Zurbarán

I love still life. One of the earliest (and best) is Francisco de Zurbarán’s Still Life with Lemons, Oranges, and a Rose (1633). Nicola Jennings writes about it in the July 23 London Review of Books:

One of the highlights of the exhibition for many will be the room of still lifes by Zurbarán and his son Juan. As the excellent wall texts explain, their contribution to the genre was significant. One of the curators’ coups has been to secure Zurbarán’s only signed and dated still life, the Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose (1633), from the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. The objects appear side by side, but separate from one another, on a wooden surface. The uncluttered and balanced composition creates a sense of stillness unmatched by most other artists of the period. It is comparable only to the still lifes of Juan Sánchez Cotán, who in 1604 took vows at the charterhouse of Granada. Both artists infuse their work with a spiritual charge, exemplified in the Pasadena painting by the cup of water and the rose, symbols of the Virgin Mary.

That last sentence directs my attention to an aspect of Zurbarán’s picture that I hadn’t previously appreciated – the symbolism of the cup of water and the rose. I’ve always focused on the lemons – actually citrons, as Peter Schjeldahl points out in his wonderful “Bearing Fruit” (The New Yorker, April 6, 2009). Schjeldahl was beguiled by them. He called them a “touchstone of painterly potency.” I agree. The way Zurbarán re-creates their nubbly yellow skins in paint is amazing. They're so real looking, I want to reach in and pick one off the plate.