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Cuadernos de la Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro, nº 2

Promotion and patronage of art in Navarre

 

CONSULT IN DADUN

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The second volume of the Cuadernos de la Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro has now been published with the participation of professors of the aforementioned Chair as well as scholars of Navarrese art.
If the first issue was centered in the Cathedral of Pamplona when being published as Homage to Don Jesús María Omeñaca, who had been canon treasurer and Director of Sacred Art of the Navarrese diocese, this second one is dedicated entirely to the topic of the promotion and the patronage in the Navarrese art.

Over the last decades, art history has been approaching the social, economic and legal aspects that contextualize cultural goods, as well as the historical and social reality of the artist-commissioner binomial, all of them issues that have been somewhat distant, if not totally forgotten, in many works, due to the interest focused on purely formal disquisitions.

The promotion of the arts has been the subject of study in two congresses in Aragon in 1981 -II congress of Aragonese Art- and in Murcia in 1988 in the VII Spanish congress of History of Art with the degree scroll of Patrons, promoters, patrons and clients. In the first case, after discussing the scope of the term patronage, the degree scroll was extended to Clientele, promotion and patronage in Aragonese art; in the second, nothing was contributed in the general methodological order for the Baroque period. Professor Yarza broke down and distinguished the different terms for the medieval period, there being no discussion paper for the art of the Modern Age or Ancient Regime.

The difficulties to obtain acceptable results, in these last lines of research, grow because of the subject of documentary sources we use, in most cases of an official nature (accounts, contracts, appraisals), and because of the scarcity of the correspondence between the artist-client, which usually has other connotations and can give enormous possibilities. Moreover, none of these sources specify or clarify practically anything about the differentiation between the different ways of promoting the arts. In the internship totality of cases, they limit themselves to stating that this or that work has been done at their expense, at their expense or by their donation. It is therefore necessary for the art historian to draw conclusions after studying the abundant documentation and classify the different types of promotion of the arts, in the light of the relationship between the artist and the client and the tastes of the latter. 

In general terms, any relationship between the commissioner and the artist is still considered to be patronage, leaving aside all the questions that affect the subject of contact between both, client and artist; the reasons that lead someone to commission a work; the possibility that there is a certain taste or some subject of preparation on the part of the commissioner. Simply put, one study after another is limited to presenting a documentation according to which a prominent person, without knowing why, commissions a more or less important series of works to one or more artists, without mentioning whether there is a conscious choice of that artist.
With the word promoter we can denominate the one who promotes, even the one who finances or the one who obtains the means of financing; in final, the one who manages something for the sake of the realization of a work. It is a broad term that does not exclude and implicitly carries the idea of initiative, so we can include a large part of the donations, so abundant in the period, in the same way that we can say of some promoters who become patrons. 

The word patron saint or patron is used with a clear meaning in the documentation of the time alluding to the one who holds board of trustees (iure propio patronus). It implies superiority (moral, of authority...) and protection and is perfectly applicable to those nobles, ecclesiastics or institutions that enjoyed the right of board of trustees over church buildings. The board of trustees had its origin in the recognition by the Church to an individual, nobleman, people or institution of a series of rights that also carries with it some contractual obligations. It was usually instituted at the time of the construction of the building. Among the rights of the patron were the presentation of ecclesiastical offices, preferences or precedence in the moments of incensation, offering or peace and the right to place noble coats of arms on walls and altarpieces. The obligations were centered on the guardianship and surveillance of the ecclesiastical discipline , as well as the building and its decoration.

The promotional work developed by kings and queens, bishops and ecclesiastical councils, civil institutions as well as Navarrese characters who occupied prominent positions in the Court of Madrid or in America and who amassed high fortunes is analyzed and valued in this book, which I hope will be interesting for our readers.

In this way, the Chair contributes through the research to a better knowledge of Navarre's heritage, updated by new approaches and enriched by new perspectives.

María Concepción García Gainza
Ricardo Fernández Gracia
Coordinators

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Promotion and patronage of art in Navarre