The building
Palace of the Dukes of Granada de Ega
Also Known As Palace of the Dukes of Granada de Ega,it is the finest example of civil Romanesque architecture in Navarra. Located in San Martín Square, facing the Church of San Pedro de la Rúa, at a key point on the Camino de Santiago as it passes through Estella, its main facade is structured in two stories built with fine ashlar stone, divided in height by a simple molded cornice.
Its lower section, at street level, is opened by four wide arches, framed by columns attached to the wall, which end in capitals adorned with vegetal and historiated decorations. On the left side of the same section, there are stylized figures depicting an episode from the battle between Roland and the giant Ferragut. The engraved letters on the abacus identify the characters: "Pheragut," "Rollan," "Martinus me fecit," and "de Logroño," with Martinus being the artist who carried out the work.
Capital Roldán and Ferragut fight
The episode of the battle refers to the confrontation in which both were protagonists, taking place in Nájera. Ferragut was a giant (about seven meters tall), who had come from the lands of Syria, sent with twenty thousand Turks by the Emir of Babylon to fight against Charlemagne. Roland, a noble knight of the Frankish king (some authors describe him as the incestuous son resulting from his relationship with his sister Berta), had come to Spain to fight against the Muslims, becoming the prototype of the knight who dies in defense of his faith against Islam. His name simultaneously symbolizes both the image of the hero and the martyr of the Christian Middle Ages, imbued with chivalric spirit. In addition to emphasizing his heroic character, he is likened to the image of the Christian as an athlete of Christ, a concept coined by Saint Paul.
The capital represents the moment of the battle between the two and the death of the giant, but it does not follow the story told in the book known as the Pseudo-Turpín, Book IV of the Codex Calixtinus.
After a fierce battle, in which the giant was favored to win due to his enormous strength, both combatants decided to take a break and immediately started chatting, engaging in a theological discussion about the concept of the Trinity, which was incomprehensible to Ferragut. However, Roland, with simple arguments similar to those used by 12th-century theologians, gradually convinced him not only of the mystery of the Trinity but also of the Resurrection and the virginity of Mary. Faced with the assertions of the champion of Christianity, the giant agreed to continue the fight on the condition that the winner would accept the faith of the victor as true. Thanks to his cunning and the religious conviction that supported him, during the conversation, the clever Roland managed to extract from the Saracen the confession that his weak spot was located in his navel (a literary reference that reminds us of Achilles and would later be adopted by other epic heroes like Siegfried). When the battle resumed, Ferragut charged at Roland, who was knocked to the ground, and the giant threw himself on top of him, trapping him under his colossal body. "Immediately, Roland realized that he could no longer escape, and began to call for help from the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And, thanks to God, he rose a little and shifted under the giant, seized his dagger, drove it into the navel, and escaped from him..."
In this capital, Roland acts not only as a warrior but also as a monk defending theological doctrines, preaching one of the great tasks of Christian life during this era. Meanwhile, Ferragut transcends the mere image of Islam, being portrayed as an example of a heretic, as heresy was understood to be the persistent resistance to the teachings of the Church.
It is the compositional and clarity needs that lead the capital to depict the combat as a staged battle between knights, with their chainmail, shields, armor, caparisons, lances, etc., fighting in a duel that recreates the struggle between good and evil, concluding at the front of the capital with Ferragut's decapitated head.
Second Floor
The second floor of the palace is opened by a gallery that creates a graceful rhythm of voids and is also flanked laterally by two half-columns. The one on the right side features in its capital a detailed composition with scenes related to the sins of pride, greed, and lust, using elements from Eastern animal fables, executed in a style with more slender forms compared to the depiction of Roland’s story. On the left side, a donkey touches a harp with its hooves while a lion, sitting on its haunches, listens attentively. This evokes an ancient motif from Sumerian antiquity, represented in a medieval context. The scene is explained as a personification of Philosophy, addressing sternly the one who seems not to have understood, saying: "Do you understand my words, or are you like the donkey in front of the lyre?" It also represents the absurd, characterizing the pretentious and ridiculous, considering them "inept and incapable, like donkeys, of playing the harp," in the words of Philippe de Thaun.
Within medieval spirituality, the absurd harms the soul, and this characteristic is the result of the action of an infernal agent known as the demon of pride and stubbornness. As an artistic motif, it is not exclusive to Estella; we can also see it in thecathedral of Chartres and the cathedral of Nantes, en la In the church of Saint-Suver in Nervers and in many others in the French region of Burgundy, in Brioude, in Sainte-Benoit sur Loire, in Aulnay de Saintinge, etc.
Following this scene, a demon looks at two naked figures, dragged by another devil who leads them, intertwined by a yoke, with bags of coins hanging from their necks, clearly referencing the punishment of greed. They are being taken to hell, towards eternal fire, graphically depicted by a cauldron suspended over flames, which are being stoked by another demon. However, the fire of hell does not burn; rather, it is a boiling cauldron where the bodies are not consumed, as they seek liberation from their torments. On the third side, facing the Plaza de San Martín, a naked woman with a hood has a serpent devouring her breasts, symbolizing the punishment of lust. Despite the clear meaning of this image, it evokes the memory of the Earth goddess, with her characteristic animals and nurturing purpose, but which Romanesque art transformed into a punishment for lust, changing the symbol of fertility into one of attack and, therefore, punishment.
Façade of Plaza de San Martín
The façade facing Plaza de San Martín is characterized by its pronounced horizontal lines and is more expansive. Its first level, which has few openings, contrasts with the second, where windows similar to those of the Rúa façade are found. These windows are distinctive in that not all of them are original, as the various functions of the building, especially its role as a prison for the Estella judicial district, led to the bricking up of some of them. At one end, there is a small paired window with semi-circular arches. The composition culminates in an 18th-century brick attic with an arcade of double semi-circular arches. Above the attic, two towers are positioned at either end, also made of brick and featuring the same type of arcade as the attic, though on a smaller scale.
The building was owned by duques de Granada de Ega (title granted by Felipe V in 1729 to Juan de Idiáquez y Eguía),The building was inhabited from the 18th century until 1868. On December 17th of that year, its sale was formalized between Don Pablo Elizabet Hernesto Peiter, Count of Montcabrié, and his wife Doña María del Rosario Idiáquez y Corral, daughter and heir of Don Francisco Idiáquez y Carvajal, Duke of Granada de Ega, on one side, and the Board of the Estella Judicial District Prison on the other, for the amount of four thousand five hundred shields. With the necessary reforms that involved bricking up many of the openings, the building became a preventive prison until 1954, when it was purchased by the Government of Navarra, restored, and returned to its original appearance.
Its original function, on the other hand, is subject to various considerations, as Tomás Biurrun argues that it was not a royal palace, but rather a building intended for meetings of the Francos de San Martín de Estella, the rulers who governed the destiny of the city of Ega. Perhaps following this opinion, Pascual Martínez interprets the capital of Roland and Ferragut as a reference to "the ideals and feelings that inspired the Franks towards the natives of the country even at the end of the 12th century." On the other hand, Professor Lacarrra sought to identify this building with the palatium maior mentioned in the 13th-century Comptos books. In this palace, there were granaries and cellars, and a large hall that was usually occupied by the Governor of the kingdom. There was also likely the main stable, and due to its small size, it is probable that additional spaces would have been rented elsewhere.
Since 1991, the renovated building has housed a municipal monographic museum dedicated to the painter Gustavo de Maeztu (1887-1947). Born in Vitoria to a Cuban father with Navarrese roots and an English mother, he was the youngest of five children, all of whom were prominent in various fields of Spanish cultural life, such as María de Maeztu in pedagogy, Ramiro in philosophy and politics, and Miguel in publishing. After moving to Bilbao at the end of the century, Gustavo's complex personality began to take shape—a mixture of individualism, sarcasm (sometimes biting), strength, and determination. This blend defined him at all times, making him the eternal protagonist of his own story and a key figure in the development of early 20th-century painting.
Permanent exhibition rooms
Room 9
The tour of the Gustavo de Maeztu Museum ends in this small room, located in the Museum tower, where we find some of the zinc plates worked by Maeztu. Unique pieces, in which you can appreciate Maeztu’s mastery in drawing, the concretion, the precision of this magical artist who wanted art to be part of our lives, art as something essential for man, form and color accompanying us in our existence.
Room 8
In the 1930s, Maeztu entered the knowledge and creation of works marked by the intention of reaching as many people as possible, that is, popularizing his work. To do this, he uses a technique with a great tradition in Spain, engraving. Following in the wake of his teachers, Goya, Zuloaga, Solana or Ricardo Baroja, Maeztu made a collection of diverse prints, presided over by his love for the figure and the Spanish landscape, and materialized them through what he will call “Autolithographs”.
The technique that Maeztu uses is Lithography, carrying out the entire materialization process himself, that is, from the preparatory drawing, to the zinc plate and its subsequent stamping, including in some of the works, color applications made of manual way. In this room some of these works are presented, proofs of the author that belonged to his personal collection.
Room 7
Maeztu is a voluptuous artist, he loves large shapes and opulence in color. All of his work is dominated by this grandiloquent, narrative feeling, loaded with content and exuberance. It is not surprising that his inclination towards opulent forms led him to become interested in mural projects. In this room we can see sketches of some of its mural decorations, highlighting the sketches made between 1935-1936 for the Palace of the Provincial Council of Navarra. A broad tour of the identity of Navarra through its landscapes to decorate the Session Hall. In all these sketches, Maeztu delights in giving free rein to his historicist vocation, delighting in giving shape to a conglomerate of characters, historical references, monuments and types that allude to a glorious past, in some cases more related to his own fantasy than with historical reality.
Room 6
Maeztu is undoubtedly a great cartoonist. Drawing in his production occupies a preeminent place, both drawing as a preparatory study for later works made in other techniques, and drawing conceived as a finished work.
Made with charcoal, ink, gouache, or mixed technique, Maeztu’s handling of the line is always precise, forceful, the line is strong and direct, the marked contours give shape to the images, always imperious, the shadows accompany and they nuance, modulate and condense. A wide range of images are broken down in Maeztu’s vast drawing production, landscapes, figures, daydreams, portraits, decorations, even illustrations. Heir to Zuloaga and his Regenerationist concern, connoisseur of Solana, Maeztu’s vision of the landscape and the characters that inhabit it is always optimistic and calm. We will not find traces of bitterness in his drawings, far from it, we will find a corpus of serene and voluptuous images.
Room 5
This Room that begins the tour of the Second Floor offers us, as a mosaic of faces, the contextualization of the figure of Gustavo de Maeztu. Heir to the approaches of the Generation of ’98 with whom he has intellectual, emotional and personal ties, Gustavo de Maeztu belongs to the Generation of 1914.
Room 4
In this room the diversity of Maeztu’s work is condensed. Three sequences, three stages, three aesthetic purposes that condense a life of pictorial production.
From the heroic vision of the “Boyfriends of Vozmediano”, the symbolism of Maeztu affects that deep relationship with the local, the national problem of rural and profound Spain, the weight of history, the loneliness and poetry of that proud and resounding, ancestral and chimerical. Under the compositional evocation of Michelangelo, Maeztu gives shape to the two couples, their monumentality, the sculptural character that predominates, does not prevent lyricism from sifting the whole, since the always bright, fiery and vital color gives the works that artist’s desire to make a creation that is a spring for moral improvement.
Gustavo de Maeztu’s London period will be both a vital and aesthetic interlude. From the fullness of his style, Maeztu unfolds a pictorial activity marked by cosmopolitanism. His palette intensifies, his motifs diversify, his forms soften, a fortunate effort to find a more international language through which to express his renewing concerns.
From the ample palette, Maeztu returns to costumbrismo in works like En la Dehesa or La Copla Andaluza, a complete exercise in painting and idealism, revisiting the localist language of his early period.
Room 2
The gallery of images outlining Maeztu’s portraiture is extensive. In this room, we can contemplate one of his most significant family portraits, that of his sister María de Maeztu. This is the portrayal of a family image. The iconography of María combines the psychological closeness of the sister with the image of the educator and columnist, a woman ahead of her time in Spain, a feminist, and a defender of free and egalitarian education.
Formally, the work follows the aesthetic guidelines typical of Maeztu: boldness, monumentality, the importance of line, and the exaltation of form and color. We are faced with a successful portrait that brings us closer to this strong-willed woman, decisive, magnificent in her attire and demeanor. Opposite this work is the portrait of her older brother, Ramiro de Maeztu, writer, thinker, and a prominent member of the Generation of ’98. His powerful figure emerges as a champion of Hispanic unity. A committed man, his tragic end marks the history of the entire family.
NATURE will be a form of expression to which Maeztu frequently turns throughout his life. The patiently crafted still lifes constitute a form of communication that fits perfectly into his approach, always interested in the message, the metaphor of a suggested or evident content, with a deliberately popular character in any case.
Objects, animals, and allegories are used by the artist through the perception of the everyday.
A similar approach can be seen when he focuses on LANDSCAPE. The scenes of this artist perpetuate real, lived visions of the landscape; not for nothing, Maeztu, as a true continuator of REGENERACIONISM, traveled across the peninsula, capturing the corners, views, and traces left by the passage of history.
History plays a significant role in the heroic and critical painting Maeztu created until 1920. His concern for Spain at that moment—its backwardness, its loss of status, the anachronism, and its deficiencies—stimulates a more critical vision of the system that hinders the country’s recovery. With the noble backdrop of architectural ruins set in a landscape full of silence, Maeztu’s always powerful figures rise, using their spiritual and physical strength to regenerate and give hope and a future to the Iberian Maeztuian Land.
Room 3
The Gustavo de Maeztu Museum is an Author’s Museum. In this room, we observe the image of the artist through three self-portraits, three introspective looks that Maeztu created of himself at different stages of his life.
These are three essential gazes. The artist stands before the viewer, presenting himself directly, from youth to maturity. The more angular Maeztu is offered to us without artifice, full of naturalness, staring intently at the viewer to convey the essence of his dimension as both an artist and a person.
We encounter the youthful, idealistic Maeztu and the sober man of maturity, but above all, we come face to face with the dandy Maeztu, with his hat and bow tie— that distinguished and self-assured English gentleman, who, through this image, wishes to underline the complexity of his character and the satisfaction of the painter he is.
Room 1
Women as the Epicenter of the Work of Gustavo de Maeztu are the focus of the First Room of the Museum. With bold and monumental forms, Maeztu’s women are opulent because their heavy symbolism defines their message.
The woman, always in the foreground, is at times portrayed as defiant, as in the case of Eva, a strong and resolute woman, aware of her power and in control of her sexuality. These women emerge like sculptures, imposing themselves in the painting, outlined with clarity, sculpted, with indeterminate features. They are paradigms of fertility and spiritual strength, but at times, they are also women of dreams—muses of the night or of beauty.
If their forms are ample, so too is the color, always worked with wide brushstrokes and applied with multiple glazes. Maeztu uses warm colors—reds, blues, violets, and yellows.
