The chapel of La Piedad del Baratillo is a small baroque-style temple located in the Arenal district of Seville. It is the headquarters of the Brotherhood of Baratillo, which takes part in a procession on Holy Wednesday afternoon with two floats (pasos), La Piedad and the Virgen de la Caridad.
Since the mid-17th century, in the place where the chapel is today, there was a small mound on which an iron cross was raised. In that same place, some of the victims of the 1649 epidemic had been buried, which in Seville killed more than half of the population. Around 60,000 people died of "plague" in the city that year.
The Baratillo Cross was awakening an ever-increasing devotion and in 1693 a brotherhood was founded around it and the construction of a chapel was decided.
Its works were completed in 1696 under the direction of Bernardo Bustamante, although in the mid-eighteenth century an extension was carried out directed by Marcos Sancho.
The chapel has a Latin cross plan, with the transept slightly raised, and a single nave. This is covered with a barrel vault and above the presbytery there is an octagonal dome on pendentives. On the outside, the dome is crowned by a metal cross, which is traditionally considered to be the primitive one that was raised on the Baratillo hill in the seventeenth century.
The exterior façade is very simple. It has a doorway with two bodies. In the lower one, the entrance opening is framed under a split pediment, in the centre of which there is a second body, smaller in size. It is flanked by pillars that support a triangular pediment and in its centre there is a contemporary stained glass window, donated to the brotherhood by the Austrian pavilion after Expo 92. The façade is topped by a bell gable under a curved pediment and with a single opening that houses the bell.
Inside are the titular images of the Brotherhood of Baratillo. In the main altarpiece, original from the late 17th century, the Virgin of Mercy is worshipped, a work by Manuel José Rodríguez Fernández-Andes from 1945. In her lap is the Christ of Mercy, made by the sculptor of San Roque Luis Ortega Bru in 1951. In an altarpiece on the right side is the image of the Virgin of Charity in her Solitude, made by the same sculptor as the Piedad, Rodríguez Fernández Andes, in 1931.
In an altarpiece on the left side is the carving of Saint Joseph with the Child, which is also the titular image of the brotherhood. It has been dated to the second half of the 18th century and, although it is an anonymous author, some authors attribute it to José Montes de Oca. It was donated in 1794 by the bullfighter Pepe Hillo. The brotherhood has historically been closely linked to the world of bullfighting, with many bullfighters linked to it, "either as brothers or out of deep devotion." It should be remembered that the temple is located just a few meters from the Maestranza bullring.
