The Arahal Heritage Charter project has recovered a valuable testimony of local history with the discovery of two pictorial panels from the early 18th century. These works, depicting daily life in the olive oil mill of an old Dominican convent, offer an exceptional perspective on the traditional oil culture in the region.
The paintings, measuring 35 x 27.4 centimeters and made on Flanders pine wood, are preserved in the Purísima Concepción convent in Jaén. The drawings show an "extraordinary" level of detail, according to the research team, and "break down the process into clearly recognizable phases," serving as a visual language to explain a fundamental technology in the economy and daily life of the era.
A "particularly significant" aspect is that these panels are not mentioned in any of the documents preserved in the congregation's Historical Archive. The research team suggests a dating between the late 17th century and early 18th century, based on their formal, technical, and material characteristics.
“"This type of finding demonstrates that archives not only preserve documents but also make it possible to discover visual testimonies of enormous value for historical knowledge."
The Historical Archive, to which these panels belong, is a documentary collection of great value that has been recently digitized as part of this initiative by the Arahal City Council. This collection has gathered crucial information over four centuries about the economic, social, and daily life of Arahal, including contracts, accounts, trade books, and property records. All this documentation will be made public in the coming weeks and will be available in the online repository Archive.org, under the name Arahal Digital, for consultation by researchers and the general public.
