June 15, 2005

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

SAN FERMIN: FIESTA, ART AND POSTER DESIGN

Art and Devotion: The Chapel of San Fermin

Mr. José Luis Molins Mugueta.
Municipal Archivist of Pamplona.

Professor Molins made an analysis and evaluation of one of the most important monuments of the capital of Navarre, during the Baroque period: the chapel of patron saint San Fermín, which must be related to an architectural typology due to the initiative and the partnership of official and private institutions (guilds, indianos and parishes) to guard the images of the patron saints of towns and cities with dignity. Thus, the chapels of San Sebastián in Sangüesa (1602), Magdalena in Viana (1693-1698), San Fermín in Pamplona (1696-1717), San Andrés in Estella (1699), Santa Ana in Tudela (1713-1725) and Cristo de la Columna in Cascante (1779-1799) were built or rebuilt.
For the construction of the San Fermín, a Dominican friar from Zaragoza, Fray Juan de Alegría, the famous Santiago Raón from Calahorra and the Guipuzcoan architect Martín de Zaldúa from high school de Loyola arrived in Pamplona. Therefore, masters from the three regions bordering Navarre: Guipúzcoa, Zaragoza and La Rioja, all three with a rich Baroque art, were given quotation in this project after discarding a previous plan drawn up by the military engineer Hércules Torelli and Juan Antonio San Juan. The works lasted from 1696 to 1717. The plan adopted was the very baroque model Greek cross inscribed in a square with a huge dome at the intersection of spaces. 

Its interior environment, especially in the great solemnities, showed remarkable pieces of sumptuary arts, gifts from many devotees and benefactors, frequently of Indian origin.

On the exterior, the volumes of both geometric figures play on the elevation and the stone porticoes stand out, as well as the reddish brick walls dotted with tiles with the heraldic emblem of the capital of the kingdom. The present interior, the result of the neoclassical remodeling, has nothing to do with the one it showed in the 18th century, described by some travelers and documents such as the lapidary phrases of Don Antonio Ponz who, upon visiting the chapel and from his academic and neoclassical taste, wrote "As for other churches, I am sorry to have seen in the parish church of San Lorenzo the Monstrous ornamentation of the chapel of San Fermín".