Francisco de Zurbarán

This catalogue raisonné offers the most comprehensive overview on the great 17th-century Spanish painter Zurbarán. It spans his entire career, from his earliest commissions to key works from his mature period.

A contemporary of Velázquez, Zurbarán developed an austere vision that combined exacting realism with a palpable mysticism. Though he was sometimes known as “the Spanish Caravaggio” for his harsh use of chiaroscuro, Zurbarán’s particular achievement was his creation of a more austere quietism, and a less foreboding if more melancholy atmosphere–qualities which lent themselves ideally to such genres as still lifes and his portraits of monks and martyrs, and which also ensured his importance for early modernism.