Drawing on an in-depth knowledge of the bibliography and close attention to the details of the paintings, this book restores Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) to his rightful place in the panorama of European artistic creation. The painter was rediscovered "in the wake of" the looting...
Drawing on an in-depth knowledge of the bibliography and close attention to the details of the paintings, this book restores Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) to his rightful place in the panorama of European artistic creation. The painter was rediscovered "in the wake of" the looting during the Napoleonic era, captivated the Romantics, and eventually came to embody the very soul of Spain. His work became shrouded in a web of clichés associated with the notion of an ultra-Catholic Spain. But were the driving forces behind his artistic creation really rooted solely in piety?
This book offers a fresh perspective on Zurbarán's work and life. It brings to light several key questions: his origins; his status as an outsider among his peers in Seville; the artistic as well as commercial strategies he developed throughout his career; his capacity for invention; his treatment of narrative in his compositions; their deliberate strangeness; the artist's awareness of his own authorship; and the distinctive way in which his models were projected across the Atlantic.
Neither awkward, illiterate nor a mere peasant, Zurbarán knew how to forge a distinctive artistic signature-and continued to assert it right up to his final paintings.
