formerly housed the Casa Profesa de la Compañía de Jesús, located in calle Compañía Street (nowadays calle Laraña Street) was partially ceded to the University. It also has a school for grantees attached to it, which was also ceded with part of its heritage. It had a magnificent library, a cabinet-museum and part of the splendid artistic heritage within its walls. The cession of the building also includes the church building, previously called Iglesia de la Encarnación Church, known currently as Iglesia de la Anunciación Church. This building was the place chosen to celebrate academic ceremonies.

In 1836, as a result of the expropriation, the income and the assets of the Colegio Santa María de Jesús were assigned under state order to the University. Shortly afterwards, the building of the College in Puerta de Jerez became a Seminary, depending on the Archbishopric of Seville.

The meaningful Jesuit heritage, of a markedly religious nature, granted by the Spanish monarchy to the University of Seville, constitutes the true seed of the university collection.

From October 1847 to June 1849, the building of the Colegio Seminario de San Telmo Seminary College served as a boarding school for second-level students attached to the ancient Literary University. This relationship meant that in the 19th century some of the works from the Seminary College were added to the University's heritage by the Royal Order of 20 August 1847.

To these incorporations, it should be added some nineteenth-century acquisitions of a markedly encyclopaedic nature, such as the commissioning of several pictorial collections of portraits, such as the so-called Galería de Rectores, Doctores Obispos y Personajes Ilustres Universitarios or Retratos de Sevillanos Ilustres de la Biblioteca Provincial y Universitaria.

It is also worth mentioning the collections that were being formed in some faculties dedicated to the study of art, archaeology, history or culture, such as the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, thanks to donations from the teaching staff themselves. Its library and museum received important archaeological, artistic and bibliographic collections at the end of the 19th century.

Among its benefactors are Francisco Caballero Infante Zuazo, Francisco Pagés y Belloc, Ildefonso Urquía y Martín, Marcelo Pascual y Palomo and Joaquín Hazañas y la Rúa, all of them doctors with links to the University of Seville. Also in 1858, the Professional School of Fine Arts was incorporated into the University of Seville, which until then had been part of the Sevillian Academy and the origin of it, contributing a very large number of pieces.

The 20th century was characterised by the growth of the university collection but also by its dispersion. In the first half of the century, the University of Seville became the repository of two sets of works of art. In 1911, the Museo del Prado Museum deposited a small but valuable group of ten paintings, and in 1951 the Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla Museum did the same with another ten.

Also in this first half of the century, specifically from 1924 onwards, the Art Laboratory, founded by Murillo Herrera, with its photo library and library, was located in the second courtyard of the Casa Profesa building, dedicated especially to the inventory and catalogue of works of art from Seville and its province. It depended on the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, which was located in that building until 9 February 1956.

By the mid-20th century, the building of the former Casa Profesa had become too small for university use. It was then that the University was granted the emblematic building of the ancient Real Fábrica de Tabaco Royal Tobacco Factory, which was officially inaugurated on 4 April 1951 as the Rector's Office. And from then on, unfortunately, the dispersion of the university collection began, which until that time had been united between the university building of the Casa Profesa and the Iglesia de la Anunciación Church.

Many works of art at this time were taken out of their natural environment and moved to decorate the premises of the ancient Real Fábrica de Tabaco. Many of them were moved from the Iglesia de la Anunciación Church to warehouses near the riverbank. Others were stored on the upper floors of the building in calle San Fernando Street, awaiting their new location. The collections of the museum of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters were divided between the Department of History of Art and the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, once they were installed in their new locations.

From then on, the old university building of the Casa Profesa began to be vacated, the Rector abandoned it in 1960, and Jesuits claimed it in 1967 and won the lawsuit on 20 May 1968. While the appeal lodged by the University of Seville against this ruling was being resolved, the Iglesia de la Anunciación Church was closed.

Many of the pieces left the church to be exhibited outside Seville, while others were deposited in the Alcázar and the Museo de Bellas Artes Museum to be restored. It was also decided to move all the tombstones that occupied the naves of the church to the crypt in order to found the Panteón de los Sevillanos Ilustres Pantheon. This was undoubtedly a period of great confusion, because some of the church's works were dismantled and disassembled, others were lost in the continuous moves to which they were subjected, and others were stolen.

However, two years later, on 12 May 1970, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the University of Seville, which regained the ownership of the church.

As a result, and at the request of the University itself, the Ministry of Education and Science granted the church the status of Temple Museum, a subsidiary of the Fine Arts, in an attempt to eliminate any future claims by the Jesuits to the church's heritage assets.

The Iglesia de la Anunciación Church was once again restored for worship, and in 1971 the Hermandad del Valle religious brotherhood moved in and relocated part of the church's artistic works to another place to make room for their possessions. It was then that the Ministry of Education and Science, through the Directorate General of Fine Arts, bought the altarpiece of the Baptism by Martinez Montañés from the nuns of the Monasterio de Santa María del Socorro Monastery in 1972 to decorate the walls of the Iglesia de la Anunciación Church.

At the beginning of 1974, the Faculty of Fine Arts moved to the building of the former Casa Profesa de los Jesuitas in calle Laraña Sreet. On 27 August of the same year, the University of Seville regained full control of the Casa Profesa de los Jesuitas building, including the Church and the Pantheon, by order of the State. It was decided by decree that the powers of guardianship of the movable assets of the Church and the Pantheon would be transferred from the Directorate General of Fine Arts and the National Board of Museums, both part of the Ministry of Education and Science, to the university itself.

Even so, there was still one more episode of dismantling of works of art from the Iglesia de la Anunciación Church.

In 1992, on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition, the beautiful tombs of Don Pedro Enríquez de Rivera and Doña Catalina de Rivera were authorised to return to the Cartuja de las Cuevas Monastery, with the unfulfilled promise of being placed in their original location.

These tombs, jewels of the Renaissance in Seville, sculpted in Carrara marble, remain the property of the Duchy of Medinaceli, which decided in 1836, at the request of the University itself, that they should be installed in the walls of the main nave of the Iglesia de la Anunciación Church, to embellish it.

Finally, it should be noted that in the second half of the 20th century there was no shortage of bequests, purchases and donations of works for the new university buildings.

Particularly noteworthy are the donations made in 1940 by the teaching staff of the former School of Fine Arts, on the occasion of the inauguration of its headquarters in the building of the house of Gonzalo Bilbao, as well as the donation made in 1989 by the teaching staff of the current Faculty of Fine Arts.

To this must be added the creation of the national university prizes for the Plastic Arts in 1994, which have gradually built up an interesting collection of contemporary art with the prize-winning works.