Oh my. The first painting you encounter in the Zurbarán exhibition is an astonishing crucifixion. The stark white figure of Christ against a black background seems to give off light… or does the light strike it? Look closely at the feet: they’re filthy, for Christ has carried the cross barefoot. It’s pure theatre, but it is also a devotional work, inspiring pity and awe. Those two elements are everywhere in this marvellous exhibition — high drama and emotion. And beauty.
Swivel round in this first room and you see another astonishing picture, a crucifix in a slanting downward motion, for this is a painting of St Peter, crucified upside down, with a kneeling friar looking at him, his hand raised in surprise or reverence. There’s nothing venerable about this Peter… he’s an old man, his mouth drawn back over his teeth, his skin reddened, and in the undignified position of being turned upside down for his last agony.
An encounter with genius
Francisco de Zurbarán is not a household name here when it comes to 17th-century Spanish art, but this exhibition may change that. For in painting after painting we encounter genius. There’s the dramatic colour — rose pink, golden yellow or the brightest red or blue. The show is hung so effectively that the images we see at a distance and through doorways are striking… there’s the poster image of the show, St Casilda, a Moorish princess, her glance turned to the viewer, her sleeve a splash of scarlet, lit as for theatre. Indeed the saints in that room, a succession of stately princess saints, look, as the curator points out, as if they are in procession. Since processions with statues carried through the streets were such a feature of Spanish religion, that may have been the idea.
Much of Zurbarán’s work was for religious orders, and some of those paintings were expressions of a specific dogma, especially the Virgin Mary’s freedom from original sin. His piety is very Spanish and profoundly Catholic, but the drama is evident even to the godless.
And what about the most extraordinary image in the show, a simply enormous head of a man with a grim expression? It’s huge; it looks like a poster image that’s been blown up to wall-size. It’s only recently been attributed to Zurbarán, but no one knows more. Weird.
Nonetheless, what’s striking is the stillness that so many of the paintings convey. Again in the first room there’s a painting of St Serapion, an English monk martyred for rescuing Christian captives from the Saracens, his hands suspended from ropes. He was in fact tortured to death, yet remarkably, here he is in repose, with his bruised head resting on his shoulder. The outstretched arms and the sideways head seem almost horizontal: we see not a man in agony but one almost asleep.
Then there are the still lifes. Some may be missed at first glance, for they are incidental features in larger compositions — a bowl of apples on the table beside the Virgin, a rose in a glass — but when you see them individually, they are marvellous studies, on a par with those of Velázquez, Zurbarán’s contemporary. He rejoices in the physicality of things — the sheen of ceramic glaze on a vase, the dull lustre of a silver platter, the knobbliness of lemon skin — but there is more to them than that.
An eyeful for modern viewers
Some are themselves Catholic images. The beautiful, simple white two-handed cup with water on a silver platter, a pink rose to the side, is both Chardin-like in its simple perfection and an expression of the sinlessness of the Virgin. The most perfect example of all is the Agnus Dei, the heartbreaking image of a little lamb bound by its feet, resigned, it seems, to his fate, his eyes lowered and his wool almost strokable. It is both a dumb animal and the image of Christ, the lamb who was slain.
Where Zurbarán really comes into his own is in painting fabrics… they can steal the show. His father traded in fabrics and he for a time sold thread. He never loses an opportunity to luxuriate in the sensual stiffness of brocade, as with the Body of St Bonaventure, resting on a sheeny orange-gold pattern, or the delicacy of the finest muslin fastening the robe of Joseph.
His piety was palpable. Sometimes it’s a bit much for modern viewers; I am sorry to say that when a group of journalists saw Christ and the Virgin directing rays of light from the hearts they held in their hands at a visionary monk, they just laughed — it really did look as if they were squirting water at him. But no one can fail to be moved by the final crucifixion showing what can only be Zurbarán himself, dressed in dusty pink, holding his easel and looking up at the dead or dying Christ. He was old by then; he had lost everything and his expression is a mixture of awe and tenderness. What a painting. What a painter.
