Word: zurbaran
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...dramatically lighted Crucifixion by Francisco de Zurbaran, Spain's i;th century master, made its reappearance at Chicago's Art Institute, an event the institute hailed as "one of the most remarkable 'recoveries' in art history." The Crucifixion, originally painted for Seville's white-robed Dominicans, dates from 1627, the period of Zurbaran's arrival as a mature artist. Seized by Napoleon's troops around 1807, it turned up in 1880 in the hands of Spain's Duke of Alba, who donated it to a Jesuit seminary in Canterbury, England...
Help from Velasquez. Success only drew Zurbaran inward. He never played in Seville's glittering art world, but withdrew with his wife to the country, painting furiously between moods of deep depression. Among his few friends was Spain's great court painter Velasquez. In later years, when commissions came more slowly, Zurbaran traveled to Madrid for help from Velasquez. The records show that Velasquez did his best, but Zurbaran painted less and less, became commonplace in some of his work. By the time he died in 1664 at the age of 65, Zurbaran was out of favor...
Over the last 20 years, some 40 of Zurbaran's paintings have come to light. His best are flat, angular studies of lean-jawed monks; even his paintings of women seem chopped out with a chisel. Depth and perspective interested him little. One of his finest, St. Serapion, is in the Wadsworth Atheneum at Hartford, Conn...
Ducats from the King. Last week in Granada, Zurbaran was having his first public exhibit since 1905. A small, handsome and tireless woman named Maria Luisa Caturla had helped to collect 60-odd paintings and bring them to Granada for a show. By poking into old monasteries and crumbling castles, Art Lover Caturla had found eight that were entirely unknown to the outside world. There was a child Jesus sitting with a crown of thorns in his lap, a warmly devout Santa Eufemia, and The Holy Family clustered around a bowl of fruit. Among other outstanding works in the show...
...Sleuth Caturla's most exciting find: magnificent series of ten scenes of The Labors of Hercules, done against mythical backgrounds. For years the ten had gathered dust in the vaults of Madrid's famed Prado Museum. Experts thought that they might be Zurbaran's work, but no one was sure. Rooting around in the archives, Maria Luisa Caturla was rewarded with a faded document bearing the seal of Philip IV's royal notary and stating that Francisco Zurbaran had been paid 1,100 ducats for a series of paintings representing Hercules and his tasks...