Painting Heaven and Hell in the Wake of the Plague. A contribution to the Study of Parish Church Wall Paintings in the Kingdom of Navarre between 1348 and 1387.
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Authors
Tuduri, Eneko
Issue Date
2023
Type
Dissertation
Language
Keywords
14th century , Black Death , Medieval Iberia , Navarre , Parish Churches , Wall painting
Alternative Title
Abstract
Specialist scholars have recognized the high artistic quality of fourteenth-century mural painting in Navarre, a small kingdom located between Iberia and France. Painted in the Gothic linear style, sophisticated and colorful murals filled the walls of churches and palaces depicting Christian and folk culture themes. Examples of these artworks, located in Pamplona Cathedral and the kingdom’s major churches, have been studied extensively by art historians. However, a notable group of murals that decorate parish churches in the Navarrese countryside have not been studied, and have arguably been undervalued on account of their damaged and naive aspect. The present research focuses on the period after the arrival of the Black Death in Navarre in 1348. It has been argued that, due to the chaotic crisis going on after the pandemic, artistic creation was not as significant as the splendorous period comprising the first half of the century. However, in the art of painting, the evidence gathered points to a continuation of, not a break with, the previous grandness. Through developing an ad hoc interdisciplinary methodology, the purpose of this dissertation is to reveal the creative process, patronage, and symbolic function of the fourteenth-century murals. Who could afford expensive wall paintings in a period of deep crisis after 1348, full of famines, wars, and the Black Death? And, where did the Navarrese painters get the precious pigments—such as azurite—to paint the wide surfaces of rural parish church interiors? Despite the terrible odds (more than 40 percent of the population lost between 1348 and 1362 in two separate outbreaks of plague), during the second half of the fourteenth century, extensive activity was undertaken to decorate the interiors of Romanesque and Gothic churches with mural paintings in Navarre. This fervent activity was possible due to the presence of an active group of local painters who were patronized by a nobility who saw their revenues increased by participating in the king’s politics. Probably moved by the chaotic period in which they were living, these noble patrons intended to stress through these murals, even more than usual, the deep fear of the punishments in Hell while expecting to reach Christian salvation in Heaven. The fortunate discovery of a silver mine in the Pyrenees in 1338 provided these painters with much appreciated pigments, which led them to divide the parish churches walls between Heaven (blue) and Hell (red).