rbärän`), 1598–1664, Spanish baroque painter, active mainly at Llerena, Madrid, and Seville. He worked mostly for ecclesiastical patrons. His early paintings, including Crucifixion (1627; Art Inst., Chicago), St. Michael (Metropolitan Mus.), and St. Francis (City Art Museum, St. Louis), often suggest the austere simplicity of wooden sculpture. The figures, placed close to the picture surface, are strongly modeled in dramatic light against dark backgrounds, indicating the influence of Caravaggio. They were clearly painted as altarpieces or devotional objects. In the 1630s the realistic style seen in his famous Apotheosis of St. Thomas Aquinas (1631; Seville) yields to a more mystical expression in works such as the Adoration of the Shepherds (1638; Grenoble); in this decade he was influenced by Ribera's figural types and rapid brushwork. While in Seville, Zurburán was clearly influenced by Velázquez. After c.1640 the simple power of Zurbarán's work lessened as Murillo's influence on his painting increased (e.g., Virgin and Child with St. John, Fine Arts Gall., San Diego, Calif.). There are works by Zurbarán in the Hispanic Society of America, New York City; the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Bibliography
See study by M. S. Soria (repr. 1955).
Zurbarán, Francisco de
(baptized Nov. 7, 1598, Fuente de Cantos, Spain—died Aug. 27, 1664, Madrid) Spanish painter. He was apprenticed in 1614 to a painter in Sevilla (Seville), where he lived until 1658 when he moved to Madrid. He had a few royal commissions but remained throughout his life a provincial painter of religious pictures. His apostles, saints, and monks are painted with almost sculptural modeling, and his emphasis on the minutiae of their dress lends verisimilitude to their miracles, visions, and ecstasies. This distinctive combination of naturalism with religious sensibility conforms to the guidelines for Counter-Reformation artists outlined by the Council of Trent. He had numerous commissions from monasteries and churches throughout southern Spain, and many of his works were sent to Lima, Peru. His late devotional paintings show the influence of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.
Zurbarán, Francisco de
Baptized Nov. 7, 1598, in Fuente de Cantos, Badajoz; died Aug. 27, 1664, in Madrid. Spanish painter.
Zurbarán studied in Sevilla with P. D. de Villanueva (from 1614) and, possibly, with F. Pacheco. He lived and worked in Llerena (Badajoz) from 1617 to 1628, at which time he settled in Sevilla.
Zurbarán’s most characteristic paintings are devoted to themes from the lives of saints and monasticism (for example, St. Bonaventura Praying Before the Election of Pope Gregory X, 1629, Dresden Picture Gallery). His early works show the strong influence of Caravaggio (for example, the retablo of St. Peter’s chapel in the Sevilla Cathedral, 1625). Works from Zurbarán’s most prolific period, from 1630 through the 1640’s, are marked by austere and simple monumental images that are dramatically intense yet nobly restrained in emotion. Beginning in the 1650’s elements of emotional excitation of an ecstatic or more lyrical tone appeared in the artist’s paintings (for example, The Crucifixion, early 1660’s, Hermitage, Leningrad). Zurbarán also painted mythological scenes, portraits, and still lifes.
REFERENCES
Malitskaia, K. M. Fransisko Surbaran: 1598–1664. Moscow, 1963.Guinard, P. Zurbarán et les peintres espagnols de la vie monastique. Paris, 1960.
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