An upside-down apostle, a head colossal, a crucified Christ in paint, a beaten and bound saint, a lamb readied for slaughter, a rose and a cup of water: these are a few of my favourite things in the National Gallery’s exhibition devoted to one of Spain’s greatest Baroque painters, Francisco de Zurbarán.
Francisco de Zurbarán (1598 –1664) is in Spain famous for his intensely devotional religious paintings. If you are fond of images of the Virgin Mary, The Immaculate Conception, Adoration of the Magi, Saints and the Crucified Christ, Zurbarán is your man. But don’t let it put you off. The National Gallery wants to show you Zurbarán’s skill and craft, concentrating less on his religious zealous. None of his Spanish contemporaries could depict Christ on the cross or a saint with such convincing three-dimensionality, as though they had been chiselled out of paint. He mastered chiaroscuro and tenebrism like few other artists who had never visited Italy. At his best, Zurbarán’s paintings are innovative, exquisitely crafted and sometimes pretty bizarre, particularly when viewed outside their religious context.
The Crucified Christ with a Painter (ca.1650) is a good example of the splendidly absurd forms that Baroque paintings could take.
What we see is a man gazing reverently up at the crucified Christ, whose monochromatic, pale and lifeless body appears almost sculptural against the gloomy backdrop. In the distance, we can just about make out the dark outlines of the hills of Golgotha. On closer inspection, however, we realise that the observer is holding a brush and a palette filled with bright colours. This is Saint Luke – the evangelist, physician and artist Luke – his likeness possibly based on Zurbarán’s own features. Luke is credited with painting the first icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary and is therefore the patron saint of artists. He is, just like Zurbarán – who painted at least a dozen Crucifixions during his career – figuring out how to represent Christ on the cross. One of Zurbarán’s earliest attempts would also become his most memorable.
In 1626 the Dominican priory of San Pablo el Real in Seville commissioned the then virtually unknown Zurbarán to paint what is now his most famous Crucifixion. The work was installed in a dimly lit sacristy and could only be viewed through a grille. Early visitors to the monastery couldn’t get close to the painting and many were convinced that it was a sculpture. Zurbarán managed to achieve an incredible sense of three-dimensionality by illuminating the perfectly toned body of Christ and contrasting it sharply with the pitch-black background. The only visible blood appears around the four nails – not three, as was customary in most depictions. Even the large loincloth has been arranged with an eye for crumpled artistry.
What makes this depiction more powerful than so many earlier representations of the same subject, is the absence of the usual witnesses to the Passion. Christ is alone, has been abandoned. Instead of a single nail piercing both feet, Christ’s feet are nailed separately to a small ledge, creating the impression that he is standing before us. The work caused a sensation in Seville, demand for Zurbarán’s paintings soared, and he soon established a successful studio. This Crucifixion is also the earliest known painting s to bear both his signature and a date.
The Spanish court painter and art historian Antonio Palomino gave Zurbarán the nickname the¨Spanish Caravaggio.¨ But that was in 1724, sixty years after the artist’s death. Zurbaran’s contemporaries never refer red to him by that sobriquet.
The Crucifixion demonstrates Zurbarán’s total mastery of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro – the strong contrast between light and dark used to create volume and the illusion of three-dimensionality – as well as tenebrism. But where did he pick up the technique?
Unlike his contemporaries Diego Velázquez and Jusepe Ribera, Zurbarán never traveled to Italy and it is very unlikely that he would have seen Caravaggio’s paintings with his own eyes. He would, however, almost certainly have seen copies and prints of Caravaggio’s paintings made by Flemish, Dutch, French and Italian followers– the so-called Caravaggisti. The popularity of Caravaggio during the first of half of the 17th century is well documented.
Ribera based himself permanently in Naples in 1616 and sent back to Spain not only his own, but also contemporary Italian paintings. Velázquez visited Italy twice and brought hundreds of artworks back with him to the Spanish court. Both artists successfully incorporated chiaroscuro – Caravaggio’s dramatic use of light, employing it to draw his figures and objects out of the shadows.
Zurbarán became particularly adept at achieving a lifelike, Caravaggesque sense of reality, an approach that proved especially effective in his dramatic depictions of saints. In Saint Serapion (1628) the martyr is bound by his hands to two posts, giving his pose a quasi- crucified appearance. There is no sign of blood, despite the horrific torture he endured. His over-large habit, rendered in many shades of white and intricate folds, adds to the profound spirituality that the painting radiates.
Although most of Zurbarán’s commissions came mostly from institutions in Andalusia, his reputation spread to the Americas as well. His representation of Saint Francis of Assisi may have been commissioned by the Franciscan convent of Descalzas Reales in Madrid.
When Pope Nicholas V opened the saint’s crypt in 1449, Saint Francis’s remains appeared to be completely intact, with blood trickling from his stigmata. The pope subsequently experienced a vision of the saint standing upright and praying within a niche! Stranger things have happened, I suppose.
Oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
Zurbarán chooses to show the saint in a state of spiritual ecstasy – the transfigurative state that offers a nearer-my-God kind of experience – a popular theme in 17th century Catholicism. The saint may be dead, Zurbarán seems to suggest, but his dialogue with God continues. The sharply cast shadow against the wall of the niche and the way Francis’ silhouette has been (almost) carved out of the shadows, create a convincing illusion of volume. At the same time the absence of his hands and the strange, mask-like, slightly unhinged expression on the his face deepens the sense of mystery. The thick brown habit, rendered with tonal variations, possesses a tactility unequaled by any other Spanish artists of the period.
Francisco de Zurbarán was born on 7 November 1598 in a small town more than 100 kilometres north of Seville, the 6th child of a successful merchant and tax collector. Recognising his son’s talent, his father sent hi to Seville at the age of 16 he was sent to Seville, where he was apprenticed to the now largely forgotten painter Pedro Diaz de Villanueva.
Seville was Europe’s most prosperous port n the 17th century thanks to its monopoly on trade with the New World. The city also had a flourishing artistic community and boasted more than 60 religious institutions, providing ample work for srtists. Zurbarán would have crossed paths with well-established painters such as Francisco Herrera, Alonso Cano and Francisco Pacheco. Diego Velázquez, who was apprenticed to Pacheco and later married his daughter, became a lifelong friend. Competition in Seville was fierce and completing his three–year apprenticeship, Zurbarán moved to Llerena , near his birthplace in Extremadura. His first wife died after six years of marriage, but his second wife bcame from a prosperous family of landowners and merchants. Financially secure and much in demand with the local institutions, he built a successful career locally. Unfortunately very few of his early paintings have survived.
In 1626 Zurbarán was commissioned by the Dominican monastery San Pablo el Real in Seville to paint 21 works, one of which was The Crucifixion (see picture above) As mentioned earlier, the painting attracted widespread praise and in 1629, the city council voted to allow him to settle in Seville.
To mark the canonisation of Peter Nolasco, founder of the religious order of the Mercedarians which ransomed Christian captured by the Moors, Zurbarán was commissioned to paint twenty-two scenes from the saint’s life. The featured image, The Apparition of Saint Peter to Saint Peter Nolasco (1629) depicts a miraculous meeting encounter between two Peters. Deeply devoted to Saint Peter, Nolasco had planned a pigrimage to Rome to visit the apostle’s tomb. Instead, he experienced a vision in which the Saint Peter, nailed upside down to a cross, descended from heaven on a radiant cloud. (Peter did not consider himself worthy to die in the same manner as Christ on the cross, and therefore requested to be crucified upside down.) The Apostle makes it clear to Nolasco that he is needed at home to continue his vital mission of liberating Christian captives in North Africa.
Zurbarán’s masterstroke is to render both Peters as real people made of flesh and blood. One might expect Saint Peter to look serene after centuries in heaven, but he is clearly suffering on the cross.– and who wouldn’t be? His face is flushed, a vein on his forehead seems on the verge of bursting , and his eyes bulge with strain. His mouth is open as he instructs Nolasco not to make the journey. Nolasco, half emerging out of the shadows, kneels in astonishment before his patron saint. His voluminous white habit, heavy with deep folds, s a superb example of Zurbarán’s skill in the depiction of drapery.
