Introduction

The towns that make up the Baztan Valley have preserved a good issue of altarpieces that correspond to the centuries of the Modern Age, in the different styles that follow one another, although the most important and remarkable correspond to the Baroque and, more specifically, to what Julio Caro Baroja called "the Navarrese time of the XVIII", where he collects in accurate expression what happened in that particular historical context as follows: "Relatives, relatives, business, business. Finances, canonries, distinguished careers in the army. Everything goes together". J. M.ª Imízcoz gives the figure of eighty-two habits of military orders obtained by families of the Valley, four counties and eight marquisates, which endowed those villages with an extraordinary civil architecture and, above all, with outstanding trousseaus for their churches. We will refer to the altarpieces of the Age of Enlightenment, leaving the late Romanesque altarpieces of Elbete or Amaiur for another occasion.

All of them were made of wood, a particularly ductile material for carving and, above all, susceptible to receiving a layer of gold, which turned them into true embers of light and golden scenographies. With the coloring and gilding - an operation in which high carat gold leaf was used - the altarpiece, illuminated by candlelight, glowed like an ember in the interior of the temples, insinuating itself to the public eye like a celestial apparition. In addition, with the vibration of the shapes of their designs, the dense 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 expansion of space 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.

A rich heritage that speaks in a multidisciplinary way 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 programme of an altarpiece demanded a wide repertoire of techniques applied to imitate fabrics, meats, various objects and varied textures, depending on the period 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.

Along with their more or less dynamic Structures , their theatricality and color, the altarpieces were conceived as thrones for the images of devotions deeply rooted in the people, as well as those of the new saints that represented, no more and no less, the response of the Church of the Catholic Reformation to new needs that proclaimed the role of works or prayer, without missing the Navarrese patron saints or the saints linked to the particular devotion of their promoters or local traditions. They were also a great backdrop for sacred ceremonies, especially for the celebration of masses, and visual, liturgical and ritual focal points.

The primary purpose of an altarpiece was to decorate and contribute to the perfection, splendor and beauty of the temple and chapel that housed it, as it was the object that best fulfilled this task inside. Its mission statement was to serve the adoration of God, as well as to place the faithful in contact with the celestial world through the veneration of the sacred images. Tapié affirms that "the altarpieces responded to a religion of ostentation that wanted to give its rites the greatest possible solemnity and brightness, and that was pleased to erect a triumphal arch above each altar".

Alfonso Rodríguez G. de Ceballos affirms that the main altarpiece of the church served wonderfully for the function of learning, contemplating its iconographies, while listening to the sermon, since the preacher could almost point with his finger from the pulpit the scenes of painting or relief to support his words, "in the manner of the blind singer who pointed with a wand in the street the drawings displayed before the spectators who listened spellbound to his story".

The altarpiece, therefore, was not just another object in the temple to instill greater veneration, but had its projection and life inside the sacred space. In Sánchez Mesa's opinion, no other element assumed the overflowing character of the altarpiece, since the Baroque, destined to exalt sensorially and move behaviors, found in this artistic genre an excellent means for its purposes by having forms, ornament, artifice, lights, fantasy, richness, color and, of course, with the sacred images. The altarpiece, wrapped in the rich liturgical ceremonial and polyphony, became a spectacle for all the senses, provoking sensorially the individual, moving and enervating him, always with the purpose of moving and convincing through the senses, much more vulnerable than the intellect.

The main altarpieces of the parishes of Arizkun and Ziga belong to the Baroque decorative phase. The rest, to a large extent, followed the courtly customs of the central decades of the 18th century thanks to their patrons, great figures in the history of the Valley at that time.

The arrival of academic art was evident in Baztan before the rest of Navarre, where the construction of the cathedral façade was a reference point. The construction of the altarpiece of the parish of Irurita is a notable exception due to its decidedly classicist lines at a date like 1770, when Rococo art prevailed in almost all the workshops.