May 21, 2012

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

ARCHITECTURE AND ART IN NAVARRA AT THE TIME OF NAVAS DE TOLOSA

From Romanesque to Gothic in the time of Sancho el Fuerte

D. Carlos Martinez Álava.
I.E.S. Sierra de Leyre. Sangüesa

The reign of Sancho el Fuerte spans no less than 40 years in the history of Navarre's architecture. During at least two generations of stonemasons and masters, there are many buildings that little by little, year after year, see their perimeter walls rise up to fill in the body of vaults. Between 1194 and 1234, town councils, urban works and some important monasteries fought for fill in some projects, often disproportionate, that had been born from the construction frenzy that the kingdom lived under the reign of his father, during the last third of the XII century.

In order to properly assess the characteristics of the buildings erected in Navarre during the reign of Sancho the Strong, it must be taken into account that most of them were planned and begun during the previous century. In fact, among the important religious buildings, it is very likely that only the collegiate church of Roncesvalles was planned, begun and completed within the limits of the reign of Sancho VII. The cathedral of Tudela, the monastery of La Oliva, the abbey of Irache, the monastery of Iranzu, the parishes of the Holy Sepulchre and San Miguel in Estella, San Nicolás in Pamplona, San Pedro in Olite, Santa María and Santiago in Sangüesa..... They are progressing, with greater or lesser speed, now. But logically, their planning and first construction phases were clearly earlier.

Therefore, the reign of Sancho el Fuerte is, from the architectural point of view, a good opportunity to reflect on the modes of construction and the times of the medieval work. Indeed, we find enormous buildings (La Oliva exceeds 90 meters in length; the cathedral of Tudela, 25 meters high) planned in a very ambitious way, which need at least three generations of masters and stonemasons (around 100 years) to be completed. Therefore, they are exposed to the changes inherent to the evolution of the workshops, and to the new constructive and decorative solutions that the passage of time was incorporating. 

They also allow us to assess the difficulty of comprehensively labeling works erected at a time of profound stylistic transformations. Although during the reign of Sancho el Fuerte the classical Gothic forms were introduced into the kingdom and the Peninsula through Roncesvalles, the rest of the constructions were born under Romanesque styles. Their prolonged "constructive life" meant that they were completed following a constructive tradition of local evolution that moved decisively towards pre-classical Gothic formulas. A structural Gothic that shares many of its characteristics with buildings throughout southwestern Christian Europe. The abbeys of Irache or La Oliva and the cathedral of Tudela itself, not completed until the second half of the 13th century, are good testimonies of a very characteristic way of building, which will be surpassed by the massive arrival of classical Gothic elements and Structures from the second third of the century.
 

Abbey Church of the Monastery of Santa María de Irache

Abbey church of the monastery of Santa María de Irache. Detail of the core topic