The reception of the historical fact of the Battle of Navas in later centuries, in addition to historiographic texts and texts of identity transcendence, has echoes in drawings, engravings and, above all, in painting, images in final, with great importance, taking into account the power of these images in a mostly illiterate society, where knowledge and thought were transmitted mainly by oral and plastic means. The literary support for most of the representations is to be found in the texts of Ximénez de Rada, some medieval chronicles, the Annals of Navarre by Father Moret and the General History of Spain by Modesto Lafuente.

If we had to synthesize, we would say that, in general, there are three great iconographic models. The first, which turns the battle into an icon of providentialism, with the preponderance of King Spanish and Archbishop Ximénez de Rada, and which incorporates the miracle of the cross in the sky. The second must be related to the ideals of 19th century history painting, with enormous compositions dedicated to the glorious and outstanding episodes of the past, carried out with large doses of reality and supposed veracity. Finally, the third, more linked to Navarre and the epic of Sancho VII the Strong, we find it from the eighteenth century in works linked to the foral community.

Two early examples in two Cistercian monasteries

It is no coincidence that these two sets are located in the monasteries that keep the remains of the king Spanish and the archbishop, and that they were made in a context of Turkish threat and the battle of Lepanto (1571), seeking an affirmation between the latter battle and Las Navas, as an affirmation of the Christian world against the Muslim world. In the monastery of Huerta, where the remains of Ximénez de Rada rest, the fresco decoration of the main chapel was done with a cycle of historical-religious character, work of the Genoese painter Bartolomé Matarana in 1580, which has been studied by Ibáñez Martínez. It narrates the scene prior to the battle, with the blessing of the troops by the archbishop before the king Spanish, with the protagonism of the Toledan canon Domingo Pascual, who carries the cross-script. The same characters take on singular importance in the representation of the battle itself.

In the monastery of Las Huelgas in Burgos, pantheon of Alfonso VIII of Castile and foundation of Tulebras, is kept the so-called banner of Las Navas and an enormous painting of the battle executed by Jerónimo and Pedro Ruiz de Camargo, in 1594. In the center of the composition are Alfonso VIII and Archbishop Ximénez de Rada and at their sides the monarchs of Aragón and Navarra. As in Huerta, the miracle of the cross over the air is not present, as it will be in the following cases.
 

The Triumph of the Holy Cross: from the 16th century to academicist painting

The portentous fact of the appearance in the air of a resplendent cross of various colors at the beginning of the battle, which terrified the Christians and terrified the Almohads, had great acceptance in painting since the sixteenth century. The first medieval text in which that portent is recorded is the Chronicle of twenty kings, written between 1270 and 1289, where quoting Ximénez de Rada, it is stated that "a very bright cross of gold of many colors appeared in the sky and the Christians saw it and took it for a good sign", although the archbishop does not say anything about it. Later, some accounts such as that of Argote de Molina in the second half of the 16th century and other apologists of the Holy Cross insisted on the same thing. The fundamental fact that favored the representations with the miraculous appearance of the cross was the official document of the feast of the Triumph of the Holy Cross instituted in 1573 to be celebrated on July 16 in Spain and the New World by decision of Gregory XIII, commemorating the battle.

In the Town Hall of Baeza is kept a painting from the end of the 16th century, the work of Juan Bolaños el Viejo, a painter who died in 1590. The painting is an adoration of the Holy Cross by the archbishop and King Alfonso VIII and Archbishop Ximénez de Rada, although the battle is represented in the background with the shields and banners of the military orders. In the church of Santa Elena, erected on the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love of the Holy Cross that commemorated the battle of Las Navas, existed until a few decades ago another similar painting, attributed to Blas de Prado, of which Francisco Ponz gives an account in his Viaje por España and that was ordered to be restored by the archbishop Lorenzana, taking it to Toledo in 1788, at the same time that he ordered to make a copy of the same one, that is conserved in the primate cathedral. To the second half of the 17th century belongs a painting from a private collection with the same topic. It represents the king Spanish and the archbishop together with the army before the vision of the cross. As a good baroque work, it is executed with rich color and vaporous technique and is one of the few that focuses on a few characters.

The collegiate church of San Miguel de Alfaro has a beautiful chapel with an exquisite endowment, fruit of the patronage of the Pérez de Araciel family, particularly Don Manuel Pérez de Araciel y Rada, Archbishop of Zaragoza between 1714 and 1726, who is buried there. Among his brothers were Fray Leon de la Madre de Dios, definitor of the Discalced Carmelites and Don Vicente Perez de Araciel, (1657 -1734) who belonged to the committee of Castile, was Regent of the committee of Italy and presided over the committee of Orders. The family was related to Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, so that in one of the walls of the enclosure the battle of the Navas de Tolosa is represented, in a great painting of beginnings of the XVIII century and Aragonese filiation. In this case, the arms of each of the kingdoms accompany their kings, being present those of Navarre next to Sancho el Fuerte.

Painters of the category of Maella and Bayeu, already in the second half of the 18th century, confronted the topic, with degree scroll precise of the Triumph of the Holy Cross. Ramón Bayeu's painting for the main chapel of the church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Zaragoza (1785) has as protagonists the canon of Toledo with the raised cross and the archbishop and the king at his sides. It includes in the detail of the cross shaft, the literary sources that referred how the cross-bearing canon was never wounded, although they tried to, shooting spears and darts at him. The latter remained stuck in the shaft of the cross without any of them touching the canon, all of which would have encouraged the Christians, certifying them about the heavenly financial aid in the business.

As for Maella's painting of the Casita del Príncipe in El Escorial, which was also configured as a triumph of the Holy Cross, the Library Services Nacional and the Real Library Services preserve preparatory drawings from 1788. The battle as such is associated with the appearance of the cross, brought by angels to the admiration of the king and the archbishop.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: a sea change in history painting

Carlos Reyero carried out, in his monograph on the historical image of Spain in the second half of the 19th century, an exhaustive review of the depiction of the Navas in the painting of the time, pointing out as source literary the History of Modesto Lafuente, that stops in the feat of Alvar Núñez de Lara with the banner of Castile, affirming that "when penetrating in the circle the intrepid horsemen find that the king of Navarre has already preceded them, that breaking the chain by another flank had entered perhaps before that of Lara. Several Aragonese tercios followed the Navarrese, as the Castilian standard-bearer was followed by the Castilians ....". If up to now we have seen that everything related to providentialism prevailed in the images, evidenced in the appearance of the cross, in the 19th century and, to a lesser extent in the 20th century, aspects more related to the war event itself will prevail, closely following the presuppositions of veracity and property of the aesthetics of the moment.

A little known canvas was painted in 1817 by the French painter Horace Vernet (1789-1863), with the horseman in the foreground playing a leading role. The large version by Francisco de Paula Van Halen, currently in the Senate, dates from 1864, although the aforementioned painter had depicted the same war event in 1846. The large painting was acquired by the State in 1865 and passed to the upper chamber in 1879. Its importance lies, according to Reyero, in the fact that it presents an overall view with an infinite number of characters and numerous war scenes.

Antonio Casanova's vision focuses on the harangue of King Spanish Alfonso VIII to his troops, surrounded by the archbishop and numerous warriors on horseback and on foot. It was a work that was highly praised and received honorable mentions. However, the most celebrated painting at national level with the topic was the one of the young Burgos Marceliano Santamaría, made in Rome between 1891 and 1892 and represents the moment in which Alvar Núñez de Lara makes the banner tremble and breaks the barrier of the colored warriors that surrounded Miramolín's tent. The composition obtained distinctions and the medal to be taken to the exhibition Colombina of Chicago. Don Pedro Madrazo and other critics praised the composition, although others doubted about the choice of the subject and the qualities of some of its parts. Other painters who also tackled the scene, related by José Mª Muruzábal in Pregón Magazine, were Ramón Vallespín, José Mongrell, Inocencio García Asarta and Javier Ciga. The latter also made beautiful designs for the commemorative diplomas of the VII centenary of the battle.
 

In Navarre: from the Annals published in 1766 to the vision of Ramón Stolz

José Lamarca, a painter and engraver from Zaragoza, was in charge of the illustration of the headers of the eighteenth-century edition of the Annals of Father Moret. Book XX shows the battle of Las Navas and it shows two kings at the head of an army fighting against the infidel enemies, while in the upper area another monarch -Sancho el Fuerte of Navarre- with his soldiers and horses invades the Almohad tent or palenque, breaking the chains that surrounded that place with enormous maces, while the Almohads fight unceasingly to protect their sovereign. The text of father Moret contributes the textual source of the graphic composition when narrating the development of the warlike fact and affirms that the Navarrese king took the advance party and attacked against the palenque hitting "reciprocally the chains with iron maces that they had prepared, and with the repetition of the hard blows they falsified them and made them jump so that the king could with few at the beginning and then many, to whom his risk hurt, put the horses inside the chained one".

By the middle of the 18th century, the feat of the chains by Sancho el Fuerte had been incorporated into the texts for more than a couple of centuries. The Prince of Viana, in his Chronicle, narrates the taking of the chains and the gift of them to several Navarrese temples. Subsequently, the intervention of the Navarrese monarch was magnified with more colorful versions, which became part of the collective imagination. At the beginning of the 17th century, one of the most cultured men of the kingdom, the sub-prior of the collegiate church of Roncesvalles and canon Juan de Huarte (1550-1625) would write about the intervention of the king himself and the harangue to his soldiers after the feat.

In the throne room of the foral palace the topic de las Navas occupies one end of the room. It is the work of Francisco Aznar (1864) and in it we find the Navarrese king on horseback, followed by his army, preparing to break the chains of Miramamolin. In the other part of the painting, a dead horse in the foreground and several wounded soldiers give way to the Muslim troops in the background. As has been repeatedly pointed out, the composition fulfills its representative function, despite its compositional, color and figure conventions.

In addition to painting, other arts also reflected the battle, such as the tapestry of the Provincial Council, made in 1950-1952, or the stained glass window of the capitular conference room of the collegiate church of Roncesvalles, a work of the prestigious Maumejean House (1906). The tapestry and its pictorial model have been studied by Javier Zubiaur. The painting entered the Museum of Navarre in 1966 from the studio of its author, Ramón Stolz Viciano (1903-1958) and served as model for the tapestry woven under the direction of Vicente Pascual Licerán at the School of Arts and Crafts in Madrid, commissioned by the Regional Government of Navarre in 1950. The scene, grandiose in its conception, following the models of baroque tapestries, is framed by two enormous Solomonic columns and a rhetorical theatrical drapery. Its center is occupied by the victorious Navarrese king mounted on a rearing steed, on a troop of Senegalese soldiers, preparing to download their maces on the chained enclosure that defended the heart of the Muslim troops.