Description

In 1626 the Dominican monastery of San Pablo el Real in Seville, Spain, commissioned the young Francisco de Zurbarán to execute a cycle of paintings including The Cruciﬁxion. This work was installed in a dimly lit space in the monastery, visible to visitors through a grill. Early commentators remarked on its powerful illusion of three-dimensionality, as though it was a sculpture rather than a painting. Set against a dark, empty background, the dramatically illuminated ﬁgure of Christ dying on the cross appears outside of time and place, both idealized in its quiet, graceful beauty and humanized by the individualized face and anatomical detail. The artist’s name and the date of the painting are inscribed on the curled scrap of paper at the base of the cross.

By depicting the cruciﬁxion in austere isolation rather than as an event occurring outside amid a crowd of onlookers, Zurbarán was conforming to the aesthetic dictates of the Counter-Reformation. Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church clariﬁed and reaffirmed its doctrine and practices in an eff ort to combat the impact of the Protestant Reformation. This eff ort recognized the educational and inspirational value of visual images and required artists to work in a style that favored clarity and dramatic fervor.

Provenance

Painted for the sacristy of the Dominican monastery San Pablo el Real, Seville; placed on deposit at Palacio Real, Seville, on the order of Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain, 1810 [see M. Gómez Imaz, 1917, p. 141, no. 224]; acquired by General Jean Toussaint Arrighi de Casanova, Duc de Padoue (died 1853) shortly thereafter [as recounted by his son to Father Stanislas Du Lac, S.J.; see letter from Father Du Lac to Father Paul Troussard dated 16 February 1901 and preserved at the Bibliothèque Sèvres, Paris, copy in file]; by descent to his son, Ernest Louis Hyacinthe Arrighi de Casanova, 2nd Duc de Padoue, given by him to Father Stanislas Du Lac S.J. (died 1909), rector of the Collège Saint Geneviève, Paris, 1876 [see letter cited above; Father Du Lac explained that he received the painting in thanks for his spiritual assistance to the duke's wife]; probably taken by Father Du Lac to St. Mary's College, Canterbury for the period between 1880 and 1890 and likely remained at Canterbury when St. Mary's College was replaced by a Jesuit school for novitiates; it was apparently moved from Canterbury to Laval along with the Jesuit novices' school in 1897 and was in Laval in 1901 [see letters from Jacqueline Diot and Father Du Lac in curatorial file]; transferred from Laval to the Jesuit seminary of Saint Louis at Jersey [see note with Du Lac letter]; transferred with the seminary to Chantilly in 1951 [see undated typewritten notes in curatorial file]. Dr. H. F. Fankhauser, Basel, 1952 [See Baticle in New York, 1988]; sold to the Art Institute, 1954.