28 March 2012

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

HOLY WEEK CYCLE

Easter processions in Navarre

D. Ricardo Fernández Gracia.
Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art

Throughout the XVII and XVIII centuries, different localities in Navarre commissioned steps for the processions that went through their streets on the afternoons of Holy Thursday and Good Friday, as an external sample of divine worship. All those processions have constituted, until recent times, a vehicle of great importance, from the catechetical and propagandistic point of view, to visualize the great dogmas.

With the images of the pasos, the aim was to excite the feeling of compassion in a society lacking in images and with too much time for their contemplation. As in the rest of the Hispanic world, numerous confraternities of Holy Week were born and developed under the protection of the Tridentine dispositions on the use of images and the so-called "devotio moderna", a movement that constitutes a vehicle for the renewal of the laity and religious and the opening of new forms of apostolate, welcoming the religious feelings of piety.

Masters and sculptures of Romanism
Some sculptors who lived between the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, trained in the Michelangelesque Romanism prevailing in those decades, worked in steps of singular importance. Juan de Anchieta himself carved the Crucifixions of the backchamber of the cathedral of Pamplona and of Tafalla, which on important occasions have paraded through the streets, although their purpose was not strictly speaking that of a processional procession.

Of the formulas used for the passional steps by the Romanesque workshops, the reliefs of the Christ at the column and the Ecce Homo of the altarpiece of Zolina, work of Juan de Gastelúzar around 1635, give us a good example.

Perhaps the most interesting set of pasos from the end of the 16th century is the one preserved in the church of Carmen de Tudela, with three images corresponding to the Ecce Homo, Christ at the column and a recumbent, all of them made in 1598, according to the testimony of Father Faci. The author of these Romanesque aesthetics can be identified with Bernal de Gabadi, a master who had been living for decades in the capital of La Ribera, where he died in 1601. Gabadi had completed his training in the altarpiece of Astorga, under the orders of Gaspar Becerra, and from there he came to Navarra where he signed a ten-year contract with Diego Jimenez in 1579.

Christ at the column, attributed to Bernal de Gabadi. 1598.
Church of Carmen of Tudela

 

Echoes of the early Baroque: Juan de Biniés
Among the masters of the first generation of the XVII century, specialized in the realization of single images for Easter processions, Juan de Biniés stands out, a sculptor who lived in Tudela and died in 1626, who left a careful production studied in detail by Professor García Gaínza. Everything indicates that he specialized in two types of pasos: the Crucifixions and the Christs with the cross on their shoulders. Among the former, those of Cintuénigo, Buñuel, Cortes and Tudela stand out, and among the latter, those of Murchante and Peralta, the latter made in 1620, according to unpublished documentation. The one in Cintruénigo was a gift from the sculptor to the parish in 1610, when contracting the altarpiece of the Virgin of the Rosary. The one in Buñuel is documented in 1619 and the one in Cortes in 1624.

García Gainza attributed to Juan de Biniés the famous Christ at the column of the parish of the Rosary of Corella, which is exhibited in the Arrese foundation of the riverside town, and which had been ascribed, without serious grounds, to the orbit of the Valladolid sculptor Gregorio Fernández.

Christ of the cross on the back of Peralta. Juan de Biniés. 1619

Masters of different origins established in La Ribera.
Among the sculptors of La Ribera, Francisco Gurrea Casado, from a family of artists and author of the altarpiece of the Carmen de Tudela and the main altarpiece of Ablitas, made in 1645 the pathetic image of the Christ at the column of Cascante that presides over the beautiful eighteenth-century chapel in the parish of Santa María.

The town of Corella was, in the second half of the 17th century and the beginning of the following century, a point of meeting of pieces and sculptors of different origins who worked with special dedication on different processional steps. In 1655, the sculptor from Arnedo, Pedro Sanz de Ribaflecha, married to Isabel Virto from Corell, made position at the request of the Brotherhood of the Brotherhood of the Descent from the Cross of its patron saint. The sculpture articulated to one with the image of the Soledad served to the brotherhood to represent the ceremony of the desenclavo, act that was stopped practicing in 1806.

In 1656 and for a period of more than a dozen years we find in Corella the sculptor of Flemish origin Pedro Soliber y Lanoa. The master married in Corella and declared to have worked in Aibar, Ardáiz and Eslava in works of his specialization program. To his gouges we owe the Santa Cena paso of the Riojan town of Alfaro and the Cristo con la Cruz a cuestas (Christ with the Cross on his shoulders) of the monastery of Fitero.

A third master, Juan Manrique de Lara, in this case of Andalusian origin, was also based in Corella between 1678 and 1720. According to his own statement, he had been in Rome, Naples and Florence and had the power of the Holy Inquisition to "remove and undo images that seemed indecent". The Corellan paso del Descendimiento is a work attributable to this master and was commissioned by the Cofradía y Amistad de los Dolores, founded in 1710, by seven brothers in report of the sorrows of the Virgin.

With the passage of time, the pasos were damaged and were reformed and completed with new images. As an example, we can mention the "paso del Balcón de Pilatos de Tudela", completed in 1844 by the local sculptor Antonio Felipe, inspired by a plate. José María Iribarren alludes to some figures of sayones that were still preserved a few years ago and describes the paso as follows: "In front of a balcony that seems to have been torn from a tier of the old bullfighting place , the busts of the three "damned", with sharp noses and aggressive chin, sprout. People find resemblance with the people of the city".

Ecce Homo. XVII century. Corella.
 

Other sculptors
The workshops established in Pamplona, Asiain or Cabredo in the 17th century had to face the demand from the confraternities.

An interesting sculpture of the Ecce Homo is preserved in the parish of Cabredo, currently integrated in a rococo altarpiece. Its author was Diego Jiménez II, married to the daughter of the Caparroso sculptor Juan de Bazcardo, with whom he collaborated on numerous projects. He carved the sculpture in 1645, before associating with masters from La Rioja, after the death of his father-in-law in 1653.

Pablo de Aguirre, retablist and sculptor established in Asiain, was the author of the disappeared passage of the Holy Sepulchre of the capital of Navarre, in 1649, known only by a nineteenth-century print. The piece belonged to the Brotherhood of the Soledad and was paid for by eight devotees of the city, headed by the silversmith Diego Montalvo.

With destination to the town of Milagro, in 1760, the painter Pedro Antonio de Rada, author of the canvases of the cathedral of Pamplona, became position of the passage of the tomb and an image of St. John the Evangelist. With great probability the painter would transfer the commission to a member of the Ontañón family of Cantabrian origin, dedicated to sculpture and established in Pamplona at that time.

One of the last artists to practice this subject of works was Miguel de Zufía from Larragua. When he was eighty-two years old, in 1825, he made position of the Dolorosa and the Christ of the Descent from the convent of Mínimos de Cascante, destined for the function of the unbinding that was carried out in that town until 1930, according to Salamero with this paragraph: "When in the afternoon of Good Friday the cuaresmero finishes preaching the last word, the "holy men" come out to the presbytery, who are two priests with alb and cincture, representing Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who unclave the effigy of the Crucified that has presided the function, and deposit it in a coffin that then they take out in procession on special platforms".

Imported works
Among the imported figures it is necessary to emphasize the very famous Christ of Forgiveness of the disappeared convent of Trinitarians of Pamplona, work of the Valladolid sculptor Francisco Diez de Tudanca, following an iconography spread in the Court by Manuel Pereira and Luis Salvador Carmona, in the XVII and XVIII centuries, that presents Christ kneeling on the terrestrial orb, in prayer before the Eternal Father, with message of redemption. The sculpture was placed in the new church of the religious in 1664 and the following year it went out through the streets of Pamplona in a rogation that obtained the desired end of the rain. In 1794 it was paraded again on the occasion of the War of the Convention, being taken to the cathedral.

The Dolorosa de los Franciscanos de Olite also arrived from the Court of Madrid in plenary session of the Executive Council XVIII century, in this case as a gift from the Marquis of Feria, through an order made in the capital of Spain. In 1850, the brotherhood of the Christ of the Orchard of Pamplona, re-established in 1833, commissioned the Valencian sculptor Antonio Esteve, from the Academy of San Carlos of Valencia, the new paso for the brotherhood, to replace an older one that already appeared in the procession of the capital of Navarre in 1553.

From the lands of La Rioja came the Christ of the Descent from Los Arcos, a work by Ambrosio Calvo, documented by Pastor Abáigar, in 1692, destined to be the protagonist in the ceremony of the Descent in that town, which was carried out until 1833 and recently recovered. Calvo was well known in Navarra for his work in Lazagurría, Mirafuentes, Narcue or Vitoria, where he carved altarpieces and different images.

Of Navarrese origin but with training in Valencia, was the sculptor Marcos de Angós, author of the Christ of the Descent from the Cross of Cintruénigo and of the dress image of the Soledad, executed in 1728. The same master was commissioned to make a Crucified Christ for the capital of Navarre, around 1741, which did not reach its destination because it was the protagonist of certain extraordinary and miraculous events in the town of Villarquemado in Teruel, where it remained and is currently venerated in its own chapel and with the title of Cristo del Consuelo (Christ of Consolation).