Juan de Garaicoechea y Oiz was one of the most outstanding artists in the architectural panorama of Navarre in the last third of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century. In the course of his professional career he acted as a master stonemason at the head of numerous building companies, which he combined with his facet as a tracista, carrying out some of the most avant-garde vaulting projects in Navarre at the end of the 16th century.

Little is known about the biography of Juan de Garaicoechea's staff His building career allows us to identify him as one of the prolific stonemasons from the Baztan Valley, experts in stone carving, who were grouped in itinerant crews, formed by the master, journeymen and apprentices, where a teaching internship of the official document was carried out. Groups in which it was usual to find several members belonging to the same family, since normally the work was passed from fathers to sons, or from uncles to nephews, prevailing in this way the professional endogamy, which we can also apply to Garaicoechea, belonging to the lineage of the Oiz, natives of Gartzain.

The earliest news located so far of Garaicoechea belong to his period as a master stonemason, which he carried out by contracting the direction and execution of constructions, mainly of a religious nature. Among them we mention his work on the churches of San Martín de Berroeta (1583), Santa Cruz de Elbete (1588), San Gil de Eugui (1590) and San Esteban de Zubiri.

In August 1591, when he was living in Elizondo, he contracted the enlargement of the Wayside Cross and chancel of the parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Lerín, in agreement the design previously provided by Amador de Segura, an artist with a workshop in Viana, and the Genoese Juan Luis de Musante, master builder of royal works in Navarre. A temple in which he materialized one of the most genuine exponents of Renaissance architecture in Navarre, closing the main chapel with a venerated shell, today hidden behind the Baroque main altarpiece (fig. 1), which is preceded by a half-barrel section, with coffers and rosettes in its interior, and the side chapels attached to the chancel by means of diamond-pointed cupolas with diamond points over galloned trumpets (fig. 2). These solutions are exceptional in the architectural panorama of 16th century Navarre, and reflect Garaicoechea's assimilation of new forms of vaulting of classicist inspiration, spread by the architectural theory of the Italian Renaissance, such as the dome collected by Palladio in The Four Books of Architecture (1570) with the drawing of the Pantheon in Rome.

In addition to contracting the execution of different factories, the good work of Garaicoechea also led him to supervise the buildings made by other colleagues of the profession, in order to rule on the execution of the same agreement what was established in the contract of the work, issuing the corresponding reports. Thus, in July 1593, he went to Ziga, together with the stonemason Juan Martínez de Bulano, as masters and officials in the art of stonemasonry and geometry, to supervise and estimate the works that Martín and Juan de Urrutia were undertaking in the church of San Lorenzo. These inspection tasks allowed him to collaborate with some of the most renowned artists of the architectural panorama of Navarre, such as the ecclesiastical overseers of works of the bishopric of Pamplona, with whom he returned years later to check the progress of the works in the parish church of Ziga. First, in July 1597 with Miguel de Altuna, examining the galloned veneration of the main chapel and the two venerated pendentives, which is preceded by an arch with rosettes, and the vault of terceletes with three concentric circles around the pole that closes the space of the Wayside Cross (fig. 3); and, later, in August 1603 when he visited the work together with Francisco Palear Fratín.

Like the vast majority of master builders and stonemasons who worked in Navarre during the 16th century, Garaicoechea used ribbed vaulted solutions in the late Gothic tradition to close the construction of the churches he was in position of. This can be seen in the aforementioned church of Berroeta, both in the chevet and in the three bays of the nave, in which concave-convex cambered ribs are added over an outline of a five keystone vault, giving rise to a more complex design .

However, this craftsman, as happened with some other master masons from Baztan, differed significantly from the rest by using stone enclosures in his masonry, specifically in the apsidal space. This is the case of the church of San Martín de Gartzain (fig. 4), which he contracted in 1594, a factory in which he was still busy in 1601, when he signed a new contract due to the delay of the works, which were completed in 1611 by Juan de Garaicoechea y Echebarren.

This singularity of the vaulted chevet with a stone galloned shell is also present in other churches in the Baztan Valley, such as the aforementioned parish of Ziga and Lekároz, which makes them participants in the assimilation of classicist Renaissance forms, by using an avant-garde covering in the context of Hispanic architecture of the Renaissance. Solutions that were being undertaken by stonemasons working in the 16th century in the most artistically advanced centers of the peninsular territory, under the orders of outstanding architects such as Diego de Siloe, Jerónimo Quijano or Martín de Gainza, among others.

The realization of this subject of vaulting demanded a high knowledge in stereotomy, that is to say, the necessary technique in the cutting of the stones that allows its application in the construction, as it appears in the Libro de traças de cortes de piedras de Alonso de Vandelvira, in one of whose sheets explains the way to undertake this covering of concha avenerada. To execute this subject of roofing, the master masons had to have a great knowledge of geometric design , since it was necessary to have enough skill to develop the conical surfaces in a horizontal plane, for which they used patterns designed with a subject of a square called baivel, which Garaicoechea mastered to perfection.

In the artistic panorama of 16th century Navarre, only the most qualified master builders had the ability to design traces, putting on paper or parchment the theoretical conception of the architectural project . In fact, training in design was one of the fundamental elements, together with the knowledge of artistic theory, which defined the professional status of the Renaissance architect, in this case the architect, as opposed to the traditional master mason and mason, considered a mere craftsman who worked on site with practical training, as Alberti or Diego de Sagredo expressed in their writings. To devise the layout, the plans, meant, therefore, to exercise this new concept of master planner, independently of the subsequent direction and material execution of the factory, which could only be carried out by the most competent professionals, endowed with an A to carry out measurements, calculations and designs to scale, capturing in each sample the most appropriate solution for the architectural project in question.

As a graphic example A Juan de Garaicoechea's gifts for artistic creation in the field of architectural drawing, we present the design he provided in 1596, together with Juan de Aguirre, a resident of Larraga, for the church of Santa María Magdalena de Ablitas (fig. 5), preserved in the Royal and General file of Navarre (AGN, Fig_Cartografía_N. 326), a project that was not carried out in the end. The proposal of the stonemasons, drawn on a sheet of laid paper in sepia ink (43x30 cm), which they both initialed, consisted of enlarging the existing church, with a single nave and chapels between buttresses, by the space of the chancel through the Building of a new Wayside Cross and polygonal apse. In the case of the Wayside Cross they delineated ribbed vaults, formed by diagonals, tercelets, straight ligatures and curved ribs that form concentric circles of different sizes traced around the pole, a subject of vaulting that, for example, is similar to the one built in the Wayside Cross and chancel of the church of San Lorenzo de Ziga, works that Garaicoechea himself supervised in 1593, and that perhaps he could have taken as a model. In the case of the three-sided polygonal chevet, as opposed to the usual ribbed solutions used in such advanced chronologies of the 15th century in Navarre, the masters opted for a more innovative vaulting, the galloned venera, a solution that Garaicoechea had already put in internship in the main chapel of the parish church of Lerín, when he was in charge of the enlargement of this temple in 1591 for the space of the chevet, or in the headwall of the parish church of Gartzain, which he undertook in 1594. The plan has its continuation in a body of three naves, of greater width the central one than the lateral ones, separated by exempt cruciform pillars, without determining the vaulting, with a tower of quadrangular plant arranged to the feet of the left side, approach that did not correspond with the planimetric reality of the existing temple in Ablitas at the end of the 16th century, of a single nave with chapels between buttresses. For this reason, the planners took advantage of this space to write the measurements of the enlargement to be made on the front of the church, indicating the measurements of the supports, the arches separating the Wayside Cross and the chapels attached to it.

We hope that future research on this outstanding architect from Navarre will reveal new data that will allow us to fill in his biography in the staff and professional field.