CANO AND ZURBARÁN
Alonzo Cano was born in Granada in 1601. He belongs, however, to the
School of Andalusia, for he studied in Seville and lived there until his
thirty-sixth year. His teachers in painting were Juan de Castillo, the
master a few years later of Murillo, and Francisco Pacheco, in whose
studio Cano was a fellow-pupil of Velasquez. He also practised
architecture and sculpture. Indeed, it was in the latter art that he
particularly excelled and gained his first distinction. His teacher had
been the celebrated Martinez Montañés, whose instruction was
supplemented by the opportunities of studying the antique marbles
collected by the Dukes of Alcalá, in their palace in Seville, the _Casa
de Pilatos_. The influence of this training is perceptible in his best
paintings which are characterised by excessive refinement of drawing and
expression. Yet Cano’s own nature was inclined to violence and
lawlessness. Having fought a duel with the painter, Llano y Valdés, and
wounded him, he found it convenient to leave Seville and settle in
Madrid.
Cano, now in his thirty-sixth year, was kindly received by Velasquez and
introduced by him to the Count-Duke Olivares, who employed him in his
palace of Buen Retiro. Philip IV expressed a wish to see the
new-comer’s work and, being favorably impressed with it, gave Cano the
appointment of drawing-master to the young Prince Baltasar Carlos, and
later made him one of his own painters in ordinary. After some seven
years of success Cano’s stay in Madrid was terminated as abruptly as his
sojourn in Seville. His wife was murdered. According to the artist’s own
account, he had returned home to find her dead in bed, clutching a lock
of hair and pierced with many wounds, inflicted, apparently, with a
pocket-knife. Her jewels were missing and the Italian servant had
disappeared. Suspicion was at first directed against this man; but when
it became known that the artist had lived on bad terms with his wife,
while carrying on an intrigue with another woman, he himself was
suspected of the crime. Whether guilty or not, Cano was alarmed for his
safety and, giving out that he had left for Portugal, fled East to
Valencia. Here he took refuge in a monastery, executing works for many
of the neighbouring communities. At length, trusting that the affair had
blown over, he returned to Madrid and sought asylum in the house of his
friend, the Regidor, Don Rafael Sanguineto. He was, however, arrested
and condemned to the ordeal. Pleading his profession as a painter, he
was permitted to submit his left hand to the torture and, passing
through it without a cry, was adjudged innocent.
Six years later Cano, desiring to settle in his native city, Granada,
obtained through the King’s influence the post of minor-canon in the
Cathedral, with the proviso that he should be excused from his choral
duties if
[Illustration:
APOTHEOSIS OF S. THOMAS AQUINAS ZURBARÁN
PROVINCIAL MUSEUM, SEVILLE]
he took orders within a year. He endeavored to conciliate the very
natural objections of the Chapter by executing some sculptural
embellishments for the Coro. He also worked for the convents of the
neighborhood and for private patrons, with one of whom he came into
collision respecting the price to be paid for a statue of _S. Antony_.
The man, who held the office of auditor of Granada, had demurred at the
sum asked for a work which had occupied the artist only twenty-five
days; whereupon Cano, anticipating Whistler, retorted, “You are a bad
reckoner; I have been fifty years learning to make such a statue in
twenty-five days.” Then he dashed the _S. Antony_ to the ground and
smashed him. This was a sacrilegious offence that might have brought the
artist under the jurisdiction of the Holy Office, but the auditor,
instead of reporting the matter to that body prevailed on the Chapter to
declare Cano’s seat vacant because he had not according to agreement
taken orders. Cano appealed to the King who obtained for him from the
Bishop of Salamanca a chaplaincy which entitled the holder to full
orders, while at the same time the Nuncio consented to grant him
dispensation from saying Mass. So Cano returned in triumph to Granada,
but never again would execute any work for the Cathedral. Indeed, it was
in works of charity that the last years of his life were chiefly spent.
He was so impoverished by them that, when he was stricken with his last
sickness, the Chapter voted five hundred reals to “The Canon Cano, being
sick and very poor and without means to pay the doctor”; and a week
later added another two hundred reals to buy him “poultry and
sweetmeats.” He died on the third of October, 1667.
The Capilla Mayor in the Cathedral of Granada is enriched with
sculptural works by Cano’s hand and with some paintings. These represent
the “Seven Joys of Mary,” _Annunciation_, _Conception_, _Nativity_,
_Presentation in the Temple_, and _Assumption_. They are placed so high,
that from the floor it is very difficult to see them, while, even when
you view them from the nearer approach of the triforium, the colored
glass of the windows interferes with their effect. As far as one can
judge on the spot and with the aid of photographs they are too flimsy in
character for the monumental structure which they are intended to
decorate. That this conclusion is correct appears probable when you
study Cano’s smaller altar-pieces. Some of them are painted so thinly,
with so little variety of values of hue and so little interest of
surface, that they seem to be empty. On the other hand, his best works,
such as the _Mother and Child_ over the Altar of Bethlehem in Seville
Cathedral, and the _S. Agnes_ of the Berlin Gallery, are so exquisitely
refined that they need to be seen at close range.
The former is regarded as Cano’s masterpiece. The type of the Virgin is
of Granada, touched with Moorish warmth, a little more womanly and much
more refined than Murillo’s. But, like the latter’s and like Raphael’s
Roman Madonnas, it is beautiful only in a physical and emotional way; it
has nothing of the spirituality of El Greco’s creations, so absorbed in
the mystery of their sacred and miraculous estate. Yet among the
Madonnas of the Southern artists there is probably none so pure in its
loveliness and so lovely in its purity as this one of Cano’s. A similar
quality of exquisitely fragrant maidenhood appears in the S. Agnes. Both
this and the other canvas represent sentiment, raised to the highest
pitch of elevated feeling; yet remaining sentiment. I make the point
because Cano, no more than the other Spanish artists, for all the
religiosity of their pictures, touched the soul of religion. The only
artist of the Spanish School to do this was the alien, El Greco.
* * * * *
Francisco de Zurbarán was born in 1598 in the little town of Fuente de
Cantos in the province of Estremadura. His father, a small farmer,
convinced of his son’s talent for drawing, took him to Seville and
placed him under the teaching of Roelas. But there is little or no trace
of this painter’s influence in Zurbarán’s style. In a general way the
latter came under the spell of Ribera and Caravaggio; indeed, at one
period of his career Zurbarán in consequence of his dark shadows was
nicknamed “the Spanish Caravaggio.” But you cannot become acquainted
with Zurbarán’s various subjects without realising that he owed his
style chiefly, almost entirely, to himself; that he had shaped it to the
needs of his own temperament. He was an out and out naturalist; in a
sense the most conspicuously naturalistic painter of the Spanish School.
For there is an austerity in his point of view, which separates him from
the sentiment of Murillo, the passionate virility of Ribera and the
aristocratic distinction of Velasquez. Zurbarán consorted with Monks;
took advantage of occasional opportunities of retiring from the world
into the quiet of a monastic community; and in the simplicity and
frugality of his tastes was at heart a monk. The bare walls of a cell or
refectory, the plain habits of the brethren, and the orderly formality
of their lives, were more to him than subjects for his brush. They were
so in tune with his own instincts, that he derived from them inspiration
for his art; affecting not only his habit of seeing but his technique.
Both became characterised by largeness and simplicity and by more or
less severity.
These qualities are represented in the great altarpiece, _The Apotheosis
of S. Thomas Aquinas_, executed when Zurbarán was only twenty-seven
years old and generally considered his masterpiece. It is to be seen
to-day under very favorable conditions in the Provincial Museum of
Seville, for it is hung high in a good light and can be viewed from
various distances. These advantages of placing no doubt count in the
impression, differing so widely from the usual circumstances under which
the altar-pieces of Spain are to be studied. But the impression received
of the _S. Thomas_ is that, with the exception of the _Funeral of Count
Orgaz_, it is the noblest ceremonial picture that one has met in Spain.
It is due to the magnificence of its organic simplicity and bigness,
which give the composition an emphasis and carrying force. And what is
true of the large masses, viewed from a distance, is equally true on a
nearer view of the details. The latter resolve themselves into finely
treated surfaces of drapery and particularly into the punctuating
emphasis of keenly
[Illustration:
MIRACLE OF S. HUGO ZURBARÁN
PROVINCIAL MUSEUM, SEVILLE]
characterised heads. The altar-piece was painted for the Church of the
College of S. Thomas; whose founder, Archbishop Diego de Deza is
represented below; kneeling opposite to the Emperor Charles V, who
presumably had been a patron of the foundation. One has but to look at
the reproduction of this picture (p. 163) to feel sure that all the
heads are portraits; that of S. Thomas, “The Angelic Doctor,” being,
tradition says, a portrait of the Prebendary of Seville in Zurbarán’s
time. While each head is individualized, it is interesting to note how
they are assembled into generic groups; the monkish type represented in
the archbishop and his attendants; the man-of-the-world in the Emperor’s
group; the type of the thinker and spiritual leader in the four doctors
of the Church, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome. Nor is there any
less distinction of character in the S. Paul and S. Dominic, in the
right upper corner. It is less manifest, however, in the Christ, and
scarcely to be found in the figure of the Virgin. Two other points may
be noted, as helping to explain the magistral impression of this canvas.
In the first place, the effect of wide-openness in the upper part of the
composition, where the clouds of glory are thronged with cherub heads,
is carried down into the lower part by the view of the street, seen at a
distance and dotted with intentionally minute figures, so as not to
interfere with the emphasis of the groups in the foreground. The result
of this continuance of lighted space is to create a unity in the
composition, binding into an ensemble the three tiers of figures. Again,
it is remarkable with what a comprehension of large, structural
principles, Zurbarán has distributed the masses, respectively, of the
plain and of the embellished draperies. The purpose of the whole pageant
is to glorify S. Thomas and incidentally the Dominican order. The key
and climax, therefore, of the whole is S. Thomas’s black and white
habit. To secure its emphasis the cardinal’s red and the rich copes with
their sumptuously embroidered orphreys have been massed about it.
Meanwhile a portion of this enrichment is repeated below in the
archbishop’s robes and the emperor’s cloak, and more faintly in the
figures in the clouds. Here too S. Dominic supplies an echo of the black
and white, which in turn are massed in the lower foreground. It is this
fine ground-work, distribution and climax of black and white, which more
than anything give this composition so noble a distinction: a certain
chaste, choice, austere dignity.
Near this picture in the Provincial Museum of Seville hangs another fine
example of Zurbarán’s originality of composition; _The Virgin Blessing
Various Monks_. The white-frocked brothers are kneeling in two groups,
left and right of the central figure of the Virgin. She stands robed in
delicate rose, with her arms extended, each hand on the head of a monk.
Meanwhile her blue mantle, fastened at the throat with a magnificent
jewel, is held suspended by two cherubs, so that its volume forms a
canopy of protection over the kneeling groups, and the upper part,
curving like a bowl, is filled high with angel heads floating in divine
glory. Here again is architectonic simplicity, allied with grandeur, in
the distribution of the masses of white, rose, deep blue and golden
yellow, and again an extraordinary interest of characterization.
The quality of intense, austere sincerity is represented also in
_Miracle of S. Hugo_ (p. 166) which is in the same Museum. Indeed, it is
in Seville that you realise the nobility of Zurbarán’s art. The examples
in the Prado are by comparison commonplace; except the _Portrait of a
Lady_ in one of the upper galleries. This introduces us to the character
of the artist’s work after he settled in Madrid, whither he was sent for
by the king. Portraits of women of fashion now occupied him. There is a
good example in the Metropolitan Museum which, in pose and style of
costume and low toned harmony, resembles the one in the Prado. In the
latter, however, the silk fall of the drapery is drawn forward over the
skirt by the lady’s hand, so that its folds are more voluminous, and the
whole figure, in consequence, is freer in design than the one in New
York. As for the other picture in the Metropolitan Museum, _S. Michael
the Archangel_, it is very hard to credit its attribution to Zurbarán.
Where else among the artist’s works can you find so palpable an attempt
to imitate Raphael? It has nothing of the originality, breadth and
determined naturalism that distinguish Zurbarán. If the latter really
painted it, he must have done so in his student days with Roelas.
Zurbarán died in Madrid, probably in 1662. He is held in high estimation
by the Spanish, but scarcely appreciated at his true worth by
foreigners. To see him at his best, alongside of Murillo’s work, as you
can in Seville, is to be disposed to question the latter’s claim to be
considered the greatest artist of the Sevillian School. Certainly, as
compared with Murillo, Zurbarán was more unequivocally the naturalist;
he was at least as good a painter; a better, one may even think; and the
qualities of his mind were superior. He had not the popular trait of
sentiment and passion; but the higher gift of intellectuality and the
rarer one of cold, dispassionate vision.
[Illustration:
CHARLES IV AND THE ROYAL FAMILY GOYA
THE PRADO]