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Agnus Dei
(painting, c. 1635–40)
Although Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán is best known as a religious artist, one who produced numerous paintings of biblical figures and important saints, it could be argued that his work reached its highest perfection when he turned his brush to subject matter not apparently religious on its surface. One such work is Agnus Dei. There is more going on here than meets the eye, as the beautifully rendered lamb is a symbol for Jesus Christ. The other title sometimes given to this painting, The Lamb of God, hearkens to the words of John the Baptist, which have been incorporated into the liturgy in the traditional mass, where it is proclaimed: “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
Behold indeed. It is hard to look away from the combined beauty and horror of the scene before us. Zurbarán’s painting is of an ordinary lamb, laid out on a table or altar with its feet bound and trussed in preparation for slaughter. As was common for Zurbarán, he has left the background indistinct, dissipating into darkness, but has lit the main subject (the lamb) with bright illumination. He has painted the scene with such exquisite detail that you feel as though you could reach into the painting and touch the rough softness of the lamb’s woolly coat. The lamb does not appear to be struggling but has meekly submitted to its fate without resistance and is prepared to die. One cannot but feel pity for what awaits this helpless victim.
The lamb was, of course, a traditional sacrificial animal in ancient Judaism, offered up to atone for the sins of the people. Isaiah had prophesied that the coming Messiah would be “oppressed and afflicted,” and that he would go quietly to his fate “like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (Isa. 53:7). So this painting offers us a reminder of the pain and suffering that Jesus took upon himself on our behalf, a willing sacrifice for the sins of us all.
Perhaps this painting should be considered in parallel with Zurbarán’s Christ Crucified (1629), in which we see Jesus stretched out upon the cross, suffering for the sins of humanity, and painted with such startling reality that he almost seems to spring forth from the canvas, as though he were sharing the same space as the viewer. He is, as in the later Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God whose sacrifice has a redemptive power that stretches down through the centuries, embracing all who believe with his atoning work.
Agnus Dei (The Lamb of God) by Francisco de Zurbarán, Prado Museum, Madrid [Wikimedia Commons, CC-PD-Mark]
Francisco de Zurbarán was born on November 7, 1598, in Fuente de Cantos in southern Spain. He apprenticed as an artist in Seville, where he met and befriended the great Spanish artist Velázquez. For his entire career he worked in the shadow of this towering genius, who is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest painters in the history of Western art, and who was considered in his own time to be the greatest Spanish artist. While Velázquez gained fame and recognition painting at the court of Philip IV in Madrid, Zurbarán did most of his painting in Seville, outside the artistic mainstream, working for the monastic orders that flourished there. Though the paintings he created for them are inarguably beautiful, many of them were, quite frankly, workmanlike religious images done to order. But at the same time, without much fanfare, he was also creating some of his most accomplished works.
If the flame-like images of El Greco were visual poetry, the work of Zurbarán is visual prose—solemn, orderly, dignified, and solid. Often depicting moments of great pain and struggle in the lives of Christ or the saints, they reflect a severe asceticism—humble compositions painted with a resigned realism and a focus on the sacrificial nature of faith. Painted during a time of religious conflict in Spain, these are sober and serious meditations about faith and martyrdom in a world filled with suffering and death. The viewer can feel the weary weight that the life of faith exacted upon the saintly figures he has painted.
Some of Zurbarán’s best paintings of the saints show the influence of Caravaggio, though any lessons were probably learned secondhand, as there is no record that he ever traveled to Italy. His canvases are typically shrouded in darkness except for the strong light that accents the main figure, creating an almost three-dimensional effect. The mastery he exhibits in lighting figures is almost unparalleled in the history of art. Art critics have sometimes even referred to him as “the Spanish Caravaggio.” But in comparison with the vigorous action that usually characterizes a Caravaggio painting, Zurbarán exhibits something different: an inner tension; a coiled-up, austere stillness. He represses the energy, but it is still present and can be sensed. In his composition of these scenes, Zurbarán has pared things down, usually with little in the way of props or backgrounds to distract the viewer from the central figure in the painting, but if there is some sort of accompanying object (such as a book or draperies), it is painted with painstaking detail.
An example of such work is Saint Serapion (1628). Serapion was a twelfth-century crusader who became a monk and died a gruesome death at the hands of Scottish pirates. In Zurbarán’s painting of the saint, he has placed him against a deep black background, each of his arms tied and suspended (a pose reminiscent of a traditional posture of prayer), and his neck appears to be broken. A bright light rakes over his tortured face and glows on his gleaming white robes. It is a horrific moment painted with pathos and a sense of great serenity, as though pointing toward a transcendent conclusion to the event. This moment of intense pain is not the final word. Though he has fallen victim to his persecutors, Serapion is, in the last estimation, the one who has gained the victory. The painting itself is a perfect fusion of realism with mysticism.
Zurbarán also produced a handful of vibrant still-life paintings, which exhibit the same austerity as his saintly portraits. Set against black backdrops, these serene works highlight the play of light on the objects depicted: cups and utensils, woven baskets, lemons, oranges, and roses. The elements in the paintings are arrayed with all their simplicity and humility, but given great dignity by the manner in which they are lit. Though the subject matter is not obviously or self-consciously religious in nature, they are nonetheless suffused with an austere spirituality. Even the casual viewer senses there is something sacred about these ordinary objects, which is surely what Zurbarán intended. They are serene votive offerings on the humble altar of a polished table and are also pointers toward eternal realities. Some of Zurbarán’s best work was done when he brought his spiritual eye to the task of painting subject matter that was not so clearly religious in nature, especially in these still-life paintings or in artistic meditations like Agnus Dei. They often give more passionate evidence of his engagement with his faith than most of those containing self-consciously religious subject matter.
When the patronage of the monastic orders began to dwindle due to a changed religious and political climate, a severe plague, and an economic crisis that robbed the monks of their former wealth, Zurbarán had to turn his attention to painting on speculation, and for a time he found a ready market for his works among Spaniards who had settled in the New World. Then, perhaps in response to the emphasis on personal faith that arose with the Protestant Reformation, the fashion among his contemporary Spanish Catholics began to call for a more emotional and accessible kind of art than Zurbarán had been producing. Young upstarts like Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and Francisco Herrera produced canvases that were both sweeter in tone and more energetic in style than the austere manner of Zurbarán. Art historians generally agree that the quality of his work declined when he tried to adapt to the demand for this more popular and sentimental style. He was always at his best when he followed his own artistic muse.
Francisco de Zurbarán later moved to Madrid in search of better commissions, and died there in 1664 in poverty and obscurity at the age of sixty-six. One of his final paintings is a lasting testament to his devotion. Crucified Christ Contemplated by a Painter (c. 1660) shows an artist (probably himself) with palette and brushes in hand, gazing reverently at Christ hanging on the cross. This mystical contemplation is the perfect summation of his life and of his status as one of the greatest of religious painters.