Zurbarán (Super) Natural

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Image courtesy of MNAC.

This exhibition is the first to bring together the three versions of Saint Francis of Assisi according to Pope Nicholas V's Vision, a major work by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664).

The unique opportunity to compare the three paintings helps shed light on each of them. The work preserved by the MNAC has undergone a thorough restoration process that has allowed it to recover its original appearance and bring to light details hidden by the passage of time.

This exhibition also brings together other works by Zurbarán, including the two subtly different twin versions of his famous Still Life with Vessels, one from the Museo del Prado and the other from the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. In these paintings, Zurbarán generates an aesthetic of emptiness, distance and presence, and of silence, where we do not distinguish everyday life from religious mystery.

Zurbarán demonstrates that art models images that do not necessarily replicate reality, but transcend it into something that brings us closer to the mystery of life. In it, nature becomes a revelation of the supernatural. This exhibition also shows how Zurbarán's work reaches its contemporaneity and places it in relation to works by contemporary artists with whom a continuity in formal synthesis and spiritual aspiration can be appreciated, such as Alfons Borrell, Toni Catany, and Joan Hernández.

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