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Ricardo Fernández Gracia, Director of the Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art.

The image of Our Lady of Le Puy in time: trompe l'oeil, engravings and photographs

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 11:49:00 +0000 Published in Navarra Newspaper

Devotion, art and images of Our Lady of Le Puy in constant growth

In the history of the devotion to the Virgin of the Puy of Estella, there are several dates that have marked a before and after: 1642, 1885 and 1946, are the years of the transfer of the image to the enlarged temple, the celebrations of the millennium of the apparition and the inauguration of the present basilica. 

Each one of those moments was translated not only in buildings, endowment of the same with altarpieces, organs and other preseasons, but in the very presentation of the gothic image, from the beginning of the 14th century, before the faithful, in a changing way. The religious images, today seem static objects and give the sensation that they always presented the same aspect, but it is not true, since the aesthetics, the taste and the mentalities changed their uses and forms and the venerable medieval Marian sculptures, simple and majestic, did not seem to satisfy their devotees, transforming them into vestments. The alterations in clothing, adornment and headdresses were adjusted to fashion and taste, as well as to the vision of the sacred of the Ancien Régime. In the second half of the 19th century, some of them recovered their original appearance, although most of them had to wait until the 20th century.


The presentation of the image until 1642

In medieval religious worship, the velum was part of the staging of the altar image. The action of veiling and unveiling made concrete in those times the dialectic of the presentation of the images, of agreement with the liturgical function and the feast to be celebrated. The curtain was, likewise, an element of the protocol and royal ceremonial that, with late medieval precedents, had a wide projection in the centuries of the Modern Age. The ceremonial observed secularly in some pilgrimages and pilgrimages to the sanctuary of Le Puy, until the 19th century, reflects the way of unveiling the Virgin.

That staging went a little beyond the veil itself, since it consisted of opening and closing the box or ark, an exceptional piece in its genre, which has come down to our days, where the Marian icon was kept, in which the door of the early fifteenth century stands out, with paintings of the Annunciation and the apostleship. The old cabinet was replaced by the curtain to veil it, certainly in 1642, when it was placed in a new altarpiece paid for by Jerónimo Ladrón de Cegama, from Estella and judge of the Casa de Contratación of Seville. The generous donor sent fabrics for frontispieces and curtains. The transfer of the Virgin took place in that year and the following year, in 1643, the celebration of her feast began, as a result of the participation of several people from Estella in the battle of Fuenterrabía. At the end of the forties she was already called the patron saint of the city.

In the last eighteenth-century altarpiece (1754), the image no longer appeared in its niche, but in its dressing room, converted into an authentic chamber of wonders.
 

The transformation of the Marian icon

The image was transformed with the addition of mantles, aprons, headdresses and ostentatious jewelry. Among the richest dresses were those given by Doña María Josefa de Palafox y Rebolledo, Viscountess of Zolina in 1753, Doña María Ventura in 1783, the city council after the cholera in 1855, and Doña Margarita de Borbón, as well as another from the Princess of Veyra, wife of Don Carlos María Isidro de Borbón. A pair of very old dresses were sold in 1751, when they were sold together with three chasubles and two frontals to Manuel Rodriguez, a neighbor of Madrid, who came to Estella in search of old ornaments, having already acquired some in the same city, Viana and Tarazona.

Crowns are documented from the end of the 16th century, although the most beautiful was the one completed, with its diadem, in 1759. A rostrillo was also made in 1752 by the silversmith Manuel Pueyo. Regarding the average moon that the image still wears at her feet, it must be interpreted within the immaculist fervor of the seventeenth century. It was a gift from Juan Albizu, an Estella resident in Sigüenza, shortly before 1646. From then on, that average moon was one of the signs of its identity, just as it was for the Virgin of Codés -as recorded in the inventory of 1664- or the Virgin of the Camino de Pamplona, who received it from Don Juan de Cenoz, treasurer of the Province of Yucatán, in 1675.
 

Trompe l'oeil to the divine and engravings

There is no doubt that the Virgin of Le Puy was the Marian image that had the most trompe l'oeil paintings in past centuries. As is well known, the great Marian icons were reproduced on canvas, in great detail, sometimes in their altarpieces, which inspired the same respect and piety as in their chapels. With trompe l'oeil (trompe l'oeil) they tried to intensify the reality, so that their contemplation would not leave a shadow of doubt, that is to say, that one would not even suspect that one was being deceived. The usual thing was to present them in a framework or box to make believe in something real enclosed.

This fact is supported by the testimony of Don Francisco Eguía y Beaumont who wrote at length about the image in 1644, when he affirms: "The devotion to this holy image is so great that, not content with enjoying it in its holy basilica, men have its brush portraits to console themselves with its daily sight. In the city of Estella alone there are three hundred portraits. There are of them and of good brush in Tarazona, Pamplona, Puente la Reina, Seville and Flanders. The first one that was taken is one that Sebastián de Oteiza has, holder of supplies of the armies of Navarre, which has great devotion, especially the very religious nuns of the Descalzas that, at the time of the death of some nun, ask him to die with courage and comfort...". The same author refers to several miracles with that painting, among them one of 1629, as a result of which Francisco Eguía wrote: "This miracle advanced the thought that I had of making another portrait and to put it into execution it was necessary to go to the Descalzas (who were not without it) and color it outside of many instances; I gave it to a famous painter who had come from Rome, he finished copying it on the first of August 1630. He came to my house and a feast was kept for him on that day, as if it were Easter"

Among those paintings, some of them stand out in the parish of San Pedro de la Rúa in the city of Ega, one of them coming from the church of Santa María Jus del Castillo, the one in the Priestly Retreat of the Good Shepherd of Pamplona, as well as two others in the Conceptionists of Estella and one in the Benedictine Sisters of Lumbier (Alzuza). 

The devotional engravings, both xylographic and intaglio and lithographic, are an excellent testimony of how the Gothic image was transformed in order to simulate it standing, instead of seated. We do not know the primitive eighteenth-century engraving, contemporary with the new altarpiece of 1752, which existed, as test the print acquired by the Riojan sculptor Diego de Camporredondo in 1756, in an auction. We have received copies made with open plates by Rafael Esteve and Narciso Cobo in 1796-1797.

The nineteenth-century versions repeat the outline of the previous century, in a more sober manner with an upper star and less rhetorical apparatus. Thus, it appears in the ninth published in Estella in 1869 and in various copies of loose printings from different years. We know of a large lithograph, made in the Barcelona establishment of Charles Labielle with a drawing by Mariano Teruel de la Ester, prior to 1877. Perhaps it must have been the last one in which the Virgin appears with apron and the Child with his costume. From the end of the XIX century, specifically from 1886, the year after the great celebrations of the VIII centenary of her apparition and coinciding with the visit of Madrazo to the sanctuary, the image only wears the mantle, leaving to see the characteristics of the medieval sculpture, as it is appreciated in a great colored lithography, made in the Pamplona establishment of Gascón, in the year 1889.
 

The first photo of a Marian image of Navarre in 1862

But, if anything came with force and novelty in the nineteenth century was photography and Estella rushed to make the snapshot of its patron, being photographed in 1862, as recorded by the prior of the basilica José María Arrastia: "In March 1862 the first photographs of Our Lady of Puy were made, in whose operation had a very important part the priest Don Babil Moreno, Full Professor physics of the seminar of Pamplona, who came to make these photographs in union with Mr. Leandro, master in that art. For this, the Holy Image had to be taken to the homeland and there it was placed with the due reverence and adorned with all the primness. On this occasion many people from the city came up, with the praiseworthy desire to visit Our Lady and see her to their satisfaction". The photographer must be identified with the Frenchman Leandro Desages, registered in the Société Française de la Photographie in 1856, and that at the beginning of the decade of the sixties had just settled in Pamplona with his own establishment, before leaving to Santander and associating in the Navarrese capital with Domingo Dublán. That photo, perhaps the same one that we present and that is preserved in the basilica, is very early and was ahead of other photos of images, such as the one of Ujué, which would go through the goal in 1876.

As for the priest and later Jesuit Babil Moreno Sesma (San Martín de Unx, 1819-Guayaquil, 1899), we know that he cultivated photography and painting in Pamplona in the mid-19th century. His name must be very present among those who dedicate themselves to the history of photography in Navarre, since the written sources indicate him as a skilled photographer and the information from Estella corroborates this.
 

Pedro Madrazo's visit and the medieval image at sight

The year 1886 marked a before and after in the appearance of the image. On the occasion of the visit that Pedro Madrazo made to the sanctuary to write his work Navarra y La Rioja, with the Episcopal recommendation, he entered the dressing room and stripped the image of its clothes, exclaiming: "Oh wonder, what an antiquity! Madrazo photographed the image and strongly recommended to the prior that they should not put those clothes back on it, considering it in bad taste. The prior calculated, in his chronicle, that it would be about 200 or 300 years since they had converted the medieval sculpture into a dress image, affirming: "Now that the time has come to remove the false clothes from the images that were made not to have them, as it has happened with the one of Ujué and others, I determined to take the same agreement with ours of El Puy". From now on, the image would only wear the mantle. The problem that arose in the new status was the deterioration of the silver sheets with which it was lined, very blackened by the patches made with tin and lead. The silversmith Eustaquio Carrasquilla , "who knows how to do things with great care" proceeded to its work during the spring of that year of 1886. For this he was required to be very neat and to proceed "with all the work and ornaments that were there before". The chronicle continues as follows: "After preparing the work in his workshop, the silversmith went up to the Virgin's dressing room for a month, where the new and refined silver was taken down every day. Two thousand nails of the same metal were used in the harness that form the top of the ropaje, they were made with all precision and accuracy as they were before and for this it was necessary to prepare new steel dies that cost quite a lot". On July 25 of the same year he finished his work, which was celebrated with a party. The following day, the image was exhibited and all the people of Estella were able to contemplate it. The cost amounted to 7,000 reales, including the silver cloud. The goldsmith kept all the old silver from the old clothing. 

Prior Arrastia longed for the day when an elegant silver chair could be made, noting that the ancients did not adorn the image from behind since they venerated her in the ark and her back was not visible. In the meantime, it was necessary to cover her with a mantle. These last works on the back of the image were carried out in 1913.

The context in which it was proceeded to refund to the image of the Virgin of the Puy its original appearance must be related to what was happening in Spain at the time. The stripping of all attachments was carried out in order to find the true appearance with the Virgin of La Merced of Barcelona, in the last decades of the 19th century, starting a campaign to do the same with the Virgin of Montserrat, something that would not be achieved, in the latter case, until after the Civil War.