In a article of this same newspaper, dated October 27, 2017, we offered some guidelines aimed at the reading of the images distributed in the bodies and streets of an altarpiece. Today we are going to do the same on the elaboration those huge polychrome wood Structures of the Renaissance and Baroque that, by sheltering in their compartments paintings, reliefs and sculptures, are true golden scenographies.

If we physically approach an altarpiece, we will have the opportunity to observe the painstaking, delicate and costly traditional carpentry techniques and see how the pieces were assembled, as well as the preciousness of the polychromies. In final, a whole set of skills and abilities of different trades, which will help us to value these works that also treasure iconographic, use and function and historical aspects. 

The parts of the altarpiece that we do not see, those that hold it to the walls of the chapels, are very interesting, as they show us how they were fitted together with beams, anchors and wooden trusses, as well as the remains of shafts and trapezoids to open and close the displays. 

A hybrid genre

The altarpiece was formed at the end of the Middle Ages, in a gigantic machine of alabaster, stone, marble or polychrome wood that housed painted cycles of the life of Christ, the Virgin and the saints, occupying the entire chevet of the church. At that time it was generally in the hands of the painters who were in charge of their masonry or sublet it.

This custom continued in the 16th century, during the Renaissance, although the sculptural and polychrome altarpieces competed with the pictorial ones and therefore painters were no longer the main protagonists in the contracting of those pieces of liturgical ornamentation. The altarpieces of the time multiplied and adopted varied typologies, but always with the union of sculpture and polychromy with gold and rich estofados.

But it was in the Baroque, during the 17th and 18th centuries, when the genre reached the greatest Degree of plenitude and development. The vibration of its forms, the density of its decoration and the multiplicity of its images gave the Spanish temples of the time, almost always with rigid, inert walls cut at right angles, a sensation of mobility and expansion of space that was structurally lacking. The altarpieces thus provoked an illusionism that was very characteristic of the Baroque.
 

Drawn tracings and contracts

The presentation of a drawing, with the trace of the piece to be executed, was a precondition for the agreement between the parties. Sometimes, several models were requested and once the most convenient one was chosen, the contract was signed, ordinarily before the notary, in which prices, dimensions, materials, bonds, execution deadlines and other aspects were fixed, leaving the masters little freedom to introduce any novelty. Generally, they included the licence, the permit, the candle auction and the agreement itself.

The drawn models usually included not only the elevation, but also the plan. The most complicated ones, such as those of shell altarpieces, with deep concave floors, required detailed drawings, as we can see in the tracing of the altarpiece of the Virgen del Camino in Pamplona in 1766, where its author showed great expertise and knowledge of geometry, at a time when the Academy of San Fernando denounced the lack of preparation of the guild masters. Exceptionally, color drawings are preserved, as in the case of the project by Juan de Ursularre for the Augustinian Recollect Sisters of Pamplona. The drawings preserved are not abundant, but they constitute an interesting material for the study of creativity and the evolution of forms.

issue Ordinarily, contracts were signed with a master who had a sufficient number of journeymen and apprentices in his workshop to undertake the project. However, there was also another way of proceeding, that of those persons or institutions that did not want to leave the responsibility in a more or less known workshop. This is what the Navarrese canon Juan Miguel Mortela, a native of Sorauren, did in the altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception in the cathedral of Calahorra, having a workshop set up to his liking with artisans from Navarre, Guipúzcoa, La Rioja and Aragon, which speaks of his knowledge of the artistic environment in different places. This method of work, on a daily basis, with journeymen noted for their expertise must not have been so infrequent and was used, as we shall see, in Corella.
 

Wood mostly from Roncal

Professor García Gaínza points out that in the Romanist period walnut was reserved for the first works class; leaving linden and pine for less important works. Wood from the forests near the towns was chosen, as was the case in Ochagavía.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most of them were made with wood from Roncal driven by the almadías, although sometimes it was also brought from Soria or Segovia. Let's see some examples of the powerful workshop in Tudela. leave Francisco Gurrea, in the main altarpiece of Caparroso (1691), undertook to use "pine from the mountains of Aragon and that which is brought from the land of Soria, without mixing in moldings, assembly or carving, the pine borders of these Bardenas Reales de Navarra". For the major of Cárcar, José de San Juan was obliged to do it with pine wood "of law of the one that leave by the Aragón river, having obligation the master to cut the mentioned wood in the waning of January, February or March, for being the most to purpose for its duration". The latter was based on the fact that, in those months, the first sap of the year was released and it was essential to cut then and let it dry on the mountain with the top face down, before taking the wood to the sawmill.

The custom of combining pine with poplar can be found in the Tudela focus. This is what José Serrano did in the altarpiece of the Rosary of Ablitas in 1727, with pine "clean of knots and free of resin" and white poplar for the statues and columns. The same was done by the aforementioned master in the altarpiece of Santa Teresa de Fitero (1730), where "good quality mountain pine was used, and it can only be allowed that the columns and some carvings be made of good quality white poplar".

The workshops in Pamplona also used pine for the most part. Juan Barón did it, in 1674, in the altarpieces of the Clarisas de Estella with "quality dry spruce pine". It also prevailed in Pamplona, in the altarpieces of the Virgin of the Rosary of the Dominicans (1687), the disappeared altarpiece of Carmen Calzado (1672) and that of Santa Catalina in the cathedral (1686). During the Rococo period, the same material continued to be used, as can be seen in the contracts for the altarpieces of Goizueta, Elizondo and the Virgen del Camino in the capital of Navarre.

The workshops in Estella combined different woods, mainly pine, oak and walnut. Gabriel de Berástegui made position of the Vidaurre altarpiece in 1674 with the condition that it be made with walnut wood "dry, cut in good weather". Juan Ángel Nagusia did the same when he contracted with other masters from Estella the main altarpiece of Mendigaña in Azcona, in 1713, obliging himself to use walnut wood "dry, cut in good time, without damage from woodworm or any other weed".
 

The processing in the workshop and the division of work: different specialties

We hardly have data of how many artisans were involved in the construction of the altarpieces, because the documents are always signature the manager of the work, the contracting master. Professor Perez Sanchez called a "problem not completely solved regarding the paternity of the altarpieces", according to which the distribution of responsibilities in their construction is always blurred. The process involved assemblers, carvers, carving cleaners and sculpture cleaners, and sculptors for the reliefs and round lumps. The tooling for work consisted of axes, lathes, saws, chisels, hammers, chisels, gouges, clamps, glues and wooden nails in the 16th century and most of the 17th century, which gave way to iron nails in the 18th century.

The assemblers, as specialized carpenters, joined the pieces of the architecture of the ensemble millimetrically, by the procedure of the dovetail - cut at the end of a trapezoid-shaped timber, wider at the head than at the start -, generally using wooden nails. The turners did the same to make the Solomonic columns with their breasts and throats. The carvers, later called carvers, were in charge of all the decorative work, abundant in the altarpieces of the First Renaissance, with grotesques and cartouches and in those of the decorative phases of the Baroque. Finally, for the iconography, the painters were called upon to make the panels or canvases, or the sculptors if the piece had reliefs or round sculptures. internship In the latter case, apprentices and journeymen made all the pieces, leaving hands and heads to the master, as parts that required greater expertise, since they provided expressions to generate empathy with those who contemplated the works. In this regard, the imports from Valladolid of these parts for different sculptures of the high school of the Jesuits of Pamplona are very eloquent.

On occasions, the master who contracted the work subcontracted part of it, as happened in 1597 with the sculptor González de San Pedro, in charge of the altarpiece of the cathedral of Pamplona, who transferred all the architectural work of the piece to the assembler Domingo de Bidarte, except for the Corinthian and composite capitals, which would be left to carvers.

The most revealing data about the division of the work in one of the great altarpieces is provided by what happened in the largest altarpiece of San Miguel de Corella. The commission was received by Juan Antonio Gutiérrez in 1718. The meticulous accounts presented by Agustín de Sesma, superintendent of the work, allow us to know that at the end of 1719 the first body of the tabernacle was placed, in May 1720 the sculptor Pedro Onofre Coll began to sculpt the images of the saints and the little angels and, at the beginning of 1721, all the elements up to the cornice were already assembled, except for the columns, which were being worked on with four pieces of wood brought from Calahorra. Finally, on July 5, 1721, the shell was taken to the church and the following year the columns and the saints were placed. 

Of greater interest are the data referring to the assistants and officers employed by Juan Antonio Gutiérrez who, ranked in order of salary, were: Pedro Onofre Coll, with seven and a half reales; José Andrés and Manuel Ugarte, with five reales; Juan Aibar, Pedro Peiró, José Zabala, Francisco Rey and Salvador Villa, with four reales; Martín de Lizarre, José Oraa, José de Aguerri, Francisco Tudela, José de la Dehesa and Manuel Abadía, with three reales, and the young Diego de Camporredondo, with two and a half reales. It goes without saying that the specialties of all of them must have been one-third assemblers and the rest carvers, given the characteristics of the altarpiece. Some of those names stood out for their projects decades later, especially Pedro Onofre Coll and Diego de Camporredondo. These names and their salaries are exceptional in the panorama of the documentation of Hispanic altarpieces and should be compared to what was mentioned above about the altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception in the cathedral of Calahorra, paid for by the Navarrese archdeacon Juan Miguel Mortela.

In the case of the main altarpiece of Falces, completed to the liking of the town's board of trustees in 1703, we know that seven officials of its author, Francisco Gurrea, who received "one hundred reales de a ocho y cincuenta robos de trigo y siete oficiales suyos a cuatro pesos a cada uno", were involved.
 

The polychrome process

The appearance final of the altarpiece was completed with its gilding and polychrome, which cost much more than the execution of the same, because gold was used as a material. As it is known, the phases of the polychrome process are four and of successive application: rigging, gilding, steaming and incarnation. The time between the completion of the carving work and the application of gilding and stewing favored the drying of the wood, approximately one year. The gilding based on gold leaf from coins and jewelry, which was prepared by the batihojas, was used matte or burnished (polished).

By rule in general, Baroque altarpieces were polychromed with a period that ranged between five and ten years, from the date of completion of its architecture and sculpture, so we can consider the resulting work a unitary art. During the Renaissance, studied in detail by Professor Pedro Echeverría, this coetaneity between sculpture and polychromy is more exceptional due to the costly and time-consuming nature of the stew work. On some occasions it was also normal for the tabernacle and the images to be polychromed first, to later undertake the gilding of the architecture.

When the altarpiece was polychromed with a great distance of time, generally due to economic difficulties of parishes or convents, the artistic unity of the piece suffered, since certain pieces require their own gilding characteristics. In these cases we can speak of a fusion of two different artistic languages, with the polychromy having the final epidermal effect that has sometimes led to misleading evaluations of the altarpiece.