The piece of the month of February 2018
A PORTRAIT OF A NUN FROM TULEBRAS ON THE LIBRARY SERVICES NATIONAL
Ricardo Fernández Gracia
Chair of Navarrese Heritage and Art
University of Navarra
Among the holdings of the Library Services Nacional are some watercolours of five nuns from different religious orders attributed to Valentín Carderera. One of them is of a nun from Tulebras. Unlike the other four, in which the name of the sitter is not personalised, in the case of the nun from Navarre it is in a registration in pencil which seems to copy another one done in graphite but which is almost completely erased. The five watercolours are extremely interesting examples of the habits of the congregations depicted, namely the Benedictine nuns of the Holy Cross in Jaca, the nuns of the Holy Cross in Jaca, the canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre in Saragossa, the prioress of San Juan de Alguaire in Barcelona and the aforementioned nun of the monastery in Navarre.
data The analysis of the drawing and some biographical information about the sitter, Doña Ángela Urtasun y Lapuerta, taken from the history of the monastery by Fr. Colombás and completed by others from file de Tulebras, will help us to contextualise and analyse the watercolour in its full extent.
Portrait of Mother Ángela Urtasun, nun of Tulebras, attributed to Valentín Carderera, second quarter of the 19th century. Photograph Library Services Nacional.
Historical portraits of nuns in Navarre
There are not many individual portraits of nuns in the Foral Community. One of the reasons for this is the reluctance of those who had abandoned the world and withdrawn to practise prayer and work behind the bars of the cloister to pose. The same can be said of the portraits of other members of the clerical establishment. In our programs of study about the famous Sister María Jesús de Ágreda, we could find very significant testimonies in this respect and the same aversion to be portrayed was very present in outstanding moralists of the 17th century, who considered that humility and portrait were not compatible. Several biographers of religious mentioned the topic to record the humility and detachment in the lives of their biographers.
This attitude of not allowing oneself to be portrayed because of its incompatibility with rigour and humility was already present in the 16th century. Let us recall the very illustrative case of Fray Luis de Granada, whose works became more widely known and the number of those who wanted to know his face and image grew as issue grew. Since he did not allow himself to be portrayed, it is said that it was the Pope himself, Gregory XIII, who sent a sculptor to "bring him out of relief" and then make a print of him.
This is how Gabriel de Aranda expresses himself, at the end of the 17th century, in the Life of Venerable Brother Francisco Díaz de Ribero, coadjutor of the Society of Jesus, when he states: "Recognising how little hope they could already conceive of the life of our Francis, and that death would soon deprive them of that living example of virtue, they wanted to encourage them with their report to have a portrait of him taken. To which, as the humble Francis was extraordinarily repugnant, it was necessary, for the consolation of those of high school, that the superior ordered him to let himself be portrayed, a difficult obedience for him that he went so far as to propose, through his confessor, to the superior to revoke the order, because in all his life he had proposed anything that was ordered of him, however uncomfortable it might be, here his humility judged that he was obliged to propose something so honourable". The same could be said about the aforementioned Mother Agreda or Blessed Juan de Palafox.
Among the few examples of nuns portrayed in Navarre are those of the Augustinian Recollect nuns of Pamplona, the foundress of the Capuchin nuns of Tudela and the famous Discalced Carmelites of the convent of San José in Pamplona. These individual portraits were justified by their reputation for sanctity, visions or foundresses. In the Recollects of Pamplona are kept those of the foundress of the order, Mother Mariana, and those of two notable nuns of the house of Pamplona: Constanza de San Pablo and Josefa de San Francisco. In the Carmelites of San José, that of the Venerable Catalina de Cristo, and in the Carmelites of the capital of Navarre, another portrait of the latter and that of Francisca del Santísimo Sacramento, famous for her visions in the first half of the 17th century. Finally, the Capuchin nuns of Tudela kept in their cloister the portrait of Sister Lucía Margarita Cerro, who was one of those who came from Toledo to the capital of La Ribera in 1736 for the foundation of the house.
There were also group portraits. The first of these is in the tomb in the present-day parish church of the Virgen del Río in Pamplona, formerly the church of the Augustinian Sisters of San Pedro de Ribas, with paintings of a knight and some groups in the background, including four nuns praying and commenting among themselves. It dates from the mid-14th century and unfortunately its conservation is rather poor.
In the Carmelite convent of San José in Pamplona and in the convent of Araceli in Corella of the same order, there are two exceptional paintings that depict collective portraits of the entire community in the mid-17th century and early 19th century, respectively. From the iconographic point of view, both paintings obey the typical image of the Virgin of Misericordia or of the sponsorship. The origin of topic lies in a passage from the Dialogus miraculorum, written around 1220 by the Cistercian Cesareus of Heisterbach, in which he narrates the vision of a monk who saw the Cistercian order in the kingdom of heaven under the mantle of Mary. From this vision onwards, different versions of the figurative arts would follow in order to express the effect of the Virgin's mercy on her favourite children. From the Cistercians it would pass to other religious orders and from these to confraternities, to the faithful in general, to sinners and to the souls in purgatory. Mary's mantle became a protector and shelter for believers, in the same way that when a child was legitimised or adopted, it was solemnly covered with the mantle.
In the Pamplona canvas, dated around 1670, the Virgin is accompanied by Saint Joseph and Saint Teresa, and was painted during the priesthood of Mother Fausta Gregoria del Santísimo Sacramento (Arbizu Garro Xavier), who was related to Saint Francis Xavier and died in 1678. Her obituary letter states that "she had a painting made and in it she placed the image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, assisted by our Father Saint Joseph and our Mother Saint Teresa, and under the mantle or cloak of the Virgin all the nuns of this house, at the feet of the great Queen, the prioress giving her the hearts of all the daughters with all the government of the convent". In a study we related this painting to some letters of the then bishop Juan de Palafox addressed to the community and its prioress in 1659, as well as to the Palafoxian devotional internship of the rosary of the heart.
The one in Corella is signed by Diego Díaz del Valle in 1816 and is located in the convent porter's lodge. It is as naive as it is interesting for its portraits of the 21 nuns, three of them novices with white veils. In the lower choir of the same convent of the Discalced Carmelites of Araceli there is a fresco with the same motif topic, painted some ninety years earlier.
Sister Ángela de Urtasun, "like a child, despite her representation and majestic bearing".
In 1818, Ángela Urtasun Lapuerta, born in Tafalla in 1797, took the habit in the monastery of Tulebras, daughter of Esteban de Urtasun and Rosa Lapuerta, a couple who had six children. She made her solemn profession in 1819, on 28th January, when Fray Benito Oñate was Abbot of Veruela. Among the posts she held were those of cillerera and depositary. She died at the age of 83, on 29 January 1879, and was buried in the chapel of Christ and Our Lady of Sorrows. The laconic monastic obituary states that she belonged to a noble family and that "she was like a child, despite her representation and respectful demeanour, from a very distinguished and noble family", words that must be interpreted as a hymn to her innocence and character.
The portrait kept at the Library Services Nacional (DIB/18/1/7801) is on yellowish paper and is executed in graphite, pen, watercolour and coloured gouache. In the lower part of the painting there is a registration which reproduces another half-drawn one that reads: "Dª Angela Urtazun / Trage de coro de las Religiosas de Tulebras / Orden del Cister" (Mrs Angela Urtazun / Choir dress of the Religious of Tulebras / Order of the Cistercian Order). As is well known, the vestments worn by the various religious orders, as well as by members of the secular clergy, in addition to being a unifying element for those who wear them within a community, to a large extent also identify their spiritual ideals, which are generally related to their origin, to the people who founded each congregation and to the rules that sustain them.
As indicated on registration, the nun wears the choral cogulla or multi-folded, loose-fitting robe with enormous sleeves that nuns used to wear to choir and even to go out of the house. She is depicted standing and at a young age, which would date the work early, shortly after Carderera's return from Italy in 1831. The background is what could be the monastic garden and a large stone wall of the architectural complex, possibly from the church itself. The curly headdress with a central shawl in the form of a small cone is striking, which is reminiscent of earlier fashions. The veil, in the form of a black tulle, has just been draped over the nun's face, as indicated by the attitude of her left hand. Her right hand is concealed in the wide sleeve of her cogulla. Her invoice is good and delicate, as is the colouring. The old habit with its elegant headdresses must have disappeared completely in 1875, when the reform of convent life was established, with Cosme Marrodán as bishop of Tarazona. The chronicle alludes to this: "When common life was established, on 24 September, the beautiful silk and curly dresses worn by the religious ladies were removed and replaced by the ones they wore. It was a great joy and happiness to establish the common life so desired by all, and they hurried to submit the particular objects that each one had in her cell to conform more to holy poverty, there was a nun who only left in her cell... stuck on a cardboard, a chair and the holy water basin". From then on, the nuns of Tulebras dressed like the rest of their sisters, and adornments and even caudas were suppressed. For the rest, as regards the habit in past and future times, we refer to what Professor Tarifa Castilla publishes in her monograph on the monastery.
In the convent's Tulebras premises there is a canvas from the early 17th century with the topic of the adoration of the Eucharist held by angels in a monumental monstrance, while four archangels identified by their names play a motet with stringed and wind instruments. In the lower part, four nuns, actually Cistercian saints, adore the Eucharist and are depicted in a prayerful attitude, wearing curly headdresses and colourful cogullas decorated with flowers and the Eucharistic symbol in the form of a Holy Form with the Calvary inside. The model cogulla is used to compare the habit of the early 16th century with that of three centuries later in the watercolour of the National Library Services , although it is true that the canvas seems to copy a print and, therefore, the generic habit of the Cistercians.
The author of the watercolor, Valentín Carderera (1796-1880), is well known in his biographical data and for his numerous works. He was born in Huesca, where he was educated at seminar and the Sertorian University. First protected by Don José Palafox, he arrived in the Aragonese capital to be taught by Buenaventura Salesa. In 1816 he went to Madrid, where he was a disciple of Mariano Salvador Maella and José Madrazo. In 1822, with the protection of the Duke of Villahermosa, he went to Rome, where he remained until 1831. During those nine years he toured the Italian peninsula and took countless pencil and watercolor sketches that would make up his famous albums. It was then that Carderera began his great collection that in time became knowledge essential for artists and connoisseurs. His most important work, the Spanish Iconography (1855 and 1864), published in Spanish and French, is one of the first repertoires of effigies of illustrious personages from the 11th to the 17th centuries. His paintings speak of an artist of academic and neoclassical training , which evolved towards an early romanticism. He was in charge of numerous official commissions and his love for his native land was evident in the bequest he did for the training of the Provincial Museum of Huesca, located in the building of the old Sertoriana University, in whose classrooms he had been formed.
SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
file Monastery of Tulebras. Book no. 3. Mirror of the holy and royal monastery of Tulebras copied and added with countless events when Pilar Vera was abbess in 1922, fol. 171.
BALSINDE, I. and PORTÚS, J., "El retrato del escritor en el libro español del siglo XVII", Reales Sitios, 131 (1997), pp. 41-57.
COLOMBÁS, G. M., Monasterio de Tulebras, Pamplona, Government of Navarre, 1987.
FERNÁNDEZ GRACIA, R., Iconography of Sister María de Ágreda. Imágenes para la mística y la escritora en el contexto del maravillosismo del Barroco, Pamplona, committee organizador del IV Centenario del nacimiento de sor María Jesús de Ágreda, 2003.
GARCÍA GUATAS, M., "Carderera: un ejemplo de artista y erudito romántico", Artigrama, no. XI (1994-1995), pp. 425-450.
VEGA, J. and PORTÚS, J., La estampa religiosa en la España del Antiguo Régimen, Madrid, Fundación Universitaria Española, 1998.
TARIFA CASTILLA, M. J., El monasterio de Tulebras, Pamplona, Government of Navarre, 2012.