JASPREET SINGH BOPARAI

The Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran is sometimes thought of as a pious equivalent to Caravaggio – a Caravaggio without the bad temper, brutal vices or criminal record. But it seems difficult to argue that Caravaggio had any direct influence on his work. After all, he died when Zurbaran was 11 and a half years old. Since Zurbaran never left Spain, he could not have seen any of Caravaggio’s paintings with his own eyes. Indeed, he might never have even heard the artist’s name. Still, there are unavoidable similarities between the two men’s work.

Zurbaran shared Caravaggio’s sense of drama and his love of shadows broken up by patches of strong light. He also absorbed many of Caravaggio’s worst artistic habits: you sometimes suspect that he preferred dark, minimalistic backgrounds because he never quite mastered foreshorteningor perspective.

Zurbaran was never comfortable painting women, even though he married three times and fathered at least nine children. Indeed, he seems to have been positively bashful in front of his models, preferring to lavish his attention on their clothes rather than their faces or hands. He was fascinated by the play of light on various textiles and also on petals, leaves, water and various kinds of fruit. Like Caravaggio he was a brilliant still-life painter (see bottom article). But there is never the same sense of showing off. His art has a sincerity that can only come from deep faith.

Zurbaran was born in November 1598. His parents lived in Fuente de Cantos, 70 miles north of Seville, which was then the wealthiest city in Europe thanks to its control over trade with the Americas. Zurbaran trained there for three years, from 1614 to 1617, then moved back to the provinces and married a rich widow, who died giving birth to their third child. He soon married another rich widow just as his career as an artist was taking off. The city fathers of Seville officially invited him to settle there in 1629, even though he was not a member of the local painters’ guild. Disgruntled artists circulated a petition demanding that he undergo their official accreditation process. Despite their jealousy, he managed to win prestigious commissions, mainly from churches and monasteries, and was even invited to paint for the royal court at Madrid.

After a decade, Zurbaran’s good luck began to run out. His second wife died in 1639. He lived with his son Juan (1620-1649), one of the children from his first marriage. In 1644 Zurbaran married a third time; his wife had another six children. But none of them survived him. Most of Zurbaran’s family died in the Great Plague of Seville. By 1650 he was all alone.

Zurbaran’s fifties were sad and painful. His work was out of fashion, and his finances were a wreck. In 1658, shortly before his 60th birthday, he gave up his house in Seville and moved to Madrid, where he died in 1664. Zurbaran’s first famous painting is a 1627 ‘Crucifixion’ (Art Institute of Chicago) that is 10ft high and 5ft wide. The........

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