We often hear that today's art has no borders. Regardless of the limits of today's art and the truth of this statement in a global world, what we are going to reflect on in these paragraphs is the role of borders in the art of Navarre in past centuries, both the arrival of external influences and internal borders. Influences, references, confluences, exchanges, diffusion and meeting are concepts that should be applied in their proper measure when calibrating the role of borders, both positive and negative.

On many occasions, the novelties and the great projects carried with them the name of a personage who, because of his preparation, his intellectual background or his travels, was in a position to require for the work he was sponsoring a certain aesthetic that had to be imported, crossing borders. Good examples are the works sponsored, among others, by Bishop Barbazán, Carlos III the Noble, Bishop Zapata, or the men of the 18th century Navarre.

Hispanic and European references in medieval art

The Romanesque centuries had a before and after with the rise of pilgrimages to Santiago. The Romanesque art in Navarre and its manifestations are in perfect harmony with the Hispanic and French influences, which are also evident here. Let us think of the Romanesque cathedral of Pamplona directed by the master Esteban, a master from Compostela and sponsored by a former monk of Conques, Bishop Pedro de Rodez.

The great monasteries of the Cistercians participated in the architectural organization of their monasteries in everything that the sons of Saint Bernard did in the ideal plan that standardized their ensembles throughout Europe.

The centuries of the leave Age average saw the triumph of the postulates of the four periods of Gothic (classical, radiant, international and late Gothic) in buildings, sculptures and paintings that reflected the great French and European works of the time. Thus, the collegiate church of Roncesvalles is a transcription of the highlights of the architecture of the Ile de France (Sainte Chapelle), the Amparo door of the Pamplona cloister has just been related, by Professor Fernández-Ladreda, to the models of Italian painting of the early fourteenth century, although its material executor must have been a master from the south of France, and the tomb of Charles III shows the influence of Burgundian sculpture.

Court customs and manners cross borders from the 16th century onwards.

If in the Renaissance century the novelties of classicism came mainly from Castile and Aragon through great ensembles, artists and patrons, during the centuries of the Baroque it would be the Court the mirror in which its commissions were seen, particularly in painting, as the highest quality was consumed in the Madrid of the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. By way of example, we can cite the altarpiece of the cathedral of Pamplona that copies the outline of the one in El Escorial, the cloister or the tower of Irache that import the Herrerian uses or the convent of the Recoletas and in general the conventual architecture that evokes the Madrilenian models. Berdusán's work opened the pictorial panorama of Navarre to the models of the period of Carlos II. The Royal Academy of San Fernando and the imposition of the academicism would culminate the process of direction of the arts from the Bourbon Madrid, in the second half of the XVIII century, projecting itself in the following centuries.

French master carvers and stonemasons from Guipuzcoa arrived in profusion in the 16th century, in addition to those from Aragon and Castile and those from Navarre who returned after apprenticing in Zaragoza or Valladolid. All of them are examples of border crossings, something that would continue in the following two centuries.

Customs taxed some items such as silver, and even paintings, both in Agreda and other inland points, as well as from abroad, as we have documented with some receipt of the Royal Customs of Vitoria, in relation to a Novo-Hispanic canvas that arrived through the ports of the Bay of Biscay.

A couple of facts about the reception of new products

The documentation of the seventeenth century provides us with a couple of examples of the lack of permeability of the Navarrese capital in the face of novelties. In the first place, the Trinitarians' rejection of the famous painting of the Foundation of their order by Carreño, now in the Louvre Museum. Palomino recreates for us the passage of the submission of the canvas "where all the primors of art are rushed", to the Trinitarians of Pamplona. The latter, when they saw it, "abhorred it so much that they did not want to receive it; and if it had not been for the approval of Vicente Berdusán (painter of credit in that land) they would not have admitted it". The management of Berdusán "painter of credit in that land", in favor of Carreño, was decisive for the acceptance of the painting in 1666. This testimony speaks unequivocally of the reluctance to receive a work that, in the eyes of the friars of that walled Pamplona, was quite novel due to the lack of drawing, the material freedom and the vaporousness.

Few years had passed when the Navarrese Jesuits residing in Peru sent sums of money to build the basilica of St. Ignatius of Pamplona (1664-1694), in the place where the holy founder had fallen. From Granada, the Jesuits wrote for the construction of a triumphal basilica, like the one erected in that city for the Immaculate Conception. From Pamplona they replied whether it would not be better to erect a humilladero to replace the existing triumphal arch. The terms "triumphal arch" and "humilladero" need no comment in the sense of evolution of architectural typologies.

Internal boundaries: the scope of guilds and ecclesiastical geography

It should not be forgotten that along with the borders that imposed taxes on objects of sumptuary arts, especially silverware and in some cases painting, there were other internal borders defined by the ordinances of the guilds, very restrictive, to allow their masters or works to leave the territories of the city or district.

The action of the guilds not only hindered the Tudelan from working in Pamplona or the Estellan from Sangüesa, but also, by virtue of their ordinances, they even confiscated sculptures and paintings from those who wanted to sell them in a fair or store, if they were not guaranteed by a workshop with an examined master at the head.

Of great importance were the borders of the dioceses that divided the territory of Navarre. The arrival of the Landerráin family of stonemasons in Los Arcos and their move to Cinco Villas was favored by the fact that all these territories belonged to the diocese of Pamplona. The arrival of Aragonese masters was also boosted by the fact that a large part of the Ribera Tudelana belonged to the diocese of Tarazona, as was the case with artists from La Rioja and Castile through the archpriesthood of Viana, belonging to the diocese of Calahorra.