Recently, in a monograph on drawings in the creative process of the arts in Navarre, we analyzed, in one of its chapters, those drawings that were not intended for the realization of works of architecture, painting, sculpture or sumptuary arts, such as notarial titles, the covers of manuscript books not intended for publication, requests for teachers, letters of profession, administration and lawsuits, complement for the historian's speech ... etc...

In this partnership we are going to deal with other drawings that generally go unnoticed and that, due to their purpose, were not made for artistic purposes of any kind class, not even as a documentary, procedural or official complement, since they were born plainly, arising from the spontaneity of someone who was cleaning up some accounts or was in a classroom or at his desk in his study, taking notes or reviewing a subject.

For obvious reasons, they are not, in any case, works that are aesthetically well cared for, but rather quick expressions of an ornamental nature, not exempt in some cases from what was going through the mind of their executor, on some occasions amusement and on others, memory, imagination or digression.

We will see two examples of many others that have been preserved in different private and public collections. The first focuses on a guide manuscript for learning grammar and syntax and the second on an account book of a female cloister in Estella.

It is not usual to find this subject of documents and we thank from these lines to its owner for having made it available to us. Because of their nature, they were widely used, and even passed from one generation to the next. In what today we would call notes, the contents of two manuals that were fundamental in the programs of study of the Grammar Schools of the Ancient Regime are copied: the books of Elio Antonio de Nebrija and Bartolomé Bravo. Regarding the former, it should be remembered that its contents, written in 1481, became obligatory at the end of the 16th century. It was a book written in Latin and contained a large issue of rules. These two circumstances led the Jesuit Juan de la Cerda to reduce its content and to place a large part of it on Spanish. The other text to which we have referred, that of Bartolomé Bravo, was basically of Latin syntax.

Regarding the chronology, the manuscript was made in the second decade of the 18th century, judging by the handwriting and paper, but, above all, by some of its annotations. It is possible that it belonged to Juan Miguel de Armendáriz, who is difficult to identify, since at that time and at the age of apprenticeship, different people with that name and surname are documented in Pamplona. Among the possibilities would be a Juan Miguel de Armendáriz, a disciple of the outstanding master architect José Ortega.

The mentions in the manuscript to some public figures of the time also lead us to the same dating proposal. Thus, there is a mention of the Provisor of the Diocese of Pamplona, Don Bartolomé García Delgado, who was in the second and third decade of the eighteenth century.

In some chapter beginnings of the manuscript, as well as in its colophons, there are a series of drawings made with spontaneity, ingenuity, candor and simplicity. On the opening page of the codex there is a complex composition that adorns the degree scroll: De Genere nominum ut continetur in regulis generalibus Antonii Nebrisensis. In the upper part we find some fierce dogs around a cross; in the center a tower with three battlements on which fall three bombs fired by a cannon and in the lower part a curious centaur without front legs. The composition may have a symbolic relationship with the emblematic subject , very present in the Grammar Schools, even with some copies of Nebrija's work.

On the page that begins the modes and voices, with reddish, green and black inks, geometric shapes and enormous flowers appear with some dogs in aggressive attitudes. Other covers are decorated, with a profusion of green watercolors, with fragments of houses, urban centers, with their churches and towers of the most important mansions, without missing the usual birds, so used by the calligraphers of the time.

One of the colophons shows a bird attached by one of its legs to a weight, with another smaller bird. In both cases its execution is done with very fast spiral lines. Other colophons have animals as the only protagonists, either an enormous horse with a tiny head, colored entirely in brown, or a lion with a human face and menacing hooves.

Another of its pages recreates the fight between bulls and dogs. It illustrates a bullfighting custom in disuse, but very much in vogue until the 19th century, of which we have evidence in numerous mosaic works, engravings and paintings of different chronology. The dogs of prey held the bulls to surrender them, grabbing them by the ears, at which time a "puntillero" -tirabueyes, in the language of Pamplona-, with a rapier wounded the bull and then finished it off. The tirabueyes, also known as matabueyes, were at the service of the slaughterhouse and were in charge of driving the oxen from the Magdalena neighborhood so that they could be slaughtered during festivals such as San Saturnino and Santa Catalina. In addition to these tasks, they also slaughtered the animals to supply the city's butcher shops.

The simple and straightforward drawing presents a large bull painted in brown, three brave dogs and the aforementioned pointillero with his particular saetas, in both hands, ready to nail the bull. It is an exceptional representation of that spectacle of the Pamplona of the Ancient Regime.

There are numerous documents that corroborate the presence of dogs of prey in the Pamplona bullfights. In 1628, an eyewitness of one of the bullfights of the San Fermín festivities relates the following: "They released another bull and threw him four hounds so small that they looked like gozques, they charged with B bravery, but the bull was so brave, that he turned them all over so many times, treating them so badly that I thought they were dead; but the tenacity they had in their stubbornness was so great that they surrendered to the ferocious animal; dogs can do so much if they get to get mad".

Luis del Campo, in his monograph on Pamplona and the bulls in the 18th century, dedicates a few pages to topic, stating that "theyused to be dogs with flat noses and bulging heads, powerful jaws and sharp teeth, somewhat pendulous ears and vigorous necks, strong bodies and long tails". Likewise, he provides numerous documents data about that bullfighting luck. In the bullfights held in 1717, on the occasion of the transfer of San Fermin to his new chapel, bulldogs were used. In many bullfights, the audience frequently shouted: "dogs! dogs! dogs!", asking the presidency to order the dogs to be thrown to the bull at a certain moment of the fight, in order to accelerate the death of the furious bovine.

A very illustrative testimony we have of the bullfight celebrated in Tudela in 1797, in the chronicle of the abbé Josep Branet, in which he affirms that the last bull "was given as contempt to the dogs that surrounded him at once, knocked him to the ground and tore him relentlessly. One of those who fought in the arena, more furious against this poor bull than the dogs themselves, plunged his sword up to his fist and I saw him smile when blood gushed out of the wide wound he had made and he was struggling against death in the midst of that mob of dogs".

Throughout the 19th century, the fate of the bulls with the dogs was also frequent and this is attested to by the numerous data published in Koldo Larrea's monograph. In 1826 one of the dogs of Leopoldo Francés lost its teeth in its fight with the bulls, for which the owner was rewarded with a little more than 42 reales de vellón. In 1831 the dogs from the slaughterhouse were used, protected with collars and also other bulldogs brought from Bilbao. In 1845, six dogs were thrown to the sixth bull, in a bullfight attended by the Dukes of Nemours. In April 1870 there was still a festejo with a bull and dog fight.

The drawing of the manuscript with this topic of the bull and the dogs would be, therefore, an exceptional representation of Navarre in the XVIII century. In this regard, it should be remembered that in the cathedral of Pamplona we find corbels with the same topic, in a context in which it was customary to throw dogs to hold the bull, biting its ear, a scene that centuries later was recreated by Francisco de Goya himself in one of the engravings of his Tauromaquia (Bullfighting).

Another example of ornamental drawings is a book of management and accounts of the Benedictine Sisters of Estella, made by one of their administrators, from 1754. Throughout some of its pages, we find different designs elaborated with brown ink, freehand, with the financial aid of the compass and the rule. Some are decorative motifs without further pretensions, while others, with an evident symbolism, should be placed in the context of devotions on the rise at that time.

Flowers, buds and birds are the main motifs of the folios where there are free spaces for drawing, either because it is a summary of accounts or to give importance to the accounting content resulting from an exercise. Daisies, tulips and sunflowers are usually sketched. On several occasions, stippling is used inside stems and leaves of flowers and the plumage of curious and fanciful birds.

Two other motifs stand out in the book for their profusion: the cross of Calatrava and the hearts. As for the emblem of the aforementioned order of chivalry, it should be noted that it appeared since the reconstruction of the monastic complex by Fray Prudencio de Sandoval between 1616 and 1619, in numerous letters of profession of the Estella nuns and that they wore the habit until the end of the 19th century, in addition to appearing on several coats of arms of the monastery on the embroidered frontal of the main altar, the work of the Aragonese master José Gualba, between 1761 and 1763.

Regarding the hearts, in a Benedictine convent and in the 18th century it can have a duplicate content. First of all, the heart of St. Gertrude, a 13th century nun of the order, whose iconographic attribute is a heart on her chest in which is the Child Jesus, in reference letter to the famous phrase: "You will find me in the heart of Gertrude". The Christocentrism of her mystical writings is revalued with the heart as a symbol of divine love.

But if that sign was important in the Benedictine monastery, the central decades of the 18th century, when the book is dated, coincided with the spread of the cult of the Heart of Jesus, with the creation of numerous congregations sponsored by the Jesuits. The city of Estella and the Duke of Granada de Ega stood out in that devotional movement. Several pages of the account book show both the heart of Jesus and the heart of Mary. In both cases, the anagrams of the names of both appear on the inside.