feet, is located on the path that circles the pond between the bathing area and the chapel. Winter, a woman wrapped in a cloak and warming her hands, stands in front of the house and at the entrance to the boxwood labyrinth. Unfortunately, some of the statues’ original components are missing. Summer lost the blade of the sickle and the handle of the rake, and Winter once had a brazier with which to warm her hands. There are two versions of the statue of a young man harvesting grapes that represents autumn. One is painted white, like the rest of the figures, and the other— which was acquired later—is unpainted cast iron. Another noteworthy sculpture is of a child located in the center of the pool of water in front of the chapel, the famous Niño taimado (Naughty Child) by Chilean sculptor Simón González. It is a cement replica of the marble original that is exhibited in Chile’s Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. The original piece received an award in the Paris Salon in 1893. The property could not be without a statue that represents San Isidro (Saint Isidore the Laborer), the patron saint of agriculture and rain. It is located at the entrance to the park and dominates an entire esplanade. The San Isidro Plaza was the traditional start and end point of the Palm Sunday procession that progressed through the park to mark the beginning of Holy Week. The Santa Rita community has met there for open air mass since Fernández Concha’s times.
Conversation with Patricia Sepúlveda, Manager of the Santa Rita Park
Patricia Sepúlveda is the Manager of the Santa Rita Park. She was hired in 1992 and replaced Raúl Brossard. The daughter and granddaughter of members of the Santa Rita community, she was born and raised in the main house. She was baptized and received First Communion there, attended school on the property, and then finished her studies at the Alto Jahuel School across from the winery. She began working as an orchard supervisor at a very young age and was then put in charge of the park. Although she initially had very little idea of the work involved, she valiently accepted the challenge. María Luisa Vial de Claro and Cecilia Montes, who were responsible for the renovation of the park, appreciated Patricia’s personality and work ethic. They supported her efforts to learn more, enrolled her in the INACAP gardening course, and then encouraged her to earn a certificate in Landscape and Design from the Catholic University. Patricia says, however, that her greatest teacher has been the work itself. She has more than 20 years of daily experience and has been a witness to and architect of the splendor the park has achieved. She began with a team of 25 workers with the goal of restoring the park to its original glory. In the early 1990s it was grown over with bushes, shrubs, and berries that grew ‘without rhyme or reason.’ Many of the paths had been abandoned or lost and many of the trees were dry due to the precarious irrigation system. It took more than a year to clean up and recover the park. During this time, the existing species were inventoried, identified, and evaluated in terms of their state of conservation. Agricultural engineer and landscaper Raúl Silva Vargas played a key role in that process. To complement the renovations made to turn the manor house into a hotel, and with the future guests in mind, tennis courts and a pool were installed at the perimeter of the park in an area next to the place where the winery’s old turbine was located. “Although the park was originally intended for
220
Santa Rita • Un monumento histórico en el valle del Maipo
the exclusive use of the hotel guests, Mr. Ricardo Claro and Mrs. María Luisa were clearly aware of the infinite value of its cultural heritage, and their goal was to restore the quality and beauty of its original design,” Patricia remembers. Special attention was paid to recovering the park’s original species, respecting both its diversity and the aesthetic of the 19th century. The traditional flowers include roses, hortensias, anemones, and lilies. There are also climbing species such as jasmine, bougainvillea, trumpet flowers, puma flowers, and ivy. Ground cover species abound, including vinca, hypericum, and ferns as well as shrubbery such as boxwood, which has great ornamental value and is also used to delimit different areas because of its dense branches and year-round foliage. Varieties that were popular in the 19th century have been added, such as clivias, agapanthus, winter lilies, petunias, and alders. The same recovery work was undertaken with the trees, which include a large variety of species from all over the world, including Brazilian and excelsior araucarias; corn oaks; Japanese maples and box elders; Australian aromos; Indian walnut and fruit trees; camellias; cedars; Italian, macrocarpa, weeping, bald and Arizona cypress; white eucalyptus; holms oak; jacasranda; grandiflora and Soulange magnolias; black walnuts; phytolaccas; elms; Oriental planes; Chilean, Chinese, Phoenix, Canadian, and reclinata palm trees; water willows; tulip trees; willows; and sequoias. Patricia lists these as well as the fruit trees that grow along the perimeter of the park in areas designed for them since its inception, including almond, plum, peach, apple, tangerine, orange, walnut, nectarine, olive, and pear trees. Patricia currently has a team of 12 gardeners who have specialized in different tasks, including mowing the lawns, using the chainsaw, applying pest control treatments, and driving the tractor. Over time, the work also has been systematized in accordance with the seasons. During the summer, the most common tasks include cutting the grass (there are ten fields of more than a hectare each), watering the plants, pest control— mainly aphids, stink bug, and mildew, pruning roses once they have bloomed, weeding, and clearing the fields and paths. During the fall, the mowing and watering continue, although less frequently, while clean-up work increases, particularly raking and removing leaves, which are taken to composting areas at the edge of the park. Some species are pruned during that season as well. During the winter, flowering species, shrubs, ground cover, and trees (especially fruit trees are pruned. Fertilizers such as superphosphate and nitrate are applied, and compost is made in the vineyard from the pomace and guano. One of the key winter tasks is planting and replanting of varieties in the plant nursery, which was built a few years ago at the park, which requires a great deal of work. In the spring fertilizer is incorporated, mowing and watering begin slowly, and pest control is ongoing, and the paths and fields are cleaned more often. To provide an idea of the amount of work that this entails, Patricia explains that wagon load of debris is removed from the park each day. This seasonal routine is complemented by the weekly supervision of María Luisa Vial and Cecilia Montes. Patricia would like many people to visit the park and be as amazed by it as she is every day. “I want them to experience its beauty and to appreciate the dedication it takes to maintain it. Walking through the park offers an opportunity to learn about and value the richness of nature as well as its fragility,” she explains. Everyone who works in the park—as well as everyone who works at the winery, in
the cellars, the hotel, the restaurant, and the museum—are part of the history and memory of Santa Rita and contribute to its identity and beauty. For Patricia, this lends a sense of importance to the work that she does each day.
— Hotel Casa Real The Manor House
Immediately after acquiring the Santa Rita property, Domingo Fernández Concha decided to build a large manor house separate from the existing house so his family could spend long periods of time in the country. He commissioned German architect Teodoro Burchard of Altona, Hamburg, to do the work. Burchard had arrived in Valparaíso, Chile in the 1860s, where he began his family with María Luisa Eggeling in 1868. They had 16 children, including painter Pablo Burchard, who won Chile’s National Prize for Art in 1944. Prior to beginning the Santa Rita project, Burchard had completed several other works, including the Iglesia de los Doce Apóstoles (Church of the Twelve Apostles) in Valparaíso and the Basílica del Salvador (Basilica of the Savior) in Santiago, both of which were declared National Monuments. He also built a manor house for Melchor Concha y Toro, Domingo Fernández’s cousin, on his El Llano de Pirque property. Construction on the Santa Rita house began in 1881 on an elevated site. Burchard combined European stylistic touches with construction elements that were traditional in rural Chilean architecture. The house was built in a U-shape with corridors, thick adobe walls, and a clay tile roof, all of which are characteristics in a Chilean home. It also had a marked neo-classical style inspired by Pompeii, which is evidenced in the plinths, walls, and painted ceilings. Years later, the deeply Catholic Domingo had an artificial grotto—a replica of the one found in the sanctuary of the Virgin of Lourdes in France—built under the house for prayers, petitions, and giving thanks, such as the plaque that reads “Thank You for saving the life of my son Vicentito, 1899” written by the mother of poet Vicente Huidobro. When Ricardo Claro bought the manor house at Santa Rita in 1990, he decided to convert it into an exclusive hotel or guest house for the winery’s customers and visitors to evoke the experience of France’s many castles and traditional vineyards. Architects Jorge Swinburn and Álvaro Pedraza were hired for the project and restored the house while maintaining its original character. The work primarily involved replacing sectors that were very deteriorated, including the southern wing of the house, which now has two floors of bedrooms. Suites were built in the northern wing and the galleries that face the courtyard were restored. A new entrance courtyard was created and the grand staircase that leads into the park was rebuilt.
Hotel Casa Real
The layout of the hotel maintained the house’s traditional spaces and their uses, such as the entrance, salons, dining room, billiard room, and courtyard, which remain just as they were in the 19th century with their original furnishings. The portraits of the Fernández Concha and García Huidobro families remain, and works of art including a landscape of the old Viña Subercaseaux winery in El Llano, an oil painting by Pedro Subercaseaux, and a harvest painting by Arturo Gordon were added. Ricardo Claro and his wife María Luisa