If you know your fashion history, you will also know that Francisco de Zurbarán was one of Cristóbal Balenciaga's key references. If that's one of your personal references as well, you may want to try and check out the exhibition currently on at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid (until tomorrow, 13th September).
"Zurbarán: A New Perspective" analyses the master of the Spanish Golden Age taking into account the researches, studies and discoveries carried out in the last few decades.
There have been multiple events featuring Zurbarán's works: exhibitions went from the first one held in Madrid in 1905 to the retrospective in 1988 at the Museo del Prado and the celebratory events that marked the 400th anniversary of his birth in 1998, culminating in the major monographic exhibition presented in Seville. Yet "A New Perspective" could be considered as a different kind of exhibit, almost an updated survey on the artist's output.
Curated by Odile Delenda, author of a book on Zurbarán and associate of the Wildenstein Institute in Paris, and Mar Borobia, Head of the Department of Old Master Painting at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, "Zurbarán: A New Perspective", shifts the focus on the painter's personality, life and times.
Including a total of 63 paintings, most of large format, and chronologically arranged in seven galleries, the exhibition sheds light on works recently attributed to the artist or on restored paintings, including major examples from different periods and from some of the artist's large-scale cycles painted during the course of his career.
The curators also dedicated a room to the artist's studio assistants and another to still lifes, including some of the rare examples by Zurbarán himself and others by his son Juan, a talented collaborator (in the exhibition there are 7 works by Juan and 9 by Zurbarán's followers).
Born in Fuente de Cantos in 1598 Francisco de Zurbarán trained in the studio of Pedro Díaz de Villanueva in Seville, the city where he spent most of his life. Here he produced devotional paintings, altarpieces and series on monastic subjects for the Dominicans, Franciscans and Mercedarians.
In 1626 the painter signed a contract to execute 21 paintings for the Dominicans at San Pablo el Real in Seville. He thus received further commissions, such as the series to mark the canonisation of Saint Peter Nolasco for the monastery of the Merced Calzada.
The series includes a painting now considered one of the artist's early masterpieces, Saint Serapion (1628; one of the highlights of the present exhibition), painted for the Sala de Profundis (mortuary chapel). The pictorial cycles commissioned by these Orders to the artist show a peculiarly original style, extremely distinctive and modern.
Characterised by a tenebrist approach to light that won him the nickname the "Spanish Caravaggio", Zurbarán combined in his transfigured monumental figures mysticism and realism. The event features areas devoted to the major commissions from the religious Orders alongside sections which focus on individual works intended for private devotion.
Zurbarán established his practice in 1629 in Seville, moving there with his family and assistants, and continuing to work on the large-scale series commissioned by different religious Orders, while also working on further artistic projects, such as the decoration of the Hall of Realms in the Buen Retiro palace.
The large monastic cycles of 1638 and 1639 mark the high point of Zurbarán's career, as proved by the works The Adoration of the Magi (ca.1638-1639) from the Musée de Grenoble and The Martyrdom of Saint James the Apostle from the Museo del Prado, included in the event.
From 1640 onwards the workshop focused on the production of important series of standing figures which were often painted for the colonial market: The dead Christ on the Cross from the Museo de Bellas Artes in Asturias (Pedro Masaveu collection), The House at Nazareth from a Madrid private collection, and Saint Francis in Meditation from the National Gallery in London are among the most outstanding works in this section, shown alongside other more recently attributed compositions including The Flight into Egypt from the Seattle Art Museum and Saint Anthony of Padua from Etreham (Normandy).
Around 1650 Zurbarán's brushstroke became softer, the lighting effects less pronounced, the backgrounds paler and the tonalities of the figures much more luminous (see the paintings for the Charterhouse of Las Cuevas in Seville and a large number of religious scenes painted for private devotional purposes).
This final section includes the largest number of works recently added to Zurbarán's oeuvre, including Saint Francis praying in a Grotto (ca.1650-1655) from the San Diego Museum of Art, The crucified Christ with Saint John, Mary Magdalene and the Virgin (1655), The Infant Virgin sleeping (ca.1655), and the magnificent oil of The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (1660-1662), all from private collections.
Zurbarán's passion for textures clearly emerges from this exhibition. Fabrics and objects (flowers, fruit, vessels and so on) are all charged with emotions: they may be "secondary characters" in his works, but he depicts them in extraordinary details.
The paintings showing beautiful young women in the guise of virgin saints dressed in monumentally elegant and bejewelled gowns enjoyed for example great success. The Saint Casilda painting included in the exhibition stands out for the brocaded fabrics and voluminous folds that contribute to give the portrait a ritual solemnity.
Zurbarán's talent for depicting textures must have derived from the fact that his father was a textile merchant and that the painter probably acquired when he was very young a fascination for reproducing the fibres, woven elements and nuances of colours.
Quite often there are direct links between the fabrics and the psychological depth of the portrait: in the painting depicting the martyrdom of Saint Serapion (on the same wall of two other paintings depicting subjects clad in white robes - friars Pedro de Oña and Pedro Machado), the ample and deep folds of his white tunic embrace and coccoon him, wishing him rest.
Painted repeatedly throughout his career, Zurbarán's devotional Veils of Saint Veronica, with the cloth showing Christ's ghostly face, are portrayed with so much realism that critics often defined them as a trompe l'oeil "a lo divino".
After Madrid, the event will travel to the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany, (10th October 2015 to 31st January 2016), but, if you already know you won't be able to catch up with this exhibition, don't despair: you can still enjoy the pleats, folds and voluminous cloaks and capes of Zurbarán's subjects by taking a virtual tour of the Thyssen event at this link or you can discover more about his life and works in the videos recorded during a study day that took place at the Thyssen-Bornemisza in June.
You may be sitting in front of your computer screen, but taking the virtual tour or watching some of the videos will still allow you to ponder more about the works of an artist who showed the same devotion in depicting the monastic spirituality of his subjects and the tactile qualities of the objects, fabrics and textures that he represented.
Image credits for this post
Francisco de Zurbarán
Santa Casilda, c. 1635
(Saint Casilda)
Oil on canvas, 171 x 107 cm
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Francisco de Zurbarán
Santo Domingo en Soriano, c. 1626-1627
(The Apparition of the Virgin to a Monk of
Soriano)
Oil on canvas, 190 x 230 cm
Church of Santa María Magdalena, Sevilla
Francisco de Zurbarán
Aparición de la Virgen a San Pedro Nolasco,
c. 1628-1630 (The Appearance of the Virgin to Saint Peter Nolasco)
Oil on canvas, 165 x 204 cm
Private collection, Courtesy Galería Coatalem, Paris
Francisco de Zurbarán
Virgen de la Merced con dos mercedarios, c.1635-1640
(The Virgin of Mercy with Two Mercedarian Monks)
Oil on canvas, 166 x 129 cm
Private collection
Francisco de Zurbarán
San Ambrosio, c. 1626-1627
(Saint Ambrose)
Oil on canvas, 207 x 101,5 cm
Sevilla, Museo de Bellas Artes
Francisco de Zurbarán
San Francisco de pie contemplando una calavera, c.1633-1635
(Saint Francis Contemplating a Skull)
Oil on canvas, 91,4 x 30,5 cm
San Luis, Saint Louis Art Museum
Francisco de Zurbarán
San Serapio, 1628
(Saint Serapion)
Oil on canvas, 120,2 x 104 cm
Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund
Francisco de Zurbarán
Adoración de los Magos, c. 1638-1639
(The Adoration of the Magi)
Oil on canvas, 263,5 x 175 cm
Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble
Francisco de Zurbarán
Huida a Egipto, c.1630-1635
(The Rest on the Flight into Egypt)
Oil on Canvas, 150 x 159 cm
Seattle, Seattle Art Museum, Donation Barney A. Ebsworth
Francisco de Zurbarán
San Francisco en meditación, 1639
(Saint Francis in Meditation)
Oil on canvas, 162 x 137 cm
London, The National Gallery
Francisco de Zurbarán
Santa Marina, c. 1640-1650
(Saint Marina)
Oil on canvas, 111 x 88 cm
Collection Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza on loan to the Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga
Francisco de Zurbarán
Santa Apolonia, c. 1636-1640
(Saint Apollonia)
Oil on canvas, 115 x 67 cm
Paris, Musée du Louvre-Département des Peintures
Francisco de Zurbarán
Carnero con las patas atadas, 1632
(The Bound Lamb)
Oil on canvas, 61,3 x 83,2 cm
Barcelona, Private collection
Francisco de Zurbarán
Bodegón con cacharros, c. 1650-1655
(Still Life with Pottery and Cup)
Óleo sobre lienzo, 47 x 79 cm
Barcelona, MNAC. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.
Juan de Zurbarán
Peras en cuenco de porcelana, c. 1645
(Pears in a China Bowl)
Oil on canvas, 82,6 x 108,6cm
Chicago (IL), The Art Institute of Chicago, Wirt D. Walker Fund
Francisco de Zurbarán
Virgen Niña dormida, c. 1655
(The Virgin Mary as a Child, Asleep)
Oil on canvas, 100 x 90 cm
Paris, Galerie Canesso
Francisco de Zurbarán
Desposorios místicos de Santa Catalina de Alejandría, 1660-1662
(The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria)
Oil on canvas, 121 x 102,7 cm
Switzerland, Private collection
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