From the July/August 2026 issue of Apollo.
Christ emerges from the shadows, body limp, nails penetrating his hands and feet, his head slumped and lifeless. His sinuous flesh contrasts with the stark white loincloth and both are realised with such precision and grace that you would be forgiven for thinking it a sculpture. The artist knew his own brilliance as he boldly signed the work on a cartellino, a painted scrap of paper nailed to the cross at Christ’s feet: ‘FRANCO DE ZUR. FA 1627’. This is the earliest signed work by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664). The large painting, made for the sacristy of the Dominican Convent of San Pablo el Real in Seville, is a fitting opening to the National Gallery’s monographic show on the artist. It was this commission that prompted the city of Seville to invite Zurbarán to settle there in 1629, an invitation that allowed the Extremaduran-born painter to bypass the standard procedures required for admittance into the guild of Saint Luke. While this may have ruffled some feathers, the artist soon found fame and fortune in his adopted home.
The Seville of Zurbarán’s day had a dual identity. On the one hand, it was a pre-eminent centre of Catholic devotion, a laurel it still holds, with spectacular Holy Week processions each spring. On the other, it was the principal port for Spain’s Atlantic empire, a status that slowly waned as the river silted and trade moved to coastal Cadiz. Looking across the paintings in this exhibition you might think Zurbarán fit squarely and wholly into this first identity, as a painter of Catholic imagery. But signs of the second aspect of the city slip through in unexpected ways.
In the National Gallery’s own Saint Margaret of Antioch, the fourth-century saint carries a woven bag shot through with colourful geometric patterns. This is an alforja, a saddlebag made in the mountains of Peru. The artist, who had an eye for exotic fabrics, likely acquired it in the markets of Seville as a curio and staged it for his saint-turned-shepherdess. He also exported dozens, if not hundreds, of paintings to the ‘New World’. This was an early and risky form of speculative trade that we know about because of the court cases Zurbarán had to instigate with ship’s captains in order to be paid.
Zurbarán is one of the canonical greats of the so-called Spanish Golden Age but, until now, he has not been a household name in Britain. Indeed, when in 1853 the National Gallery acquired its first painting by Zurbarán, Saint Francis in Meditation, there was minor public outcry. In a letter to the Times, William Coningham, an art collector who would soon be elected to Parliament, condemned the Trustees of the National Gallery for wasting money on the ‘small, black, repulsive picture’. Nearly two centuries later, the artist is getting his moment in the London sun, but few visitors will leave with Coningham’s sentiment. Dark perhaps, but the greatest of Zurbarán’s works are the opposite of repulsive. They are magnetic, drawing us in with a gentle but inexorable force.
Zurbarán’s power lies in his union of physical realism with spiritual depth. Flesh, cloth and bone are rendered with subtlety, yet they evoke more than the sum of their parts, becoming a profound reflection on mortality and faith. This power is on full display in the exhibition. In the opening room, the lifeless body of Saint Serapion shows no trace of his gruesome martyrdom at the hands of English privateers, yet it conveys death and suffering more intensely than any blood could. Then, in the final gallery, the bound ram of the Agnus Dei is a silent reproach to those who forget Christ’s sacrifice.
However, Zurbarán had his limitations, notably with faces. While the blankness of the martyred saints evoke serenity in death, when these same faces are part of a narrative ensemble they can fall flat. In The Body of Saint Bonaventure (1629), the crowd appears as emotionless as the dead saint before them. Perhaps this can be explained by the intended position of the painting, high on the nave walls of the Colegio de San Buenaventura, but if that were the case, why go to such lengths rendering the beautiful damask? We rightly fawn over Zurbarán’s luscious fabrics, yet the bodies within are occasionally lacking humanity.
The National Gallery has chosen to display only the finest paintings by the artist but hints of his large studio practice and penchant for replication show through. This comes to the fore in the room dedicated to still life. Still Life with Four Vessels, on loan from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) in Barcelona, hangs alongside two newly identified versions of individual ceramic vases. They are nearly identical to the MNAC painting. The display is a curatorially generous exercise in comparison and connoisseurship, as it is up to the visitor to decide whether these works are studies, versions or studio productions.
The show contributes an important new addition to the artist’s oeuvre, the fierce Colossal Head (c. 1635). At almost 2.5m high, the head is indeed huge, with thick curled hair framing some impressive brows. The work has gone through several attributions over the decades, most recently to the court painter Vicente Carducho. However, looking at it hanging beside Zurbarán’s Hercules Cycle, it is surprising there was ever doubt. The curators suggest it was used as part of a stage set for one of the many plays performed for Philip IV in the Palace of the Buen Retiro. The painting expands our understanding of Zurbarán’s early visit to the Spanish capital, a trip that resulted in him being named a pintor del rey (painter to the king).
The artist’s final years were marred by tragedy. His son, the talented painter of still life Juan de Zurbarán, died in the Seville plague of 1649. Zurbarán’s artistic fortunes also waned as other, younger artists, including Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, gained the favour of religious patrons in the city. These difficulties and his subsequent move to Madrid precipitated a curious transformation in Zurbarán’s style. The Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, one of the final paintings in the show, is a breath of fresh air at the end of a dark and intense tunnel. It is soft and airy with a colour scheme reminiscent of Raphael or the contemporary Italian painter Carlo Maratta. Looking at this new style, one wonders if this was simply the artist catering to changing tastes, or a transformation in his vision of what sacred art could be. In either case it is a beautiful work, marrying Zurbarán’s sculptural sensibilities with a softer and perhaps more hopeful vision.
‘Zurbarán’ is at the National Gallery, London, until 23 August.
Edit, 1 July 2026: This review has been corrected to clarify that Four Vessels is on loan from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) in Barcelona, and not from the Prado in Madrid as originally stated.
From the July/August 2026 issue of Apollo.
