March 23, 2011

Course 

THE CATHEDRAL OF PAMPLONA. A VIEW FROM THE 21ST CENTURY

The Renaissance in the Cathedral

María Concepción García Gainza.
Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art

Once its construction was finished at the beginning of the 16th century, the cathedral began to be dressed with liturgical furniture, such as the choir stalls, grilles, bells, images and altarpieces that were going to show off the new style that had been born in Italy, in Florence, after the abandonment of the Gothic style. A new style, the Renaissance, which recovered Greek and Roman Antiquity, a new culture, that of Humanism, as model of Education for man. Based on classical texts and mythology, its arts will show a preferential interest in architecture and classical orders that are known through treatises such as Vitruvius, Serlio and Vignola, in the proportions, in the harmony of man, whose programs of study of the human body and the nude will be preferential. 

Bishops, priors, dignitaries of the cathedral, canons will be the promoters and patrons of the new works that are built in which Italian Humanism is introduced first and then the Counter-Reformation, not only in its forms that correspond to the change of taste but to the evolution of thought through iconography.

The ashlar is one of the great artistic enterprises of the Cathedral that occupied several teams of sculptors in a common work of great collective and economic effort, from the time of the emperor. It was destined to a main place, the central nave of the cathedral in front of the main altar, where it remained until 1940. It had an outstanding promoter and mentor: Sancho Miguel Garcés de Cascante, who was prior of the cathedral and belonged to an illustrious family of Cascante that exercised artistic patronage. He had been in Rome like other ecclesiastics and patrons. He knew the family circle of Pope Julius II and the great works of the Italian Renaissance.

The construction history of the masonry is well known. The contract was signed in June 1539 under the bishopric of Pedro Pacheco. Bonds were granted in August 1540 in the person of the Tudela canon Miguel de Baigorri for a value of 2,600 ducats that came from chapter revenues, tithes, censuses, alms from individuals, canons and the Crown.

Work was carried out from 1539-1541 in the workshop in the prior's house in the second courtyard. Families of the masters resided in inns and outbuildings of the cathedral. The manager is Esteban de Obray, French master mason, established in Aragon and a group of Frenchmen from Normandy Picardy whose names we know: Pierres Picart, Petit Juan de Beauves, Peti Juan de Melum and Guillén de Holanda who were founders of the sculptural workshop of Pamplona, connoisseurs of a not very pure Renaissance with Burgundian and Flemish mixture.

A sacred program is developed in the ashlar: Apostleship presided over by the Savior. Prophets of the Old Testament Old Law: saints, archangels, deacons, Martyrs that sample the historical continuity of the church, whose execution is carried out by Guillén de Holanda.

Esteban de Obray will be the manager of the grotesque and mythology present in the masonry. Backs and panels full of decorative themes; pagan and fantastic themes in infinite variety of very fine execution. Copies of engravings, medals, Italian drawings by Nicoletto Rosex de Modena Agustino Veneziano 1530, Fantuzzi and also German and Flemish engravings.

Also mythological figures in more discreet places: Cupid with bow and arrows, Apollo with lyre, Tritons and nereids sea gods, Three Graces, Hercules with the lion and Hercules with the giant Cacus, Vulcan sitting on a breastplate; pegasus or winged horses.

As in the Italian Renaissance works, the ashlars of the cathedral of Pamplona sample show the Renaissance synthesis between Christianity and Antiquity. Although mythology is reserved for discreet places, the Romanesque grotesque with pagan content covers the entire masonry. All this Humanism, mythology and grotesque will be swept away by the Counter-Reformation, which will maintain the strictest orthodoxy not only in the figuration but also in the prohibition of grotesque.
 

Choir stalls. Pamplona Cathedral. Esteban de Obray. 1539-1541
Detail.
 

In the Counter-Reformation, the cathedral put on internship the guidelines of the Council of Trent through the Synodal Constitutions of the Bishopric of Pamplona, promulgated by Don Bernardo de Rojas y Sandoval and published in 1591. It was during this period and in this context that the cathedral acquired one of its most devout images, the Crucifix of Juan de Anchieta. Likewise, in the episcopate of Don Antonio Zapata, the execution of the main altarpiece was promoted with a counter-reformist program that was a fundamental element for the renovation of the worship of agreement with the guidelines of Trento. The altarpiece looks today in all its splendor after a deep restoration.

The placement of the main altarpiece immediately led to the renovation of the entire presbytery, not only with the silver templete, made by Zapata himself, to house the Eucharist in the main altarpiece, but also with the construction of the altarpiece of Our Lady of Piety for the royal chapel located in the presbytery.

Main altarpiece of Pamplona Cathedral, currently in the parish church of San Miguel de Pamplona.