The central days of August have had, secularly, a reference in the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin, a feast with multiple expressions of playful, popular, devotional and musical character. It is worth noting that this devotion is held in 91 parishes in Navarre, only below Saint Martin, who has 92, and far above such popular saints as Saint Peter, who has 70, Saint Michael, with 56, or Saint James, with 10.

Its feast, widespread for centuries, has theological support, although not in the sacred texts of the Bible, but in the apocrypha and the writings of some of the Holy Fathers. From the East, where it was celebrated since the 4th century, it passed to the West, where it experienced a great boom since the 12th century. Since 1950, it has been among the dogmas of the Catholic Church.

Its versions in images have had several options, highlighting the topic of the Dormition, which already appears in the Bible of Sancho el Fuerte, although the great examples of the topic are found in the exceptional covers of the cloister of the cathedral of Pamplona, the Gothic altarpieces of the cathedral of Tudela and the panel of the main altarpiece of Tulebras. From the 16th century onwards, the image of the Virgin had its own iconography, independent of her Dormition and the empty tomb next to the apostles, with a great prominence in altarpieces, paintings and other representations in the sumptuary arts. Artists of great category in regional and national art left outstanding examples in the cultural heritage throughout Navarre.

To the feast of the Assumption in the cathedral of Pamplona we dedicated a article in Diario de Navarra (August 20, 2011), where we collected from the medieval testimonies that speak of surveillance of the enclosure with guard put ex profeso, as well as the obligation to attend in its festivity all the vicars and presbyters of the city, until the great celebrations of the feast and the octave in the Modern Age. Music, bonfires, fireworks, fireworks, giants and the ringing of bells, as components of the festivity, took place secularly inside and outside the cathedral enclosure.
 

The sleeping scene since the Middle Ages average

Among the figures of the Dormition, we must highlight the illustrations of the Pamplona Bible, which make up two codices made by Ferrando Petri de Funes and his workshop shortly before 1200. They are a vision of the biblical texts through images. Ferrando Petri was a canon of the cathedral of Calahorra, who reached the degree scroll of royal chancellor between 1192 and 1194. The sacramentary of Fitero, from the beginning of the 13th century, preserved in the file General of Navarra, also contains only one image of the Virgin with angels, to illustrate the liturgy of August 15.

The most important late medieval references of the Dormition are found in the cloister of the cathedral of Pamplona, in the doors of the Amparo and the Preciosa. The first of these has been related, by Professor Fernández-Ladreda, to the models of Italian painting from the beginning of the 14th century, although its material executor must have been a master from the south of France. As in the miniature of the Bible mentioned above and other examples of medieval art, the figure of Christ gathers in his arms a small figure -in this case praying- that represents the soul of the Virgin. The second, a work from the third quarter of the 14th century, has a program inspired by the Assumptionist Apocryphon of John, Archbishop of Thessalonica, which includes nine of the scenes on the cover, and influences of the Pseudo Joseph of Arimathea or the Pseudo John the Evangelist, as well as the Golden Legend, can also be detected.

The passage has very beautiful panels in the altarpieces of the Villaespesa chapel in the cathedral of Tudela (Bonanat Zaortiga, 1412) and in the main altarpiece of the same, work of Pedro Díaz de Oviedo, contracted at the end of the 15th century. Of particular beauty, delicacy and detail is the first example. In the monastery of Tulebras the main panel of its main altarpiece, work of Jerónimo Cosida (1565-1570), represents the same scene in one of the most beautiful panels of the Renaissance in Navarre.
 

The Virgin of the Bed of Tulebras

The presence in Tulebras of this image of the passage of Mary must be related to the extension of the topic in the iconography and liturgy in the territories of the Crown of Aragon, where it has excellent examples, studied by Jesús Criado. It is recorded that in 1623 an Assumptionist confraternity was founded in Tulebras that commemorated the Marian feast, provided since 1633 with its own chapel, erected at the expense of the abbess Beatriz Español del Niño. Nowadays the custom of exposing the processional procession on the day of the Assumption, between the 15th and 22nd of August, still survives. Of the old brotherhood we know that it had a lay origin on the part of the mayor and several neighbors of Tulebras. It enjoyed great success in its first year, also among the nuns who became members of the brotherhood. Since 1651 began to predominate the invocation of the Virgin of the Bed on the more generic of the Assumption.

The image is a work of the early seventeenth century, is presented in a monumental rococo bed, made in 1784, along with a set of six delicate polychrome wooden blandones, decorated with bouquets of flowers. Among its trousseau stands out the mantle embroidered by the nuns in 1892 and some jewelry, such as a pinjante with the Immaculate Conception, from the first third of the 17th century.

It is one of the very few examples that have been preserved in Navarra of this subject of images. We know of only three other images: the first in the closed monastery of the Poor Clares of Fitero (from Calatayud), the second in the Carmen of Tudela and the third in the Carmelites of Araceli of Corella. This last one is of small size and arrived at the cloister, between 1930 and 1947, as bequest of the mother of the Jesuit Martín Sánchez Arellano (1861-1918), director spiritual of the foundress of the Angelicas, saint Genoveva Torres Morales, in whose high school he is considered as co-founder.
 

Great iconographic development since the 16th century

The great Assumptionist flowering developed from the beginning of the 16th century with images accompanied by angels, in different styles, from the late Gothic ones of Marañón to those of expressive models, such as the pictorial one of Cizur Mayor (1538) or the sculptural one of Genevilla (1549-1563), and the countless Romanesque ones of so many altarpieces, at the head of which are those of Santa María de Tafalla (1583), Cáseda (1576-1581) and the cathedral of Pamplona (1597), today in the parish of San Miguel in the capital of Navarre.

The Romanesque aesthetic and its models remained in force throughout the first decades of the 17th century, as we can see in the altarpieces in which realism was introduced, such as in Barásoain or Sesma. Among the fully baroque examples of the 17th century, we should mention the examples of Los Arcos and Viana, the latter being the work of the Calceta sculptor Bernardo de Elcaraeta (1663-1674). In the altarpieces of plenary session of the Executive Council baroque altarpieces, the sets are very important, as is the case in the attics of those of Miranda de Arga (1696) and San Miguel de Corella (1718-1722). Among the models belonging to the rococo period we will mention those of the altarpieces of Lerín (1759) and Goizueta (1760).

Vicente Berdusán left excellent canvases with the topic in the attic of the main altarpiece of the Rosary of Corella and in the parish of San Pedro de Viana (1687), today in the sacristy of Santa María of the same city, copying a Rubenesque composition spread in numerous prints. The Madrid painter Antonio de Castrejón signature a dynamic Assumption of the Franciscans of Olite, dated around 1670. In San Francisco de Viana, the Aragonese Francisco del Plano left a beautiful example in one of his mock altarpieces in the second decade of the 18th century. The painting that presides over the front of the sacristy of the sacristy of the canons of the cathedral of Pamplona dates from 1762, a work by Pedro Antonio de Rada, paid for by the canon from Baztan and archdeacon of the Chamber Don Pedro Fermín de Jáuregui, in 1762.

Among the examples of academic sculpture we will mention the group of Echalar and the one in the portico of the cathedral of Pamplona. The first is signed, in Seville, in 1781, by the sculptor Blas Molner, a sculptor trained in the Valencian Academy and who moved to Seville in 1791, where he became director of the School of the Academy of Fine Arts. The one in the atrium of the Pamplona Cathedral is the work of Julián San Martín, who was awarded the contract, following proposals from other sculptors such as Manuel Martín Rodríguez -nephew of Don Ventura-, Juan Adán, lieutenant director of the Academy of San Fernando, Alfonso Bergaz and José de Folch.

The allusions to the empty tomb survived in some cases of the Modern Age. In the central panel of the altarpiece of the monastery of La Oliva, today in San Pedro de Tafalla, Rolan Mois recreated Titian's model of the upright Virgin. According to the contract he signed with Paolo Schepers and the monks of that abbey in 1571, it was to be done "with the proportion of a large and very polished human body and with high and graceful colors". With these last expressions he meant that the Venetian coloring should stand out in the large composition. His model is repeated in the painting of the chapel of the Cervantes Enriquez de Lacarra family in the church of La Victoria in Cascantina, while in other cases, also linked to Aragonese painting, the Virgin appears seated, following the model of Zúcaro in El Escorial, as in the altarpiece of the Assumption in the monastery of Fitero. In the latter case, the Cistercian abbot, as the donor, is in one of the lower corners of the representation.

In sculptural examples we also find the groups of apostles around the tomb in the lower zone and the Assumptionist group in the upper part, as in the altarpieces of Valtierra (1577-1590), the disappeared one of Cascante (1587-1601) and Villafranca (1786-1789). In all three cases the great scenographic development is striking.
 

Angels and oratory for festive accompaniment

In principle, the expression Assumption is very significant: it is opposed to Ascension, like the passive to the active. That is to say, the Virgin does not ascend to heaven by her own means like Christ, but is raised to Paradise by angels, some of whom are usually musicians. Let us recall a couple of examples. First, the attic of the main altarpiece of the parish of Los Arcos, with the Virgin surrounded by numerous naked angels. The actual sculpture of that altarpiece was the work of Juan de Amézqueta and Pedro de Oquerruri (1655-1677). The second example is the cohort of the same ones that appear in the chapel of the Sartolo in San Jorge de Tudela, where the image of the Assunta is accompanied by various musical angels and others in daring positions. It is a work of Aragonese filiation or perhaps by José Eléizegui, from the first decades of the 18th century.

The feast could not be without the sermons that, in times past, constituted great mass phenomena. St. Bernard writes for the feast: "May our thirsty soul turn to this source, and may our misery have recourse to this treasure of compassion. Blessed Virgin, may your goodness henceforth make known to the world the grace that you have found with God: obtain through your prayers the forgiveness of the guilty, the health of the sick, the consolation of the afflicted, financial aid and freedom for those in danger".

Fray Luis de Granada, when glossing the Gospel of Christ in the house of Martha and Mary, which was sung in Latin on August 15, recalls in the sermon, in language vernacular, the parallelism of the Virgin Mary with Martha and Mary, as model of action and contemplation, respectively. Here is one of his paragraphs: "The gospel that is sung on this day, if we look at it in the letter alone, has no suitability with this feast; but considering the spirit hidden under this letter, none could be sung more to purpose on this day..... This virgin Martha was the most solicitous in serving her Son: if Martha received Him in her house, the Virgin received Him in her womb; if Martha served Him, She gave birth to Him, wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, laid Him in a manger, nursed Him at her breasts with greater care than ever a Mother nursed a Son; she carried Him in her arms to Egypt, worked from her hands days and nights to sustain Him..... The name and official document of Mary suits her no less than that of Martha. How many more times did she than Mary enjoy those divine words at the feet of her Son? With what will would such a teacher teach such a disciple?". Based on this text, Professor Manuel Pérez Lozano, has gone further in the interpretation of Velázquez's famous painting of Christ in the house of Martha and Mary, identifying the older woman pointing her index finger at Martha and Mary with the Virgin Mary, model of active and contemplative life.