Allegory as a form of rhetorical and visual language has been used since classical times. Etymologically, it means "to say something else" or "tospeak differently". Through it, continuous metaphors were made in a system of mental equivalences with two meanings, one literal and the other deeper. In the visual universe of images we usually speak of allegories to refer to personifications of vices, virtues, attitudes, aptitudes, territories ... etc. From the Renaissance onwards, religious speculations were largely supplanted by humanistic erudition and symbolic compositions, in which allegories, emblems and even gods of the Greco-Latin pantheon were given quotation .

The works could be contemplated and enjoyed from an aesthetic point of view by the general public. However, those with a broad humanistic culture could also discover moral reflections, political allusions or religious dogmas. This dual structure of form and substance corresponded to the Horatian principle that required all works of art to combine the useful with the pleasant.

The great codifier of allegories or personifications of vices, virtues, emotions, sciences, aptitudes and attitudes was Cesare Ripa, an Italian academic and erudite humanist who died in Rome in 1622. Under the degree scroll of Iconology, he published in the Eternal City, in 1593, a large repertoire of allegories, with extensive descriptions, inspired by medals and monuments of Antiquity, as well as various literary sources: Hieroglyphica by Piero Valeriano, Emblematum libellus by Andrea Alciato, the Sermon of the medals of the ancients by Sebastiano Erizzo, the Bible and various medieval codices. In 1603 the text was republished in Rome, enlarged with more than 400 entries and many woodcut engravings. In 1611, it was republished in Padua and subsequently translated into other languages. In some editions, images gained space, which made the work more attractive and didactic.

Ripa's repertoire of images imposed itself on the imagination of European artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in Italy, France and Spain. The great artists and writers possessed that book. We know that it was on the shelves of the bookstores of Velázquez, Palomino, Carducho, Pacheco, Preciado de la Vega or Ardemans, among others. Anyone wishing to approach an iconographic reading of the great works of the Baroque should refer to Ripa's work.

In Navarre the presence of the allegories of the theological and cardinal virtues was evident, above all, in what was related to the world of power and festivities, as well as in the reliefs of the Romanesque altarpieces, and even in some earlier and early Baroque ones. Another support were the processional silver crosses. Of all of them we gave an account in a article in this same newspaper(Diario de Navarra, November 2, 2016, pp. 70-71)

Among the allegories that carry his blindfolded eyes are the representations of ambition, error, fierceness, fortune, love, greed, ignorance, justice, faith and prodigality, for other reasons. Ambition, because of its relation to the appetite to prosper justly or unjustly. Love, because of the blindness in which those who love each other are immersed and which makes them seem beautiful what is not. Fortune, because, according to the Greeks, it distributes and denies favors without discernment. Greed, because according to Prudentius Omnis avaritia caeca (All greed blinds, Prudentius). Justice sometimes appears blindfolded, because it must have eyes for no one and because the judge's opinion will always be hidden until the sentence is passed. As for faith, by the definition in the catechisms, which spoke of believing in what we do not see. For error, Ripa states that "they mean that when the light of the intellect is obscured by the veil of worldly interests, all sorts of errors are easily incurred". The same author justifies it in furor as follows: "sample as the intellect is deprived of the light it has when Furor exercises its dominion over the soul, for in truth it consists entirely in a certain blindness of vision and deprivation of the light of reasoning". For prodigality he understands it because it dispenses goods madly to those who do not deserve them and refrains from giving them to the most worthy, "being very reprehensible not knowing how to measure in giving and giving away one's own goods and wealth".

In the heritage of Navarre we have different examples of the faith and the Synagogue or the ancient Mosaic law, which we will now review. In different festivities, we know from their chronicles that some representations were blinded. Thus, in a celebration dedicated by young students to San Fermin in 1756, a parade was organized with several couples, on horseback, with breastplate and trellis, which were allegorizations of the nine cities of the Kingdom of Navarre with their heraldic emblems and their corresponding poems, followed by gods and goddesses of the "Blind Gentility" and biblical heroes and heroines and of the Antiquity.

In Catholic theology, the theological virtues are the habits that God instills in the intelligence and in the will to order man's actions to God himself. Faith, at the head of the other two - hope and charity - is the firm and absolute conviction that something is true.

As might be expected, our heritage, eminently of a religious nature, has preserved numerous images of faith, usually represented blindfolded and accompanied by the cross and, frequently, the chalice and even the Eucharistic host. We will refer, on this occasion, only to when she is blindfolded.

The great pulpit loudspeakers are crowned with his allegorical figure. Thus it appears in those of Fitero, Funes, Errazu, Ujué, Santacara or Villafranca. Sometimes, it tops the exhibitors (Urdiain, Los Arcos, Villafranca) or the great temples, as we see in the one of the Magdalena de Viana or the one of San Fermín de Pamplona.

When it accompanies its companions, hope and charity, it usually occupies the central place. With this prominence it appears in sets such as the silver pedestal of the Virgen del Camino de Pamplona (1701), the round image of the baldachin of the chapel of Christ of the monastery of Fitero (1735), mural paintings of the church of San Francisco de Viana (c. 1715-1720), the parish of Santa María in the same city (1732), the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love de la Virgen del Soto de Caparroso (1775-1776) and the Comendadoras de Puente la Reina (1759-1766), among other examples. In the altarpiece of the chapel of Saint Anne of Tudela (1751), her sculpture presides over the attic and is accompanied by the cardinal virtues. She is blindfolded and holds a cross and a chalice.

One of the emblems for the funeral of Philip V in Pamplona (1746) was copied, as in others, from the models of the funeral of Philip IV in Madrid (1665), composed by Sebastián Herrera Barnuevo, as studied by Professor Azanza.

The allegory of the Synagogue was widely echoed in medieval art in groups where it is opposed to the Church. Generally in the form of female figures, the latter with the cross and the chalice, the former with the Tablets of the Law, the ritual knife of the abolished sacrifices and a broken spear indicating the loss of her kingship. Frequently, we find her blindfolded to show the spiritual blindness and obfuscation of the Jewish people, who persist in their errors by not recognizing the revelation of Christ expressed in the Old Testament nor admitting the Christian principles, with enormous stubbornness. For this last reason, his stubbornness and obstinacy can be accompanied by an ass or a dry tree. Likewise, she is usually represented in an attitude of bowing for having been defeated, in front of the Church, crowned, younger and erect. Sometimes he is replaced by Moses.

On the door of the refectory of the cathedral cloister in Pamplona, a work dated around 1335, we find the representation of the Church and the Synagogue. The latter is blindfolded and holding in her hands some almost lost attributes: the Tablets of the Law and the broken spear.

A few examples belong to the Renaissance century, almost all of them in reliefs or sculptures from the workshop of Pierres Picart. In one of the side walls of Irañeta, where Picart worked with the partnership of his son-in-law Lope de Larrea and Friar Juan de Beaubes, from 1574, a tondo is preserved with the allegory in the form of a bust of a woman with long hair and blindfolded with the Tablets of the Law. The same happens in the altarpiece of the Dominicans of the capital of Navarre, where there is a relief with the same iconography, work of Picart and Beaubes, made between 1570 and 1573.

More significant for its size and visual expression is the large relief of the figure of the seated Synagogue on the bench of the main altarpiece of Eulz, a work made around 1565. In this case, besides having his eyes veiled to insist on the aforementioned contents, he wears a helmet -not a crown- and the piece of a spear. With his right hand he proudly raises the Tablets of the Law, unfolded. In the background a classical architecture is outlined in very flat relief.

In Zuniga's main altarpiece, plumb with the extreme columns of the great Renaissance machine, we find the civil service examination between the Church and the Old Testament. employee On this occasion, to represent the Synagogue, a woman with a threatening gesture and veiled eyes, with a slight blindfold that translates the anger of the character holding the Tablets of the Law, has been carved on her head. Moreover, on her head are carved the horns, typical of the figure of Moses, which, as is known, had its origin in the Vulgate, comparing the luminous rays of the prophet with horns, when he descended for the second time from Mount Sinai, when his face shone: "Videbant faciem Moysi esse cornutam". A defective version of this text caused him to be represented with horns, which were supposed to be present as a symbol of power and strength, in inheritance of the Canaanite gods.

The altarpiece, of great quality, dynamism and expressiveness, was made from 1557 onwards by the notable Vitoria sculptors Juan de Ayala II and his brother Francisco, according to the information kindly provided by Professor Pedro Echeverría, after an unsuccessful contract signed in 1555 with Bernabé de Gabiria.