_Francisco Zurbaran_ (Spanish: 1598-1662).
Zurbaran--the contemporary of Velazquez--unites in a
typical manner the two main characteristics of the Spanish
School--asceticism in subject, realism in presentment. He
is, says Stirling-Maxwell, the peculiar painter of monks, as
Raphael is of Madonnas, and Ribera of martyrdoms; he studied
the Spanish friar, and painted him with as high a relish as
Titian painted the Venetian noble, and Vandyck the gentleman of
England. In the Museum of Seville are several pictures which he
painted for the Carthusians of that city. "The venerable friars
seem portraits; each differs in feature from the other, yet all
bear the impress of long years of solitary and silent penance;
their white draperies chill the eye, as their cold hopeless
faces chill the heart; and the whole scene is brought before
us with a vivid fidelity, which shows that Zurbaran studied
the Carthusian in his native cloisters with the like close and
faithful attention that Velazquez bestowed on the courtier,
strutting it in the corridors of the Alcazar or the alleys
of Aranjuez" (_Annals of the Artists of Spain_, ch. xi.).
Zurbaran was the son of a peasant, but having shown an early
talent for drawing was released from the plough and sent to the
studio of the painter-priest Juan de Roelas, at Seville. His
abilities and his close study of nature soon gained him a high
reputation; his forcible naturalistic style acquired for him
the name of "the Caravaggio of Spain." He was employed in the
cathedral of Seville, which remained his abode for the greater
part of his life. In his picture of "St. Thomas Aquinas" in
the museum there, the dark wild face, immediately behind the
Imperial adorer, is traditionally held to be the portrait of
Zurbaran himself. His habits were those of the recluse, but
in 1650 he was, through the influence of Velazquez, called
to Madrid. There he was set to a task little suited to his
tastes--the production of a series of pictures (now in the
Prado) to illustrate the labours of Hercules. Philip IV. used,
we are told, to visit the artist whilst engaged on these
pictures, and on one occasion expressed his admiration of his
powers by laying his hand on his shoulder, and calling him
"painter of the King, and king of the painters." "His best
characteristic," says Burton, "is his power of imparting the
sense of life to the heads of his figures. He was in fact a
great, though not a professed, portrait painter."
It is a transcript from the religious life around him that Zurbaran
here sets before us. Seville was the most orthodox city in the most
Catholic country--at every corner of the streets there were Franciscan
monks, with prayers or charms to sell in exchange for food or money.
"For centuries in Spain country people bought up the monks' old garbs,
to use them in dressing the dead, so that St. Peter might pass them
into heaven thinking they were Franciscans." It was in the streets and
convents of Seville therefore that Zurbaran found his models. This
picture was bought for the National Gallery from the Louis Philippe
sale in 1853. When the gallery of Spanish pictures to which it formerly
belonged was inaugurated in the Louvre, "what remained most strongly
in the Parisian mind, so impressionable and so _blasé_, was not the
suavity of Murillo, nor the astonishing pencil of Velazquez, making
the canvas speak and palpitate with life; it was a certain 'Monk in
prayer' of Zurbaran, which it was impossible to forget, even if one
had seen it only once" (C. Blanc, cited in W. B. Scott's _Murillo_,
p. 55). "Of his gloomy monastic studies," says Stirling-Maxwell, "the
kneeling Franciscan holding a skull is one of the ablest; the face,
dimly seen beneath the brown hood, is turned to heaven; no trace of
earthly expression is left on its pale features, but the wild eyes seem
fixed on some dismal vision; and a single glance at the canvas imprints
the figure on the memory for ever."