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Heritage and identity (43). Tempus fugit. The representation of the clock in the arts of Navarre.

31/12/2020

Published in

Diario de Navarra

Ricardo Fernández Gracia

Director of the Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art

The symbolic meanings of the clock are varied. Durando, a famous French canonist who died in Rome in 1296, in the best medieval liturgical synthesis, affirms that the clock signifies the diligence that priests must put into praying the canonical hours.

Its presence may allude to temperance and a well-regulated life, in allusion to its rhythm, which marks the life of the wise. An hourglass accompanies Saturn, especially since the Renaissance, when it is assimilated with time. It is also related to the approaching death and usually accompanies the devil or a skeleton with the scythe or the arrow. It is an attribute of the occasion, of youth or old age, depending on whether the upper part is full or empty, and of truth, considering the latter as the daughter of time. The pocket watch is also indicative of the slow but inexorable passage of time. Since it is almost always a luxurious object, its very presence alludes to the uselessness of hoarding precious goods in the face of the fleeting nature of man's life.

In textual sources and in devotional prints, its chimes are usually associated with prayer. In the life of Don Antonio de Idiáquez (1756), Duke of Granada de Ega and Count of Javier, whose house and jewels Pilar Andueza studied, it is stated that he owned three pocket watches, one with enameled gold, diamonds and emeralds on both sides. The nobleman wore an image of the Heart of Jesus inside his jacket and when the watch struck the hours "he would incline his head towards said image slyly and for a brief interval of time he would suspend his conversation and glance at his conscience...".

The clock has given its name to towers, as in the parish of Miranda de Arga, to notable buildings such as the Casa del reloj in Tudela, or the Portal del reloj in Puente la Reina. It appears both in its sundial and mechanical variants in church towers for centuries, and later in town halls. The sundials have been inventoried by Pedro J. Novella. The priest Isidoro Ursúa and the physician Rafael López Velasco know a great deal about the makers of the mechanics. Over time, mainly in the 19th century, they became widespread in Navarre in schools, town halls, courthouses, cafés, casinos and salons. Also the portrait of the moment incorporated to the adornment precious clocks with showy chains, and even the strings of the same ones.

Our contribution is not going to collect historical clocks, which there are and of great category in different buildings and in a collection collected in Sangüesa, but its presence in works of art and architecture, in relation to their metaphors and symbology.

Next to the portrait of the ruler and the writer

Of the founder of the Augustinian Recollect Nuns of Pamplona, Don Juan de Ciriza, Marquis of Montejaso, the nuns keep his portrait A , made in 1617 by Antonio Rizzi. The portrayed one, royal secretary, dresses of agreement with the fashion of the time of Felipe III, of rigorous black: white gorguera, coleto, short coat, gregüescos and tights. Some golden touches on the belt, the buttons, the collar and belt from which hangs the sword -symbol of justice- give a certain colorfulness. In the buffet, richly dressed in velvet, appears the emblematic clock, whose meaning is explained by the registration that accompanies it: VIGILAT QUIA (NESCITIS DIEM) NEQUE HORA(Matthew 25:13) in clear allusion to the vanity of earthly things. However, in this context of the image of the rulers, the clock signifies prudence, accuracy and good government that, in the manner of the adjusted gears of the machinery of the clock, must watch over their acts of government.

Other prominent figures show the clock on their table at work. Thus St. Jerome in several canvases, such as the one in the sacristy of the beneficiaries of the cathedral of Pamplona. In this same room is the portrait of the patron of the group, the canon from Roncal, Pascual Beltrán de Gayarre (1696-1742) next to his office at work, in which an hourglass appears.

Attribute of temperance in the palace of Navarre

The ceiling of the throne room of the Palacio de Diputación is decorated with five allegories, made by Martín Miguel Azparren (1860). In the center is that of Navarre and next to it the personifications of good government: justice and prudence, also present on the façade of the Pamplona City Hall, together with temperance and fortitude. Temperance carries a brake and an hourglass, the first as a symbol of moderation, self-control and balance is very frequent, while the second takes us back to the whole of the allegory of good government of Lorenzetti in the Palazzo de Siena (1337-1340). Cesare Ripa, codifier of allegories in his well-known work Iconology, edited multiple times since 1593, in one of the descriptions of temperance justifies both attributes thus: "He is painted with the bridle in one hand and the pendulum [of the clock] in the other, thereby showing the principal function of temperance, which consists in restraining and moderating the appetites of the spirit, from agreement with the times and occasions, symbolizing also with said pendulum the respective measures of the movement and alterations of the spirit, fixing the limits by which it should be channeled."

In the allegory of history: a Pamplona engraving

The 1759 Pamplona edition of the book La diferencia de lo temporal y lo eterno, a work by the Jesuit Juan de Nieremberg, was financed by the Navarre-born Pedro Fermín de Goyeneche. The engravings for the publication were made by the silversmith Manuel de Beramendi, who specialized in this type of work subject . The proceeds from the sale of the books were donated by Goyeneche to the Pamplona Hospital. On the frontispiece we find a beautiful engraving in burin by the aforementioned Beramendi, according to the idea and care of Miguel Antonio Domec, whose name appears on a cartouche dated 1758 as "curante". The composition must be read as an exaltation of the city of Pamplona, whose coat of arms under a large pavilion is the main element. Below, some figures with trumpets signify the fame that sings the glories of the city whose past is written by a matron -history- under the surveillance of time, represented as winged Cronos who, accompanied by his scythe, unveils the curtain to reveal the heraldic emblem of the capital of Navarre and thus unveil its past before the eyes of history that is about to write it. The hourglass with a dial on it, speaks of time and of the feats and merits of the city over the centuries that history rediscovers in his book.

In the emblematic: the Tudela high school of the Society of Jesus to mark the time of death of St. Francis Xavier and the disposition of the Jesuits.

Two clocks appear among the motifs chosen by the sons of Saint Ignatius to decorate the cornice of their church in Tudela, today the parish of Saint George, in 1748, when they commissioned the plasterwork and altarpieces to the brothers Antonio and José del Río. The hands of the first of the large clocks clearly mark five minutes to five on its dial, an hour that coincides with dawn on the day of Javier's death, who, by the way, presided over the church from the main niche of the main altarpiece. Another emblem shows the solar quadrant with the fifteen hours of sunlight, in allusion to the disposition and sacrifice of the sons of Saint Ignatius for the ideals of the Society. This composition is related to one of the emblems that appear in the book that celebrated the one hundred years of the Society: Imago primi saeculi.

In funerary art

The presence of the clock, together with the skull, could not be absent in the manifestations of the funerary image and linked to the afterlife. The representation of the clock in different emblems painted for the funeral rites of the kings commissioned by the city council of the capital of Navarre during the Ancien Régime has been studied by professors J. L. Molins and J. J. Azanza. The emblems for the funerals of Philip V, in 1746, were painted by Juan de Lacalle. In two of them we find two clocks (hourglasses and sundials) with wings. The clock, as a symbol of passing time, had become popular since the 15th century. In the texts of its Latin mottoes and explanations in Spanish the funerary content and transience of earthly things is insisted on. 

The funerals of Carlos III (1789), had emblems made by Juan Francisco Santesteban, following the program of the presbyter Ambrosio de San Juan and the poet and playwright Vicente Rodríguez de Arellano. One of them is starred by the image of time with its wings (lightness and speed), accompanied by the clock (passing of time) and the scythe (power to snatch and destroy).

The aforementioned silversmith and engraver Manuel Beramendi executed some engravings for the sermon for the funeral of the Viceroy Count of Gages, which was published in Pamplona in 1753 by Miguel Antonio Domec. In the illustration that opens the edition we find a beautiful composition with elements of the Roman baroque of the followers of Bernini. A large skeleton, reminiscent of Bernini's in the tomb of Alexander VII, writes the Count's epitaph with an arrow next to a funerary urn. At the top we find the winged figure of time with the clock and scythe, reminiscent of models of the great Roman master and the one that appears on the tomb of Giulio del Corno, by Ercole Ferrata, in the Roman church of Jesus and Mary. Weapons and military trophies together with the crowns of his nobility (count and viscount), the insignia of the orders to which he belonged (Golden Fleece, San Gennaro, Santiago and Calatrava) and the key of the king's gentleman complete the iconographic speech of the composition.

The skull with a clock on it also appears in a design for the painting and polychromy of the altarpiece of the Blessed Souls of the Purgatory of Lodosa which, with design by Andrés Mata, was made in 1773 by the gilder Juan Manuel Marzo. Among its most effective motifs is a skull crowned by an hourglass, with a registration that reads: "Nemini parco" (I forgive no one). That same Latin motto appeared, together with the representation of a skeleton with a scythe and an hourglass, which opened numerous Holy Week processions.