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Conserving the Past for the Future
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A Conservation Tour
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Christ and the Virgin in the House at Nazareth: How a Painting's Appearance Changes Over Time
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| Franciso de Zurbarán (Spanish, 1598-1664) Christ and the Virgin in the House at Nazareth, about 1635-40 Oil on canvas, 165 x 218.2 cm Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1960.117 |
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The Painting Sequence
The painting sequence that Zurbarán followed in Christ and the Virgin in the House at Nazareth was practical and ordered. After the application of the two large areas of opaque underpainting, the canvas would have appeared to be a large gray-brown quadrangle with an abstractly rounded area of light cream colored paint on the left and an ochre colored area of similar contours on the right. These marked the positions of Christ and Mary. They would later be covered with the blue of Christ's tunic and the red of Mary's robe. From the outset, Zurbarán understood that these areas were the foundation of the most luminous elements in the painting, and he proceeded to construct the painting by arranging the other elements of the image around these two centers of light. When the underpainting was completed, he laid down the lower layer of the flesh tones and then blocked in the broad areas of warm shadow and light in the background, foreground, and table, over which he later painted the still-life of figs and books. The local drapery colors and the highlights and shadows of the flesh tones were the last parts of the painting to be completed, along with the final adjustments of garment contours.
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Page 7 of 11 | On the next page: The Drapery