Virtual exhibition on the historical collections of the IES Cardenal Cisneros

The monumental staircase made of white marble, illuminated by stained glass windows decorated with frets and the coat of arms of Cardinal Cisneros, is the most representative architectural element. Symbol of social advancement for applied students, it has clear formal references to the ladder of notables of the Liceo Enrique IV in Paris.

The Institute was a true pedagogy laboratory in which the plans devised, from the political levels, for the nation as a whole were put to the test. Its internal functioning was organized and discussed in the boardroom, a space of power in which the faculty met periodically. Wide and austere, this room became the scene of discussions about educational policies and their implementation. The dual Spanish ideological tradition was always present and confronted progressive and conservative professors.

The magnificent stained glass windows of the Institute were made between 1898 and 1905, they are the work of Joseph Jules Mauméjean Lalanne (1869-1952), French artist based in Spain, known simply as José Mauméjean. He was the most prominent member of the prestigious house of artistic glassmaking, founded in Pau in 1860, which throughout its history had branches in Anglet, Biarritz, Hendaye and Paris. Its enormous production spread throughout Europe, mainly France and Spain. Installed in Madrid since 1897, he collaborated with innumerable architects and developed an immense activity characterized by its technical variety (leaded, grisaille, cloisonné, etc.) and by its stylistic versatility. This is reflected in multiple civil and religious works, where the different dominant currents alternate (Symbolist, Modernist, Neo-Gothic, Neo-Baroque, Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Plateresque or Art Deco stained glass). Through its stained glass windows you can take a unique tour of the main aesthetic trends developed in Spanish architecture, and particularly Madrid.

The effigy of Cardinal Cisneros (founder of the University of Alcalá de Henares in 1499), his shield or the illustrated legend "Perfundet omnia luce" (Everything floods it with its light), in clear reference to the power of knowledge, decorates a good part of the building in clear reference to the origin of the institution. In recognition of the merits of the center and its many contributions to the progress of the country, King Alfonso XII granted the Institute the exceptional privilege of embodying in all its documents, furniture and stained glass a shield in which the coats of arms of Madrid and of the city are intertwined. Cardinal Cisneros. The Royal Order, signed in 1877 by the Count of Toreno, became effective and the new shield became omnipresent in the center, the only Spanish Institute that has its own shield granted by royal will.

A classroom of the Institute preserves the furniture and general appearance that the classrooms originally had, following the Regulation of the Institutes of Second Education of 1859, art. 117. They were divided into two zones. The space for the students, with a staggered arrangement of continuous benches located on a slope where they sat. Opposite, a podium for the teacher, one meter high, surrounded by a gate.

The teaching area is the place from where the professor delivered the lessons. The teacher was expected to stand before class began. His elevation was intended to highlight his authority, so that he could visualize all of his students and be heard clearly. On the back of the table are sliding blackboards that make it easy to write extensively without erasing.  

The school furniture of the Institute allows to reconstruct, in a complete and reasoned way, the history of furniture in secondary education in our country. Adapting to the different prevailing pedagogical proposals, it summarizes the evolution of life in the classrooms over time. A good example of this is the management office, clearly inspired by old Castilian furniture, where dark-stained noble woods are used, richly carved with the effigy and shield of Cardinal Cisneros, as well as the Meeting Room, the History Cabinet Natural, the Laboratory of Natural Sciences or the Historical Classroom.

The nineteenth-century roots of the facilities are present everywhere, a hydrant installed shortly before the completion of the building in 1888.

The second room of the Cabinet is dedicated to the zoology and geology collections. It is the largest. Its walls are lined with pine wood cabinets. They were made in 1855 by the carpenters of the Central University.

The third room of the Cabinet also has double-height metal cabinets, where the collection of scientific instruments and the material of the original chair of Agriculture are kept. Currently, it is also a space where practical biology classes are taught.

This room basically contains pedagogical models made of plaster, wood, papier-mâché, plastic and other materials, which served to illustrate the teacher's explanations. Manuel MJ de Galdo López de Neira conceived the whole of the Cabinet as a living museum from which objects could come out, to be displayed in classrooms, and in which students could enter, to observe and be impressed by the simple lesson that emanates of the things themselves.

Especially striking are the collections of floral and zoological models bought in Paris in the late XNUMXth and early XNUMXth centuries. In addition to their usefulness, these objects have an undeniable heritage value, as well as others, aesthetic, artistic. Conceived as instruments to help learning, their elaboration implied, in itself, a whole series of trades, which denotes "the good work of other times".

The cabinets in the second room show a significant number of animals of different species, vertebrates and invertebrates, naturalized or in formaldehyde, skeletons, shells, entomological boxes, fossils, minerals and rocks, and pedagogical models.

The Cabinet has a large collection of anatomical models made in papier-mâché, the work of the Frenchman, Doctor Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux (1797-1880). Its internationally recognized models were exported around the world for 1878 years. Among all the pieces, the human anatomical model on a natural scale stands out, especially. It was acquired, along with other didactic materials, directly, in the Parisian shop of Dr. Auzoux by Manuel MJ de Galdo López de Neira, who went to Paris, on the occasion of attending the Universal Exhibition held in XNUMX, as a representative of the Spanish Government , and took advantage of the visit to acquire various teaching materials.

In the third room of the Cabinet, the collection of scientific instruments and the material of the original chair of Agriculture are kept. It is made up of a considerable volume of objects from microscopes, scales, to plow models, seedbeds, herbaria of dry plants or cloth.

Here is an epidiascope (Epi-dia-skope, see through) and a good collection of glass plates acquired, from 1880, by Galdo López de Neira. This type of apparatus served to project the flashlight or epidoscopic plates. The use of luminous projections on glass, at the service of teaching, began in 1880 and lasted until 1940. The method for teaching was by rote that relied, for greater efficiency, on the senses of sight and hearing. The transmission of scientific concepts required the reinforcement of this didactic material to facilitate the visualization of the concept to be learned and its repetition in the oral exam. The first plates were bought in Paris (E. Mazo, C. Houlbert and Bezinger). Several Spanish houses acquired their commercial representation in the first quarter of the XNUMXth century (Sogeresa, Cultura and Eimler-Basanta-Haase) distributing them throughout all Spanish institutes and universities.

The creation of the scientific laboratories meant a milestone in the methodology of science teaching, following the currents coming from central Europe. Laboratories emerge as a new space for the transmission of scientific knowledge to young people. In them students were invited to learn science by doing science, through their own research and experimentation.

Its start-up was the initiative of professor Celso Arévalo, in 1920. The close relations it had with the National Museum of Natural Sciences of Madrid made it possible to acquire the necessary material for its proper functioning. From that time, today the test tubes, pipettes, watch glasses, alcohol lighters, test tubes with their wooden racks, dissection trays with a wax layer, flasks, beakers, petri dishes, crystallizers, optical microscopes are preserved. and stereoscopic.

Collaboration with the School of Restoration of the Community of Madrid has made it possible to restore some old prints and engravings. The undeniable aesthetic value of the plates causes it to be frequently confused when the drawing of an animal or a plant is a work with an artistic or naturalistic vocation. The naturalistic image instructs, as it is always accompanied by a comment that explains the content of the image, be it a printed text or the speech of a teacher in his classroom, the artistic one evokes and, both, contribute to the intellectual construction of the student .

The Laboratory is dominated by a huge mural, painting of a landscape of ferns and cycads populated by diplodocus, iguanodons, triceratops and archeopteryx. The author is Emiliano Redondo, a former student who did it in 1954 as a gift to the Center. It was restored in 2008 by the Escuela Superior de Restauración.

Also the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Community of Madrid, has been collaborating in the recovery of several models of Dr. Auzoux. One of the pieces has been the clastic man, located in the Cabinet of Natural History. These models are removable to facilitate their study and didactic understanding, they are made up of hundreds of pieces that fit perfectly into each other and, each one of them, is identified with a number and a label that describe the part represented.

Other restored pieces have been four models that represent an Eye, an Eye with a vertical cut, an Brain and a Tongue. In this work we continue this year with other models.