Francisco de Zurbarán was educated under Pedro Díaz de Villanueva in Seville, where he probably knew Francisco Pacheco and formed a firm friendship with Diego Velázquez at his lodgings. After a long stay in Llerena, in 1629 he settled in Seville, where he received major commissions from 1626 on, but there were also acrimonious clashes with the painters’ guild led by Alonso Cano. In 1634 he travelled to Madrid, most certainly invited by Velázquez, to help with the decoration of the Buen Retiro Palace. Back in Seville, having enriched his artistic output with what he had seen in Madrid, Zurbarán began to produce his most important and best-quality works, particularly the sets for Guadalupe and the Jerez Charterhouse. From 1645 on, as the career of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was on the rise, the prestige and significance of Zurbarán began to decline. He resorted to exporting a series of canvases of saints, emperors, Virgin Marys, patriarchs, etc. to the Americas. In 1658 he was in Madrid, testifying on behalf of Velázquez in the proceedings for the latter to be granted the habit of the Order of Santiago. He must then have remained there until his death, in a very precarious financial situation.
An artist of extremely limited resources and a docile interpreter of monastic lessons, he achieved his greatest expressive intensity in painting from life, which he did with amazing accuracy and Franciscan simplicity, with an intense light that clearly came from Caravaggio. He was always faithful to the tenebrist naturalism of the start of the century and only made some slight concessions under the influence of Murillo in the last decade of his career. Zurbarán is undoubtedly the artist that best embodied the traditional idea of Spanish tenebrism.
Francisco de Zurbarán was educated under Pedro Díaz de Villanueva in Seville, where he probably knew Francisco Pacheco and formed a firm friendship with Diego Velázquez at his lodgings. After a long stay in Llerena, in 1629 he settled in Seville, where he received major commissions from 1626 on, but there were also acrimonious clashes with the painters’ guild led by Alonso Cano. In 1634 he travelled to Madrid, most certainly invited by Velázquez, to help with the decoration of the Buen Retiro Palace. Back in Seville, having enriched his artistic output with what he had seen in Madrid, Zurbarán began to produce his most important and best-quality works, particularly the sets for Guadalupe and the Jerez Charterhouse. From 1645 on, as the career of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was on the rise, the prestige and significance of Zurbarán began to decline. He resorted to exporting a series of canvases of saints, emperors, Virgin Marys, patriarchs, etc. to the Americas. In 1658 he was in Madrid, testifying on behalf of Velázquez in the proceedings for the latter to be granted the habit of the Order of Santiago. He must then have remained there until his death, in a very precarious financial situation.
An artist of extremely limited resources and a docile interpreter of monastic lessons, he achieved his greatest expressive intensity in painting from life, which he did with amazing accuracy and Franciscan simplicity, with an intense light that clearly came from Caravaggio. He was always faithful to the tenebrist naturalism of the start of the century and only made some slight concessions under the influence of Murillo in the last decade of his career. Zurbarán is undoubtedly the artist that best embodied the traditional idea of Spanish tenebrism.