Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) , Spanish Painter
Francisco de Zurbarán y Salazar (1598 - 1664)
Spanish painter, born in 1598 in Fuente de Cantos, Estremadura. In 1614 he was apprenticed to the painter Pedro Días de Villanueva in Seville. At this early stage in his development he came under the influence of Caravaggio and Velazquez. Apart from a few outstanding still lives, and a number of mythological and history paintings. Zubarán painted mainly religious subjects for monasteries in Seville and later for the Colegio de San Buenaventura and the monastery in Guadelupe. He also worked for Philip IV of Spain. In his late period his workshop reveals an indebtedness to Murillo, on whom he had himself previously exercised an influence. Zubarán died in Madrid in 1664
Francisco de Zurbarán was one of the greatest painters of the Golden Age in Spain. He worked primarily for the monastic orders that flourished in Spain during the Counter-Reformation. His best-known paintings are of humble monks and saints dramatically lit against simple dark backgrounds, as in this hauntingly beautiful work Saint Francis of Assisi in His Tomb. As the founder of the Franciscan Order, the ascetic saint had a special resonance in Spain's Monastic communities and with the reform movement of the Catholic Church. Zurbarán's many paintings of the subject are notable for their quiet evocation of monastic solitude and contemplation.
This strangely somber Saint Francis was inspired by a legend that became popular in the seventeenth century. The uncorrupted, motionless body of the saint miraculously appeared above his coffin when Pope Nicholas V visited the burial crypt in the church at Assisi in 1449. Zurbarán's powerful portrayal concentrates solely on the single figure of the saint, who stands before us full-length, life-size, and dressed in the wool garments worn by the Franciscan monks. A high, peaked cowl casts his face into darkness and focuses our attention on the saint's meditative state and on the golden skull he clutches to his chest--the object of his intense contemplation. A strong shaft of light pierces the darkness and imbues the figure with a mystical presence. His hands, feet, and chest exhibit the stigmata--the five wounds of Christ's Passion--symbolizing the hope of the Resurrection. Few Baroque works so poignantly address the ultimate questions of reality and illusion, substance and shadow, life and death.
As well as being an exponent of the religious thinking of the Counter-Reformation in Spain, Francisco de Zurbarán was an artist whose oeuvre was characterised by its abstract and natural values. A painter of monastic life and an illustrator of devotional images, he depicted scenes taken from ordinary life and became one of the greatest artists working in the still-life genre in the Peninsula. His Immaculate Conception, one of the emblems of the Museum, can be counted among his greatest recreations of this motif, while his St Francis of Assisi After the Vision of Pope Nicholas V is one of the most captivating images of his entire repertoire.
His son Juan, who died at the peak of his career during the Black Death in 1649, developed an artistic personality all his own. While showing signs of the family legacy, his style was characterised by a profane almost avant-garde sensuality removed from the paternal influence. His Still Life with Fruit and Goldfinch is an early work, whereas Basket of Apples, Quinces and Pomegranates belongs to the period in which young Zurbarán ha established himself as an independent artist.