Reviewing ‘An Introduction to Zurbaran’ @aucklandproject
This event is hopefully the first of a series of talks growing out of the Bishop Auckland Project and the transformation of this town into a capital of culture. This one was an introduction to the life and work of Francisco de Zurbaran. We were also introduced to a new film trailing an assessment of his art by art historians and others. It was more than worth attending to see this alone. You emerge with a sense of the magnitude of the achievement of the artist that uses excellent contrasts with the more easily accessible Velasquez.
This theme was amplified in an excellent talk in which the life of the painter and his context were beautifully illustrated in terms of Spanish history and geography. Most important was the use of the Sons of Jacob, about to be re-revealed on November 2nd in their long-term home in the Bishop’s Palace, to illustrate the place of Zurbaran and his world before and after the oppressions of Ferdinand & Isabella. This was a less known world of religious collaboration and demonstration of spiritual and communal love across racial, ethnic and cultural boundaries, that in eighteenth century England even brought in Bishop Trevor, who first brought the Sons of Jacob to Durham.
Those great illustrations of diversity can be put in the context of an art that was not merely a servant of the Counter-Reformation but also, in some hands, an illustration of love person-to-person, even when that person was sometimes the divine. It threw up some great paintings – not least The Circumcision, a strangely haunting painting about enforcing commitment, where love, pain and ritual are confounded. For many of us this is difficult because it forces us to confront religious difference, even when we may have no original religion, complexly. It is full of problematic moments, as is the wonderful Saint Serapion, in which a young male battered and broken body is clothed in symbolic love. Clothing as symbol never was so beautifully handled and this alone might be something very special about this artist, whose links to the linen trade the talk touched upon. We need to reassess clothing too in the Sons of Jacob.
More of this, @aucklandproject please. I’m already booked for the November event on Poussin.
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