XXXV
DETAIL OF RETABLO
(Late 15th century. Museum of Valladolid)
The intricate sillería of the Pilar of Zaragoza, containing almost every kind of subject—beasts, birds and fishes, allegories, incidents of the chase, or scenes of popular life—was designed by Esteban de Obray, a Navarrese, and executed by him and his assistants, Juan Moreto Florentino and Nicolas de Lobato, between 1542 and 1548. That of the Minor Friars of the Cartuja of Burgos was carved at a cost of eight hundred and ten ducats by Simón de Bueras, in 1558. That of Pamplona cathedral dates from about the middle of the century, and is the work of one Ancheta, who had visited Italy and gathered inspiration from the masterpieces of Siena. The material is English oak. The stalls of Huesca, carved from oak proceeding from an older sillería which had been removed, were begun in 1587 and finished in 1594. The craftsmen were Nicolás de Verástegui and Juan Verrueta de Sangüesa.
Seventeenth-century sillerías are those of Santiago, carved by Juan de Vila in 1603; Salamanca, in 1651, by Alfonso Balbás; Orihuela, in 1692, by Juan Bautista Borja; and Segorbe, carved in the same year by Nicolás Camarón; while dating from the eighteenth century—a period of manifest decadence in this beautiful but short-lived craft—are the stalls of Lerida, by Luis Bonifar y Masó (born in 1730), and Cordova, executed between 1748 and 1757, at a cost of 913,889 reales, by Pedro Ciriaco Duque y Cornejo, a son of Seville and a pupil of the Sevillano Roldan.
The least imperfect of these later and decadent sillerías is that of Málaga, whose author, Pedro de Mena, was, like his master, Alonso Cano, a native of Granada.
Mena's contract with two canons of the cathedral, nominated by the bishop to prepare and sign the stipulations, will be found in No. 134 of the Boletín de la Sociedad de Excursiones.
The stalls of Málaga number a hundred and one, carved in walnut, larch, cedar, and the heavy Indian wood called granadillo. As happens with many of the sillerías of this country, the costumes of the figures are of great historical value. Among the saints is San Roque, in pilgrim's garb, attended by the dog who brought him day by day a loaf of bread while men refused to succour him.
No less magnificent than these sets of choir-stalls are the carved retablos or altar-screens,[54] a gradual excrescence from the primitive and unpretentious altar of the early days of Christianity. Several kinds of craftsmen worked upon these altar-screens, such as tallistas, entalladores, imagineros, and even architects.
