Zurbarán: painter of death and saints

I’m not certain when I first became aware of Francisco de Zurbarán, but I can remember as a teenager thinking that there were just three great Spanish papers: Velasquez, El Greco, and Goya. Spanish art, I knew, was different to the art of Italy, the Netherlands, or France: more intensely religious, crazier, darker. But I don’t remember then being aware of Zurbarán. The National Gallery has great pictures by Zurbarán, not least the sinister dark painting of the hooded St Francis holding a skull, but somehow they hadn’t made a big impact with me. My appreciation grew greatly when we visited Seville and saw his paintings of saints and his apostolado, which inspired Chicken to paint her modern versions. But our appreciation of Zurbarán was hammered home when we visited Bishop Auckland and saw his life-size paintings of the sons of Jacob in the dining room of the Bishops of Durham. https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2022/09/05/why-you-must-go-to-bishop-auckland/ We thus arrived at the…