The 19th century put an end to popular religious practices and liturgical theatre which, on many occasions, had secular roots. Among those traditional customs was the Descent from the Cross in the presence of Mary, an act that generally took place on the afternoon of Good Friday in many parishes and convents, especially those of the Franciscans and Poor Clares. In most cases, only one testimony remains of that ritual: the presence of crucified and recumbent figures articulated in their arms, at shoulder height. In this way, the sculptures were included, like any other character, in the complicated liturgical-theatrical ceremonial of the aforementioned performance. The origins of this act can be traced back to the Middle Ages average, a period to which very beautiful sculptural groups with the topic belong. Its genesis is to be found in the so-called liturgical or sacred dramas, popularised from the 15th century onwards. During the centuries of the Baroque it acquired a spectacular development throughout the peninsula. 

In plenary session of the Executive Council 18th century, the famous Father Isla relates the function, in his Fray Gerundio de Campazas, as follows: "In the afternoon, at three o'clock, the Descent from the Cross. It takes place in the small square in front of the church, weather permitting. The venerable men who represent Saint John the Evangelist, Nicodemus and Joseph of Abarimathias come out, with their towels, hammers and tongs, and two ladders are already set up near the cross in the middle. An image of Solitude is placed next to the theatre with hinges on the neck, arms and hands, which are operated with hidden wires for the corresponding inclinations and movements...".

From that centuries-old custom, we are left with the articulated images, which constitute a singular material heritage, and lead us to another, less tangible, immaterial bequest , transmitted orally, and even recovered some decades ago in some localities.

In the society of the Ancien Régime, where the majority of the population was illiterate, the means of disseminating culture relied on images and the spoken word. As far as the religious and devotional instruction of the people through the spoken word was concerned, there were two elements to be taken into account: theatre and sermons. Theatre and sermons were, along with bullfighting, the favourite spectacles of the time when there was no daily press, cinema, radio or television. With regard to theatre, both mythological comedies and the lives of saints were performed, the latter generally on the occasion of their canonisations. 

People used to attend sermons as if they were attending a party, not only to learn and be instructed or edified, but also to see how the speaker performed, how he gesticulated and modulated his voice, and how he used the rhetoric and allambic that were sometimes the object of admiration and sometimes of mockery. 

The sermon and figurative art worked in tandem, sometimes allied with liturgical theatre, in order to achieve greater persuasion of the audience. In this way, preacher, actors and some sculptures or paintings were associated in a common task, since the former requested a vividly realised image that would enter through the eyes, at the same time as his fiery word penetrated the ears of the audience.

accredited specialization In the representation of the Desenclavo or Descent from the Cross, special mention should be made of the articulated images that were actively involved in its representation development. Crucifixes with articulated arms can be found in the Franciscans of Olite, Tudela, Los Arcos, Corella, Arguedas, Valtierra, Milagro, Cascante, Villafranca and Fitero in pieces from the second half of the 15th century to the beginning of the 19th century.

The sculptor from Arnedo, Pedro Sanz de Ribaflecha, in 1655, made the one for the parish church of San Miguel de Corella, preserved in the altarpiece of its chapel. The contract for its execution stated that the arms would be articulated to serve in the Descent from the Cross, which was carried out in Corella until 1808, when it ceased to be performed "due to inconveniences in the church".

The articulated Christ of the Descent from the Cross from Los Arcos, the work of Ambrosio Calvo (1692), documented by Pastor, also came from La Rioja. It was staged until 1833. In 1846 it was the procurator of the town and of the board of trustees who requested that the traditional custom be reinstated. In his memorial we read: "Could these gentlemen doubt what St. Paul says, that fides ex auditu and that by external signs the incomprehensibility of our mysteries is made sensible in some way? The love of a whole God made man and dying for us, is not within the reach of people little versed in mysticism and the laws of mental prayer; and, at the sight of the instruments and ceremonies that represent the sufferings of the man God, they come to understand the gratitude and good correspondence that is demanded of them". The text is a manifesto that speaks for itself of a people's love for its traditions, but also a counter-reaction to what happened at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, when a purification and purification of customs took place in many ecclesiastical circles, with tinges of a certain Jansenism. In 2004 the function was recovered by the Cofradía de la Vera Cruz (Brotherhood of the True Cross).

The sculptor Marcos de Angós (Fitero, 1667 - Agreda, 1737) was commissioned for the parish church of Cintruénigo by B , after perfecting his art in Valencia, where he is documented between the end of the 17th century and 1728. In the latter year he made for Cintruénigo the images of the Soledad (Solitude) and the Cristo muerto (Dead Christ) with articulated arms. In this case, the image of the Virgin was to take an active part in the performance and was to have the possibility of certain movements, by means of a stage set installed inside her body, as well as having glass eyes that would open and close. The indications in the document leave no room for doubt, when at reference letter the image of the Soledad indicates that it would be "corresponding to her precious Son, denoting the tears that the passage requires, with the greatest perfection and features that art requires, with the liberal movements of head and hands, as well as the necessary action to embrace her Hixo, opening and closing her arms". 

The description speaks of a figure with a large number of movements, a true android. Where would Marcos de Angós have learnt all these procedures? The answer leads us to the aforementioned city of Valencia, where José Caudí (1640-1698), architect, decorator, set designer and creator of automatic figures, was born. It should also be remembered that the use of figures or moving figures or bundles must have been generalised precisely in the Descent from the Cross ceremony, from the second half of the 17th century onwards. A milestone in the use of these automatons took place in Madrid in 1656, when Baccio de Bianco mounted, in the Hospital de los Italianos, a Passion of Christ performed entirely by automatons, an event that caused great surprise in the Villa y Corte. 

position In 1760, the painter Pedro Antonio de Rada, author of the canvases in the chapterhouse sacristy in Pamplona, was commissioned to paint the tomb passage and an image of Saint John the Evangelist for the town of Milagro. It is highly likely that the painter passed the commission on to one of the Ontañón family, who were sculptors established in Pamplona at that time.  

One of the last artists to practice this sculpture subject was Miguel de Zufía from Larrago. When he was eighty-two years old, in 1825, he made position of the Dolorosa and the Cristo del descendimiento de los Mínimos de Cascante, destined for the function of the desenclavo which Salamero described in 1930 as follows: "When on the afternoon of Good Friday the Lenten priest finishes preaching the last word, the "holy men", who are two priests with alb and cincture, representing Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, come out to the presbytery, and they take down the effigy of the Crucified One who has presided over the function, and place it on a coffin which is then carried in procession on special platforms". The ceremony survived until 1964, making it the longest-lived ceremony in Navarre. In 2001 the traditional ceremony was revived.

We have two testimonies to reconstruct the Descent from the Cross that took place in the church of the Franciscans in Tudela during the centuries of the Baroque; the first is taken from a lawsuit, initiated by the ecclesiastical authority, on the occasion of a certain commotion that occurred during the aforementioned function; the second is a text by a French member of the clergy , disseminated by Iribarren and, more recently, by Esteban Orta. His text was published in this newspaper on 9 April 1998. The image of the articulated Christ is kept in the cathedral of the capital of La Ribera.

average The testimonies gathered in the procedural diligences of 1797 offer us an account, which we can summarise as follows: on the afternoon of Good Friday, at 2:00 pm, the leaders of the Venerable Third Order organised the celebration of the Descent from the Cross, "a function capable of moving the hardest and fiercest heart to compunction and pain". One of those gathered there, with little respect, dared to release a lizard or "gardacho" onto the floor of the church, which led to the consequent uproar as word spread that it was a rabid dog. The event seemed extremely serious to the ecclesiastical prosecutor, who considered it to be "an enormous insult committed in the house of God, at a time when all those present must have been in bitter tears at the sight of the aforementioned function". Apparently the lizard was introduced between Josefa Préjano's garments during the sermon of the Soledad, preached shortly before in the cathedral. Shortly afterwards, at the Descent from the Cross function at the Franciscans, the animal came out "through the handkerchief around her neck", landing on another woman and other people who burst into screams and the ensuing uproar.