In 1948, Julio Caro Baroja published a article in the magazine Príncipe de Viana graduate "Arte e historia social y económica". In it he analyzed some works of Navarre's heritage in their socioeconomic context, specifically a relief of the doorway of Santa María de Olite and some details of the choir stalls of the parish of Isaba. In the text he reflected on the conditioning factors of artists and artisans when working and nature as an observation source , while wondering about the countless motifs of inspiration in the reality of everyday life. All of these themes were suitable for reproducing everyday life and were easily understood by a simple audience. Thus, biblical scenes and scenes from the lives of saints were reproduced according to criteria of great realism.

By examining the numerous works of art that our heritage treasures, it is possible to make very precise observations in order to reconstruct the work, leisure and daily life in the different periods.

Agricultural scenes: from Genesis and medieval mensarios to saintly farmers

A farmer pruning the vineyard is found in the early thirteenth century corbels of the Magdalena of Tudela along with other representations of other trades and the devil himself, implying that the work is a consequence of the triumph of Satan and a consequence of original sin, obeying a negative interpretation of the trades represented, as Esperanza Aragonés pointed out in her study on the image of evil in the Navarrese Romanesque.

The text of Genesis also inspires works such as the capital of the door of the Judgment of the cathedral of Tudela, from the first third of the 13th century, with Adam with the hoe and Eve spinning. The doorway of Santa María de Olite, belonging to the radiant Gothic, has a very descriptive passage of Adam tilling with a radial wheel plow pulled by two oxen or cows, which was the subject of the aforementioned study by Caro Baroja. Adam wears a short tunic with free sleeves, high boots and a hood, with one hand he holds the plough and with the other he presses the ploughshare to make it penetrate the earth. Adam and Eve in their labors will be repeated in the following centuries. An example of this is the painting from the palace of Oriz from the middle of the 16th century, today in the Museum of Navarre, where we find them subject to work and death.

The representation of the calendars with the labors of each of the months were developed in Spain in the Romanesque period and they did it with the vision of the work imposed by God, although in the course of the XII century, some biblical commentators of great projection, like Hugo de San Victor, glossed the work not so much as a divine punishment, but as a revaluation as penitence and redemptive means. In addition, those tasks spoke graphically of the passage of time in the human evolution, and constituted a didactic resource for the farmers to pay the tithe to the church. In the monastic and regular life environments, they reminded the importance of work guide to combat idleness, the great enemy of the soul, as the Rule of St. Benedict reminds us, in harmony with St. Augustine who, centuries ago, had sentenced "Idleness walks slowly, that is why all vices reach it".

The story of Genesis is the textual source of the copperplate series from the convent of La Merced in Pamplona, from the last third of the 17th century, now in the Museum of Navarre. Its author Jacob Bouttats followed the prints engraved by Jean Sadeler. Those dedicated to Adam working the land and to Cain farmer and Abel shepherd place us in agricultural and livestock scenes, with tools and endless details. The arrival of these paintings in Pamplona has been related to the death, in 1682, in the convent of La Merced in Pamplona of the Pamplona native and General of the Order, Fray Sebastian de Velasco, who bequeathed other artistic works to the convent.

The mensarios have several versions in Navarre from the Gothic period, at a time when they came to occupy more marginal places and in frames of movable art, as Professor Manuel A. Castiñeiras has shown in his study for Spain. We find them in the pediments of Eguillor -currently in Turin-, Góngora and Arteta -both in the Museum of Art of Catalonia-, the keystones of the cloister of the cathedral of Pamplona and in the mural paintings of the parish of Ardanaz de Izagaondoa. All of them seem to obey a positive and edifying vision of work, far from those representations of the Romanesque where scenes of work were considered as a consequence of the original sin, with a punitive interpretation. In the Pamplona church we find the pruning of the vines in March, the harvest in July, the threshing in August, the transfer of the wine in September, and the plowing and sowing in October. The Ardanaz paintings, studied by Carlos Martínez Álava, also show hay and wheat harvesting in June and July, threshing in August, the cooper in September and tilling in October. Mikel Zuza, on the basis of some coats of arms, relates them to Don Luis de Beaumont, brother of Carlos II and dates them between 1354 and 1361. In the case of the frontals of Arteta and Góngora, the representations of the mensario are located in the upper part of them, being the one of Arteta the one that best preserves the cycle and the one with the highest quality.

In another context, it is worth remembering one of the large corbels in the Barbazana chapel, in the cloister of the cathedral of Pamplona, which sample shows a farmer wielding a hoe, of which only the handle has been preserved.

Moving on to other examples from the Modern Age, we must remember that the harvest, the protagonist of the medieval calendars, can be found again in a detail of the panel of the Flight into Egypt from the main altarpiece of Santa María de Olite (Pedro de Aponte, 1529). In the background of the composition the miracle of the wheat is represented, when the Holy Family, on its way to Egypt, was pursued by Herod's soldiers. Arriving next to a man who was sowing the field, they told him that when the soldiers arrived he should reply that he saw the three of them passing by at the moment of sowing. Then the miracle of the wheat happens, it grows and is ready for harvest. Thus, when the soldiers arrived, they gave up the pursuit, thinking that they had been there for many months. The sculptor Juan de Biniés made a relief with the same topic in the altarpiece of the Rosary of Cintruénigo (1610), which was polychromed by Juan de Lumbier.

In the first quarter of the 18th century, in one of the reliefs of the Isaba masonry, there are also some men mowing with scythes from a handle and others sharpening their blades. It is a work that should be attributed to Pascual de Lorea, a master from Roncal living in Garde, who was examined in Pamplona in 1686 and died around 1736. The outline of the panels is reminiscent of 16th century works, particularly those of some masters of Sangüesa, such as the ashlar of San Martín de Uncastillo, so it is possible that the old models were imposed, although the work is clearly Baroque in style.

Several canvases from the XVII and XVIII centuries show several saints in agricultural tasks, singularly and at the head of them Saint Isidro plowing with the oxen or the latter directed by the angel while the saint prays. In the first case we find him in two canvases of the Augustinian Recollect Sisters of Pamplona and the Conceptionists of Estella. In some occasions, he dresses timelessly, but in the majority he dresses following the fashions of the XVII century, including the golilla.

But it is not only San Isidro, since in the series of San Elías, currently conserved in Leire, coming from the Augustinians of Pamplona, there is a canvas that presents Eliseo plowing next to the prophet, with all subject of details in the implement. It is a work realized in Pamplona by the Italian painter Jacobo de Bari in 1704 and that copies an engraving of Abraham Van Diepenbeeck that appears in the book Speculum Carmelitanum sive Historia Eliani del Padre Daniel de la Virgen María (Antwerp, 1680).

Among the examples of contemporary paintings that depict agricultural scenes, we highlight the canvas of the Harvest, a work from around 1900 by the painter Natalio Hualde (1873-1951), studied by J. M. Muruzábal. It is a small format work with a cart pulled by oxen and a woman in the foreground working on her work. For its realism, it follows the style of Millet or Breton. We should also mention the yuntas de bueyes by García Asarta (1893) and Ciga (1915).

With livestock

Everything that has to do with the pastoral world and, above all, with the care of livestock, found its iconic reflection in the advertisement to the shepherds of the cycle of the infancy of Christ. The figurative art from the miniature, painting and sculpture from the Romanesque period to the great nineteenth-century nativity scenes provide a universe of images in this regard. In the different epochs we find their protagonists with different costumes, in some cases in a timeless way, and in others with clothing more adjusted to the uses of the land.

Special accredited specialization of that passage deserve the flocks of the Bible of Sancho el Fuerte (1197), of the capitals of the doorway of San Miguel de Estella and of the cloisters of Tudela and San Pedro de la Rúa de Estella, works from the second half of the 12th century, as well as the Italo-Gothic mural paintings (c. 1333) of the chapel of the Virgin of the Campanal in Olite. In the Gothic cloister of the cathedral of Pamplona we find a delicate shepherding scene among the capitals of profane subject matter. In some 16th century paintings of the Nativity where the passage merges with that of the Annunciation of the shepherds there are also copious flocks, as in the altarpiece of the Caparroso of the cathedral of Pamplona (1507) or the larger one of Santa María de Olite, work of Pedro de Aponte (1529).

Cattle are also protagonists in the capital of Job in the Romanesque cloister of Pamplona (Museum of Navarre), which dates from the mid-twelfth century, and in the same scene in the aforementioned Bible of Sancho el Fuerte (1197), preserved in the Library Services Municipal de Amiens. The topic of Job's flock, as studied by Professor Soledad Silva, derives from the Byzantine miniature, where it was widely represented.

Leaving these examples linked to the cycle of Christ's infancy, the care of cattle and a woman milking a cow appear in two preparatory drawings and their corresponding engravings that illustrate the eighteenth-century edition of Father Moret's Congresiones (1766). They are emblems that combine graphic representation and a Latin motto allusive to the text at topic .

To illustrate the sixth congress, a preparatory drawing of a flock of sheep and the attacking wolf is used, which was completed in the engraved version final with a pair of shepherds, one watching and the other whipping the dog to chase the wolf. The motto that accompanies the graphic composition reads: "Eripe pastor ovem servo raptoris ob ore" (Free, O shepherd, the sheep from the servile mouth of the raptor) alludes to the content of the text that Father Moret glosses with the intention of making true what Father Larripa wrote in his writings. For the approval final of the preparatory drawing for this Congress, the Diputación del Reino required the author of the composition, José Lamarca, to add "a shepherd with his servant, encouraging the mastiff to chase the wolf", as he did in the plate intended for printing.

The eighth congress is illustrated with a pruner and we referred to it in a previous article , when glossing the vineyard and the grapes. The twelfth sample a woman milking a cow in a simple rural landscape, with the motto: "Dulcius accipies quo plus expresseris uber" (You will receive a sweeter fruit the more you squeeze), insisting on the probative value of historical research with a thorough work .

A Marian devotion proper of the Capuchins, that of the Divine Shepherdess, will incorporate in its iconography some sheep represented next to the Virgin with great realism, especially in paintings and engravings. As it is known, the mentioned invocation was spread by Fray Isidoro de Sevilla from 1703, when he had a canvas painted by Alonso Miguel de Tovar. There are examples in the Conceptionists of Estella, the Comendadoras de Puente, Araceli de Corella and among all the Augustinian Recollect Sisters of Pamplona, a gift of Doña Antonia de Ripalda Marichalar, sister of the Count of Ripalda and resident in Seville in the first decades of the 18th century.

Finally, we cannot forget some paintings of the twentieth century where the shepherding or the care of animals become protagonists, highlighting two works by Javier Ciga, the Shepherd (Museum of Navarra, 1910-1911) or a delicate painting by the same author graduate Cuadra, dated 1910, belonging to a private collection of Elvetea, which is an expression of the painter's interest in the landscapes and men of Baztan.