ZURBARÁN, Francisco de

In 1638 Zurbar�n received order from the Carthusians of Jerez which consisted principally of two parts: five large and two small canvases for the monumental altarpiece of the church, and eight portraits of distinguished members of the order, accompanied by two images of angels with censers, which were installed in a narrow passageway leading to a small room behind the altar where the host was kept. Four of the major altarpiece paintings depict the Infancy of Christ, and for sheer magnificence of colour and spectacle, they are unsurpassed in the artist’s work. One of these paintings is the Adoration of the Magi.

This painting is a version of the composition employed by Vel�zquez. Zurbar�n takes this scheme as his point of departure and enriches it by substituting rich colourful costumes for the plain serges worn by the magi of Vel�zquez, although fundamentally the paintings are similar in their use of large figures, the suppression of illusionistic space, and the air of high solemnity.

Zurbar�n’s picture of St Andrew is in marked contrast to Ribera’s dramatic representation of the crucifixion of the saint. There is the same close observation of detail, but Zurbar�n’s picture has the calm majesty seen in the work of El Greco. These various qualities Zurbar�n blends into a unity with an individual touch of his own. Just as the figure in El Greco’s picture is suffused with blue-green shades, so here the figure of the wise old man is suffused with warm greenish browns. St Andrew is seen leaning against two beams or branches which serve, in a quite uncontrived way, to identify the saint, being in the form of the cross of St Andrew, his attribute. It is obvious at a glance that this picture dates from Zurbar�n’s finest period: the lined face of the saint, the peasant hands roughened by hard work and the austere folds of the robes, together create an impression of the serenity and permanence so characteristic of Zurbar�n’s still-lifes as well as his large compositions.

In all probability the painting once adorned an altar in the Carmelite church of St Adalbert of Seville, together with its companion piece, the painting of the Archangel Gabriel, which is now in the Montpellier Museum.

Zurbar�n’s exalted and naive piety and his close affinity with popular culture expressed themselves in his amazing gift as a colourist. The pure, bright, intensive hues of his paintings, most often dictated by Christian symbolism, seem automatically combined, yet they come together in unexpected poignant harmonies. Here, the red of Mary’s dress signifies love and charity; the white of the stitching purity and innocence; the green, youth and the enclosed garden of paradise, one more symbol of immaculacy.

In 1627, while still resident in Llerena, Zurbar�n painted this spectacular picture, that made him famous, for the Dominicans. It was placed in a small oratory chapel and made a strong impression. The represented drama in the composition is increased by the overpowering light, which heightens then transforms the real into superreal, thus expressing the dual nature of Christ.

This monumental picture, signed and dated at the foot of the cross, represents Christ on the Cross with the Virgin, Mary Magdalen and St John the Evangelist. It is a late masterpiece by Zurbar�n, painted in Seville towards the end of his career. The picture is an outstanding example of the artist’s late style, the only known treatment of the crucifixion by the master to include the figures of the Virgin, Mary Magdalen and St John at the foot of the Cross.

Some eleven other treatments of The Crucifixion by Zurbar�n are known today, ranging in date from his painting of 1627 in the Art Institute, Chicago, to the celebrated Artist before Christ on the Cross, datable to around 1655-60, in the Prado, Madrid.

This painting depicts a fine white ceramic cup filled with water, resting on a silver saucer, adorned with a single rose on a wooden tabletop. The flower here could refer to rose water, a perfumed drink popular in the 17th century, or have a deeper, religious significance. The motif of the cup filled with water is familiar from other works by Zurbaran: it appears in his famous still-life of 1633, Still-Life with Basket of Oranges (Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena) and in at least two of his religious paintings. In the latter paintings the cup of water and rose allude to the Virgins purity and love. The flower could also be interpreted as an emblem, referring to the Virgin as the Mystic Rose.

This canvas is a fragment of a larger work: the left-hand edge is intact, while the other three sides have been cut.

This painting is from the Hall of the Realms in the Buen Retiro Palace and it belongs to the same series as Vel�zquez’s Surrender of Breda.

Saint James of the Marches (1391-1476) (Italian: Giacomo della Marca, Spanish: San Jacobo de la Marca) was an Italian Franciscan Friar Minor, preacher and writer. He is generally represented holding in his hand a chalice, out of which a snake is escaping - an allusion to some endeavours of heretics to poison him. In Zurvar�n’s painting the snake is not present.

It is assumed by some scholars that St Luke is a self-portrait of Zurbar�n.

Born in Catania, Sicily, at the foot of Mount Etna, Agatha decided to remain a virgin and dedicate her life to Christ. The Prefect of Sicily, Quintian, hearing of her great beauty, tried to seduce her. Faced with her rejection, he sent her into a brothel, but even there she miraculously preserved her virgin state. She was then subjected to a singularly cruel torture. She was attached head down to a column, and her breasts twisted or torn off with a pair of pincers. The next day, St Peter visited her in her dungeon and healed her wounds. She was then brought before a court and hauled over hot coals until she died, crying out her thanks to God.

Protector of Sicily, Agatha is invoked against the eruption of Etna and other volcanoes, as well as against lightning, fires and earthquakes. Her cult quickly gained the mainland and is strong in central and northern Italy (Cremona, for example) and as far as eastern France, Germany and Spain, where she protects against fire. She is also the patron saint of nursemaids, and of bell-founders (the latter apparently because of the resemblance in shape between bells and breasts).

St Agatha is normally represented as a noble young girl carrying her severed breasts on a platter, like in the painting by Zurbar�n.

The old man’s gesture suggest that this was one of two paintings flanking a central image.

The painting of St Casilda follows a typology invented by Zurbaran and repeated in other paintings of martyr saints. The saint is represented full-length in half profile, with the appearance and rich clothing of a young woman of the 17th century. She is shown taking part in a procession, set against a dark background.

St Casilda is associated with the miraculous transformation of bread into roses as was St Elizabeth of Hungary and Thuringia. Casilda was the daughter of the Emir of Toledo and was secretly converted to Christianity. She gave bread to her father’s prisoners. When the bread was miraculously turned into flowers she was saved from exposure like the charitable Elizabeth who gave food to the poor.

Zurbar�n at his best may be said to have given new life to certain qualities found in the Mozarabic miniatures and Romanesque panel paintings - majesty, serenity and brilliance of colour. He had already made his name, and was a court painter - though he had not yet come under the not altogether felicitous influence of Murillo - when he painted this Andalusian girl with her attractively irregular features, elegantly dressed in heavy, shimmering silks, wearing pearls and a coronet and holding roses in her hand, the only indication of her identity. For St Elizabeth of Portugal is associated with the miraculous transformation of bread into roses as was St Elizabeth of Hungary and Thuringia.

There are many versions of the story of Elizabeth’s miracle of turning bread into roses, but they are all fundamentally the same. She is said to have been forbidden by her unfaithful husband to give to the poor. Having hid bread to give away in her apron, she encountered King Diniz, who asked her what she was carrying. Not wanting to let on that the contents of her apron were meant for the poor, she responded that they were roses. The bread was transformed into roses, and King Dinis, who could not understand how she could have possession of fresh roses in January, did not punish his wife.

The left side of the painting was cut.

St Elizabeth of Thuringia is an example of “divine portraits” depicting particular ladies dressed in period costume and personified in the saints. These portraits are representative of the quality Zurbar�n reached in such compositions, showing an extraordinary command in the treatment of silks, brocades and embroidery.

Born in 1181 or 1182 in Assisi as the son of a wealthy draper, he died in poverty in the same town on 3 October 1226. Francis’ life of poverty, humility, selflessness and serene neighbourly love made the order of Friars Minor which he founded one of the most widespread religious orders in the entire western world. Following the council of Trent in the mid 16th century, St Francis was invariably portrayed as an ascetic, penitent and ecstatic monk, frequently dressed in the habit of the Capuchin monks and with a skull as attribute.

Zurbar�n’s saint bears the entire complexity of this figure. This is Francis the ascetic, dressed in a brown habit, without signs of office or adornment. This is the humble Francis dressed in the colours of the earth. This is Francis the ecstatic monk, who has received the stigmata of the five wounds. His young face is raised heavenwards in contemplation, one hand placed upon his heart, the other on the skull, the sign of meditation. He is shown as a holy man of spiritual profundity and scholarly intellect, as reflected in his facial traits. Yet he is not a monk who is alienated from daily life and caught up entirely in his mystical passion, but a man close to life, as Zurbar�n shows. His “portrait” is an allegory of faith and simplicity.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 33 minutes):

Michael Haydn: St Francis Mass

Zurbar�n produced devotional works relating to the founder of the Franciscan Order throughout his career, and through their stark simplicity and profound sense of spirituality, they can today be considered amongst the most evocative and iconic sacred images produced within 17th-century Spain.

In its simplicity and directness, Zurbar�n’s depiction of St Francis is entirely in keeping with the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, following the Council of Trent (1545-63), which encouraged a new focus on devotional life and re-affirmed the importance of the veneration of images.

Zurbaran was born in a village in the Spanish province of Badajoz and became one of the most important artists of the Seville school. During the 17th century Seville was one of the most active artistic centres in Spain and was also the birthplace of Vel�zquez and Murillo. Zurbaran’s naturalism brought him, around 1630, numerous commissions from throughout Andalusia. His austere, simple style was particularly suitable for transmitting the spirit and message of the Counter-Reformation, which called for a return to a pure and ascetic religiosity. His religious paintings combine the mystical nature of the subject with a profound sense of humanity in accordance with the renewed precepts of the faith.

Zurbar�n’s painting of a Carthusian refectory intensely reflects the ideal of this order of hermit monks: simplicity, sobriety and quiet contemplation. The room is unadorned, but for a painting showing the Virgin and Child with John the Baptist in the wilderness - an inspiration to the monks. An arched doorway opens out towards a typically simple Carthusian church. The monks, dressed in white cassocks, are seated at the table on which there are only plates of bread. With the exception of one monk whose hands are folded in prayer, they are all completely immersed in introspective contemplation with their eyes cast down, apparently paying no attention to the guest to whom the elderly abbot, St Hugo, appears to be explaining the life of the monastery. This painting exudes an atmosphere of tranquillity unaffected by the event portrayed.

In contrast to other geniuses of the Spanish golden age, Zurbar�n appears modest, lacking their boldness of innovative approaches and technical virtuosity. But he was far more strongly connected with traditional Spanish piety, with its ardor and tendency to mysticism. Acclaimed by his contemporaries, he executed many commissions for monastery buildings. The Monastery of San Jos� was the source of this large image of St Lawrence shown in deacon’s vestments and the instrument of his martyrdom, the gridiron on which he was said to have been roasted alive.

The painting is probably a portrait of a lady dressed as shepherdess. The serpent is the attribute of the saint.

The apocryphal legend of the life and death of Margaret of Antioch was known in the western world as early as the 7th century. Cast out by her heathen father, she was martyred in the Diocletian persecution of Christians and decapitated. In the course of the centuries, more and more legends grew up around this popular martyr. Zurbar�n has portrayed her with straw hat and staff, in the costume of a Spanish shepherdess. Behind her we see the dragon which she is said to have overcome with the sign of the cross. Completely inactive, with the Bible in her left hand and a woven shepherd’s bag over her arm, she gazes at the spectator with a sweetly childish face. This painting does not tell the turbulent episodes of her life, but shows a saintly woman revered in the home country of the painter.

St Marina, a Spanish virgin and martyr, lived in the first centuries of our era. According to early Spanish breviaries, she was martyred in the region of Galicia, in Aguas Santas near Orense, the city of which she is patron saint.

Zurbar�n portrayed the saint in a very personal manner without specific iconographic references, as was fairly common practice in his handling of these themes. The figure is depicted three-quarter length and isolated, turned slightly to the right – a device commonly used by the painter to enhance the volume of the figure and also to achieve the processional appearance works of this kind usually have.

The painting was probably part of an altarpiece of St Joseph executed for a church in Seville. St Apolonia was the patron saint of the dentists, this explains the attribute in her hand.

The bleak, austere piety of Zurbar�n’s early pictures of saints, painted for more severe religious orders, made him the ideal painter of simple doctrinal altarpieces expressed in clear, sober colour, with figures of massive solidity and solemnity, and with a Tenebrism owing little to Caravaggio or Ribera, but developed straight out of southern Spanish traditions of unidealized representations. For the same reason, he was one of the finest still-life painters.

In the oeuvre of Zurbar�n, religious themes predominate, with particular emphasis on asceticism. He also painted many still-lifes, which, however, reflect the same qualities of asceticism, quiet contemplation and introversion for his choice of objects indicates the transience of human life.

Zurbar�n does not do so by presenting a clock, a skull or an hourglass. Instead, on a brilliantly polished table, he shows us a pewter plate with lemons, a basket of oranges complete with leaves and blossoms, and a fine china cup on a silver saucer on which lies a rose in full bloom. Though lemons signify wealth in a Netherlandish still life, they have a very different meaning here, in the country where they actually grow. Even so, they are not represented as the fruits of daily life, but presented with all the solemn celebration of an offering on an altar.

As in the paintings of his contemporary S�nchez Cot�n, Zurbar�n isolates the individual objects from one another - even the composition appears to be a conscious though not excessively artificial arrangement. Against the dark background, the objects are completely static, and appear to be torn out of the context of everyday life. The human beings to whom they apparently belong have no place here.

In 1638 Zurbar�n received order from the Carthusians of Jerez which consisted principally of two parts: five large and two small canvases for the monumental altarpiece of the church, and eight portraits of distinguished members of the order, accompanied by two images of angels with censers, which were installed in a narrow passageway leading to a small room behind the altar where the host was kept. Four of the major altarpiece paintings depict the Infancy of Christ, and for sheer magnificence of colour and spectacle, they are unsurpassed in the artist’s work. One of these paintings is the Adoration of the Shepherds.

Zurbar�n’s painting is populated by rough, plain countryfolk, who have been toasted by the sun and beaten by the weather. In compliance with the strict local rules for religious imagery, all the figures are fully clothed. Zurbar�n seeks to establish an atmosphere of quiet reverence and concentrates attention on the upper bodies and faces; anatomical correctness is not essential to this enterprise and therefore he does not attempt to show the legs below the knee, leaving them to be furnished in the viewer’s imagination. Instead he dwells on the smallest inanimate details - the woolly fleece of the lamb, matted with caked, dried mud; the rough weave of the multi-coloured mantle covering the bed of straw; the dry, bony shells of the eggs - and makes them comes to life.

The painting and its companion-piece was commissioned by the Mercedarian Monastery in Seville shortly after the canonization of Pedro Nolasco who four centuries before established a lay Order for freeing the Christians from Moorish captivity.

The representation of The Holy Face or Veil (Sudarium) of Veronica, showing the image of Christ - vera icona - on the cloth used by Veronica to wipe his drawn face was one of Zurbar�n’s favourite subjects. The motif enabled him to create a surprising trompe-l’oeil effect by representing Christ on a cloth tied by pieces of rope and hung from a nail, set against a black background that theatrically competes with reality. The excellent painting faintly reveals Christ’s evanescent face, depicted in brownish-grey tonalities that form a contrast with the intense white of the cloth and the shadows produced by the folds. The austerity of the pictorial treatment of the theme highlights the verism of the image and enters directly into the transcendent world of the Baroque; such works, beheld in closed places - chapels or oratories - tenuously lit by candlelight, sought to move the faithful to pity.

There are 14 versions of this subject painted by Zurbar�n with illusionistic effects.

Whereas the names and works of Vel�zquez and Murillo were known and appreciated by European connoisseurs at a relatively early date, Zurbar�n was scarcely known outside Spain, and even now there are not very many of his works to be found in European galleries. Born in Fuente de Cantos, a small village in Estremadura, he studied in Seville and most of his work, almost exclusively commissions for monastic orders and churches, was done there. These circumstances determined his themes and the way he treated them: he painted hardly anything but religious subjects, mostly scenes from the lives of the saintly or monastic visionaries. His pictures are generally characterized by a severe structure, vigorous forms, rustic models and a close and detailed observation of nature.

During the last years of his life Zurbar�n worked in Madrid where, mainly under the influence of Murillo, his interpretation became softer, his way of expression more lyrical and his colours lighter. The Holy Family (The Rest on the Flight to Egypt), signed and dated 1659, is a remarkable example of this late period: a simple composition of half-length figures with an intimate charm and emotionalism strongly reminiscent of Murillo.

Zurbar�n painted an important series of paintings for the Jeronymites of the monastery of Guadalupe. Here the mood varies from a vein of realism to visions of miracles and scenes of contemplation in which the mysticism of the great Estremaduran artist has mingled with his colors. Perhaps the finest of these scenes is the mystical House of Nazareth, in the Cleveland Museum.

The Immaculate Conception (in Spanish: Purisima) was a favourite subject in seventeenth-century Spanish painting. In these pictures Mary is usually represented as a child or as a young girl, her eyes turned heavenwards, personifying innocence and childlike devotion and rising amidst clouds and cherubs to heaven. Murillo painted innumerable versions of this theme, which also engaged the attention of Zurbar�n.

This painting is a late work of Zurbar�n. The Virgin is a slender, delicate young girl with an exquisite oval face and golden hair falling to her shoulders, a vision in white and ultramarine seen against a golden sky peopled with cherubs. Though lacking in vigour, this late work has all the painterly qualities and expressive beauty of the great monumental paintings of Zurbar�n’s early period. There is a similar Immaculate Conception in the church of Langon near Bordeaux.

The church of the Franciscan college San Buenaventura in Seville was adorned by a narrative cycle on the life of St Bonaventura, the renovator of the Franciscan order. Between 1626 and 1628 Herrera painted the four scenes describing the saint’s youth, placed on the left wall of the nave; Zurbar�n was commissioned to complete the cycle, and executed four canvases illustrating the end of the saint’s life.

Dressed in the brilliant white robes of a bishop, grasping the cross in his folded hands, the body of the saint lies in state on a bier draped in sumptuous brocade, with the red biretta of the cardinal at his feet. Pope Gregory X, who had appointed him cardinal bishop of Albano in 1273 stands, a white bearded man, beside the king, to whom he appears to be explaining the merits of the dead man. Most of the mourners, however, are simple Franciscan monks in their greyish brown habits, pensively praying or meditatively contemplating the dead man. He is indeed one of them, and the wan complexion of his tranquil face appears to mirror the dull hue of the habits. The great scholar and administrator of his order is here placed between the representatives of ecclesiastical and worldly power and the world of simple Franciscan brotherhood. He was accorded the title of “doctor seraphicus”, meaning the “brilliant teacher full of love”. This is what Zurbar�n paints: the teacher bound to practical life, his face filled with mystical desire even in death.

This painting was commissioned by the The Mercedarian Order to hang in the De Profundis (funerary chapel) hall of their monastery in Seville (now Museum of Fine Arts of Seville). St Serapion of Algiers (1179-1240) was a Mercedarian friar who fought in the Third Crusade of 1196 and was later martyred.

Zurbar�n treated the subject of the Virgin Mary as a child on several occasions.

The painting and its companion-piece was commissioned by the Mercedarian Monastery in Seville shortly after the canonization of Pedro Nolasco who four centuries before established a lay Order for freeing the Christians from Moorish captivity.

In his vision Peter of Nolasco, in the white robe of his Order, sees the New Jerusalem showing by an angel. The heavenly city with its tower resembles to contemporary �vila.

The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John the Baptist is one of the most important works painted by Zurbar�n, two years before his death. This composition reveals the evolution of his style in Madrid, where he had private patrons and his works differed considerably from those made in his workshop in Seville, where he relied on the collaboration of assistants.

This peaceful scene before a neutral background shows similarity to the Madonna paintings by Murillo.

Zurbar�n attains religious feeling by realistic simplicity, an extreme density, the boldness of his colours and the calculated awkwardness of his composition.

After producing a trial piece for the Hieronymite monastery at Guadalupe in 1638, Zurbar�n signed a contract on 2 March 1639, which obligated him to supply eight pictures for the sacristy, each portraying a noted brother of the order. These paintings remain in their original place and constitute the best surviving example of a series of monastic history painted in the seventeenth century.

The spiritual achievements of the Guadalupe Hieronomytes are exemplified in the Vision of Brother Andr�s Salmer�n, in which Zurbar�n’s art of immediacy attains a pinnacle of intensity and feeling. Set in an indeterminate space that is flooded with amber light, the scene is divided by swirling, cyclonic clouds which accompany the appearance of Christ. In the shallow foreground zone, a mystical encounter takes place between two towering figures. Christ, garbed in a bright pink robe, reaches out and gently touches the forehead of Brother Andr�s, who is posed in strict profile, hands clasped in a reverential attitude. The absence of external expression seems to turn all emotion inward, making the experience truly ineffable.