Francisco de Zurbarán

Abstract

Francisco de Zurbarán (b. 1598–d. 1664) was a leading painter in Seville between the 1620s and 1650s. Born in Fuente de Cantos, a small village in Extremadura, he trained in Seville between 1614 and 1617 before establishing himself in Llerena, a town near his birthplace. In 1626, he returned to Seville with a commission to execute twenty-one paintings for the Dominican Monastery of San Pablo el Real. This project led to commissions from many of the city’s monastic institutions, which became a primary source of patronage for him. As demand for Zurbarán’s paintings increased both in Spain and the Spanish Viceroyalties, he established a workshop. While based in Seville, he traveled at least twice to Madrid: once, in 1634, to participate in the pictorial decoration for Philip IV’s Hall of Realms at the Buen Retiro Palace, and again in 1658 when he moved permanently to the city. Zurbarán’s fame had already begun to wane in the decade before his death and it was only in the 18th century that he came to be rediscovered by Spanish artists and critics. A familiarity with the artist’s early reception history is key to understanding the framework and arguments of the 20th- and 21st-century monographs and monographic exhibitions dedicated to him. Scholarship on his work can be divided into categories including: technical studies, monastic commissions, series made for private and ecclesiastical patrons as well as the open market, still lifes, paintings made in Madrid, paintings made for export to the Spanish Viceroyalties, and self-reflexive paintings that demonstrate the artist’s engagement with the condition of his art.