The life of the saints does not end with their physical death, since after leaving the earthly world, another stage begins, a decisive one in their historiography, that of the fabrication and reception of their transfigured image. The beatification, canonization and extension of the cult of St. Ignatius coincided with the centuries of the Baroque, in which sensory impact, grandiloquence, ornament and excess were dominant, always in the interest of moving and provoking the individual sensorially, marking behaviors through the senses, always more vulnerable than the intellect.

All the iconographic testimonies, as well as the literary ones, end up placing us before a baroque and transcendent saint. If sermons and biographies insist on a triumphal and military language, calling him captain general of the earthly and heavenly militia of the Society, his paintings are not far behind. Each epoch also contemplates its referents with different optics, even disparate. Today Ignatius is read more alone and on foot, in the words of J. I. Tellechea, and the motto of AMDG(Ad maiorem Dei gloriam) coexists with the famous "in all things love and serve" of the Spiritual Exercises, an expression that continues and is completed in this way: "to His Divine Majesty".

The rich collection of images of the saint preserved in Navarre must be associated with the Jesuit charism, with the process of searching for God and finding to passionately follow his will. The new times and the new models of sanctity had in the artistic representations one of the best allies for the diffusion of the ideals of the Society.

Mother Leonor de la Misericordia (Ayanz y Beaumont, 1551-1620), a cultured and noblewoman, was responsible for the arrival of a rich collection of engravings to the Carmelites of Pamplona. Among them are those of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier, made in Rome in 1600, by Iacobus Laurus. The one of St. Ignatius is a very rare piece, and does not appear in the A study by Ursula König-Nodhoff. Its chronology corresponds to the thrust of his cult promoted by Cardinal Baronius.

In spite of not being beatified, he is identified as Beatus, which should be interpreted as blessed or blessed, according to a common internship at that time, before the dispositions of Urban VIII in 1642. He also wears a nimbus on his head. This custom was usual, since it was not yet forbidden for the unbeatified and depended on devotion. That internship changed with the orders of Urban VIII that prohibited its use, punishing even with the suspension of the cause of beatification. 

The composition is organized as a wundervita, with the central image of the saint with his arms outstretched contemplating the Trinity. Around him we find thirteen small vignettes accompanied by explanatory Latin texts. Highlights include the vision of the Virgin and Child and of Christ in the Sacred Form, the seven days in ecstasy, the confessed condemned man, the shipwreck, healings, knowing other people's thoughts, beaten by demons and the prayers before his dead body.

Among what was required of artists in times of the Counter-Reformation, the property and historicity of what was to be represented stood out. This gave rise to the illustrated lives, closely watched by the religious orders. Particular importance was given to the resemblance of the face. In the case of Saint Ignatius, we know the testimony of his first biographer, Father Pedro de Rivadeneira, who affirms: "He was of medium height, or better said, somewhat small and short of body, his brothers having been tall and very well disposed. He had an authorized face; his forehead was wide and wrinkled; his eyes were sunken; his eyelids were shrunken and wrinkled, due to the many tears that he continually shed; his ears were medium-sized; his nose was high and curved; his color was bright and temperate, and his bald head had a very venerable appearance. The countenance of his face was cheerfully grave, and gravely cheerful; so that with his serenity he gladdened those who looked at him, and with his gravity he composed them".

Along with this description, the first portraits were made from his death mask and the portrait of Jacopino del Conte. Some artists made versions with great success, such as the pictorial one by Alonso Sánchez Coello or the sculptural one by Gregorio Fernández.

With respect to the isolated image, two types must be distinguished, the first with the cassock and mantle of the Society and the second with alb, chasuble and manipule to celebrate Mass. Among those of the first subject the carving of the cathedral of Pamplona, made for the canonization and the one of the basilica of the saint in the capital of Navarre, which follows the model of the one of Gregorio Fernandez in Vergara (1614), stand out. There is no lack of other examples from the 16th century. The model will be repeated until the eighteenth century, as shown by the sculptures of the altarpieces of Santa Barbara in the cathedral of Pamplona (1713), Santa Teresa in Fitero (1730) and the bishop's palace (1748). In those models he carries as an attribute the book of the Constitutions or of the Exercises and a sun with the IHS, to which he looks deeply. In this regard, we must remember that the saint "saw Christ as the sun, especially when he was dealing with important things" (Autobiography, 99).

With the ornaments to celebrate mass we find it in paintings such as the one of the altarpiece of the parish of Javier, which follows a composition by Rubens very popularized through Flemish engravings. To the same subject, correspond the sculptures of the altarpieces of the Remedios de Luquin (1741) and Lesaca (1753), the engraving of the cover of the book of Father Erice, work of Jean de Courbes (1623), as well as the paintings of Vicente Berdusán in Garde and Roncal, from the end of the XVII century.

Among the paintings preserved in the Pamplona basilica is the large landscape canvas of the fall of the saint, sent in 1729 by Father Manuel de la Reguera (1668-1747), private theologian of Cardinal Belluga. The composition is an exact copy of that of the vaults of the church of St. Ignatius in Rome, the work of Brother Andrea del Pozzo (1691-1694). The painting, in the heart of Pamplona, acquired great value in the place of the event it represented, nothing less than the fall of the saint and the origin of his conversion and, therefore, of the Society.

The cathedral of Pamplona preserves a canvas, from the high school of the Jesuits of the Annunciation, which represents the vision of the saint in the chapel of the Italian town of Storta, in November 1537. It represents Ignatius, accompanied by Pedro Fabro and Diego Laínez, in the temple of that city to perform the daily prayers. There he had a vision in which the Eternal Father pointed to Jesus carrying the cross and telling him: "I will be propitious to you in Rome".

The four pendentives of the basilica, made around 1720, narrate the apparitions of St. Peter and the Virgin and Child, the essay of the Exercises and the sail of arms in Montserrat in March 1522, following the autobiographical text that says: "After going to confession and giving his clothes and wearing the tunic of a pilgrim, he makes visit on foot and prostrates himself before the Virgin of Montserrat". This story also inspires the interesting seventeenth-century painting of the same basilica.

The altarpiece of Azoz, from the basilica of Pamplona, contains a cycle of four Ignatian paintings of which we reported in this newspaper on May 21 of this year. They are possibly the work of the Guipuzcoan painter Esteban de Iriarte in 1632. The passages, mostly based on prints from the 1610 illustrated life, represent the saint immersed in the waters to achieve the conversion of a sinner walking on the bridge, the apparition of Christ, the vision of the Virgin and the hanged man saved in Barcelona.

In a context like the one we have pointed out at the beginning, we could not miss the types as military and in glorification, defeating heresy. With armor, in an exuberant framework of golden carving, the portrait of the saint of the Pamplona basilica stands out. It was sent around 1715 from Rome by Brother Emeterio Montoto who, years before, had been in the care of the young Jesuits in Villagarcía. It is a copy of another painting, conserved in San Ignacio in Rome. The composition was successful and was lithographed in plenary session of the Executive Council XIX century.

In glory we find him in a delicate painting of the castle of Javier, in another of the basilica of Pamplona and in the polychrome plaster sculpture of a pendentive of St. George of Tudela, carrying the flag of the Society. A canvas of delicate invoice of the capitular conference room of the Augustinian Recollect Nuns of the end of the XVII century, that follows a print of François de Poilly, presents him glorified and in ecstasy.

Other paintings also arrived in Pamplona from the Eternal City in 1749. One of great size with the saint before the Resurrected that represents, as Father Javier Sagüés pointed out to me, the approval of the name of the Society with the approval of Christ himself. Father Juan Antonio Polanco, from Burgos, secretary of St. Ignatius and of the Society, provides us with the textual source of the composition, in De Societatis Jesu nomine, shortly before arriving in Rome, in Vicenza, in September 1537, when the question of the name of the high school was proposed. This is how the aforementioned Polanco relates it: "While they were discussing among themselves what they would call themselves to whoever asked them which congregation was theirs, they began to pray and to think about what name would be more convenient, and, seeing that they had no head among themselves nor any other Superior but Jesus Christ, whom they only wished to serve, it seemed to them that they should take the name of the one who had the head, calling himself the Society of Jesus. And in this matter of the name, Father Master Ignatius had so many visitations of the one whose name they took and so many signs of his approval and confirmation of this surname, that I heard him say to the same one that he would think of going against God and offending him if he doubted that this name was appropriate.