School of FRANCISCO ZURBARAN; Seville, first half of the seventeenth century. "The Child of the thorn". Oil on canvas. Re-enteled.

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Jul 14, 2021

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• Lot Description
  School of FRANCISCO ZURBARAN; Seville, first half of the seventeenth century. "The Child of the thorn". Oil on canvas. Re-enteled. Presents repainting and losses of the pictorial layer. Size: 125,5 x 82,5 cm. Due to the stylistic characteristics, this canvas can be inscribed within the aesthetic patterns that defined the master Zurbarán, and more specifically to those corresponding to his workshop. This work follows precisely the iconographic model of the "Child of the Thorn" already used by Francisco de Zurbarán, following a composition close to other works of the same theme of the time. Thus, we see a rosy-cheeked baby Jesus, carefully contemplating his hands, in particular one of his fingers, from which a thin thread of blood falls on the crown of thorns, alluding to the passion. Francisco de Zurbarán trained in Seville, where he was a disciple of Pedro Díaz de Villanueva between 1614 and 1617. During this period he would have the opportunity to meet Pachecho and Herrera, and to establish contacts with his contemporaries Velázquez and Cano, apprentices like him in Seville at the time. After several years of diverse apprenticeship, Zurbarán returned to Badajoz without undergoing the Sevillian guild examination. He settled in Llerena between 1617 and 1628, a city where he received commissions both from the municipality and from various convents and churches in Extremadura. In 1629, by unusual proposal of the Municipal Council, Zurbarán settled definitively in Seville, beginning the most prestigious decade of his career. He received commissions from all the religious orders present in Andalusia and Extremadura, and was finally invited to the court in 1934, perhaps at the suggestion of Velázquez, to participate in the decoration of the great hall of the Buen Retiro. Back in Seville, Zurbarán continued to work for the court and for various monastic orders. In 1958, probably moved by the difficulties of the Sevillian market, he moved to Madrid. During this last period of his production, he painted canvases of private devotion of small format and refined execution. Zurbarán was a painter of simple realism, excluding grandiloquence and theatricality from his work, and we can even find some clumsiness when solving the technical problems of geometric perspective, despite the perfection of his drawing in anatomies, faces and objects. His severe compositions, rigorously ordered, reach an exceptional level of pious emotion. With respect to tenebrism, the painter practiced it especially in his first Sevillian period. No one surpasses him in the way of expressing the tenderness and candor of children, young virgins and adolescent saints. His exceptional technique also allowed him to represent the tactile values of canvases and objects, which makes him an exceptional still life painter. His sobriety, the expressive force and plasticity of his figures, added to his obvious gifts as a colorist, place him at the top of the Spanish masters of the Golden Age.
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