Starker than Velázquez and more ascetic than El Greco, Francisco Zurbarán (1598-1664) is easily among the finest of seventeenth-century Spanish painters. Apprenticed in Seville, he quickly gravitated toward the use of chiaroscuro, possibly having seen paintings by Caravaggio there: he was later to become known as the Spanish Caravaggio. But Zurbarans temperament, as it is realized in his painting, appears more melancholy, and therefore less foreboding, than Caravaggios, and his religious subjects are almost exclusively Christian. He developed a characteristic image repertoire around monasticism and martyrs and made a speciality of the Carthusians, whose white robes he took evident pleasure in depicting. His best-known work may be his 1631 Apotheosis of Saint Thomas Aquinas, now housed in the Seville Museum. It was around this time that Zurbarans star reached its peak, as he was appointed court painter to Philip IV. Later, toward the end of his life, Zurbarans harsh chiaroscuro style fell from favor, but his reputation was restored in the twentieth century, in part through the concerns of Cubism and its attraction to precedents for an emphatic plasticity. In this monograph, illustrated with 114 color plates, Santiago Alcolea, a scholar of seventeenth-century Spanish art and the author of previous books on Velazquez and El Greco, provides us with an overview of Zurbarans artistic career, dividing it into four stylistic phases and reproposing his relevance for our times.
La trayectoria de Velázquez puede ser considerada como una constante investigación de la relación entre la pintura y la naturaleza, en la que la pincelada toma el papel principal. A medida que la desarrollo, logro un naturalismo fisico y psicologico sin precedentes con pinceladas progresivamente mas pronunciadas y mas elegantes, consiguiendo efectos milagrosos de ilusion con una tecnica condensada y asombrosa, basada mas en la deduccion que en la elaboracion del detalle. la sintesis de la vid y la obra de Velazquez que el profesor Santiago Alcolea i Gil realiza en este libro ofrece al lector una amplia panoramica de uno de los credores mas señalados de la pintura universal.
Junto a Velázquez y El Greco, Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) es indudablemente uno de los pintores españoles más célebres del siglo XVII. Zurbarán , que para los románticos representó el ascetismo monastico español, volveria a ponerse de actualidad en el siglo XX gracias, en parte al cubismo, que contribuyo al redescubrimiento de las grandes cualidades plasticas de su obra. En efecto, si la simplicidad de su preparacion artistica refleja un temperamento melancolico y escasamente refinado, y si su pintura contiene incluso un acento rustico, en su obra se aprecia no obstante un predominio de los valores plasticos que responde a la preocupacion de dar una forma concreta a la construccion del espiritu. El profesor Santiago Alcolea nos ofrece una perspectiva general de la trayectoria artistica de Zurbaran, estructurada en cuatro periodos marcados por acontecimientos relevantes que provocaron unos significativos cambios de estilo.
El profesor Santiago Alcolea i Gil nos describe en este libro, ampliamente ilustrado, los aspectos más sobresalientes de la vida y la obra de este artista, figura cumbre del arte pictórico europeo.
