PARIS.- Francisco de Zurbarán, along with Diego Velázquez and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, is considered one of the greatest Spanish painters of the 17th century. At first considered a Caravaggista with a focus on monastic ascetism, he was gradually recognised in the 20th century as a prodigious colourist and celebrated for his distinctive personal style, which married a simple treatment of volumes with striking naturalism.
Though Zurbarán has been the subject of numerous exhibitions over the last ten years, the last large-scale international presentation to focus on his work had been the joint exhibition Zurbarán, mounted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Grand Palais in 1987–1988.
Now, the National Gallery, London, the Musée du Louvre and the Art Institute of Chicago have joined forces to offer their visitors a retrospective that allows them to revisit Zurbarán’s paintings (or discover them for the first time), to better understand his work and to stand in awe of the modernity and visual power of his compositions.
The Louvre’s exhibition places great importance on the monumental paintings, commissioned by Andalusian monasteries, on which Zurbarán’s fame was built, as well as portraits and still lifes, with a special place reserved for the brief career of his son, Juan de Zurbarán (1620–1649).
Sixty-five paintings in total, including 50 by the master himself, are being presented. A number of these works, dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, highlight the significant influence Zurbarán exerted on later avant-garde artists working in France such as Édouard Manet, Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris. The visit, organised into seven parts, analyses the various facets of Zurbarán’s painted oeuvre both chronologically and thematically, aiming to do justice to the whole of his long career, and occasionally stepping outside of this timeline to compare a group of similar works.
The exhibition ‘Zurbarán’
The exhibition ‘Zurbarán’ takes place in the Hall Napoléon in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Sculpting Colour: Masterpieces from the Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid’.
Though these two exhibitions are distinct projects, each with its own texts and visiting order, a number of obvious links bind them together, as both deal with works and artists from the same historical and cultural context.
Thus, the two exhibitions feed each other, affording the visitor a global understanding of the richness, diversity, and points of convergence of artistic production in 17th-century Spain. The interplay between painting and polychrome sculpture is of particular interest, as are the constant dialogue and collaboration between painters and sculptors, particularly for commissions of religious works.
One of Zurbarán’s major works, The Holy Face from the Museo Nacional de Escultura, will serve as a common point of introduction to both exhibitions, placing the visitor face to face with one of the greatest challenges for Spanish painters and sculptors of the 17th century: depicting, with as much precision and naturalism as possible, the incursion of the celestial world into the simple reality of daily life – in this case, the vanishing, miraculous imprint of the face of Christ on the cloth offered him by Saint Veronica.
Seville 1626–1634: Painter for Religious Orders
Since the late 16th century, Seville had been pulsing with the vibrant commercial activity animating its port on the banks of the Guadalquivir. Its wealth was based primarily on the transit of gold and silver from the territories under control of the Spanish Crown in the Americas. The city was also home to many religious communities. Painters and sculptors were summoned to decorate churches and convents and convey Christian doctrine through images.
In 1626, Zurbarán returned to Seville. A commission for the church of the Dominican monastery of San Pablo el Real gave him an opportunity to demonstrate his immense talent: the monumentality, sculptural power and restrained emotion of Christ on the Cross inspired awe among the viewers.
After this remarkable achievement, major commissions for several religious communities established the artist’s reputation and led the city to raise him to the rank of maestro pintor, master painter.
The Monastery of the Merced Calzada, Seville
The religious order of Our Lady of Mercy was founded in Barcelona in 1249 by Peter Nolasco (1181–1256). The mission of its members, the Mercedarians, was to liberate Christians taken prisoner by Muslims, through military action, paying ransom or offering themselves as replacement hostages.
Over the centuries, the organisation and vocation of the order changed. Some monks decided to observe their vows of poverty with greater austerity and went barefoot as a sign of this: they became known as the ‘discalced’ (descalzos) friars. Others remained faithful to the original rules and were shod or ‘calced’ (calzados).
In 1628, the year of Peter Nolasco’s canonisation, Zurbarán received a major commission for the monastery of the Merced Calzada in Seville. It included twenty-two paintings illustrating the saint’s life for the small cloister and two paintings, including the touching Saint Serapion, for the monastery’s funerary chapel.
Devotion, Vision and Illusion
The challenge of transcribing in paint the episodes of visions experienced by holy figures and miraculous apparitions runs throughout Zurbarán’s work.
How might mental images described in mystical texts be rendered visible? What visual form could be given to the supernatural incursion of the divine into the everyday? In what ways could painting foster devotion among the faithful in a religious context?
Through bold and inventive compositions, Zurbarán brings these heavenly manifestations into our earthly world.
His virtuoso work with light makes the presence of these apparitions extraordinarily concrete. The painter blurs the border between mystery and reality, illusion and representation. Are these mental visions or genuine apparitions of the divine? The praying figures who witness these scenes guide our attitude towards these supernatural manifestations: their presence in the painting draws us in, inviting us to observe what they see.
Portraying the Immaculate Conception
In the early 17th century, the cult of the Immaculate Conception flourished in Spain. A heated theological debate developed around the belief that the Virgin Mary was conceived ‘immaculate’, literally ‘unstained’, free of original sin and preserved from human imperfection.
The depiction of this concept was inspired by the Book of Revelation in the Bible. In it, Saint John recounts the vision he had on the Island of Patmos of a glorious woman ‘clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars’.
As the worship of the Virgin Mary was a central element of piety in Seville, Zurbarán frequently painted the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, following the example of Francisco Pacheco (1564–1644), painter, theorist and defender of that doctrine. In these pictures, Mary is portrayed as very young, wearing a white gown symbolising her purity and a long blue cloak.
Madrid 1634: A Formative Stay in the Service of the King of Spain
In 1634, Zurbarán was summoned to Madrid, the capital of the Kingdom of Spain, where art and culture were flowering under the rule of Philip IV (reigned 1621–1665). The painter was invited to contribute to the decoration of the new royal palace, the Palacio del Buen Retiro. This commission was probably due to the support of Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), a fellow Sevillian and a friend from Zurbarán’s youth, who had been appointed court painter in 1623.
In Madrid, Zurbarán explored the magnificent royal collections, particularly rich in Italian and Flemish paintings. He addressed new subjects, historical and mythological, and met the era’s finest artists, who, like him, painted for the king.
When he returned to Seville, Zurbarán’s visual culture had been enriched and his style developed towards more complex compositions, as seen in the exceptional group of paintings from the Jerez de la Frontera Charterhouse. His background landscapes were now populated with many figures and punctuated by architectural structures. His treatment of light and colour became even more refined.
The Hall of Realms in the Buen Retiro Palace of Madrid
The Buen Retiro (pleasant retreat) residence was intended for relaxation and amusement, as desired by King Philip IV (reigned 1621–1665) and his minister the Count-Duke of Olivares. But this new palace, designed by the architect Alonso Carbonel, was also a place of symbolic representation.
The Great Hall’s paintings, contributed by many artists between 1630 and 1635, celebrated the Spanish dynasty of the Habsburgs and the power of the king. The name ‘Hall of Realms’ derived from the twenty-four coats of arms painted on the ceiling, those of the kingdoms and realms controlled by the King of Spain.
For this prestigious commission, Zurbarán painted historical and mythological subjects never before treated in his work, notably two large battle scenes and ten of the twelve labours of the Greek hero Hercules. Little now remains of the Buen Retiro Palace, but the Hall of Realms is one of the rare spaces to have been preserved.
The Jerez de la Frontera Charterhouse
The Carthusian monastery of Nuestra Señora de la Defensión (Our Lady of Defence) was founded in the 15th century near Jerez de la Frontera, about 90 km south of Seville. It was built on the site of an apparition of the Virgin Mary, a miracle that had allowed Christian armies to escape a Muslim ambush in the 13th or 14th century.
In 1636, the prior who directed the monastery decided to replace the medieval decoration of the church’s main altar, entrusting its design to the architect Alejandro de Saavreda. The sculptures were commissioned from José de Arce and the paintings from Zurbarán. Sadly, this monumental ensemble was dismantled during the Napoleonic invasions of the 19th century. Its paintings were sold and scattered; they are now held in various museums throughout the world.
The Series of Jacob and His Sons or The Twelve Tribes of Israel
According to Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the patriarch Jacob was the father of twelve sons, themselves legendarily founders of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
This seldom-painted theme testifies to the diversification of subjects addressed by Zurbarán in the 1640s. While we do not know the circumstances in which this series was created, the thirteen paintings were most likely meant for the Spanish American market, where this subject was popular in the 17th century.
There was a belief in Europe that the indigenous peoples colonised by Spain were in fact descended from the lost Tribes of Israel scattered by the invasion of the Assyrians.
Seville traded intensively with the conquered territories of Central and South America: many works painted by Zurbarán and other Sevillian artists were shipped there.
Isolated Figures, Real and Fictitious Portraits
We are aware of several portraits painted by Zurbarán, such as that of Juan Bazo de Moreda, an officer, displayed in this room. This less well-known aspect of his activity testifies to the diversity of his production and his clients, who were not religious orders exclusively.
His figures of saints have the same presence and individuality as the portraits. Indeed, the painter often used the same pictorial conventions: the isolated figure, usually standing, is illuminated from the side and detached against a dark background. Some figures are life-size and all the more impressive for it.
Zurbarán specialised particularly in the depiction of magnificently garbed female saints. The shimmering colours of their elegant robes, the refinement of their adornments and headdresses, but also their individualised features and intense gaze, give them an enigmatic presence. Some carry the martyr’s palm and may be identified by an attribute recalling the cruelty of their execution, like Saint Lucy’s gouged-out eyes.
