The word "visionary" is often overused, but for the 17th-century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán, it is entirely appropriate. He paints supernatural things naturally and natural things supernaturally, creating a world where space morphs, distances dissolve, and the barrier between viewer and painting vanishes. The first work in this dreamlike exhibition immediately defies logic: a monk in white robes kneels before a living man hanging upside down, nailed to an inverted cross. This vision feels as real and close to us as it does to the awestruck monk, enveloped in a penumbra of bronze fire and a stream of smoky light from heaven.
The Vision of Saint Peter Nolasco
Lent by the Prado, The Apparition of Saint Peter to Saint Peter Nolasco (1629) depicts Nolasco receiving a vision of Saint Peter, who requested crucifixion upside down to avoid imitating Christ. Unable to make the pilgrimage to Rome, Nolasco is visited mystically at home in Spain. This could be dismissed as sentimental folk art, but Zurbarán paints with such incandescent conviction that it becomes sublimely real. Salvador Dalí admired this artist, imitating his still lifes and crucifixions; Zurbarán is, in essence, a primitive surrealist. Several newly attributed paintings include a wall-filling mask of a giant, possibly for a stage set, which mocks proportion yet is beautifully detailed and weirdly alive.
Mystic Realism and Historical Context
Born in 1598, Zurbarán spent his most productive years in Seville during an age of Catholic revival in Europe's most fervently Catholic country. Spain's militant faith was shaped by centuries of religious warfare that expelled Muslim rule. Seville, whose cathedral bell tower was originally a minaret, housed the Mercedarians, founded by Nolasco, who rescued Christians captured by Muslims. Despite this, Seville was artistically sophisticated, with a legacy of Islamic design and the ironic portrait genius Diego Velázquez. Gold from the Americas enriched the city, explaining Zurbarán's aestheticism. No other artist has painted loincloths so exquisitely: in The Crucified Christ, a pale body looms in darkness, while over his groin dances a flower-like formation of pure white fabric.
Zurbarán's Obsession with Fabric
Once entranced by this lavish loincloth, one notices Zurbarán's eye for fabric everywhere. Holy garments obsess him: Saint Serapion, tortured to death on a Mercedarian mission, is hidden in a billowing white sail of a garment. Alongside acres of white cloth, blue, silver, bronze, and red garments adorn Saint Casilda of Toledo, a Muslim princess who gave bread to Christian prisoners. When caught, the bread miraculously turned to flowers, which Zurbarán depicts with observational brilliance, turning the painting into a springtime celebration. This is truly popular art, another reason this exhibition captivates. It is great art for the masses, with a passion that must have touched 17th-century Seville's working people as much as it will today.
The Paradox of Zurbarán
Yet Zurbarán possesses a hard, lucid edge. He is a mesmerising paradox: a mystical Catholic artist who paints with scientific accuracy. Living in Galileo's age, when the telescope popularised precise observation, Zurbarán transforms that science into metaphysics, turning natural observation into cosmic revelation. This is clear in his still lifes. A superb room unveils newly identified examples alongside lovely paintings of fruit and flowers by his son Juan. While Juan's dusky grapes explore earthly lushness, Zurbarán's still lifes isolate natural and fabricated things in conceptualised, metaphysical arrangements. Lemons, oranges, and a pink rose balanced on a reflective metal plate beside a cup of water are lined up against blackness. It is tremendous, eerie, yet painted with mirror-like perceptiveness. In ordinary things—a cup of water, a rose—one glimpses God's mystery. Living at opposite ends of Europe, one imagines he might have gotten on with John Donne; Zurbarán is a metaphysical poet in paint.
For the Irreligious
What does such art offer the irreligious? A seriousness about life, death, and the mystery of being that few can match. In Zurbarán's most moving still life, a lamb lies trussed for slaughter. It is unclear if it is already dead or passively awaiting fate. Agnus Dei symbolises Christ but is also an actual lamb, a victim of human butchery, painted lifesize with such perfection it might be a specimen in a vitrine. Each fold and knot of its fleece is soft and thick enough to touch. Zurbarán drags you through the picture plane to pity its suffering. You cannot ask more of a work of art.
Zurbarán is at the National Gallery, London, from 2 May to 23 August.
