Tarazona Cathedral: A Gothic, Mudéjar, and Renaissance Cathedral in Spain
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Crown of Aragon, Spanish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page21 sections
History
Tarazona Cathedral is a Catholic cathedral in Tarazona, Spain, built as a Gothic church from the mid-twelfth century and serving as the seat of the Diocese of Tarazona. Also known as the Seo of Our Lady of the Huerta, it stands outside the medieval walls on the right bank of the Queiles River, near Eguarás Palace. Construction is conventionally dated to 1162, although traditions place its beginning in 1152, while another historical note associates the foundation with 1235. The cathedral was consecrated in 1232 under Bishop García Frontín II.
Foundation and medieval expansion
After Alfonso I of Aragon conquered Tarazona, the church was initially known as Our Lady of the Hydria, probably a reference to a vase of lilies. The names Our Lady of the Huerta and Our Lady of the Vega later became customary, reflecting the building’s position beside the river, fields, and gardens. Its location beyond the walled town may preserve the importance of an earlier urban and Christian area.
The nearby Cistercian Gothic monastery of Veruela was being built during the same period and probably influenced the cathedral’s austere Gothic character. In 1221, James I of Aragon was knighted in the cathedral after marrying Eleanor of Castile in nearby Ágreda. He was thirteen at the time. During the second half of the thirteenth century, the church was enlarged while retaining its Cistercian Gothic character. This phase established the main arrangement of three naves, a transept, a semicircular apse, an ambulatory, and radial chapels.
War, rebuilding, and architectural transformation
Tarazona’s cathedral was exposed to military action because it stood outside the town walls. In 1357, during the War of the Two Peters, a conflict between Peter I of Castile and Peter IV of Aragon, Castilian troops used the building as a barracks during Peter I’s attack on Tarazona. The occupation caused serious damage, and the medieval cloister was destroyed.
After the conflict, the cathedral was substantially rebuilt and given Mudéjar elements. Mudéjar architecture combines Islamic-influenced forms, brickwork, plaster, geometric ornament, and latticework in Christian buildings. The naves, side chapels, exterior wall sections, central crossing tower, and bell tower were reconstructed or heavily altered. The principal plan remained Gothic, but the crossing tower and bell tower acquired Gothic-Mudéjar forms, while the central crossing was later enriched with Renaissance features.
Work on the bell tower began toward the end of the fifteenth century. Its central section was built in 1496 and 1497, and its upper section was added from 1588. The portal facing the Plaza de la Seo was also financed in the sixteenth century by Martín de Mezquita, treasurer and canon of the cathedral, who was buried at the entrance beneath a slab bearing his image. Baroque additions included the retrochoir, the large atrium, and the Chapel of Saint Andrew.
Restoration and archaeological interpretation
The cathedral was declared a Historic-Artistic Monument and a Property of Cultural Interest in 1931. Its combination of Gothic, Aragonese Mudéjar, Renaissance, and Baroque work has led to the nickname “Sistine Chapel of the Spanish Renaissance,” particularly because of its unusual mythological nude paintings.
Serious structural problems led to the cathedral’s closure from 1985 during a comprehensive restoration that continued until 2011, following major work begun by 1984. The restoration uncovered Gothic paintings and Renaissance paintings in the apse and crossing tower that had been concealed for centuries. Bishop Hernández Sola reconsecrated the cathedral for worship on 20 April 2011.
Archaeological work beneath and around the cathedral revealed successive Roman, late Roman, Visigothic, Romanesque, and early-modern activity. These remains support the interpretation of the site as an important urban and Christian location before the present cathedral was built. The chapter archive also preserves evidence of the institution’s long intellectual and musical history, including 168 manuscripts, 258 incunabula, and a library of about 3,700 volumes. An incunabulum is a book printed in Europe before 1501, during the earliest period of movable-type printing.
The oldest preserved document in the archive is a 1196 concord between the Tarazona chapter and the Diocese of Sigüenza. Other holdings include a letter from Christopher Columbus to the Catholic Monarchs announcing the discovery of America, correspondence between María Jesús de Ágreda and Philip IV, Justinian’s complete Digest, works by Averroes, Plato, and Aristotle, and a Protestant theological incunabulum. Hebrew documents from Tarazona’s former Jewish quarter were discovered in 1997 after being reused in the bindings of Christian books.
The archive’s Renaissance polyphonic music collection includes Manuscript 2-3, described as the richest surviving document of Hispanic religious polyphony. Polyphonic music combines several independent vocal or instrumental lines. The manuscript contains music associated with the court chapel of Ferdinand and Isabella, who stayed in Tarazona for several months in 1484 and 1495 while holding the Cortes of Aragon. Their visits helped establish a major musical tradition at the cathedral. Musicians associated with it include Cristóbal de Soria, Juan García de Basurto, Francisco de Silos, Juan Francisco de Sayas, Antonio Ripa, Tomás Genovés y Lapetra, Nicolás Ledesma, and the Franciscan theorist Pablo Nasarre.
Remains
Gothic plan and exterior setting
The cathedral occupies the present Plaza de la Seo beside the Queiles River and Eguarás Palace, separated from the higher medieval town on the opposite bank. A monumental staircase leads across the broad square to the building. Its Gothic plan consists of a central nave higher than the two side aisles, a transept, a semicircular apse, an ambulatory, and radial chapels. The full length has been described as about 230 feet, while the transept is about 120 feet wide.
External flying buttresses support the main walls. The side aisles retain simple Gothic rib vaults, while the main chapel and transept have a triforium, a gallery or passage above the main arcades. Pointed Gothic vaulting rises over the central nave, although semicircular arches also appear in the nave structure. A Gothic gallery runs around the apse and transept, linking the principal architectural elements.
Towers and cloister
Bell tower
The bell tower is divided into three principal sections. Its lower body is Gothic and built of stone. Above it, the central Mudéjar section extends to the clock and is constructed of brick. Alí Darocano made this part in 1496 and 1497. The Renaissance upper section, built from 1588 by Juan Guaza and Juan Villanueva, consists of two brick bodies, one square and one octagonal. The octagonal body is divided into two levels. Friezes of angled bricks form diamond patterns and semicircular arches across the tower’s surface.
Crossing tower
The crossing tower, or cimborrio, is a tower rising over the church’s central crossing. Juan Lucas Botero and his son built it between 1543 and 1545 over the medieval crossing tower, and Alonso González began its decoration in 1546. The lower body has eight niches separated by columns, each containing a statue of an apostle. Grisaille paintings, made in a single color to imitate sculpture or relief, depict nude biblical figures.
Shell-shaped squinches transform the square lower body into an octagon with windows. Above it are a lantern and a star-shaped rib vault. A small chapel dedicated to the Virgin is located within the crossing tower. Renaissance work in this area also includes the interior paintings, sculpted wild men, and the star-shaped vault.
Mudéjar cloister
The sixteenth-century Mudéjar cloister is built of brick and plaster around a square plan. Its rib-vaulted galleries contain windows opening toward the inner garden and plaster latticework inspired by Eastern designs. The screens include fantastic animals, bucolic scenes, and religious images. After the earlier cloister was destroyed during the fourteenth-century conflict, the present structure was rebuilt in the early sixteenth century under Bishop Guillem Ramon de Montcada, with local inhabitants participating in the work.
Ambulatory chapels
Chapel of the Calvillo Bishops
The Chapel of the Calvillo Bishops is trapezoidal and has a simple rib vault and a thirteenth-century window with a semicircular arch. It contains the tombs of the brothers Pedro and Fernando Pérez Calvillo, made by Pedro de Corcán around 1404 and 1405. Funerary scenes and recumbent effigies decorate the monuments. The chapel’s fourteenth-century International Gothic altarpiece, a refined courtly style of late medieval European art, was made by Juan de Leví and dedicated to Saints Lawrence, Prudentius, and Catherine.
Chapel of Saint Andrew
The Chapel of Saint Andrew occupies the center of the ambulatory. Its walls have a stucco frieze painted to imitate precious-stone inlay. The early eighteenth-century Baroque altarpiece includes a central painting of the saint’s martyrdom and an Annunciation above it. Four seventeenth-century Italian-school paintings show episodes from Saint Andrew’s life. A crypt beneath the chapel was used for the burial of canons and some bishops.
Chapel of the Immaculate Conception
The Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, also called the Chapel of the Conchillos, contains the tombs of Lope Conchillos, dean of Tarazona, and Gonzalo Conchillos, a Tarazona canon. Their tombs stand beneath a richly decorated plasterwork pointed arch. The chapel also contains an altarpiece by Juan de Moreto.
Chapel of the Purification
The Chapel of the Purification, also known as the Chapel of the Presentation or Talavera Chapel, was remodeled by Alonso González between 1551 and 1558. Its unusual vault is crossed by a stucco entablature carved with fantastic animals and medallions. Beneath it is a monochrome representation of the apostles. Antón de Talavera commissioned the Hispano-Flemish altarpiece from Martín Bernat in 1493.
A double funerary monument contains the tombs of Antón I Talavera, Pedro Talavera, Ana de Guarás, and María de Talavera. The polychrome iron screen dates from 1558 and was made by Hernando de Ávila the Elder.
Chapel of Saint James the Greater
Completed in 1497 in the Flamboyant Gothic style, the Chapel of Saint James the Greater has an altarpiece showing the saint’s preaching, the Virgin’s arrival, and the saint’s martyrdom. Its richly colored sculpture of Saint James has no certain author, although it has been attributed to Pedro Díaz de Oviedo.
Chapel of the Pietà
The Chapel of the Pietà contains a Neoclassical sculpture by Francisco Gutiérrez showing the Virgin holding the dead body of Jesus. Two freestanding bishop sculptures flank the central group and probably represent Saint Atilano and Saint Ildefonsus.
Other ambulatory chapels are dedicated to Our Lady of the Pillar, the Annunciation, Saint John, Saints Peter and Paul, Saint Gregory, the Visitation, the Rosary, Saint Vincent Ferrer, Saint Lawrence, and Saints Clement and Lucy.
Main interior furnishings
Main altarpiece
The main altarpiece was made chiefly in the seventeenth century by Jaime Viñola and Diego Martínez and painted by Agustín Leonardo and Gil Jiménez. Measuring 11 by 7 meters, it has five vertical divisions, a predella, and three levels of scenes from the lives of Jesus and the Virgin, accompanied by figures of the diocese’s patron saints. Its central niche contains a fifteenth-century image of Our Lady of the Huerta by Pere Johan. Lamberto Garro made the silver frontal in the eighteenth century.
Pulpit and choir
Pedro de Cervellera made the octagonal plaster pulpit in 1506. Its platform has four panels decorated with candelieri ornament, Renaissance plant-like forms arranged symmetrically around a vertical axis, together with an Ecce Homo. The base alternates the same ornament with sphinxes, and a wooden Plateresque sounding board rises above it. Plateresque is an ornate Spanish Renaissance style of finely worked architectural and surface decoration.
The late fifteenth-century choir stalls are Gothic oak work decorated with tracery, scrollwork, vegetal motifs, angels, musicians, and fantastic animals. A seventeenth-century screen encloses the choir, with paintings by Vicente Berdusán dated 1696 showing Saint John the Baptist and Saint Andrew. The choir occupies the center of the main nave.
Archaeological remains and archive objects
Excavations beneath the atrium uncovered Roman houses from the first and second centuries and a large semicircular building from the fourth century. The building had floor mosaics and geometric wall paintings and may have been public in function. A somewhat later baptistery was associated with it. West of the cathedral, tombs belonged to a late Roman funerary enclosure. Other discoveries include what may have been a Visigothic temple, a Romanesque apse aligned with the cathedral’s apse, and Romanesque capitals. South of the cathedral, archaeologists found a complex early-modern water-distribution system.
The archive’s material holdings include decorated religious manuscripts. A 1474 missal contains miniatures by Diego Ramírez, a priest from Salamanca. Pontificals produced in 1484 by Fernando Gómez de Ágreda, chaplain to Andrés Martínez, are also preserved there, together with the musical manuscript associated with the chapel of the Catholic Monarchs.
