The list of the four great masters of Hispanic polychrome imagery of the Modern Age begins with Juan de Anchieta in the 16th century, followed by Gregorio Fernández and Juan Martínez Montañés in the 17th century, and Luis Salvador Carmona in the 18th century. We find ourselves before the best interpreter of Michelangelo's style, without having personally known the Florentine genius, surpassing even many of his Italian disciples. He is considered the father of one of the greatest Michelangelo schools in Europe in the three northern kingdoms of Castile, Navarre and Aragon. He was a true Renaissance man and one of the artists with the greatest projection, not only through his disciples, but above all through a mass of followers, as Concepción García Gainza, author of the best monograph on this artist, has highlighted.

The Burgundian Juan de Juni, designated him in his will of 1577 as the most gifted sculptor of Castile and his contemporaries Arbulo or Fernandez de Vallejo recognized in 1598 in the work of this excellent master, the compendium of the precepts of art and the model to follow. We know from Tarifa that he possessed, along with prints, his own traces and preparatory drawings, a high issue of models in clay, wax and plaster. As it happened with the patrons of Raphael or Michelangelo, who used to demand them the realization staff of paintings and sculptures, in Navarre the clause of executing the hand carvings is usually only included in the contracts of singular artists such as Fray Juan de Beauves or Juan de Anchieta. test The call of Philip II in 1583 to appraise the statue of San Lorenzo and the imperial coat of arms that Juan Bautista Monegro had carved for the façade of the monastery of El Escorial was conclusive of his supraregional prestige.

We do not know the family origins of Juan de Anchieta (1533-1588), who declares that he was born in Azpeitia. The most unknown period of his life until recently, the twenty years as an apprentice and officer in Castile, between 1551, the date of his apprenticeship, and 1571, when the altarpiece of Santa Clara de Briviesca was finished, has been revealed in a book by Vasallo Toranzo. He analyzes his interventions as an official in the service of different company chiefs such as Inocencio Berruguete or Juan de Juni, whom we can consider his master, in several altarpieces in Valladolid and Palencia. As had already been assumed, it has been confirmed that he worked under the orders of Gaspar Becerra in the main altarpiece of the cathedral of Astorga, whose novel design and style constitute a manifesto of Romanism in Spain. Between 1566 and 1569 he was the author of the most elaborate carvings and reliefs of the main altarpiece of the monastery of Santa Clara de Briviesca, contracted by Pedro López de Gámiz and considered the most ambitious liturgical piece of furniture of all times in Spain.

The fruitful period of Anchieta, the master of Navarre, after marrying Ana de Aguirre in 1570, was spent in Pamplona, where he was very active as a draughtsman and sculptor until his death in 1588, a year in which, paradoxically, he multiplied his commitments, some of which he left unfinished or did not even begin. His mature work during the last quarter of the 16th century is well known to us, and can be grouped by decades. The seventies saw the completion of a large issue of Miguelangelesque façade altarpieces and Romanesque carvings in Aragon (Zaragoza and Jaca), Burgos (Las Huelgas and cathedral), commissioned by Castilian bishops of Pamplona, the Basque Country (Zumaya and Vitoria) and, mainly, Navarre (Añorbe, Cáseda, cathedral and convent of Augustinian Recollect nuns of Pamplona). In the eighties, once established in his house-workshop in Navarrería Street, other altarpieces are dated, such as those of Aoiz, Obanos, of which some images remain and, finally, the tabernacle, benches and first body of Santa María de Tafalla, which was finished, following the original design by his disciple Pedro González de San Pedro.

The pieces of the Aoiz altarpiece were embedded in a Baroque structure and polychromed, like the one in Cáseda, in plenary session of the Executive Council 18th century. Today we can only fully admire the profiles of Anchieta's gouge in several loose images and in the altarpieces of Añorbe and partially in the one in Tafalla and its tabernacle, which have preserved the colorful polychromy of the late 16th century, the work of Juan de Landa, an excellent Mannerist painter. In the last year of his life, he finished the bench of the altarpiece of San Pedro de Moneo (Burgos), in the chapel of board of trustees of the bishop of Pamplona Pedro de la source, and the Virgin of the Rosary of Navarrete (La Rioja). As with his reference, the divine Michelangelo, death would surprise him in full activity, leaving more than 7,000 ducats in house, estate and receipts to be collected. The balance of a fruitful life is summed up in the eloquent epitaph that he had placed on his tomb: Here lies Ancheta, he who did not praise his own works, nor despised those of others.

Michelangelesque mannerism is a classical-heroic style, designated by the artists themselves as the true manner. It is based on the imitation of the prototypes and compositions of Michelangelo and his disciples and was adopted by the Roman Curia as the official style and visual propaganda of the Tridentine decrees. The Florentine had started, in turn, from Hellenistic sculpture, in which he admired the fusion of dramatism and formal perfection. His sense of beauty, of Neoplatonic inspiration, is based on the adequacy of form to content, so it is governed by unwritten rules that Anchieta knew how to capture as few sculptors. Some of the most evident are the concession to the nude (Christ of the Miserere of Tafalla or ignudi of Aoiz), the anatomical exaltation independent of age or sex, to emphasize moral virtue (Crucified of the cathedral of Pamplona, Virgin of the Rosary of Cáseda, St. Jerome of the Museum of Navarre, St. Jerome of the Museum of Navarre, St. Jerome of the Cathedral of Navarre, St. Jerome of the Museum of Navarre, and St. Jerome of the Museum of Navarre), San Jerónimo of the Museum of Navarre, and mancebos, telamones and various angels), the expressions of terribilità (San Ambrosio or San Agustín de Añorbe), the abundant canvases (Natividad de María de Tafalla) and the eight-headed canon (Christ resurrected as Savior of Tafalla). To represent the intention of the soul and the inner world, he will use different formulas to suggest movement, such as impossible twists (Virgin and Child of Recoletas de Pamplona), declamatory attitudes (Asunción de Cáseda), serpentine lines (San Juan Bautista de Añorbe), displacements of the main topic (Entierro de Cristo de Tafalla), physical and spiritual links (Virgen con el Niño and San Juanito de Obanos), visual counterpositions (Anunciación de Cáseda or San Judas Tadeo and San Bartolomé de Aoiz) and a varied non-verbal language of gestures and hands (Visitación de Tafalla).

In the XXV session of the Council of Trent, the catechetical function of the images and the altarpiece was clearly defined as a history of the mysteries of our redemption, so the attics of the Romanist altarpieces are reserved for Calvary, with Christ crucified dead as the culmination of salvation. In the lower serliana the Assumption-Coronation of the Virgin as mediator is arranged, responding to two types, the erect one with open hands (Cáseda and Añorbe) and the seated one as praying (Tafalla). The stories in relief refer to the life of the Virgin and Infancy of Christ and the Passion, standing out for their emotionality the Miguelangelesque scenes of the Pietà, Lamentation over the dead Christ and Holy Burial. The foundations of the revealed doctrine, which are the evangelists, Fathers of the Church and virtues, are usually placed on the benches, while the apostles, as symbolic pillars, are placed in the interstices. The examples of life to follow are found in the images and hagiographic cycles of the saints. In all the themes, the authority of the pope and the prelates, the value of the sacraments and other Tridentine dispositions are affirmed in the face of the Protestants. The tabernacle is an independent microarchitecture that guards and exposes the Eucharist and usually shows in its doorway the risen Christ, triumphant over death, only the one in Tafalla with its three bodies, paired columns, superimposition of orders and dome is preserved in its entirety.

Recently, we have expanded the catalog of Anchieta's mature work in Navarre with a Romanesque carving of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, which presided over his rural abbey of Ciriza and today is kept in the parish of Azcona(Sarmental, 2, 2023, 51-62). Despite its extraordinary quality, unmistakable style signatures and contemporary polychromy, it had gone unnoticed until now. This classical matron with a heavenly gaze is the first work attributed to the brilliant sculptor in Navarre in the 21st century, when his production seemed to be closed in the previous century and the first in the merindad of Estella, although it must have been executed in the workshop he had open in Navarrería Street, near the cathedral. It was commissioned in 1588 by the abbot Andrés López del Valle, steward and executor of Pedro de la source, bishop of Pamplona, as indicated on a registration of the Mannerist tabernacle that housed it.