Saint Francis at Prayer

Zurbarán signed this Saint Francis in 1659, and by then his world had shifted. For most of his life he had been the great painter of Seville's monasteries, working in hard, sculptural light. But tastes moved on, the younger Murillo had won the city's favour, and around 1650 the aging Zurbarán began softening his contrasts and warming his colours to keep pace. He had recently moved to Madrid, near the court, when he made this. The saint kneels, the skull in his left hand resting on a rock, a prayer book and a small wooden cross on the stone beside it, his right hand at his chest, his face lifted, caught in the passage from quiet reading toward prayer. Zurbarán painted Francis dozens of times across his career. It is a companion to a Saint Francis of Paola of the same year, size and design, also now in the Prado.