17 October 2012

Global Seminars & Invited Speaker Series

AROUND THE EXHIBITION OCCIDENS. DISCOVER THE ORIGINS

The Gothic cathedral of Pamplona: iconography of the cloister

Ms. Soledad de Silva y Verástegui
University of the Basque Country

During the centuries of the Gothic period, two important artistic undertakings were carried out in the Cathedral of Pamplona. In the first place, the new Gothic cloister that replaced the old Romanesque one, a work begun at the end of the 13th century that was largely completed in the middle of the following century. And secondly, the new cathedral church, begun in the last decade of the 14th century, remained under construction throughout the 15th century. Both works required a splendid architectural ornamentation, both sculpted and painted, in addition to the provision of important funerary monuments, carved ex profeso, altarpieces, pulpits, devotional images, or the liturgical trousseau that included excellent pieces of goldsmithing and illustrated manuscripts. To deal with all this collection of works in the time of one hour would force us to reduce lecture to little more than an inventory or Catalog, so we focused on the iconographic program sculpted in the cloister, one of the most beautiful creations of the universal Gothic that surpasses, for its decorative exuberance, the work of other contemporary Hispanic cloisters such as those of Burgos, León, Oviedo or Toledo.

The cloister was an essential space in the life of the canons of the Cathedral of Pamplona since they, at the end of the 12th century, had become regular canons subject to the Rule of St. Augustine. Life in common demanded a series of rooms such as the chapter house conference room , the refectory and the kitchen, the dormitory and other rooms where life took place, the cloister being one of the busiest places and an obligatory passage from any of them to the church or vice versa. The sculpted decoration of this enclosure was centered on three levels, comprising the keystones at the highest level, the capitals at mid-height, and finally the doorways and the sculpted groups below, within easy reach of the eye.

The former, especially most of the keystones located in the eastern, northern and western wings of the cloister, provide us with an allegory of the world or the terrestrial orb where the categories of space and time govern, evoked respectively by the images of the winds and rivers of Paradise, and of a calendar represented, as was usual in the Age average, by the work of the months of the year. The Agnus Dei, allegory of the Redemption, confers to the whole a meaning of new Creation.

At a lower level are the capitals that depict human activity with a wide range of profane themes, in which the story of Salvation is inserted. This begins with the creation of the first man and continues in the four capitals depicting various episodes from Genesis up to the Tower of Babel, the construction of which presents an image of everyday life. The topic of Job, a prefiguration of the Passion of Christ, in two other capitals, allows us to link the Old Testament with the cycle of the Passion represented in the doors of the Refectory - which includes a programme of Eucharistic exaltation - and of the Archdeaconry in the southwest corner.

Of exceptional iconographic interest is the Door of the Amparo, which represents the Koimesis in the tympanum and a beautiful image of the Virgin and Child in the mullion, both crowned, and accompanied by other scenes, including an Annunciation and the episode of the fall of Adam and Eve, which were used by medieval theologians to explain the reasons for this singular Marian privilege. Finally, the last great doorway of the cloister, called the Precious Door, on the southern side, depicts the cycle of the death and coronation of the Virgin. No doubt the repetition of the psalm: "pretiosa est in conspectu Domini, mors sanctorum eius", which accompanied the reading of the Pretiosa or the martyrology that the canons of the Cathedral did every day in the chapterhouse conference room , whose door they had to cross to access it, may have motivated its iconographic programme. This would also explain the series of martyrdoms of saints depicted on the keystones of the vaults of the adjoining sections. Another devotion that the chapter had to fulfil, according to the bishops' decree, was the nocturnal procession after Compline from the choir to the chapel of Jesus Christ, which included, among others, two seasonal stops in the cloister, one before the group of the Epiphany in the northeast corner and another before the effigies of St. Peter and St. Paul located at the door of the Barbazana chapel. The Cathedral documents have allowed us to know the antiphons and prayers that the canons prayed before these images.
 

Pamplona Cathedral. Cloister. Refectory doorway. Early 14th century