20 September

lecture series
CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE RONCAL VALLEY

Wooden architectures and golden scenographies: altarpieces from Roncalese

Ricardo Fernández Gracia
Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art

The localities that make up the Roncal Valley conserve in the internship totality a good issue of altarpieces that correspond to the centuries of the Modern Age, in the different styles that follow one another: Renaissance, Mannerism and Baroque. In the middle of the 16th century, the altarpieces had already become enormous machines that sheltered under their Structures, called by some Navarrese masters as architectural buildings, cycles of figurative arts with themes linked to secular devotions and others chosen for the catechization of the people, a large percentage of whom were illiterate. The major altarpieces preserved in the Valley are one more testimony of how during those centuries, the genre reached its greatest Degree plenitude, at a time when the means of dissemination of culture were mostly oral and plastic.

All the altarpieces from Roncal in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were made of wood, so abundant in that land, generally pine, a particularly ductile material for carving and, above all, susceptible to receive a layer of gold that turned them into true embers of light and golden scenographies. In addition, with the vibration of their forms, the density of their decoration and the multiplicity of their images, the temples of the time, almost always with rigid, inert walls cut at right angles, were given a sensation of mobility and spatial expansion that they structurally lacked. The altarpieces thus provoked an illusionism very characteristic of the Baroque, in which the dichotomy between background and figure, between surface and reality, was only deceptively resolved.

With the coloring and gilding -an operation in which high carat gold leaf was used- the altarpiece, illuminated by the dim light of the candles, glowed like an ember in the half-light of the temples, insinuating itself to the sight of the public like a celestial apparition. In this regard, we cannot fail to mention the eloquent Latin phrase that appears on the Isaba altarpiece next to the donors who made possible the polychrome and gilding of the piece: LUCERE FECERUNT.

The ensemble presented can be used to see the evolution of the altarpiece genre throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, from the early Renaissance casillero altarpiece with multiple iconography (Isaba), to more classicist examples (Uztárroz) and in a later stage where the rhetorical and scenographic triumphs, with the incorporation of moving designs and supports of Solomonic columns dressed in fashion (Zuberoa, Garde, Idoia, Salvador de Urzainqui and Castillo de Roncal) or eighteenth-century balusters (Urzainqui and sponsorship de Uztárroz).

Detail of the main altarpiece of Isaba, by Miguel Garriz 1555-1560.

Masters from Pamplona, Sangüesa, Tudela and nearby Aragonese towns, such as Sos or Uncastillo, and even from the Valley itself are its authors, highlighting the sculptors of the Pejón family in Garde, Roncal, Urzainqui and Burgui, as well as those of local masters who had workshops in different localities, such as Manuel Gorri, Pascual de Lorea, Pedro José Urzainqui or Miguel Ayerdi and the gilder Joaquín Elizondo (or Joaquín Suescun de Elizondo), who left his goods to the church of Garde in his will (1721). The arrival of the master of the Tudela workshop Francisco San Juan to make the altarpiece of Idoia in 1694 is very special, as he was given the model of the main altarpiece of the Jesuits of Pamplona, which had been made by the same artist in 1690. The Aragonese influences are evident, either by the arrival of the artisans, or through the style of the works, something that is logical if we take into account the geographical proximity and belonging to the same diocese of Pamplona, which then covered the archpriesthood of Valdonsella. With respect to the promoters and their financing, there are all kinds subject: private individuals, indianos, clergymen, patrons, in addition to those who were financed through alms.

At final, a rich heritage that speaks multidisciplinary of history, aesthetics, patrons and promoters, artists, messages, iconography, use and function, and techniques. The architecture, painting, sculpture and polychrome reliefs that make up the iconographic program of an altarpiece demanded a wide repertoire of techniques applied to imitate fabrics, meats, diverse objects and varied textures, according to the time and fashions, producing, as a whole, an illusionist effect that effectively enhances the miraculous character of the altar, while magnifying the dimensions of the temple.

The history of each of the major altarpieces of the different localities has been the subject of a visit on the website of the Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro and can be seen on the following page. 

To the data mentioned there we will add others unpublished about the round images of the altarpiece of the parish of Roncal. As is known, the making of the altarpieces, the genre par excellence of Spanish art, is known by numerous notarial and accounting documentation, but there are aspects that still need detailed study, such as the issue and specialization program of those involved in its execution and, above all, the authors of its sculptures and reliefs. In the case of Navarre, we already know some of the names of the sculptors themselves who were commissioned by the master who signed the execution contract or were associated with him. In the case of Roncal, its master Miguel de Garde agreed with the master Clemente Quintana, resident in Pamplona and Asiain, for the execution of the sculptural part, specifically thirteen lumps. The non-compliance of the latter gave rise to a lawsuit for non-payment, which was litigated throughout 1662. A new agreement for the same purpose was signed by the aforementioned Garde in 1670 with the Asiain sculptor Juan Mihura, author among others of several sculptures of the Muruzábal altarpiece that was under the responsibility of his father-in-law Pascual Ochoa de Olza. Specifically, he was to make position of six already roughed out and five without roughing, the reliefs of the tabernacle and finish the two stories of the pedestal, all for the amount of 250 ducats. In 1673, the sculptor from Estella, Pedro López Frías, recognized all those pieces, accepting seven of them as good (Calvary, St. Stephen, St. John the Baptist, St. James and St. Bartholomew) and demanding that some parts of those of St. Sebastian, St. Lawrence, St. Vincent, St. Gregory and God the Father be redone.

One last piece of information that we can offer about one of the altarpieces that was left out of the aforementioned virtual visit , the largest of Vidángoz, tells us about the great remodeling in the second quarter of the 18th century, possibly at position by a local master and completed with images of St. Raymond Nonnatus in 1769, made by Manuel García, and of St. Paul, made in 1773 by a sculptor who was in Sangüesa. Undoubtedly the deficient quality of the sculptures of the altarpiece made it necessary to have the two mentioned, which were closer to the view, in the first body, made. The piece took advantage of the Solomonic columns and some parts of the structure of a previous altarpiece from the second half of the 17th century. The decoration and even several bulges are inspired by Castilian models, although the execution leads us to a local master, more linked to carpentry than to artistic carving.

Detail of the altarpiece of the Virgin of the Castle of Roncal, by Francisco Pejón, 1738.