Works of charity as core topic in the new models of sanctity

In the seventeenth century, when the new models of sanctity burst with force and the role of works was spread in sermons and images, we find poor people both next to San Diego Alcalá and San Lorenzo, for having distributed among the needy the treasures of the church that Pope San Sixto had entrusted to him. In one of the canvases of the altarpiece of the Hospital de Gracia de Tudela, from 1644, there is a game of hands that stretch out to receive some coins from those of the saint, which seem to gloss the aphorism "Hands that you do not give, what do you expect?

But it will be above all with St. Thomas of Villanova that the new times of the Counter-Reformation will insist on spreading the life and deeds of authentic heroes of charity. In the paintings of the Comendadoras of Puente la Reina, the cathedrals of Tudela and Pamplona, or the Recoletas of Pamplona we see the Augustinian saint, known as the saint of the purse. Francisco de Quevedo wrote about his representation in his beatification: "They painted him dressed as a pontifical, with a bag in his hand, which is the true staff of a shepherd who feeds the sheep, and where a prelate can best lean against to avoid stumbling on the narrow path of his official document. Alms is the staff of the good bishop, where the poor lean, with which the needy are sustained. Therefore, the archbishop's crozier must replace the poor and not the archbishop; and that is why His Holiness ordered him to be painted with mitre and bag, which is the crozier of alms, with the poor around him... for glorious degree scroll called the almoner. surname is that of the almoner who knows much about the house of God".

The painting of Saint Thomas of Villanueva de Tudela was made by Vicente Berdusán around 1666 for his altarpiece in the collegiate church and was paid for by Canon Agustín de Baquedano. The composition is divided into two halves, perfectly delimited by the light, organizing the figures in a double diagonal open towards the bottom that comes to converge in the act of almsgiving itself, with the hands of the saint and the beggar. The group on the right is occupied by the saint, dressed in the Augustinian habit and pluvial cloak, the episcopal attributes -mitre and pectoral-, while the crozier has been replaced by the alms bag. On the left, in contrast, on a cloudy sky and an architectural background that must allude to the church where the saint leaves to celebrate his mass to distribute alms, we find a poor old man half kneeling with his cane and behind a dynamic sketched group , in which a woman appears with her child on her shoulders, which we have to interpret as an allegory of charity, accompanied by another character with her arms outstretched.

The canvas of Recoletas, a work by Francisco Camilo, presents a very rich coloring typical of the mid-century Madrid school. A poor man and a maiden to be endowed meet the saint who takes money out of the bag to help them. The painting of the Comendadoras de Puente la Reina belongs to the same period but formally it is a work attached to the tradition of tenebrist naturalism.

Again with the charity of St. Martin

Without the abundance of the 16th century, the topic of the saint parting his cloak with the poor will be treated both in the sculpture of the altarpieces and in easel paintings. Among the examples to point out are the sculptures and reliefs of Abaurrea leave, Ituren and Ciriza from the first half of the 17th century and those of Eslava, Los Arcos and the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love of Cuevas de Viana from the second half. The groups of the attic of the altarpiece of Santa Ana in San Nicolás de Pamplona (José Pérez de Eulate, 1738) of the altarpiece of Bacaicoa (Ildefonso Fuster, 1757) and of Echalaz and Beasoain from the middle of the 18th century belong to the 18th century.

In painting we find it in Elso, the parish of San Nicolás de Pamplona and Lumbier, belonging to the first half of the XVII century. To the second half of the following century belongs an interesting canvas of the Comendadoras de Puente la Reina, with a very young poor man seated and stripped of clothes, which seems to have served its author, probably from Madrid, to make a study of male nude.

The stinking and the dying with St. Francis Xavier

Plague-stricken, dying and even demon-possessed people are present in the representation of some of the miracles of the patron saint Saint Francis Xavier. The holy chapel of his castle has housed since 1692 a series of the saint's life painted by the Flemish Godefrid de Maes, among which one narrates the cessation of the plague in Manar. On a background of landscape, trees, sea and the colonnade of a huge building we find the saint kneeling with his arms outstretched imploring divine mercy, in a theatrical position, surrounded by the dying, the dead and people lamenting the misfortune. In the background, a fire can be seen, possibly the clothes and belongings of a plague-stricken person that are destroyed, according to internship usual in those cases. The foreshortened bodies of children, young people and adults with incarnations of very sick people, contrast with the sky, some garments of a group and the robe of the saint. The composition is based on a print by François Louvemont, by painting by Ciro Ferri and drawing by Pietro Locatelli that was used by many painters, even in New Spain. In Navarre it was taken as model for a canvas of one of the altars of the basilica of San Ignacio de Pamplona, in plenary session of the Executive Council XVIII century.

Sick and possessed people approach the Jesuit saint in a copperplate kept in the Palacio Foral, signed by Peter Sion (†1695) from the third quarter of the 17th century. Its composition derives from the Rubenesque model of the famous painting of the miracles of St. Francis Xavier, although there are other more immediate precedents such as the engravings of Peeter Clouwet, Bouttats or Mateo Küsell. All of them commemorated the miracles of the saint in the city of Mechelen, of which Father Gerard Grumsel gave an account in a work that appeared in that city in 1666. Among the characters of all condition and race that crowd to implore him, there is not lacking the deceased that resurrects and takes off his shroud, nor the mother that brings her sick son, nor a woman with her naked chest, supported by two soldiers, furious and mad, undoubtedly allegory of the lust that cannot support the force of the doctrine that the saint imparts.

In devotional prints and nativity scenes

A curious vignette of all the historical engravings of the Virgin of Nieva, who experienced a great cult in Navarre from 1732, presents one of the most famous miracles of the image, with an invalid and crippled Navarrese who recovered his health in the Segovian sanctuary of that Marian invocation. Its graphic representation is eloquent, with the man supported by his companion, half fallen and with his crutches on the ground. The legend of the scene reads as follows: "A neighbor who came dragging to visit the Holy Image returns healthy to Navarre".

Without leaving the world of the devotional print, the one representing San Babil de San Jorge de Tudela from the beginning of the 19th century, is accompanied by a young child who has lost his arm, which is still sample bleeding, to make the scene more pathetic. The registration of the engraving presents the saint as "advocate of all pains".

Cripples with their crutches and widows, as representatives of the abandoned and most unprotected in society, have a place in a place like the nativity scene, which by nature is relaxed and joyful. The reason is to proclaim that Christ came to save everyone and his call is universal to people of all ages and social conditions. A group of widows and cripples with their crutches guards the monumental nativity scene of the Recoletas of Pamplona, shaped throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.    

Captives

If we want to see how the captives are represented, we have to approach the iconography of the orders that were dedicated to their redemption, especially that of the order of the Merced, where they accompany the Virgin of that invocation or one of its progenitors: St. Peter Nolasco.

The large canvas of St. Peter Nolasco freeing the captives of the parish of San Miguel de Corella, attributed to Francisco Crespo and painted around 1670, sample the Mercedarian saint in a passage probably related to one of the eight redemptions of Christian captives that led him to visit cities like Valencia or Algiers in times of Muslim occupation. In the foreground appears the saint with the habit of his order and a group of captives, with shackles on their feet, who direct their prayer towards the top where a luminous break of glory presided by the Virgin and the Child opens. Between the saint and the captives a chest that speaks of the money collected for their redemption. At the back of the composition, there is a hollow -like a painting within the painting- where a room occupied by a Mercedarian and the Almohad king is represented. On the table both characters exchange the price paid for the ransom in gold and silver coins.

The captive peoples allegorized in half-naked and chained figures are found in the preparatory drawing by José Lamarca for the cover of the 1766 edition of the Annals. The composition, which was never used, sample the coat of arms of Navarre with the allegories of history and Fame, together with the goddess Minerva and the defeated peoples held by a chain that holds the goddess of the just war and that in one of its ends links symbolically with the coat of arms of Navarre.

The sculptural group of the Virgin of La Merced from her extinct convent in Tudela, which is kept in the town hall of the city, has three sculptures of captives in small size, in imploring attitudes and dressed in poor and rudimentary clothing. They are from the second half of the 18th century.

In contemporaneity: exclusion as seen also through photography

The chapel of the Old Baths of Fitero was presided over by a canvas of medium quality of the miracles of St. Peter, made in 1892, perhaps by Miguel Abad, who alternated photography and painting at that time.

In relation to begging, we have to mention the canvas "El rapapobres" by Eduardo Carceller, painted in 1870 during the painter's stay in Tudela and preserved in the Museum of Navarre. The painting has been studied by P. Guijarro and following Iribarren identifies the portrayed as the asylum seeker of the Casa de Misericordia tudelana that watched over the population to prevent begging, using as distinctive a wide white leather bandolier and a wooden sword. We are faced with a poor man gathered in the establishment that has been dignified in the portrait, in tune with and evoking works by Velázquez and Ribera.

The poor would have their particular place in the nativity scenes that became popular in homes in plenary session of the Executive Council XIX century. Some figures dressed in rags and, above all, children begging were not lacking in the recreation of the towns and their people where they were part of the urban landscape of the moment.

Photography has not been alien to the old topic and good test are the snapshots, such as those preserved in the file Municipal of Pamplona on the Homage to the Old Age of a century ago and others from various charitable and welfare institutions. La Avalancha Magazine of September 24, 1907 reproduces a photograph of the asylum seekers in the Little Sisters of the Poor taken by Hermógenes Maiz, where the nuns appear with the chaplain Eulogio Sarasa y Erro and the residents. Another photograph of the day of the Homage to Old Age in 1924, taken by J. Roldán, from the Arazuri Collection, is conserved in the Municipal file and sample of some old ladies in a carriage going to the celebration, which had been celebrated since the previous year, 1923 with the sponsorship, among others, of the Caja de Ahorros de Navarra, the City Council of Pamplona and the local newspapers. A photograph by the Marquis of Santa María del Villar entitled Sopa boba en La Oliva, dated 1936, evokes a daily reality of past centuries, that of the convents' porters handing out the pot to the most needy, to those who did not even have enough to eat a bite to eat.

A special chapter deserves the photographic testimonies of the Casa de Misericordia, an institution studied by Camino Oslé. The snapshots of the cuestaciones with the children welcomed there provoke the sensitivity of our society, but they were part of the landscape of the city less than a century ago.