Santa Maria de la Molsosa

This parish church, built in 1925, was designed in neo-Romanesque style by the Barcelona architect Enric Sagnier. Until then the congregation had gathered in the old church, which can be seen from here on the top of a hill, near Molsosa Castle. For greater convenience, it was agreed to build a new church that was easier to get to, and the three baroque altarpieces were moved. The old church, Romanesque in style but with alterations made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was restored in 2005.

THREE BAROQUE ALTARPIECES (DEDICATED TO THE ASSUMPTION, SAINT ISIDORE AND OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY)

The architectural, ornamental and figurative repertoire of the altarpieces is seventeenth century. The oldest is the high altar, dedicated to the Assumption, dated 1647. The other two, in side chapels, likely date from the sixteen sixties, the decade in which the use of Solomonic columns began to abound in Catalonia. The high altar has been attributed to Joan Grau, a sculptor from Tarragona who moved to Manresa around 1629, but the name of the artist responsible for the interesting cycle of paintings on the pediment and the top part is unknown. The piece in the side chapel in the south corner, dedicated to Saint Isidore, is probably the work of Josep Generes, a sculptor from El Bages who was a contemporary of Joan Grau. It combines free-standing sculptures with two reliefs depicting the best-known miracles of the patron saint of farmers since he was canonised in 1622. The artist behind the third altarpiece, found in the north chapel and dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, is unknown, but he was probably from El Bages. The original figures were lost but the reliefs indicate that it is by Josep Generes, struggling largely unsuccessfully to fit in the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary in small reliefs squeezed into the colourful Solomonic grid.