School of FRANCISCO ZURBARÁN (Fuente de Cantos,... Lot n° 47

School of FRANCISCO ZURBARÁN (Fuente de Cantos, Badajoz, 1598 - Madrid, 1664). "Santa Faz". Oil on canvas. Relined. Presents repainting. Measurements: 73,5 x 59,5 cm; 94 x 78 cm (frame). In this devotional image painted in oil on canvas is represented the image of the face of Christ, which seems to be printed on the canvas of the Veronica. Jesus wears the crown of thorns, and shows the blood stains that show suffering or exhaustion. Looking directly at the viewer with a serious and emphatic gesture, but at the same time serene and calm, the image thus reflects Christ as savior and redeemer. The iconography of the Holy Face has its origin in the episode that occurred during the Passion of Christ, when on the way to Calvary a woman took off her veil to wipe the face of the Messiah with it. The image of the face of Jesus Christ was imprinted on the linen handkerchief, and it was miraculously preserved through the centuries, becoming an object of worship. The woman would later be called Veronica, whose etymology derives from the Latin "verum" (true) and the Greek "eikon" (image). The Holy Face is one of the most famous relics of Christianity, first described in 1137. The theme of the Santa Faz was taken up by Francisco Zurbarán at a time when works with this theme were no longer common. Francisco de Zurbarán trained in Seville, where he was a disciple of Pedro Díaz de Villanueva between 1614 and 1617. During this period he would have the opportunity to meet Pachecho and Herrera, and to establish contacts with his contemporaries Velázquez and Cano, apprentices like him 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, a city where he received commissions both from the municipality and from various convents and churches in Extremadura. In 1629, by unusual proposal of the Municipal Council, Zurbarán settled definitively in Seville, beginning 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 the suggestion of Velázquez, to participate in the decoration of the great hall of the Buen Retiro. Back in Seville, Zurbarán continued to work for the court and for various monastic orders. In 1958, probably moved by the difficulties of the Sevillian market, he moved to Madrid. During this last period of his production, he painted canvases of private devotion of small format and 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 in anatomies, faces and objects. His severe compositions, rigorously ordered, reach an exceptional level of pious emotion. With respect to tenebrism, the painter practiced it especially in his first Sevillian period.