Temptations, devils and deadly sins had a great echo in the visual arts, especially in the Middle Ages average. For various reasons, the images of this whole world linked to evil, perversion, greed, covetousness and lust were more interesting than the topic of the works of mercy which, although they exist and were captured, did not reach the issue nor the amplitude of what is implicitly negative about evil. Some examples will help us to evoke this wide universe of images.
 

Capital sins

Esperanza Aragonés studied the image of evil in the sculpture of the Navarrese Romanesque, in a monograph (1996) that collects her doctoral thesis and in the Gothic, in a article in the magazine Príncipe de Viana (2002). Both works are of obligatory enquiry and reference letter for topic. In them he recalls that in the Romanesque world the winged and clawed devil was imagined. Greed and lust had in the art of the twelfth century a great development, much greater than the rest of the deadly sins. However, more than a concrete sinner, the fault perpetrated was represented, abstracting the essence of the sin and materializing it with human characters.

Lust was represented very graphically with the figure of a naked woman attacked by toads and reptiles in her sex. Among other examples, we will cite those of the portals of San Miguel de Estella and Santa María de Sangüesa and the palace of the Kings of Navarre in Estella, all from the 12th century. Other figures of lust were the woman devoured by an androphagous monster (church of the Crucifix of Puente la Reina); the exhibitionist woman (San Martín de Unx, San Pedro de Echano, Larumbe and Artáiz); paired figures (Garinoain, doorway of Santa María de Sangüesa and Arce); some procarious gestures (Leire, San Pedro de la Rúa de Estella or cloister of the monastery of La Oliva); the spinario (Larraona) and the siren that, with her melodious song, attracted sailors, to trap them in her nets and kill them (church of the Crucifix of Puente la Reina, San Román de Cirauqui, doorway of Santa María de Sangüesa, San Pedro de Aibar, Torres del Río and monastery of La Oliva).

Greed was usually represented by men from whose necks hang bags of coins. A parallel of this iconography is that of the drinker who carries around his neck the weight of his vice: a barrel of wine. At the head of the misers, we have to mention for its great quality, the Judas of the capital of the Romanesque cloister of Pamplona, from the middle of the XII century, today in the Museum of Navarre. Misers with their bags are found in other examples of Romanesque monumental sculpture in the portals of the monastery of Leire, Santa María de Sangüesa and Santiago de Puente la Reina, in the church of Olleta and a small stone of the Magdalena de Tudela.

Gluttony has interesting and varied examples in the same period: in the passage of the banquet of the rich Epulón (metope of Artáiz) or with drunk or eating men, highlighting the men with the barrel around their necks of Echano, Larumbe and Añezcar.

Laziness or spiritual acedia, on the other hand, will have its expression in the harpist donkey. The topic was inspired by literary sources such as the fable of Fedro that mentions the donkey with the flute or the donkey with the lyre of which Boethius speaks, in the 6th century. In Santa Catalina de Azcona it appears accompanied by a quadruped. The pride has a classic topic : the "ascension of Alexander" flanked by griffins. This is how it appears in Santa Catalina de Azcona and the Magdalena de Tudela. Finally, anger was represented by fighting characters, as can be seen in a capital of San Pedro de la Rúa in Estella and the façades of Santa María de Sangüesa and Artaiz.

The Romanesque hells evolved in their iconic representation in the leave Age average, in Gothic times. According to Emile Mâle, in the Gothic hell we pass from the threshold to contemplate its interior, since in it we will see the punishments towards the Christian morality of agreement with the capital sins, highlighting the diversification of sins and the variety of punishable activities related to them. Thus, lust will be explained as the woman who sins as a prostitute and adulteress, sharing condemnation with the man, as an adulterer or sodomite. For its part, avarice will take the form of money changers, merchants and bankers. Their representations are not lacking in the door of the Judgment of the cathedral of Tudela (c. 1230), where they receive their particular punishments, either burned, or led by the devil or suffering torture in their language because of the deceit in their transactions. Other sins such as gluttony, envy or laziness have much less presence in the Gothic hell.

The dissipated life of the prodigal son, in Arróniz

On the bench of the altarpiece of the Magdalena of the parish of Arróniz, made by Miguel López de Ganuza and entrusted, after his death, to Domingo de Lusa, from 1632, we find three beautifully polychrome reliefs on the prodigal son, in parallelism with the licentious life of the Magdalena, titular of the altarpiece. This is the only artistic representation that we know of in Navarre of the dissipated life of the young man in the Gospel parable narrated by St. Luke, whose engraved versions include the series by Jacques Callot (1635) and pictorial versions include the spectacular paintings by Teniers the Younger or Louis Caullery, always insisting on the merciful sense of God towards repentant sinners, showing his joy at the conversion of those who have gone astray. More abundant are the scenes of the return of the prodigal son, as shown in the paintings of Murillo or Rembrandt.

In Arróniz, in harmony with the compositions of the engravings and paintings mentioned above, we find banquet, fruit, feast, dance and music. From left to right there are three groups inside a room built with ashlars and with several openings that leave painted landscapes. The first one with two women, the first one with the money bag, the same one that appears in the scene of his departure of the same altarpiece, the other woman holds a large cup inviting the young man to drink. The second presents the young man squatting next to a woman who embraces him and sample him a book, surely with literature considered pernicious: to the two is added a young musician playing a vihuela bow. The third and last one presents two dancers, next to a table with rich food. It is interesting to emphasize, above all, the message of the young man captive of the pleasures of the world, drink, women, music and dance.

Temptations: from Adam and Eve to Christ

The topic of the temptation of Adam and Eve and the original sin has examples throughout the different artistic periods in Navarre, from the Romanesque doorway of Santa María de Sangüesa, to the Gothic ones of the door of the Judgment of Tudela, that of Santa María de Olite or the cloister of Pamplona, where we find for the first time a snake with a woman's face and numerous Renaissance examples in altarpieces and even in petition plates (Sorlada) or Baroque, such as the copper from the second half of the 17th century by Jacob Bouttats of the Museum of Navarre, from the convent of La Merced in Pamplona.

The chapter of the temptations of Christ and some saints will give place to some interesting scenes. Sometimes, it will be the devil himself who will be present in them with his visible features or under a disguise, in the same way as he appears in some paintings of the Guardian Angel, protecting a child from the evil stalker.

The temptations of Christ, narrated by the evangelist Saint Matthew (4, 1-11), appear in three capitals of the doorway of the Magdalena of Tudela, studied by Marisa Melero, in the Renaissance cross of Cirauqui, from the last third of the 16th century, and in one of the scenes of the main altarpiece of Dicastillo that comes from the monastery of Irache, work of Juan Imberto III (1617).  

The Tudela capitals of the Magdalena, made around 1200, are quite damaged, although it is possible to identify Christ with a nimbus and beard, which is repeated in all three. The first represents the temptation in which Satan asks Christ to convert the stones into bread; the second, with the temple incorporated, speaks of the request for Christ to throw himself down, and the third with Jesus Christ accompanied by the angels who came down to serve him.

In the Romanesque relief of the altarpiece of Dicastillo, we see Christ seated in the lower area, preparing to take some stones offered to him by the evil one disguised in a habit and hooded. It is the first great temptation that takes its origin from the material need of hunger, when the devil says: "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread", to which Jesus responds with the Sacred Scripture: "Man does not live by bread alone". In the upper part of the relief, it is Christ who expels the unmasked figure of the devil.

The case of the temptations of San Anton

More eloquent and eloquent are the representations of the temptations of lust to some saints, particularly in the case of San Antón. We will stop in three of them belonging to altarpieces of Tabar, Ilundáin and the sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de Codés. St. Athanasius, in the life of St. Anton, written in the second half of the 4th century, refers that the devil presented him with terrible temptations so that he would give in to his determination to distribute his goods and become a hermit. class When he did not discourage him, the evil one transformed himself into a deformed monster or disguised himself, accompanied by terrifying screams and noises and, not content with those apparitions, he brought him the most desperate temptations against the senses and particularly against purity, presenting him with all sorts of impure images in his imagination. The beating of the saint and the carnal temptation were two great themes brought to the images.

Around the year 1000, texts were circulated that presented St. Anton praying, when a beautiful young woman with a beautiful face and adorned appearance appeared to him, before which the saint raised his eyes to heaven asking God to show him the true figure of the tempter. His temptations, like those of other hermits firm in their Withdrawal to the impulses of the flesh, rejecting feminine charms, turned the tempting woman into a mole.

In the main altarpiece of Ilundain (late sixteenth century) and collateral of Tabar (Juan de Huici a. 1616) and in two reliefs of the altarpiece of San Antón of the sanctuary of Codés (Bartolomé Calvo, 1654), we find the saint with the figure of a horrible demon, in the case of Ilundáin with female breasts. In Tabar the saint appears kneeling and praying, turning his back to two naked women. The episode is to be related to a passage of his life, according to which the saint was trying to kill idleness by weaving leaves in the desert and met an old man who made nets, who was none other than the devil. Saint Anton asked him to weave some nets to capture some animals that had destroyed his garden and the disguised demon let him continue on his way until he reached a river in which some naked women were bathing, the protagonists of the relief of Tabar.

A scene of the bench of his altarpiece in Codés, also shows him praying, turning his back to an elegantly dressed courtesan who must be identified with one of the young women in the story who were naked and wanted to engage him in conversation. The saint ordered her to dress in her best clothes and the young woman tried to convince the hermit of the disadvantages of virginity. Saint Anton refused all her insinuations and the young woman revealed to him that she was the queen of a marvelous country, while the saint saw beautiful cities on the other side of the river. After strolling through that dreamy landscape he discovered the deception, prayed to God's financial aid and when he raised his eyes to heaven the lady and her imagined cities disappeared in a column of smoke.

These representations in which St. Anton defeated lust must be read in a context in which the overcoming of carnal temptation was associated with the representation of women. Literature had been insisting, since the leave Age average, on frivolity in dress and ostentation as factors predisposing to carnal temptation. In fact, many allegorical paintings will have in the woman who preens herself or elegantly combs her hair her protagonist and motive of inspiration.