"The new chapel erected to our Patron Saint Anne, a true marvel that has admired our Spain and has been celebrated as a wonder by foreign nations". This text, wrapped in rhetoric, saw the light of day in a print critical of the attitude of the bishop of Tarazona, who wished to annex the full jurisdiction of the deanery of Tudela, considering it a "Ginebrilla chica", or place of great debauchery. Its content reflects the state of opinion regarding the complex inaugurated on July 26, 1725.

The vows that the cities made to commemorate and honor the protector saints, against all subject of calamities, had different developments with the passage of time. Some, like that of Saint Saturnino of Pamplona, in 1611, derived in the board of trustees the saint over the city and something similar happened in Tudela with Saint Ana. In 1530, the capital of La Ribera made "a vow to perpetually keep and celebrate the festivity of Saint Anne, every year, in perpetuity, with a very solemn and devout procession and carrying in the procession the holy image of Saint Anne with the illuminations that appear to the mayors and aldermen...". Decades later the board of trustees the saint was an indisputable fact, becoming a sign of identity of the city, which was in crescendo, integrating in its celebration all the elements of the celebration: music, bells, giants, gunpowder, bulls and great sermons.

Among the milestones of that growing devotion, some specific dates stand out. In 1589, the regiment commissioned the bust of Saint Anne Triplex to Juan de Ayuca, according to the model of Blas de Arbizu. Between 1590 and 1591 it was gilded and polychromed by Juan de Lumbier. In 1656, the precious relic of the saint arrived from the cathedral of Zaragoza and was received with triumphal arches and all subject of festivities. In 1680, the town council approved the concession of the board of trustees the old chapel in favor of the city.

It is significant the expression used by the regiment in 1712, in the prolegomena of the construction, indicating the intention to build the "most ostentatious chapel that can be found in the whole region". The context could not have been more purpose in a society in which some cities emulated others in the worship of their patron saints. Pamplona was already well advanced with the chapel of San Fermin (1696-1717) and Estella had just done the same with that of its patron saint Andrew (1699). Tudela's agreement fits perfectly in that environment. Those were times in which the cities competed with their main squares and the chapels of their patron saints. Recently they have been doing so with their soccer stadiums and centers of contemporary art and, during leave average age, they did so with their cathedrals.

Years ago we put the authorship of the project in relation to Fray Bernardo de San José, a tracer of the Discalced Carmelites, who issued a report on the stability of the tower in 1713, when work began on the chapel. Among the Tudela masters who were able to advise on the design, we must not lose sight of José Ezquerra, one of the best architects in the city who had worked on important buildings in Viana and Pamplona. We have been able to document the existence of several projects through the procedural diligences of a lawsuit filed in 1712, in relation to certain amounts that were to be paid for the construction of the complex. In one of the declarations with the arguments of the regiment, it is affirmed that it had been "conceived by master craftsmen of the greatest approval", so that it would have the magnificence and sumptuousness that was desired.

The current chapel was built and decorated between 1712 and 1725, for which various means of financing were arranged, from the collection of alms with a cajeta through the streets, to the formal request to absent Tudela citizens with important political and ecclesiastical positions, without forgetting some municipal taxes, prior to licence of the Real committee. Among the private donations, those of Juan de Mur y Aguirre, in 1716, and the testamentary bequest of the Marquise of San Adrián, in 1723, stand out. The first of these, Juan de Mur, a knight of the order of Santiago, belonged to a noble family and at that time held the post of governor of San Marcos de Arica, in New Spain. The contribution of the Marquise of San Adrián came at a crucial moment, when the complex was being completed and funds were scarce, due to the innumerable expenses incurred for the decoration of polychrome plasterwork.

The construction was carried out in three stages: the first, between 1712 and 1716, in which the site and the layouts were chosen and the stone, plaster and brick materials were planned; the second, between 1716 and 1720, in which the actual building was constructed; and the third, between 1723 and 1725, in which the whole was decorated with plasterwork and the stone plinth and the grille were put in place. Throughout that process, the delegates of the collegiate and municipal chapter were aware of all the details and contracts necessary for the successful completion of the works. Years later, in 1737 and 1751, the altarpiece-baldachino was contracted with Juan Bautista Eizmendi, marble worker, and the sculptor José Ortiz respectively, result in one of the most interesting projects of this type in Navarra, both for its plan and elevations, and for the combination of rich materials, colored jasper, gilded wood and spectacular columns of black marble from Calatorao. The construction of the same was like an ex-voto to remember the decision of the monarch Philip V recognizing the decanal jurisdiction, against the wishes of the prelate of Tarazona.

We know several names of artists from Tudela and Aragon who worked on this ensemble, such as Juan de Lezcano, Juan Antonio Marzal, Juan de Estanga, authors of the stone, marble and jasper pedestal and the masonry. Regarding the plasterwork, its authors could have been Juan de Peralta, one of the most famous sculptors of the first decades of the 18th century, or better yet, José de San Juan y Martín, also from Tudela and author of the disappeared decorative design of plasterwork of the chapel of San Fermín in Pamplona, in 1708.

The chapel of Santa Ana belongs to the so-called "castizo" baroque, due to the role played in its interior by ornament and color, which become the true protagonists, together with a studied light. It is conceived as a centralized organism covered by a monumental dome on drum whose pendentives rest on gigantic foreshortened machones; outline that has been put in relation with the tabernacles of the Andalusian Baroque and that keeps analogies with some Aragonese chapels of the same period. These classical Structures were baroque by a theatrical illumination and, above all, by a lavish decoration of polychrome plasterwork in which flowers, garlands, fleurons, children, angels, curtains and a wide iconographic program aimed at extolling St. Anne and the Virgin coexist, from the machones and pendentives with the holy Fathers and the Evangelists as the true support and foundation of the church, to the close relatives - St. Joseph and St. Joachim - and the kings of Judah, members of Christ's genealogy.

With respect to the altarpiece-baldachin, it is necessary to point out its exceptional nature, both for the materials with which it is built and for the typology and the artist who made it. The final result is a templete, unusual in these lands, not entirely Exempt, like the one in the chapel of San Fermín in Pamplona or the baldachin baldachin of the Cristo de la guide in Fitero, a work from Tudela of Aragonese origin.

The grille, unlike the iron ones found in other places, is a complement to the whole. It is made of azófar and is the work of the brass worker Roque Asín, in 1724. Its gilding and metallic sheen, together with the colored marbles, make the Tudela example one of the most ostentatious of the time.

The set of marble, plaster and polychrome wood was ideal for the Baroque, as an expression of a rhetorical culture and an aesthetic designed to captivate the senses, moving behaviors, in a society in which the means of dissemination were mainly oral and plastic.

We have several testimonies and descriptions of the impression made by the ensemble throughout the second third of the 18th century. In this same newspaper we publish one from 1735 and another from 1739(Diario de Navarra, July 27, 2020, pp. 38-39). In one of them the chapel is compared with great works, concluding that if the saint were not already in heaven "she would choose for the paradise of her delights this celebrated chapel, which has been the admiration of foreign nations that have managed to see it and have praised it on the tongues of all the curious of our Spain" (DiariodeNavarra, July1739).

Times changed and at the end of the 18th century, Ventura Rodríguez, the author of the design of the façade of the cathedral of Pamplona, visited Tudela in 1782. Some prebendaries requested, perhaps with ulterior motives, his opinion regarding the chapel, seeking the reprobation of the whole. Don Ventura replied, diplomatically: "This work is and will be an eternal monument to the piety and devotion of the people of Tudela". One of those who had asked the question, specifically, Don Joaquín Ruiz de Conejares, added on his own in the story, that the chapel was sumptuous in his time, but then it already lacked merit, interpreting the architect's answer, to conclude "that in it generosity shone more than good taste" . There is no doubt that Conejares, with this last expression, identified himself with the classical academic art that, at that time, triumphed among the elites, in tune with the guidelines imposed by the Academy of San Fernando.

These were times of denigration of the traditional baroque. The opinions of the secretary of the Academy, Francisco Ponz, were about to be published in 1785 about other Navarrese ensembles.

In any case, immediately after Don Ventura's visit , the entire chapel was whitewashed, as this was one of the solutions of those captivated by the aesthetics of academicism. The other solution would have consisted of shaving and eliminating all the plasterwork, as was done in other areas. The manager of that whitewashing intervention, in 1784, was Francisco Bazzi, who intervened in other groups in Navarre. The initiative came from Felipe González de Castejón, knight of the Order of Charles III, alderman and promoter of the Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País and its first director. Later, in the plenary session of the Executive Council 19th century, when the smoke from the candles had soiled the ensemble, it was whitewashed again in 1854, remaining in that state until, in 1948, the original colors and polychromy were recovered by Eulogio Oñoro, painter and restorer, former manager and successor of the workshop of José Lamela, who participated in the repair of frames for the Lázaro Galdiano collection and opted for the intervention of some works of the Prado Museum.