The Cortes of Navarre during the Ancient Regime embodied the personality of the Kingdom of Navarre and brought together the representatives of the three states to make laws, vote taxes and ensure respect for the institutions. We have three representations corresponding to that period that, with a certain fidelity, show what the place of one of its solemn sessions was like, as well as a nineteenth-century recreation made under the assumptions of history painting, typical of that century. The first ones are set at conference room Preciosa in the cathedral of Pamplona, conveniently arranged, with the empty throne under the canopy, the seats of the three arms, the king of arms, the music chapel... etc. To this are added other elements such as the image of the cathedral's patroness presiding and the raising of the king on the pavés, graphically showing the ceremony par excellence of the Navarrese monarchy, unparalleled in other peninsular kingdoms: the raising of the pavés.

As it is known, the latter was one of the traditional rites of the monarchy, collected in the so-called regional law Antiguo, base of the regional law General of Navarre. In the rite of access to power of the new monarch, the swearing in of the fueros, the candle of arms, the mass, the offering of alms to the poor and the Church, the uprising by the rich-men and the acclamation by the people followed one after the other. From 1234 onwards, the coronation and the anointing, which were practiced in other kingdoms, would be added.

It should not surprise us that, as the cover of the public-legal corpus, the rite of the raising on the pavés was chosen as a recreation evocative of the origins of the Kingdom, where the commitment or pact between the knights, the nobles and the king was made clear. Its historical antecedents lie in the recognition of Sancho Ramírez by the distinguished knights of Pamplona in 1076, although Moret traced it back to the year 716. It is an inclusion of a medieval rite, in the atmosphere more typical of the centuries of the Modern Age. In final, an image with deep political significance that must be included among the examples of visual constructions that encompassed the past with the moment in which they were made.

The first engraving in 1686

It is no coincidence that the first engraved representation of the institution accompanied a legal text of the Fueros, together with a compilation of laws from 1512 made by Francisco Chavier, based on a commission from the Diputación del Reino with clear intentions of defending Navarre's own regime. Professor Floristán Imízcoz has shown how the elaboration of the work of Moret and Alesón, together with the compilation and arrangement of the fueros and laws of the Kingdom by Chavier, were a very clear exponent of an awakening of the conscience of Navarre, in the fields of history and law. The rescue of a glorious past, as the foundation of a renewed "foralism" was the intention of the Kingdom when it ordered the famous Jesuit to write the Annals essay , which would henceforth be the basis of all the histories of Navarre until the twentieth century.

Chavier did not limit himself to a meeting of legal provisions from 1512, as he made three contributions: a rich prologue about the Navarrese fueros, the engraving and the print version of the regional law General. In the prologue he explained the symbolism of the royal oath-taking-coronation of 1494 with other documented late medieval antecedents, and illustrated it with the engraving in which Charles II is figuratively represented, standing on the coat of arms in the middle of the three arms or estates. In this way, the legal identity of the kingdom is based on the past, idealized, saving the bankruptcy of the conquest and incorporation of Navarre to Castile. The idea was to recreate the past in an abstract way, reviving it as an argument.

The author of the composition, who signature with a monogram on the print, we identify him as Don Dionisio de Ollo, secretary of the ecclesiastical court, who was married to María de Guesa and held the degree scroll of lord of the palace of Torres. He possessed a good Library Services and worked, according to his own statement, in "drawing and some other curiosity". Dionisio de Ollo must have dealt with artisans of different specialties in Pamplona and countless projects and tracings would pass through his hands due to his position in the ecclesiastical court, since 1654. To his hobby as an engraver, we must add other works also related to the world of design, since Don Dionisio was the legatee of all the prints and drawings owned by the Flemish painter Pedro de Obrel, author of the paintings of the altarpiece of Salvatierra de Álava, who dictated his will in Pamplona, in 1671.

In the composition, together with the three arms of the Cortes, the canopy and the decoration of the cathedral's conference room Preciosa stand out, enriched with rich tapestries and Solomonic columns. The model of the latter can be related to the engravings that illustrate Juan Caramuel's work on oblique architecture, published in 1678, which contributed so much to the baroque style of the Hispanic altarpiece. The seats where those called to court sit are of rich invoice and decorated with geometric and animated motifs. The king of arms has great prominence, with his dalmatic or coat of arms bearing the coat of arms of Navarre. His functions are known from the programs of study of M. P. Huici and I. Ostolaza.

Most of the knights wear the golilla that replaced the traditional lechuguilla in the neck since 1624, by virtue of the pragmatic on dresses. It consisted of a cardboard support and white canvas starched on it.

The king wears a colorful mantle with embroidery of castles and lions and lined with ermine, which was associated with purity of intention. The royal crown (dignity and authority), the scepter (political power) and the orb (power and justice) are the elements of his status.

The chapel of music arranged to sing the Te Deum appears next to the altar, distinguishing the organist in front of his instrument with open doors, in which can be seen both the canonical or façade pipes and the typically Hispanic battle trumpet, the chapel master, a bass player and several singers.

In the 1766 edition of the Annales

The thirty-first book of the Annals in its illustrated edition of 1766 incorporates, as we read in its registration the topic: "It is raised in the Coat of Arms the King Carls 3 of Navara by the Rich Men". It is perhaps the only scene that had for those dates an iconographic precedent, in the great engraving to burin of Dionisio de Ollo that illustrates, as we have seen, the work Fueros del Reyno de Navarra, of A. Chavier (1686). The preparatory drawing by the Aragonese master José Lamarca and the state test are preserved. It is a simplified version of the above-mentioned model by Ollo from the previous century.

Moret describes the uprising on the pavés, after narrating the rites with the crown, the scepter and the sword with this paragraph: "The said deputies of the nobility and of Pamplona raised the shield to King Carlos shouting three times Real, Real, Real. And at the same point, being the king raised on his royal coat of arms, he poured coins everywhere, recently beaten for this attempt and before he came down from the shield, the cardinal bequest and the bishops of Pamplona and Tarazona came to him and led him to an elevated royal throne that was prepared with great magnificence, where they seated him and dismounted him from the shield and the prelates said other prayers proper to the enthronement. After this, immediately, the bishop of Pamplona began to sing the Te Deum Laudamus and continued singing the whole hymn in alternating voices the bishops and prelates, which was followed by the joyful acclamations and applause of the three States and people who were present in great issue ".

A scholarly version by Manuel Albuerne in 1815   

The engraving by Manuel Albuerne, with a drawing by Antonio Rodríguez, carries the same message as the previous ones. It appeared in the edition of the Fueros de Chavier, published in Pamplona in 1815, although on this occasion the forms have varied greatly, with respect to the previous ones, as the engraving belongs to academic models, in accordance with the prevailing aesthetics of the time. The plate or matrix is preserved in the file General de Navarra.

The inventor of the composition, the painter Antonio Rodríguez (Valencia, 1765- d. 1823), was trained at the Academy of San Carlos in the city of Turia. In 1786 he moved to Madrid, entering the Academy of San Fernando, obtaining in 1790 a second award and the appointment of Academician of Merit in 1795. Rodríguez must have relied on a drawing sent from Pamplona or on Don Dionisio de Ollo's own version, transforming it to the aesthetic tastes of the time, eliminating the more baroque scenography of the seventeenth-century version. The engraver Manuel Albuerne was trained at the Royal Academy of San Fernando, where he made various prints reproducing famous works of art. He collaborated with the aforementioned Rodríguez in the Historia de los trajes and in 1808 he engraved the portraits of the guide de Forasteros. By 1815 he had already worked on other commissions that came from Navarre, such as the great devotional print of the Virgins of the Miracle and the Remedy of Luquin (1797-1798).

The print, fruit of the partnership of these Valencian masters, is cold and academic, although its outline is similar to that of 1686. The walls appear empty without any ornamentation class, as corresponds to an interior of subject classicist. The altarpiece of the Virgin presents a severe architectural order, while the symbolic king does not allow for concrete identification. In the costumes of the nobles who raise the pavés, unlike the seiscentist engraving, they wear the traditional lechuguilla of the rulers of the centuries of the Modern Age in Tudela, Pamplona and other towns.

The recreation of the Cortes in the Throne Room of the foral palace. 1864

The canvas that, along with others of historical genre, is located in the throne room of the palace of the Diputación, today the Government of Navarre, has a very different character from the previous representations. In an area linked to the collective report , the Cortes were once again judged as one of the most identifying institutions. However, the setting sought in medieval times is typical of the painting of those times, as evidenced above all by the costumes of those who appear in the scene. As for the topic, it should be noted that the raising of the pavés occupies another of the paintings in the salon because it is a ceremony and rite typical of Navarre and, therefore, it was no longer necessary to show it, as in the examples of the Modern Age, in a meeting of the Cortes. In the third edition of the Fueros de Chavier of 1869, commissioned by the Diputación to Pablo Ilarregui and Segundo Lapuerta, with a purification of the text of inaccuracies and manipulations, the inclusion of the image of the Cortes of Navarre next to the historical event of the uprising on the pavés, so contrary to the new national sovereignty and that nobody pretended to restore in its primitive fullness.

The author of the painting, Francisco Aznar (Zaragoza, 1834-1911), became position of other paintings of the same salon and was a history painter, engraver and illustrator. He trained at the San Luis Academy in the Aragonese capital and at the San Fernando Academy in Madrid with Federico de Madrazo and Carlos Luis Ribera. In 1854 he went to Rome as a boarder and there he met Johann Friedrich Overbeck. In the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts he obtained accredited specialization honorary in 1860 and 1867.

The landscape format of the composition gave the painter the possibility of incorporating numerous elements, among them the silver voting urns of the Cortes that appear on the table of those who register conference proceedings and act as secretaries. The urns were made in 1675 by the silversmith José López Calvo. A large throne under a canopy shelters a queen accompanied by a lady, the royal standard also occupies a privileged place. The members of the different estates seem to dispute about something that is read to them by a dignitary. The walls of the room are decorated with large tapestries in whose registers unidentified scenes are guessed but undoubtedly with feats and deeds by the presence of knights, horsemen and weapons.