Francisco de Zurbarán
The austere painter of the monasteries.
Zurbarán painted monks, saints and still lifes in Seville with strong contrasts. His white monks' habits are famous.
Francisco de Zurbarán was born in 1598 in Fuente de Cantos in Extremadura in western Spain. His father was a merchant. At fifteen he was apprenticed to a painter in Seville, Spain's richest city thanks to the trade with the Americas. After his apprenticeship he lived in Llerena in Extremadura for about ten years, and he married there. He was married three times and had several children.
In 1628 he moved back to Seville and quickly became the city's leading painter. He received large commissions from monasteries, where the monks wanted pictures of the saints and history of their order. An early masterpiece is Saint Serapion of 1628, now in Hartford in the United States. A monk hangs dead from ropes, and his white habit fills almost the whole picture. He also painted a series for the sacristy of the monastery at Guadalupe, where the paintings are still in place.
Zurbarán's style is marked by strong contrasts of light and dark, inspired by Caravaggio's followers. The figures are simple and monumental and stand silently in a dark room. He was a master at painting fabric, especially the white monks' habits with their heavy folds. His few still lifes, such as Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose of 1633 in Pasadena in the United States, are as still and devout as his pictures of saints. He also painted the Agnus Dei, a bound lamb against a black background, in several versions.
His workshop also exported paintings to the Spanish colonies in South America. During the 1640s taste in Seville shifted towards Murillo's softer style, and Zurbarán received fewer commissions. In 1658 he moved to Madrid, where he died in 1664 in straitened circumstances.
Zurbarán was partly forgotten outside Spain but was rediscovered in the 19th century. He is sometimes called “the Spanish Caravaggio” and is admired today for his spiritual gravity and stillness.