ZURBARÁN, FRANCISCO de. – Painter, b. at Fuente de Cantos (prov. of Badajoz in Estremadura) on 7 Nov. 1598, d. at Madrid after 28 Feb. 1664.
His first artistic training was received at Seville under the humble painter P. Díaz de Villanueva and subsequently under Juan de Roelas. He went to Madrid in 1633 and formed a friendly relationship with Velázquez, from whom he learned certain technical refinements without abandoning his austere realist personality, which contrasted with the pomp of the Baroque age. He was influenced by Francisco de Herrera the Elder and, after 1634, by Ribera, and in his best period (c. 1630–1640) he showed more Caravaggesque tendencies than any other master in Seville. In this city he carried out a copious output, mainly in the service of Franciscan, Dominican, Mercedarian and Carthusian friars. After the death of his first wife (1639), Zurbarán adopted even more austere ways, but in the last decade of his career, in an attempt to cater to the prevailing taste fostered by Murillo, he largely renounced the virile and solid structure of his earlier compositions, adopting light colouring, soft impasto and thus losing his personality. On the whole, Zurbarán remains one of the most typical representatives of Iberian mysticism and asceticism and, in purely pictorial terms, one of the most sincere and vigorous masters of 17th-century Europe.
Among the compositions that bear witness to his exceptional ability to interpret monastic environments and customs are *St Hugh in the Refectory of the Carthusians* (Seville) and the three works inspired by St Bonaventure: *The Saint Presides at a Chapter of Friars Minor* and *The Burial of the Saint* (both in the Louvre) and *The Saint Shows a Crucifix to St Thomas Aquinas* (Berlin, 1629). Other outstanding works, distinguished by singular structural harmony, are the *Apotheosis of St Thomas Aquinas* (1631), in the Seville and Grenoble museums, the Murillesque *Adoration of the Shepherds* and the *Circumcision of Jesus*. In the series of the *Labours of Hercules* (Prado), the representation of the mythical hero sweeping out the Augean stables stands out for its strong realism, while the *Sorrowful Christ after the Flagellation* (Breslau), the *Ecstasy of St Francis of Assisi* (Boston) and the *Hooded Monk in Prayer* (National Gallery, London) deserve consideration for the originality of their dramatic composition. Zurbarán’s portrait skills are concentrated in the superb male head in the Brunswick Museum, in the *Doctor of the University of Salamanca* (Gardner Collection, Boston) and in the portraits of Fathers Gerónimo Pérez, Pedro Machado and Francisco Zumel (Academy of San Fernando, Madrid). Concrete and striking examples of symbiosis and Jewish prayer, full-length figures of venerated personages include the synthetic *St Bruno, Bishop of Grenoble* (Cadiz) and similar works, and *St Clare* (Padua), *St Peter the Apostle* (Louvre), *St Margaret* (National Gallery, London), *St Elizabeth* (collection of Montefalco) and *St Rufina* (Spanish Society of America, New York).