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<\/p>\nThe Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbar\u00e1n (1598-1664) is best known for his austere, contemplative paintings of saints. But a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London will show that the 17th-century artist\u2019s range extended much further than is commonly thought. As well as his signature portraits of saints in shadowy cloaks, the show will include intimate still-lifes, which best express his spare aesthetic; his late work, where the artist\u2019s technique softens to smaller, private devotional paintings; and vast multi-painting projects for religious confraternities\u2014\u201cwhen he\u2019s the toast of all of Andaluc\u00eda, taking commissions from everywhere\u201d, says the show\u2019s curator Daniel Sobrino Ralston.<\/p>\n
The last Zurbar\u00e1n exhibition on the scale of this survey was in 1987 and there have been some discoveries in the intervening years. \u201cOne of the real highlights of the exhibition,\u201d Ralston says, \u201cwill be the opportunity to see two newly discovered paintings.\u201d These freshly attributed pictures, including Alcarraza on a Plate (around 1650 or earlier), individually depict ceramic objects that feature together in one of the Spaniard\u2019s great paintings, the Still Life with Four Vessels (around 1650), a version of which, lent by the Museu Nacional d\u2019Art de Catalunya will feature in the exhibition. The new paintings \u201csuggest that Zurbar\u00e1n, and possibly his son [Juan], who he was training in the art of still-life, is painting these very individual small, detailed studies that he then transposes at exactly the same scale into larger pictures,\u201d Ralston says. \u201cYou get a sense of how he worked as a still-life painter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ralston argues that Zurbar\u00e1n\u2019s precision and poise appear not just in the intimate still-lifes but in the religious paintings for which he was much in demand during his lifetime. \u201cThere is that same kind of quality of attention,\u201d Ralston says, so that \u201cwhen you get up to them there are all these little details that make them of a piece with the still-lifes.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Zurbar\u00e1n\u2019s Adoration of the Magi (1638-39)<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Ville de Grenoble\/Mus\u00e9e de Grenoble\u2014J.L. Lacroix<\/p>\n
How, though, can the exhibition reflect the enormous commissions the artist made for religious brotherhoods in Seville\u2014where he lived for many years\u2014and wider Andaluc\u00eda? \u201cOne of the great achievements is to bring together a single tier of this amazing altarpiece from the Charterhouse of Jerez de la Frontera, which would have been 15m tall,\u201d Ralston says. \u201c[It] would have been absolutely spectacular.\u201d For the first time in about 175 years, the second tier of that altarpiece will be reconstructed, with The Adoration of the Magi (1638-39) and The Circumcision (1639) being lent by the Mus\u00e9e de Grenoble, and the Virgin of the Rosary with the Carthusians (1638-39), measuring about 4m in height in its frame, coming from the National Museum in Pozna\u0144. \u201cWith that, you get a sense of the scale of how these paintings might have been received, walking into that church.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another focus of the show is on the artist\u2019s much misunderstood late period. Ralston points out that Zurbar\u00e1n is often perceived as having declined in his final years, after his imperious oeuvre of the 1630s, and especially after the great plague that struck Seville in 1649 and killed Juan. Rather than declining, Ralston says, the show argues that \u201che moves in quite a different direction\u201d. Smaller in scale, the late works are \u201csofter and more intimate in tone. These are things that were made to hang in houses or in private chapels.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spiritual experience<\/p>\n
In his final years, Zurbar\u00e1n was \u201cmore self-aware than he\u2019s been given credit for\u201d, Ralston says. He painted cartellini, \u201cfictive pieces of paper on his canvases, announcing authorship\u201d. One is present in The Veil of Veronica (1658), created in the tradition of Santa Faz (\u201choly face\u201d) showing Christ\u2019s portrait in blood and sweat imprinted on the cloth. The picture is \u201can almost witty game of illusion and allusion with a cloud-like representation of the stain on the veil,\u201d Ralston says. \u201cHe\u2019s trying to suggest what painting can do.\u201d This is reinforced spectacularly in the work that ends the show, Crucified Christ with a Painter (around 1650). Interpreted as a self-portrait or a depiction of Saint Luke with the painter\u2019s likeness, it is a remarkable statement about the Spaniard\u2019s craft. \u201cIf the purpose of painting\u2014and certainly the purpose of his paintings\u2014is to leave you with a spiritual or religious experience,\u201d Ralston says, \u201cthen showing that allows us to understand more about him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Zurbar\u00e1n, National Gallery, London, 2 May-23 August<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbar\u00e1n (1598-1664) is best known for his austere, contemplative paintings of saints. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,182416,366,18,117,966,137297,19,17,16995,200978],"class_list":["post-456512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-baroque-art","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-exhibitions","tag-francisco-de-zurbaran","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-national-gallery","tag-spanish-art"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116477838856180258","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}