Zurbarán, Francisco de

ZURBARÁN, FRANCISCO de. - Painter, b. at Fuente de Cantos (province of Badajoz in Extremadura) on 7 Nov. 1598 and d. at Madrid after 28 Feb. 1664.

His first pictorial education took place in Seville with the humble image-maker P. Diaz de Villanueva and, then, with Juan de Roelas. He went to Madrid in 1633 and had friendly relations with Velazquez, from whom he learned some technical devices, without abdicating his personality as an austere realist, in contrast with the baroque pomp of his age. He was influenced by Francisco de Herrera the Elder and, after 1634, by Ribera, and in his best period (from about 1630 to 1640) he displayed Caravaggesque tendencies more than any other master of Seville. In this city he carried on his copious activity, above all in the service of Franciscan, Dominican, Mercedarian and Carthusian friars. After the death of his first wife (1639), Z. adopted even more austere manners, but in the last decade of his career, with the intention of catering to the current tastes determined by Murillo, he largely renounced the virile and solid structure of his earlier compositions, adopting light colorations and soft impasti, and thus losing his personality. On the whole, Z. remains among the most typical representatives of Iberian mysticism and asceticism and, in strictly pictorial terms, one of the most sincere and vigorous masters of the European seventeenth century.

Among the compositions that attest to his exceptional ability to interpret the settings and customs of monastic life, one may single out St. Hugh in the Refectory of the Carthusians (Seville) and the three paintings inspired by St. Bonaventure, namely: The Saint Presiding over a Chapter of Friars Minor and The Funeral of the Saint (both in the Louvre) and The Saint Showing a Crucifix to St. Thomas Aquinas (Berlin, 1629). Other eminent works, endowed with a singular constructive harmony, are the Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas (1631), in the museums of Seville and Grecoole, the Murillo-like Adoration of the Shepherds and the Circumcision of Jesus. In the series of the Labors of Hercules (Prado), the depiction of the mythical hero sweeping the stables of Augeas stands out for its strong realism, and worthy of consideration, for the originality of their dramatic conception, are the sorrowful Christ after the Flagellation of Wrocław, the Ecstasy of St. Francis of Assisi in Boston and the hooded Monk in Prayer in the National Gallery of London. Z.'s portraitistic virtues are condensed in the superb virile head of the Brunswick Museum, in the Doctor of the University of Salamanca (Gardner collection, in Boston) and in the Fathers Geronimo Perez, Pedro Machado and Francisco Zumel (Academy of Madrid). Portraitistic concreteness of features is present in several full-length evocations of greatly venerated figures, such as the concise St. Bruno Bishop of Grenoble (Cadiz) and the very beautiful St. Casilda (Prado), St. Apollonia (Louvre), St. Margaret (National Gallery of London), St. Elizabeth (Horme collection in Montreal) and St. Rufina (Spanish-American Society in New York).

Alberto Neppi