The Museo del Prado enriches its collections with a new work by zurbaran, ‘Saint Francis de Paula’ (1659). Released in 1998 by Juan Miguel Serrera, it constitutes one of the most important additions to Zurbarán’s catalog of recent decades, both for its quality and for the unique moment in its author’s career in which it was made, or for the close relationship it has with a work from the painter’s collection in the Prado: ‘San Francisco in prayer’, which is part of the donation of Plácido Arango.
When Zurbarán signed it, in 1659, I had been in Madrid for about a year, after having lived in Seville for most of his career. He would live at court until his death in 1664, practicing a different style from the one that characterizes most of his production: against the taste for sharp light contrasts, and the use of reduced color ranges that he practiced in Seville until the early 1980s. 1650, in San Francisco de Paula those light contrasts, and the color gamut is expanded. It retains from its previous years the prodigious descriptive ability, and the ability to create an image of great affective and devotional efficacy. These changes are related to the new tastes of the public in the 1650s, and coincide with the direction that the work of the most advanced artists of his generation, and those born around 1615, were taking.
Con ‘Saint Francis in prayer’ It shares similar measurements, they are signed in the same year, and they represent two saints who share the same name and are described in full length before a luminous landscape with a similar color range. Everything indicates that they were conceived as a couple (or part of a larger series), so that the possibility within the museum’s reach of hanging both works together will result in a more complete knowledge of the artistic meaning of both, since they are interdependent.
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