High altarpiece of the parish church of Garde

The main altarpiece in Garde is the first attempt at a large Baroque altarpiece in the Roncal valley and one of the first of its type with a shell and large-scale salomonic elements in the whole of the Sangüesa region.

The author of this altarpiece, Juan Baines, was a master from Isaba, who was examined in Pamplona in 1696. His professional life was spent in the Aragonese capital, where he completed his trainingand married Josefa Fuster in 1700, who belonged to a family of craftsmen. sampleDespite living in Saragossa, he sourced his timber from his own land, as can be seen from a 1703 trial in which the public prosecutor and Don Juan de Goyeneche, a fitter of masts, planking and pitch for the ships of the Royal Navy, litigated against the town of Burgui over the illegal sale of a portion of trees to Juan Baines, a resident of Saragossa (AGN. Procesos, no. 004986). His work catalogued in Aragon is limited to the altarpiece of San Miguel in the parish church of San Salvador de Salvatierra de Esca, which belonged to a brotherhood of priests in that town and for which he received the sum of 140 Jaquesan pounds.

The Garde altarpiece is his most important work. According to Gárriz, the council and chapter decided to commission it in 1697, although the notarial contract is dated June 1700, after obtaining the mandatory licencein February 1699. The reason is repeated with respect to other cases, the deterioration of the previous one being cited as "mistreated and indecent". The authorised expensewas 1,400 escudos, the execution deadlinetook a year and a half and the supervision of projectwas the responsibility of positionof José Echeverría, master architect of Sos, who had worked years earlier on the basilica and altarpiece of Nuestra Señora de Zuberoa, in the same town of Garde. Echeverría considered the work to be well executed in 1701.

It has an octagonal floor plan and is enclosed by a sumptuous shell, one of the first of this type, subject, to be built in Navarre. It consists of a bench, a body divided into three sections and a cascarón. The high bench has six corbels, two exterior ones on a more advanced level, which are decorated with rich foliage and a bust of a beast, and the four interior ones, on a later level and arranged on two levels, which are decorated with the same subjectfoliage dotted with flowers and with busts of beasts dressed in breastplates. The main body is divided into three aisles, each of which has niches topped by richly embossed cards, the central one with a wreath and the side ones with pairs of children and scallops. The articulation of these Structuresis made by means of transpilastras and giant Solomonic columns with Corinthian capitals, the external ones simple and the double ones that frame the central street; all the shafts of these supports are covered by a moving and plastic vegetation dotted with sunflowers, chicotes and bichas that sprout from the foliage itself. A powerful entablature gives way to the shell. The iconography of the ensemble respects what was agreed with the master in 1700; in the main body flank the spectacular sculpture of Santiago Matamoros, the images of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, while in the shell there is Saint Anne with the Child Virgin plus two figures of the archangels Michael and Raphael. The polychromy of the whole, based on rich gold and red and blue backgrounds, enriches the ensemble and was carried out by Joaquín Elizondo from 1717, who died in 1721, leaving the parish church as his heir. Matías Moler was in charge of the gilding of the pedestal. The archdeacon of the Chamber of Pamplona Cathedral, Domingo Pérez de Atocha y Maisterra (1646-1716), whose parents were from Garde and who had paid for two silver lamps in the Pamplona cathedral and, in 1710, a silver frontal for the parish church of Tafalla, contributed a respectable sum for the latter work, The work of the goldsmith José Montalvo and the altarpiece of Saints Félix and Amadeo in the parish of Garde, probably the work of Juan Baines, who is the only one in Navarre to have some very curious torsos and forked columns, unique in the whole region and which we can relate to those that appear in the altarpiece of San Antonio Abad in the church of San Pablo in Saragossa.