Saint Romanus of Antioch and Saint Barulas
Francisco de Zurbarán
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The Story
In 1626 the Dominican monastery of San Pablo el Real in Seville, Spain, commissioned the young Francisco de Zurbarán to execute a cycle of paintings including The Crucifixion. This work was installed in a dimly lit space in the monastery and was visible to visitors through a grill. Early commentators remarked on its powerful illusion of three-dimensionality, as though it was a sculpture rather than a painting.
The dramatically illuminated figure of Christ, set against a dark, empty background, appears outside of time and place, both idealized in its quiet beauty and humanized by the individualized face and insistent realism.
As Oil on canvas (290.3 × 165.5 cm (114 5/16 × 65 3/16 in.); Framed: 339.1 × 212.1 × 14 cm (133 3/8 × 83 1/2 × 5 1/2 in.)), the work shows the tool marks and layering choices typical of Francisco de Zurbarán's output in this period — decisions about ground, underpainting, and glaze that a photograph can only partly convey.
Look closely and the painting opens up. Objects you might pass over — a folded letter, a half-drawn curtain, the angle of a glance — were placed to be read. Light hardens into edge, drapery becomes shroud, and the body is staged like an argument about mortality.
Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago now holds the work, where conservators and historians continue to revisit its condition and attribution. Each generation of scholarship adds a layer to how Francisco de Zurbarán's output from this period is understood.
“A silence so complete it becomes its own witness.”
