La Processó Valenciana del Corpus

The celebration of Corpus Christi in Valencia is a splendid festival that has roots in the 14th century. Every year, the city center is filled with acts, dances, and processions venerating the Eucharist, which first began in 1355 at the behest of Bishop Hug de Fenollet. These processions are in turn rooted in a feast that was begun in 1326. After declining, the festival began to be revived to its original splendor in the 1950’s and again represents a major event in Valencia. This wonderful collection of 39 drawings and sketches of the procession ca. 1800, including 16 double-pages, was created by Fray Bernat Tarin i Juaneda in 1913, a time when the artist must have felt nostalgia for the grand celebrations of the past. Juaneda artfully depicts these grand processions weaving their way across his landscape-format pages in detailed and airy watercolors. The text of the work was written in the Valencian dialect by Manuel Sanchis i Guarner (1911–1981), a Spanish philologist, historian, writer, and professor at the Universitat de València. This codex represents a wonderful inside view into one of the proudest traditions of the city of Valencia.