April 12, 2005

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

FIVE LINES OF RESEARCHON NAVARRESE ART

The Art of Humanism: the introduction of the Renaissance in Tudela

Mrs. Mª Concepción García Gainza
Organized by the Chair of Navarrese Art and the Ateneo Navarro.

Professor García Gainza first took stock of the substantial contributions made in recent years to the art of Navarre in the 16th century, focusing on the fields of polychromy and painting, sculpture, architecture and silverware, which have allowed the first synthesis of the Renaissance in Navarre, soon to be published by the Government of Navarre.

He then went on to explain how Renaissance art and humanism were introduced from Aragon, fundamentally from Tarazona, with which Tudela formed a single diocese. He then analyzed a group of personalities of the time who maintained relations with Rome or other cities in Italy and who were to be promoters of artistic enterprises in Tudela in which the new language of the Renaissance was introduced. One of these prominent figures was the Dean of the Collegiate Church of Tudela, Don Pedro Villalón de Calcena, builder of the dean's palace in Tudela and of the choir stalls of the cathedral choir, in which the Renaissance was introduced in Tudela at the early date of 1515 and which constitute the first examples of the Italianate language in Navarre. It was not only a merely formal or iconographic introduction, such as the Last Judgment of the choir stalls inspired by Michelangelo's, but humanist thought was also cultivated, such as the series of Illustrious Women of Antiquity in the Palace of the Marquis of San Adrián de Tudela, sample .