BRINGING HERITAGE CLOSER. THE BAZTAN VALLEY: MEN, ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE

20 September 2006

Families and artistic promotion: Elizacoechea in Azpilkueta, the Jáuregui family in Oharriz.
Dr. Ricardo Fernández Gracia. Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro.

"Relatives, relatives, business, business. Finances, canonries, distinguished careers in the army. Everything goes together". With these words Caro Baroja defined decades ago the phenomenon of "La Hora navarra del XVIII" what was happening in so many families in Baztanes, throughout the so-called Age of Enlightenment.

Architecture and the rest of the arts experienced an unprecedented development in the Valley, under the protection of huge amounts of money from those who had achieved fortune and position in the Court or in the Indies. Charitable foundations, the native house and the parish where they were baptized, were the referents of the gifts of numerous people from Baztan.

The case of Bishop Elizacoechea and his degree program in the Indies is very significant. After ordering the reconstruction of his house and parish of Azpilcueta with licence of the patron saint, the Count of Javier, and endowing the temple with altarpieces and singular sculptures by Luis Salvador Carmona, his brother-in-law wrote him, from Errazu, sentences like these: "The people are very happy and grateful for how much Your Illustrious Lordship is doing for your country", "the building of the house of Dorrea was admirable and to be complete on the outside only the coat of arms needs to be placed... "it will be one of the best houses in the valley".

History repeats itself with the Jáuregui and Aldecoa family of the palace of the Ohárriz armory corporal. In this case three sons of the house reached celebrity, one with the military degree program , Don Agustín, viceroy of Peru, Don Pedro Fermín canon and archdeacon of the Chamber of the cathedral of Pamplona and the third, Francisco Martín, with a successful degree program in business. The last two stood out in artistic promotion. Don Pedro Fermín, besides having financed the decoration of the great set of the Rococo sacristy of the cathedral of Pamplona, gave several reliquaries, ornaments and sculptures of Luis Salvador Carmona to the parish of Lecároz, financing the collateral altarpieces, work of Silvestre de Soria, together with his brother Francisco Martín. The latter, after having paid for sculptures by the same master in the Royal Congregation of San Fermín de los Navarros in Madrid, offered carvings of St. Bartholomew and St. Matthias to the same parish where he was baptized and contributed the amounts necessary to build the new Ohárriz palace in 1748.

The altarpieces and sculptures of Azpilcueta and Lecároz, works of singular artists, speak of something unusual that endorses the dimension of the "Navarrese Hour": the best and most outstanding artistic avant-garde present in some villages, so far away from the Court, where the best art was truly consumed and the best artists lived.