kvmshell.blogg.se - Francisco de Zurbarán by Ignacio Cano Rivero

Here, an example of the former, we see the emergence of the Baroque style for which Zurbarán would eventually become world renowned. Indeed, according to curator Almudena Ros de Barbero, Zurbarán "executed some thirty works on this subject" though these fall into two categories: "the Christs who are still alive and taking their last breath and those who are dead". This work is thought to be the artist's earliest known take on a subject that would become a theme throughout his oeuvre. Here Christ is nailed to a cross set against a blank black background.

Crucifixion was commissioned by the San Pablo el Real monastery. Most of Zurbarán's output was produced for religious organizations in Seville. This shift was not met with universal approval, however, with some historians suggesting his later work had sacrificed their palpable aura of spirituality for a wistful sentimentality.

Though Zurbarán carried the earnest storytelling legacy of the Baroque into his later devotional paintings, his figures become more idealized - more mythical - and less realistic in form.

Such a strategy merely cemented Zurbarán's Counter-Reformation worldview: just as the spiritual exists in the corporeal, so the heavenly finds its expression in the natural world. Though not a landscapist per se, his mature works reveal an affinity with his natural environment and a deft hand when rendering nature as a narrative feature.

In later works, Zurbarán would place his religious and mythological figures within the landscape.

Though unique amongst his contemporaries, his take on his subject matter - where the material coalesces with the ethereal - was still in keeping with the Counter-Reformation theology of seventeenth-century Spain which was invested in the idea of the spiritual presented in the earthly. This technique revealed not only the influence of Caravaggio (Zurbarán was sometimes nicknamed the "Spanish Caravaggio") but also the dramatic technique of tenebrism whereby human shapes and facial features are often depicted in shadow.

Zurbarán became well known for the way he created emotional effects by creating sharp contrasts between dark backgrounds and light foregrounds.His approach to the somber, monastic Spanish Baroque elevated his painting above many of his contemporaries by virtue of the fact that he imbodied his saints, friars, and apostles with a rigid figurative modelling and a refined naturalistic simplicity. Zurbarán's style was well equipped to tackle portraiture and still lifes but he found his true vocation in religious subjects.