Baroque Art in the Valleys of the Alt Pyrenees

Baroque Art in the Valleys of the Alt Pirineu

Funding Entity

“Salvador Grau i Tort” Grants from the Alt Pirineu Natural Park through the Research Observatory.

Period

March 2023-July 2023

Researcher: Adrià Vázquez

Description

The project aims to delve into a largely unknown period in the history of art and culture in the Pyrenees, knowing, however, that each parish church and each altarpiece are an invitation to embark on a temporal journey to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Knowing that like other territories of the Principality of Catalonia, the imprint of this era on the heritage and landscape was profound and lasting, and that its study is not only an interesting initiative but also necessary if we want to understand the history, heritage and landscape of this territory. Even if we want to provide a new cultural argument that enriches the experiences of visitors to the valleys, as attractive as that which can be provided by the Pyrenean nature or the visit and exemplary activities of institutions such as the Ecomuseum.

The project that is to be carried out proposes the study of the artistic heritage of the Pyrenean valleys that make up the Alt Pirineu Park is integrated into the context of the broader studies of the research group Reflejos de lo Sagrado. El ciclo del retablo en Cataluña, del fin de la Edad Media al Academicismo. Models, patrimonial fortune and gender perspective, which aspires to the reconstruction of the altarpiece cycle in Catalonia from the end of the 14th century until its dissolution due to the extension of the aesthetic ideals of Academicism. This information will also serve to analyze the heritage adventures of artistic objects in the Pyrenean context during the destructions of 1936.

An initiative that aims to recall that small dynamic and vital universe to discover decisive episodes of the core of the social and religious life of the valleys, investigating the scenarios from where the society of the time explained its religious convictions, its relationship with the supernatural in a stage, let us emphasize, in which the afterlife determined the cycle of daily life. We must bear in mind that the construction of a church or the assembly of an altarpiece culminated a laborious collective enterprise born from an agreement of the population itself, of a trade or of a corporation. And it used to be the result of lived and participatory initiatives, whether by the entire parish or local community, or by an entire community, such as farmers and ranchers, artisans, shepherds or farmers with a precarious economy, or also by rectors who dedicated part of their small fortune or their income to the care and embellishment of an altar, that is, to the promotion of a devotion.

Methodology

The project that is intended to be developed consists of two main tasks.

The first aims to make a complete scrutiny and photograph all the artistic production of the 16th-18th centuries. This will involve traveling throughout the entire territory and accessing the various buildings, which will require contacting the corresponding parishes and establishing an itinerary that allows, in the most agile way possible, to travel through all the valleys in the area.

The second task to be developed ?to be carried out among all the members of the research team? will focus on making a first attempt at documenting the archives of the territory. In this case, it will be carried out, initially, in the Pallars Sobirà Regional Archive (ACPS), as the headquarters where the documentary collection of the Sort notarial district is preserved and, within it, that of Tírvia, Rialp and Esterri d’Àneu. The emptying of the notarial books can provide us with new information relating to the artistic production of that period, especially the 18th century. In parallel, a search will also be carried out in the Capitular Archive of La Seu d’Urgell (ACU), a diocese that brings together each and every one of the parishes circumscribed by the Park.

Finally, research will also be carried out in those private documentary collections that have been preserved, seeking to enrich the information relating to the cultural heritage of the Alt Pirineu valleys, as well as the Historical Archive of the Valls d’Àneu.