26 May 2011

Conference

The Cathedral of Santa María de la Huerta in Tarazona. Art and History in the meeting between three kingdoms

Mr. Jesús Criado Mainar.
University of Zaragoza

The recent reopening of the cathedral of Santa María de la Huerta, which has been closed to the public for more than twenty-five years due to its restoration, is a cultural event of the first magnitude that will allow visitors to (re)discover a monument endowed with a strong personality and converted over the centuries into a veritable museum of sacred art. The head of a frontier bishopric, Tarazona straddles Aragon, Navarre and Castile, as its diocesan geography originally included territories in all these kingdoms. This eminently "open" statusmade the city a crossroads of roads and influences and contributed to our building being configured as a plural mosaic.

Located on the right bank of the river Queiles, the cathedral of Tarazona was erected in the early years of the 13th century, perhaps on the remains of a temple dating from before the Muslim domination, and was one of the first peninsular projects in which a firm commitment was made to the models of classical French Gothic, as can still be seen in the configuration of its main chapel (consecrated in 1235). The original structure was completed over time with the addition of numerous chapels at board of trustees, both in the ambulatory and in the basilica. Later, a very large Mudéjar cloister (1501-around 1522) was added on the southern flank, which establishes a singular contrast with the stone block of the church.

In the mid-16th century, the church underwent a profound transformation to bring it into line with Renaissance aesthetics. The collapse of the medieval dome around 1542 made it necessary to raise the monumental turriform structure that has come down to us and also to reform the transept between 1543 and 1545, the work being carried out by the Zaragoza master builder Juan Lucas Botero el Viejo (Juan Lucas Botero the Elder) at position. Between 1546 and 1550 the interior of the new skylight and the main nave received their magnificent "Romanesque" cladding which, among other elements, includes some surprising grisaille with a mythological theme on the drum, alternating with the sculptures of the apostles.
 

Dome of the Cathedral of Tarazona
 

The architect of this transformation was Alonso González, a skilled plaster carver and painter of Leonese origin who settled in the lands of Moncayo, who was also the author between 1562 and 1564 of the spectacular decoration of the main chapel. Its vault, covered with grisaille on top of an Italianate background that emulates a brilliant mosaic of golden tesserae, samplean erudite contrast of sibyls - in the presbytery section - and Christ's ancestors and prophets - in the polygonal section. The restoration has also brought to light the mural paintings of the light section, whitewashed at an undetermined date and which serve as a plastic and iconographic complement to the previous ones.

Paintings in the Main Chapel
 

The restoration has restored the splendour of a two-faced cathedral in which the medieval masonry finds a suitable counterpoint in the luminous transformation it underwent during the Renaissance, which affected a good issueof chapels, many of them true artistic jewels in their own right that are still awaiting restoration. A complex rich in nuances, in which the visitor can discover oil-painted alabaster windows - in the main chapel and the transept - and in which there is no lack of classicist creations such as the monumental main altarpiece (around 1605-1614) or Baroque spaces such as the suggestive cathedral parish church of San Andrés (around 1700) or the chapel of Los Dolores, whose altarpiece (1773) houses a spectacular Pietà by the academic sculptor Francisco Gutiérrez.

The lecturetook place at classroom35 of Central Buildingof the University of Navarra.