27 August 2014

Francesco de Zurburan

... died 350 years ago today, and the always admirable Rorate blog has a good piece with two videos. I add:

(1) Z featured in the Sacred made real exhibition at the National Gallery in London 2009/10. So if you went to that and were wise enough to buy the Catalogue, today is a day to fish it out and revisit Z.
(2) That exhibition emphasised the significance of Z's early work as one who painted polychromatic wood-carvings.
(3) One of the videos provided by Rorate shows an American Art Historian talking about Z. What she ... like most Art Historians ... fails to understand or to know is that the Man from Nazareth is God. They refer to Him ... usually reverently ... as the [Most High] Son of God; but without realising the Truth of Nicea. This means they miss (for example) the point of S Gabriel kneeling before the Annunciate Virgin ... because what is in her womb is God.

2 comments:

Nicolas Bellord said...

I particularly like the Zurbaran picture of the vegetarian Carthusians being offered a joint of meat by their bailiff. They decided to think about what to do: whether to offend the bailiff or break their non-meat eating regime. They considered the question for a whole month by which time the meat was rotten and the problem solved.

Joshua said...

Which reminds me of the tale of St Hugh of Grenoble's visit to his friends the Carthusians: he arrived to find them in a quandary, for they had nothing to eat but a flock of chickens, yet could not eat them lest they offend against the Rule. The holy bishop trusted in the Lord and blessed the chickens, which thereupon transmogrified into tortoises (or was it turtles?), which count as fish, and therefore were licit foods for the monks.