Francisco Zurbarán Workshop

Workshop of FRANCISCO ZURBARÁN (Fuente de Cantos, Badajoz, 1598 - Madrid, 1664).
El Niño de la espina" ("Child with the Thorn").
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It presents repainting and restorations on the pictorial surface.
It has a 20th century frame.
Measurements: 132 x 178 cm; 159 x 205 cm (frame).
Due to its stylistic characteristics, this canvas can be inscribed within the aesthetic patterns defined by the master Zurbarán, and more specifically those corresponding to his workshop. This work precisely follows the iconographic model of the "Child with the Thorn" already used by Francisco de Zurbarán, following a composition similar to other works of the same subject matter from the same period. Thus, we see a rosy-cheeked Christ Child, gazing attentively at his hands, particularly one of his fingers, from which a fine trickle of blood runs down onto the crown of thorns, alluding to the Passion. The conception of the Child is very similar to that seen in the work by Zurbarán in the collection of the Museo de Bellas Artes in Seville. However, in this case the scene is enlarged to include a woman of monumental dimensions on the right. Her features and her needlework indicate that this is the image of the Virgin Mary, who, oblivious to the viewer, is concentrating on her work, paying no attention to her son. This manner in which the artist presents the figures invites the viewer to empathise with the divinity, as she appears before him in a friendly, everyday manner, dramatic only in the lighting and not in her subject matter.
Francisco de Zurbarán trained in Seville, where he was a pupil of Pedro Díaz de Villanueva between 1614 and 1617. During this period he had the opportunity to meet Pachecho and Herrera and to establish contacts with his contemporaries Velázquez and Cano, apprentices like himself in Seville at the time. After several years of diverse apprenticeship, Zurbarán returned to Badajoz without undergoing the Sevillian guild examination. He settled in Llerena between 1617 and 1628, where he received commissions both from the municipality and from various convents and churches in Extremadura. In 1629, at the unusual suggestion of the Municipal Council, Zurbarán settled permanently in Seville, marking the beginning of the most prestigious decade of his career. He received commissions from all the religious orders present in Andalusia and Extremadura, and was finally invited to the court in 1934, perhaps at Velázquez's suggestion, to take part in the decoration of the great hall of the Buen Retiro. On returning to Seville, Zurbarán continued to work for the court and for various monastic orders. In 1958, probably prompted by the difficulties of the Sevillian market, he moved to Madrid. During this last period of his output he produced small-format private devotional canvases of refined execution. Zurbarán was a painter of simple realism, excluding grandiloquence and theatricality from his work, and we can even find some clumsiness when solving the technical problems of geometric perspective, despite the perfection of his drawing of anatomies, faces and objects. His severe, rigorously ordered compositions reach an exceptional level of pious emotion. With regard to tenebrism, the painter practised it above all in his early Sevillian period. No one surpasses him in his way of expressing the tenderness and candour of children, young virgins and adolescent saints. His exceptional technique also enabled him to depict the tactile values of canvases and objects, making him an exceptional still life painter. His sobriety, expressive power and the plasticity of his figures, added to his obvious gifts as a colourist, place him at the top of the Spanish masters of the Golden Age.