We Could Have Lost Francisco de Zurbarán by William Davie
Saint Francis in Meditation (1635-9) Oil on canvas 152 × 99 cm NG London
Standing before Francisco de Zurbarán’s Saint Francis in Meditation (1635-9) in the National Gallery’s highly engaging and revelatory survey exhibition Saint Francis of Assisi, two things come to mind that make this visceral masterpiece depicting him in a moment of profound prayer having received stigmata, even more arresting.
First, is the story that brought Ruben Enaje to wider public attention.
In 1985, Enaje was working in construction when he lost his footing and slipped from the bamboo scaffolding he was on. As he fell to his certain death three storeys down, he screamed: “Diyos ko!” - My God!
Miraculously, Enaje survived the fall.
Even more miraculously, Enaje had escaped without serious injury.
To thank God for granting him a second chance at life, Enaje vowed to undertake a panata, an act of devotion common in Filipino Catholicism. His chosen act was to be crucified during the Senakulo, a nationwide celebration during Holy Week in which the suffering, death, and Resurrection of Jesus is reenacted through a Passion Play.
Describing what it felt like to be crucified, Enaje explains: “Once I am on the cross it is difficult to breathe. Breathing on the cross is really shallow. I use my mouth to breathe. My legs are tied down, so I can only move from waist up. To stay conscious, I close my eyes and focus on breathing pattern, breathe in and breathe out. . . The pain is anticipated as the nails pierce through my flesh, but I bear the pain by closing my eyes, taking deep breaths. I make a silent prayer that I can make it. . . When the cross goes into the upright position, I feel goosebumps all over my being, seeing thousands of people watching me. . . I close my eyes and pray. When I pray, I feel as if a cold wind is blowing through. I feel the closeness of Jesus. I feel as if I am pulled out of a prison. While on the cross, I usually pray the Lord’s prayer. I also pray for the health of my family mostly. . . During the entire show, I feel the presence of Jesus Christ that makes me comfortable and makes the pain bearable.”
Enaje has continued to use the act of devotional crucifixion as he has faced uncertainties and periods of tribulation in his life.
To date, he has been crucified more than 33 times.
Enaje’s crucifixions offer us the closest tangible understanding of what it would feel like to receive stigmata, the phenomena of receiving the pain and scars of Jesus’s mortal wounds inflicted during his crucifixion. As he describes it, the pivotal role that breathing and prayer play in it, strikes a chord with Zurbarán’s decision to also focus our attention on Francis of Assisi’s mouth and nose as he receives stigmata.
The painting confronts us with a life-sized Francis of Assisi kneeling before us with his head tilted back, looking up to the sky. Zurbarán minimises all extraneous elements in the foreground and background leaving it mostly darkened, apart from a thin vertical passage of fading light seen behind him to the right that gives the faintest illusion of architectural depth to his surroundings. From the left, Zurbarán employs a harsh raking light. As this casts across Francis of Assisi’s body, it has the effect of rendering the volume of his contorted, kneeling body sculpturesque. This creates a compelling visual tension that belies the flatness of the painting’s surface, heightening the overall impact and the otherworldliness of this moment of divine intervention.
Zurbarán further tailors his use of light to draw attention to key points of didactic symbolism. First, to the skull that he cradles in his hands clasped tightly together in front of him, revealing his stigmata, that emphasies his mortality and ours. Then, to the immensely detailed coarseness of the habit’s patchwork, and to an area of tattered fabric on the elbow. This has prompted scholars to speculate that it was likely a community of Discalced Friars, who dedicate their life to prayer, that commissioned the painting. Then, to the three knots tied in the habit’s cincture, announcing his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
But it is in Francis of Assisi’s face where Zurbarán’s painterly prowess truly takes centre stage.
The cowl of his habit is pulled up obscuring his features in dark shadow apart from a sharp triangular passage of light that illuminates the bottom of his nose and his mouth which is agape. This triangular passage of light appears subtly at odds with the oval opening of the cowl, further alluding to a divine rather than natural origin. Zurbarán’s rendering of his mouth like this is so convincing that our mouth begins to emulate his. We innately comprehend its significance as both a way to communicate with God through prayer, and as a way for God to enter into his–our body, akin to the sacrificial symbolism Jesus inscribed into the bread and wine during the Last Supper before his crucifixion.
By focusing on this aspect rather than allowing us to see a wider, narrative-driven picture, Zurbarán prioritises the painting’s instructive intention - to encourage a life of devotion by encapsulating Francis of Assisi’s moment of divine reward for a life of worship, proselytising, and sacrifice - while cunningly carving out enough pictorial room so that his artistic skill can flourish without detracting from it.
That this painting and another very kindred portrait of Francis of Assisi that is also included in the National Gallery exhibition remain so resolutely commanding, even instructive, to a predominantly secular audience almost 400 years later, is testament to Zurbarán’s artistic aptitude.
Which leads us to the second thing that comes to mind: How could Zurbarán’s artistic output have been so neglected for so long?
During Zurbarán’s artistic zenith, spanning the mid-to-late 1620s to the very early 1640s, he was considered one of Spain’s best painters, and arguably created some of Spain’s most important and recognisable contributions to the canon of art history. Yet, compared to his contemporaries Diego Velázquez and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, institutional and scholarly acknowledgement has been minimal at best.
The first exhibition dedicated to Zurbarán’s work took place as recently as 1964 in Madrid, and despite fierce champions, it is only in the last twenty years that a seachange in perception around him has begun to take shape more widely. A necessity that is made all the more obvious when we see Zurbarán in concert with an eclectic mix of canonical bellwethers such as Sandro Botticelli, Caravaggio, Murillo, El Greco, Francisco Ribalta, as well as more recent artists like Stanley Spencer and Antony Gormley, in the National Gallery exhibition.
Fundamental to what distinguishes Zurbarán’s paintings from others executed in a comparable mode, is his extraordinary ability to creatively employ and depict light.
First, we must understand the constraints outlined in the doctrines of the Catholic Church at the time, as well as the parameters imposed by his patrons, where the essence of the story is first and foremost, not the style in which it is delivered. It is against these that Zurbarán’s ingenuity, his “unique visual language in which he combined pure naturalism with a poetic modernity,” as curator Ignacio Cano Rivero has described it, is exercised, subtly blossoming wherever it can, either by design or through opportunity.
Zurbarán was a devout Catholic, working predominantly in and around Seville along with stints in Madrid. Like his patrons, who were mostly ecclesiastical and located throughout southern Spain, and later on in his career, the New World, Zurbarán was indelibly shaped by the effects of the Counter-Reformation.
At the heart of the Counter-Reformation was the Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563, in order to redefine Roman Catholic doctrine and theology as it regained popularity following the birth and rise of Protestantism during the Reformation. Addressing the function and aesthetics of religious works of art and iconography, it was asserted in the decree On the Invocation, Veneration and Relics of Saints and On Sacred Images, that they should be direct, moving, easily interpreted, and encourage devotion. Any superstition and lasciviousness should be avoided, and compositions should not be painted or adorned with any hint of seductive charm.
With this in mind, Zurbarán’s largest documented surviving work, an altarpiece, The Apotheosis of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1631), should have been an over-policed exercise that resulted in artistic so-so-edness. Instead, it sees Zurbarán triumph: a manifesto displaying the breadth of his talent.
The Apotheosis of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1631)
The altarpiece, measuring 486 x 385 cm, was commissioned for a small chapel at the Dominican College of Santo Tomás de Aquino. The content was rigorously hemmed in by the college rector, who stated that it must glorify Thomas Aquinas, as well as commemorate the founding of the College of Santo Tomás in 1517 by the Dominican cardinal Diego de Dez. Added to this was the need for the altarpiece to command the chapel, both with immediacy and lastingly, as it would be looked at for extended periods of time by those seeking reflective inspiration and to a lesser extent, studiously.
Zurbarán separates the composition into two sections using a compositional structure commonly seen in paintings from Seville between the mid-16th and early 17th centuries. The top two thirds depict a heavenly realm, while the bottom third depicts earth. Over this, Zurbarán methodically arranges the multitude of figures with a precise symmetry. In the centre of the heavenly realm, we see Thomas Aquinas holding up a pen like a trophy, emphasising the pursuit and importance placed on intellectual attainment by the Dominican college that bears his name. Sitting on either side of him are the four fathers of the Latin church. To his left, Saint Ambrose and Saint Gregory, and to his right, Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine, all wearing elaborately patterned, opulent robes, and each one holding a tome. They are under the watchful protection of the Holy Spirit who appears above them, as do various biblical figures that are seen fading into the golden clouds behind them.
In the bottom third, against the silhouetted interior architecture of the college, we see two groups of kneeling figures facing towards the centre of the room, their hands raised or clasped together in prayer, their heads tilted back, looking up towards the Aquinas. Closest to the centre, and leading the group on the left, is de Deza. Opposite him, leading the group on the right, is Charles I, a friend of the cardinal and a patron of the college. In the centre between them is a table with the college charter on it.
At first, it is Zurbaran’s calculated employment of red that draws our eye quickly across the composition, from the scarlet of Saint Jerome’s hat to a flicker of red seen on the underside of Saint Gregory’s robe, down to where a passage of light illuminates the velvet drapery that extends over the table with the college charter on it. We then become aware of and mesmerised by the extreme level of detail in the ornamentation on Charles I’s robes, following it as the folds crest and fall, which redirects us back up to the equally ornate robes of the saints, each one a powerful showcase of the scope of Zurbaran’s brushwork.
As we do this, the symmetrical arrangement of the figures reveals a central triangulation that pulls the arrangement together as a strong, cohesive whole, with Aquinas at the top, and de Deza with Charles I on the bottom left and right corners. This further stresses the importance that these three men have in the history and continued success of the college, illustrating Zurbaran’s ability to create an easily legible root interpretation.
But above all, what keeps us looking at the altarpiece once these facets have firmly established themselves is Zurbaran’s sophisticated use of light.
This is quietly underscored by his resourcefulness in creating an area of tenebrism within the composition in the bottom section. By painting the interior architecture of the college black, even as we see daylight and the buildings and streets through the windows, Zurbaran allows the symbolic effect of his use of light to act as a visualisation of the divine protection provided by the Holy Spirit over the college’s representatives and pupils on earth. Zurbaran focuses it on their hands and their upturned faces promoting their devotion. As seen in Saint Francis in Meditation, light and shadow don’t always align to a single source, which further infers that the source is both omnipresent and divine. This cleverly has the effect of making each figure’s moment of transcendence appear unique.
Likewise, in the heavenly section, intense passages of light draw our attention to the faces of the saints and to the tomes in their hands, reiterating their historical significance and the importance that knowledge played in their lives, while simultaneously, certain passages of light that fall across their robes serve to remind us of the dexterity of Zurbaran’s brushwork.
As shown in the two previous examples, light is central to Zurbaran’s paintings. It is also playing a pivotal role as the linchpin steering Zurbaran’s reappraisal, as a headline for a New York Times review of the first exhibition dedicated to Zurbarán in Italy in 2013 testifies to: ‘Master of Light Leaps From the Shadows’.
Capitalizing on this, the author, Roderick Conway Morris, begins with a bold assertion by Italian art historian Roberto Longhi who described Zurbarán as “the greatest constructor of form with light, after Caravaggio and before Cézanne.”
However, as much as this recognises the technical skill that Zurbarán had when it comes to depicting light, in this instance, it fails to communicate the effect his use of light has on its audience, which is its raison d'etre.
While Zurbaran’s use of light is undoubtedly influenced by Caravaggio and-or the Caravaggesque painters that followed in his wake, their applications are inherently different. They tended to utilise a warm spotlight-like light as a means to add a sense of theatricality to the human drama that is at the core of their compositions. Whereas Zurbarán uses a more pronounced, often harsher variant, to promote and illustrate the presence of divinity as it intersects with the mortal figure or figures in a composition, made even more muscular by the removal of foreground and background elements in favour of darkness or blackness. Both are initially dramatic, but the longer we stay in front of one of Zurbaran’s paintings, we see this sense of drama transmute, revealing itself as divine intervention, sensed only by those it illuminates and us, the viewer. It is as if we are witnessing a break in the fourth wall from a privileged position of divine access, illustrating Zurbarán’s masterful ability at manoeuvring us into that moment of divine intervention both physically and spiritually.
Saint Serapion (1628) is a fascinating example of this at work. It was commissioned for the monastery of the Shod Mercedarians in Seville, and, as the revered art historian and authority on Spanish painting of this period Jonathan Brown has noted, was displayed in the sala de profundis, the room where deceased members of the order lay in state before burial.
There are different accounts of Serapion’s life however, it is widely believed that in 1222, Serapion, a crusader likely born in England, met Peter Nolasco in Barcelona and became a member of the Order of Our Lady of Mercy, known as the Mercedarians. Nolasco founded the Order to free Christian captives held for ransom in Muslim states. Despite the differing accounts, the extreme violence and brutality of his death remains a constant, with the most authoritative account drawn from annals of the lives of Mercedarians, who wrote that Serapion was murdered by English pirates in Scotland. They tied his arms and legs to two poles, beat and disembowelled him and finally, partially severed his neck.
However, in Zurbarán’s portrayal, we see a three-quarter length portrait of Serapion emerging out of blackness. His hands are tied at the wrists, each one secured to its own barely legible tree trunk behind him, pulling them up to the top corners of the composition. His pose and martyrdom mirroring that of Jesus on the cross. Any other distinction between foreground and background, as well as any narrative elements including signs of the extreme violence of his death, are omitted. Instead, Zurbarán focuses our attention on and celebrates the spiritual reward that he is receiving as a result of his martyrdom.
Using two main sources of light, he imbues this moment with divine intervention, creating a tension between his mortal death and his future canonisation; Serapion was beatified in 1625 (Nolasco was canonised in 1628). Executed in exquisite life-like detail, one source of light highlights the tops of his limp-hanging fingers and the side of his face that looks towards the top of the composition. His head slumps to one side, his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open, again echoing the way in which Jesus’s head slumped to one side on the cross. The second source of light bathes his pristine white robe from both the left side and straight on. Like Francis of Assisi’s habit, the folds appear sculpturesque, as if carved out of marble. On the right side, we can glimpse beneath his robe, where there is cold shadow and it is lifeless as the divine light is not able to penetrate through to his body, further signifying that his flesh and blood is no longer alive, but that something of great spiritual significance is nonetheless taking place.
In opting to present Serapion’s martyrdom like this, we imagine how incredibly thought-provoking the painting would have been in the sala de profundis. And, if the room was dimly lit or dark, which it likely was to encourage reflection and prayer for the other members of the Order, that Zurbarán’s extensive use of white in Serapion’s robes combined with the raking light would have made it appear as if it really were a divine vision emerging from the darkness.
The most influential argument for Zurbarán’s reappraisal, however, is seen in the way that he engineers a form of transubstantiation through our gaze, that is unrivalled by any other painter. It’s an extension of his ability to manoeuver us into a moment of divine intervention both physically and spiritually illustrated previously, seen in works such as Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose (1633) and Agnus Dei (1635-40), both of which are acmes of his artistic zenith.
Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose (1633)
The paintings were created for private devotion and initially presented as still lives, but quickly reveal themselves as exuding maximum symbolic evocation through formal and pictorial restraint. They are unified in that every creative decision that Zurbarán makes, is done so with calculated precision. Each one composed with an exacting eye for harmony so that it is perfectly balanced, from the blackness around the object or objects, to the intensity and temperature of the light, to where and how the light and shadows fall, to the colours he employs, so that nothing is or appears superfluous.
In Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose we see a pewter plate with four lemons, a wicker basket with oranges and a sprig of blossoms, and a cup on a saucer with a single pink rose next to it, arranged along a dark wood table, set against a pitch-black background.
Today it is less likely to be as easily interpreted, but at the time, to the faithful, the calculated arrangement of the three distinct sections would have been understood as symbolising the Holy Trinity. Just as the oranges, their blossoms, and the cup of water would have been understood as symbolising the Virgin Mary’s purity, and the thornless rose symbolising her Immaculate Conception. Similar to the way that the hints of eroticism, “as subtle as the shadows on the whitewashed walls”, would have been legible to “the sophisticated viewer’ of Vermeer’s The Milkmaid (1657-58), as the late curator Walter Liedtke points out in his essay Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) and The Milkmaid for The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
At first, Zurbarán draws us in agonisingly close to the painting’s surface. Our eye captivated by the life-like appearance with which he masterfully renders the vividly coloured textures of the ripe, voluminous fruit, as well as the leaves and petals of the blossoms and rose, the strands of wicker on the basket, and the reflective surface of the metal plate. As we scan each one, we become conscious of the rhythm Zurbarán establishes in his precise and equal spacing of each of the three distinct stations, and the importance in what they represent, just as we did with the central triangulation seen in The Apotheosis of Saint Thomas Aquinas. As we do this, the harsh raking light that cascades across the objects, like the variant seen in Saint Francis in Meditation, casts severe shadows that ever so subtly do not align to a single source. Again, this strongly infers that the source is both omnipresent and divine, as it provides the catalyst for the transubstantiation to take place, as it strips away all of the objects’ earthly, physical characteristics before our very eyes. Its rich, sacred presence, now impossible to deny.
In this particular version of Agnus Dei, one of five that Zurbarán painted, currently on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from a private collection, we see a lamb laid across a dark wood table in a sacrificial position against a pitch-black backdrop. Its feet are bound together reminiscent of the pose of Stefano Maderno’s hauntingly affecting sculpture The Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia (1600), located in the Basilica di Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome.
Agnus Dei, ca. 1635–40, Oil on canvas, 38 × 56 cm
The Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia (1600) by Stefano Maderno, Basilica di Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome
The light that Zurbarán employs from the left and the dramatic delivery that usually accompanies it, is uncharacteristically subtler and more subdued; just enough to show that the lamb is being divinely touched. Instead, the drama is replaced by a false air of serenity evoked by the still life-like design. Just as with Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose, in stark relief in our mind’s eye, this amplifies the philosophical weight and importance of the symbolism, commencing the transubstantiation.
The Latin title translates as ‘Lamb of God’, which combined with the imagery, allows the plentiful symbolic readings to come forth effortlessly. Zurbarán shrewdly plays with the interpretable connotations usually associated with still life paintings, often populated by symbolic food and perishables, to reinforce the sacrificial nature of the ‘chosen’ lamb, as his use of light indicates. In death, the lamb is a source of sustenance, of life, a metaphor for Jesus, who in his sacrifice on the cross, “took the punishment for all of our sins at once.” This is made gut-wrenchingly powerful by the meek innocence of the lamb’s expression, resigned to its imminent and violent death, surrounded by eternal blackness, for which we cannot do anything.
In our understanding that we are not able to alter the lamb’s inevitable fate, the necessity of Jesus's betrayal by Judas Iscariot, and the all-encompassing remorse he feels for what he has done that leads him to take his life, is also brought to mind. We avert our eyes from the lamb momentarily, yet sacrifice and remorse headily colour the eternal blackness that surrounds it.
As we step back, the painting, which is only 38 x 56 cm, and must be considered one of Christian iconography’s most powerful and affecting images, now has a hugely commanding and loaded presence, as magnetic and moving as any of the world’s most captivating altars.
And Zurbarán has shown himself to be a true master.
He has elevated the culturally-maligned genre of still life far beyond what it was thought it could be, to that of his most forthright and impacting religious paintings like Saint Francis in Meditation, The Death of St. Bonaventura (1629), or Christ on the Cross (1627), in much the same way that Enaje elevates and makes tangible a level of devotion and a commitment of one’s vows to God that we would find impossible to comprehend otherwise.