Don't miss Zubarán's powerful exhibition at National Gallery

By Theresa Thompson, Timeless Travels' Art Correspondent

Francisco de Zurbarán, Agnus Dei, 1635 – 1640, oil on canvas. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

© Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado

Some things are absolutely worth finding time for. As I proved to myself last week at the National Gallery’s Zurbarán exhibition when I finally got to see this extraordinarily powerful exhibition. Do go if you can - but you’ll have to act fast for it’s now in the final days of its London run. It’s in the National Gallery’s recently revamped Sainsbury Wing until Sunday 23^rd August.

I’d originally planned to see it back in April when the exhibition opened, then life got in the way, but happily I squeezed it in just in time. I knew I liked Francisco de Zurbarán’s paintings from those seen in other exhibitions, but this - the first major exhibition in the UK devoted to the Spanish Baroque artist - confirmed my feelings unreservedly.

Francisco de Zurbarán’s name is perhaps less familiar to most in the UK than that of his contemporaries Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682), but along with those, Zurbarán (1598–1664) was one of the leading painters of 17th-century Spain.

The striking Zurbarán posters all over the London Tube network - the Lemons, a detail of from his magnificent still life painting; the quiet face of Saint Casilda of Toledo and wonderful fabric of her dress; and the astonishing hyper-realistic detail of the sacrificial lamb in Zurbarán’s Agnus Dei painting – must have upped the familiarity of Zurbarán’s name enormously. They do a great job for this tremendous show.

Zurbarán paintings are indeed striking. Singular. Natural. Direct. And in many cases, carry a deep emotional power.

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Left: Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Apollonia, c. 1636–40. Musée du Louvre, Paris. © GrandPalaisRmn (musée du Louvre) / Stéphane Maréchalle. Middle: Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Casilda, c. 1635. Oil on canvas. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. © Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. Right: Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Francis of Assisi, 1636, oil on canvas. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon. © Lyon MBA - Photo Martial Couderette

Born in 1598 in Fuente de Cantos, Extremadura, Zurbarán spent most of his life in Seville, then one of the richest cities in Europe, whose maritime links to the Americas made it a hub of global trade, and although he painted primarily for the city’s religious orders (his first large commission in Seville was for a Dominican priory), producing altarpieces and cycles of paintings of staggering scale and ingenuity, he also worked for private patrons and, for a time in Madrid, for the king of Spain.

Over 40 paintings are included in the show, from superb and frequently contemplative life-sized depictions of saints stunningly set against minimal background detail, to soaring altarpieces, and unbelievably realistic still life paintings, following the timeline and breadth of the artist’s career. There are exceptional loans from public and private collections, from France, Spain and the USA (the show travels on to Paris and Chicago), and reunited works, which always feel special, for instance the three vast altarpieces reunited here after 175 years. Originally commissioned by the Carthusian order for their monastery dedicated to the Virgin Mary near Jerez de la Frontera, north of Cadiz, the monumental multi-panelled altarpiece was disassembled in the early 19^th century.

The very first room shows three great paintings that define the painter and the show. Inventiveness, mastery in representing saints as figures from our world, grace, naturalism, directness and power - that Zurbarán was an acute observer of reality is abundantly clear.

Francisco de Zurbarán, The Crucifixion, 1627, oil on canvas.. The Art Institute of Chicago, Robert A. Waller Memorial Fund, 1954.15. © The Art Institute of Chicago

One, an early work, The Crucifixion (1627) so stunned viewers in the dimly lit sacristy that one ‘believed it to be a sculpture’. Zurbarán had trained as a sculptor as well as a painter, and used a near monochrome palette to make the work seem as ‘physically present’ as possible. This ability to portray saints as real people is one of the qualities that sets Zurbarán apart. Likewise, the lighting, many might say Caravaggesque; the composition a lesson in simplicity; and the fabric of the loincloth astonishingly realistic.

Zurbarán’s father was a haberdasher, which perhaps may explain his feel for painting fabric and its intricacies. Two of my favourites, Saint Francis of Assisi, stand side by side in the next room. One is the National Gallery’s and thus well known – the hooded saint kneeling in meditation – and one from Lyon which shows the saint standing, looking to the heavens in ecstasy. Recent conservation revealed, for the first time in centuries, the artist’s signature and date (1636). The fabric depiction is incredible, the worn sleeve in one painting and the knotted cord in the other worthy of a still life themselves.

Francisco de Zurbarán, Still Life with Lemons in a Wicker Basket, c. 1643-9, oil on canvas. © The National Gallery, London

Still Life paintings are in the penultimate gallery, so however short of time you are, they simply cannot be missed. These are works that stop you in your tracks. Zurbarán’s still lifes (also those of his son Juan) are among the most beautiful ever painted. You want to reach out and take one of those glistening grapes, to pick up that rose delicately placed beside the cup, to smell those lemons.

What more can I say? Fabulous! I hope you can get to see it in time. And if not, if you are lucky, perhaps you can see it at the Louvre in Paris or in Chicago.

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Zurbarán

The National Gallery, London

Showing until 23rd August 2026

More information at nationalgallery.org.uk

The Musée du Louvre exhibition of Zurbarán’s works will be on view from 7 October 2026 to 25 January 2027, and the exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago will take place from 28 February until 20 June 2027.