The piece of the month of June 2019

THE ALTARPIECE OF SAN PEDRO ALCÁNTARA OF THE LECUMBERRI FAMILY OF TUDELA

Ramón I. Villanueva Sáenz
researcher

The Lecumberri family in Tudela since the 16th century

The Tudela branch of the Lecumberri family originated in the last decade of the 16th century when Juan Aicine de Lecumberri, a native of Lugar de Lecumberri in leave Navarra, settled in Tudela and married Águeda Bela. From that moment on, they adopted the surname Lecumberri, "omitting the main and private name of Aizine, as it has its origin in the aforementioned place of Lecumberri and it is common and regular in the towns of the Ribera to call with the name of the place to the people who come down to live in the said towns from the mountains of this Kingdom and France", taking up the Aicine, in 1760, Antonio Lecumberri Sartolo, in the proofs of nobility (file General de Navarra. Process no. 243354), in which he states that his lineage originated from the house of Aicine, in the Place of Gambarte (France).

Several members of the family group joined the noble and distinguished Confraternity of San Dionís, in which "only people not only of clean blood but also of notorious nobility and nobility are admitted". They soon achieved a high economic and social position in Tudela, as a result of carrying out a variety of businesses, as well as a thoughtful marriage policy. Antonio Lecumberri Torrobas, Juan's grandson, married three times, his wives coming from three families of high position: Enriquez and Amezcua, from Tudela, and Virto, from Corella. He founded a bull-breeding ranch, the most important of all those in Navarre in the 18th century, taking his bulls not only to Pamplona for more than half a century, but also to Madrid on several occasions.

As might be expected, they chose places of distinction for their burials. In the different wills consulted, granted by different members of the Lecumberri family, we have verified the importance given to family burials and their location. Each testator expressed his wish to be buried in a specific chapel, very often in the family's own tombs, where other close relatives had previously been buried. Throughout almost three centuries, from the 17th to the 19th century, the deceased members of the family were buried in different tombs, all of them located in Tudela: in the collegiate church (now the cathedral), in the convent of San Francisco and in the parish church of San Nicolás. Juan Aicine de Lecumberri died in 1624 and was buried in the chapel of the Holy Spirit in the collegiate church. His son Antonio Lecumberri Bela bought a burial place in the church of the convent of San Francisco, which "is in the middle of the first row of tombs next to the presbytery of the main altar, on the slab or tombstone it has a description that shows its antiquity and what it contains is the following: Grave of Don Antonio de Aizine Espondaburu de Lecumberri and his descendants". Antonio Lecumberri Torrobas, son of the former, together with his second wife, Isabel de Amezcua, bought a second grave in San Francisco.

Altarpiece of San Pedro de Alcántara, paid for by the Lecumberri family.

The chapel of the Virgen de la Peña in the convent of San Francisco

Regarding the chapel of Nuestra Señora de la Peña in the church of the Franciscan convent of Tudela, Ángeles García de la Borbolla states that it was a much sought-after burial place. Antonio Lecumberri Sartolo, grandson of the aforementioned Antonio Lecumberri and Isabel Amezcua, agreed with the Franciscan Order on the cession and donation of the aforementioned chapel, formalising the said agreement in a deed dated 22 October 1771, which contained, among others, this clause: "they may use the said chapel for their own burials and other purposes, and carry out [what] suits them in any way and at any time, placing in it the images or images of the saints and saints that they see fit". In addition, the purchaser undertook to endow the "chapel with a perpetual light of its lamp and to place as suffrages for their deceased and alms for their religious on All Souls' Day each year a perpetual load of wheat and also to cede in favour of the convent two tombs that the house has in the said church to be given to the trustee". Don Antonio Lecumberri, from agreement with what was stipulated, modified the dedication of the chapel in favour of Saint Peter Alcántara. One of the initial corroborating proofs is the will of his cousin, Francisco Lecumberri Sola, of the same year, in which he stipulates that his "body be buried and interred in the church and convent of my father San Francisco and in the chapel of San Pedro Alcántara, owned by Don Antonio de Lecumberri, my cousin, in the habit of San Francisco...".

Family devotion to St. Peter Alcantara and the chapel

The devotion of the Lecumberri family to Saint Peter Alcantara and Saint Francis of Assisi is evident not only from the dedication in the chapel, but also because we know that in the main house of the entailed estate they kept: "two full-length paintings, one of Saint Francis of Assisi and the other of Saint Peter of Alcantara, with their gold and black frames" and a sculpture of the saint from Extremadura described as follows: "A Saint Peter of Alcantara in bulk with his Silver diadem, which is used to carry him and place him on the High Altar of the Church of the Convent of the Religious of Our Father Saint Francis, in the novena and feast that is held annually by the House". The silver diadem weighed four ounces.

Titular image of the altarpiece of San Pedro de Alcántara.

María Ana Azcue y Altuna, widow of Antonio Lecumberri Sartolo, in the deed of foundation of the Lecumberri entailed estate, described the chapel as follows:

A Chapel in the Church of the Convent of the religious of Ntro. Padre San Francisco de esta dicha Ciudad y en su Presbiterio con su altar dorado y en él colocada la efigie del patron saint de la Casa el Glorioso San Pedro Alcántara con sus sepulcros dentro de las dos paredes colaterales de dicha capilla cerrado o cercado su frontis con una vallada rebajada de yerro y en él fijado y colocado el escudo de su nobleza y una preciosa lámpara de plata que continuamente todo el año is burning and in the same way it will have to be and be maintained in obsequio of the Glorious Saint patron saint for which effect ten dozens of oil and six robos of wheat will be given as alms for the suffrages that the Religious in each year celebrate for the souls of all the deceased of their family on the day of the souls or commemoration of the deceased.

The vicissitudes of the chapel, altarpiece and image were similar to those of the Franciscan convent in the capital of La Ribera. It remained standing until the church was demolished, ordered by the Tudela Town Council in 1841 and executed the following year. Prior to this and since the last decree of exclaustration in 1837, the convent was used as a military hospital and prison. We do not know the whereabouts of several important objects that the chapel contained, for example the fence or grille that enclosed the chapel on which the coat of arms of the Lecumberri family was placed. Nor do we know the fate of the "precious silver lamp that burns continuously all year round". We know of the Napoleonic looting to which the convents of the time were subjected, and we therefore suspect that the silver lamp and perhaps the grille were removed from their original location.

The altarpiece in the parish church of San Nicolás

Regarding the altarpiece of San Pedro Alcántara, which is the element that concerns us here, it was dismantled and moved, in the first instance written request, to the Lecumberri house on 7 September 1836, judging by what Juan de la Cruz Lecumberri Azcue, son of the founder of the entailed estate, noted in the notebook of the expenses of the said house. A few days later, Juan de la Cruz Lecumberri commissioned Alba, a bricklayer who carried out a good issue of repairs to the house, to partition the sepulchres of the chapel containing the mortal remains of several family members.

The Lecumberri family had been left without a burial chapel as the church of San Francisco was closed. On 30th March 1841, at the request of Juan Lecumberri Azcue, the mortal remains of several members of the family were transferred from San Francisco to the church of San Nicolás, which were lying in the sepulchres sealed five years earlier. They were placed in the tomb issue 9, located in the first row and right column, right next to the chapel in which the altarpiece of San Pedro Alcántara was placed, which for decades was in the chapel of San Francisco.

Altarpiece in the parish church of San Nicolás de Tudela in 1978. Photo CMN.

In the inventory of goods made by Juan Lecumberri Azcue, in 1854, on the occasion of the death of his wife Concepción Martínez de Arizala, among the goods listed quotation:

A chapel that existed in the Church of the suppressed convent of Religious of San Francisco of this city, with its gilded altar and in it placed the effigy of San Pedro de Alcántara in bulk, with its sepulchre within the two collateral walls of the said Chapel for burial therein of the founder of the entailed estate Don Antonio Lecumberri, Don Ignacio, his brother, and his descendants, on which the corresponding deed was granted with the community by the Founder on 22nd October 1771 before the notary Don Joaquín García. It was transferred with knowledge of the Bishop, at the time, of this City and its Diocese, Don Ramón María Azpeitia y Sanz de Santa María, as well as the remains existing in the sepulchres of it to the Parish Church of San Nicolás de Bari of this city where the golden altarpiece was placed with the effigy of San Pedro de Alcántara, the fence and others corresponding to the Chapel.

The altarpiece of San Pedro Alcántara was placed on the left side wall of the first chapel on the Epistle side of the church of San Nicolás, where it was photographed by the team of the Monumental Catalogue of Navarre at the end of the seventies of the last century. It was catalogued as a rococo work and described in its organisation. As for the carving of the figure in the central niche, it was catalogued as 18th century, "with a Baroque composition of open lines and landscape elements on the pedestal".

The attribution of the ownership of the altarpiece and chapel of San Nicolás to the Martínez de Andosilla y Gaytan family, made by Julio Segura Miranda, must have been motivated by the fact that doña Josefa Lecumberri y Martínez de Arizala, granddaughter of the founder of the Lecumberri entailed a second marriage to Felipe Gaytán de Ayala y Salvatierra, a descendant of the Martínez de Andosilla family. This marriage had no descendants, and with the death of Doña Josefa Lecumberri, all traces of this illustrious family were erased in Tudela, with the exception of the aforementioned altarpiece of San Pedro Alcántara, and the new Jesuit high school , largely financed with the inheritance of this lady.

The altarpiece is undoubtedly the work of workshops in Tudela, either by the del Río brothers or the Ortiz family, whose projects in those years of the 18th century still oscillated between the dynamic rococo architecture with adventitious plaques and other more classical models that were being imposed in the light of academic guidelines. The sculpture of the saint must have been imported, possibly from Madrid. It depicts the saint ecstatic before the cross - the primitive nude one has disappeared in recent transfers - in harmony with the banner of the day of the saint's canonisation in 1669 and with many other sculptures, drawings and engravings studied by Professor Andrés Ordax in his monograph on the iconography of the Extremaduran saint. The presence of elements of nature on the base is reminiscent of his numerous abductions in the orchard, and the discipline and the skull allude to his penitences. The sculpture is of B quality and is not from the local workshops of Tudela in the third quarter of the 18th century.

Transfer of the altarpiece to Milagro

After a century and a half in the church of San Nicolás, and when this church in Tudela was closed to worship due to its lamentable state of conservation, the altarpiece of San Pedro Alcántara underwent a new transfer, leaving Tudela when it was sent in 1999 to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fair Love of the sponsorship in Milagro, where it was placed on the front wall of the chapel on the Gospel side. The altarpiece, according to José Ignacio Omeñaca, the parish priest of Milagro, told me, arrived in a state of certain deterioration, with two of the altarpiece's columns missing, and it was necessary to commission the workshop of the restorer Patxi Roldan to carve it.

SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

file Tudela Municipal Council. Notarial Protocols of Tudela.
file General of Navarre. Royal Courts. Proceedings, no. 243354.
file General of Navarre. Royal Grants. Mayorazgo Lecumberri Foundation 1796.
Ecclesiastical Archives of Tudela. Sacramental Books of the Parishes of Tudela.

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