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| Francisco de Zurbarán The House in Nazareth ca. 1635-40 oil on canvas Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| Francisco de Zurbarán The House in Nazareth (detail) ca. 1635-40 oil on canvas Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
Learned Ignorance
Sophisticated painting touches us much more if something also remains of naiveté. This is what we appreciate in Konrad Witz or le Douanier Rousseau. They are marvelous, but also somewhat comical. We think we can see all the way around them. But it is they who see all around us, and they detect our own naiveté – by means of their humble but formidable mastery, by means of their "learned ignorance" – as philosophers of earlier ages called it.
Beginning with the Venetians and grand Mannerists (as already in Michelangelo, in certain passages on the Sistine ceiling), clothing can be rendered in variable colors. Textiles painted by these masters sometimes change tone according to location; they respond within their folds to the solicitation of neighboring objects. Artists are then described as painting "local" tone. They choose to look not at what they know about the color of the object, but at how the object reacts under light. Thus, a red garment may appear at a certain moment in a certain place as orange or even as blue. This was the insight that would later lead to Impressionism.
Celestial Colors
Color that resists the temptations of the environment can, in Zurbarán, attain extraordinary intensity. The artist is above all known for his near-monochrome works – his Carthusians and his Franciscans dressed in their habits – these are brown or white from head to toe, bathed in a brown or white light. But there are other works with more contrast in the colors – saints, for example, wearing elegant vestments. Indifferent to earthly compromises, his colors partake of eternity.
Isolation of Objects
The isolation of "general" color accords, in still lives, with the isolation of objects. In this painting, Zurbarán places articles side by side, while in a typical Dutch still life, for example, they would overlap – Zurbarán rather cuts them off from one another. He paints each as purely sufficient unto itself. In this way their forms are brought to the highest level of contrast, as are their colors.
Between the Virgin and Christ is a large table with a half-open drawer. It is set at an angle and rendered in a perspective that makes it appear to tilt toward us. The effect suggests a formal offering. At right are two books, one leaning on the other, though with minimal contact. The upper casts a crisp shadow across the lower. On the other side, an isolated book lies open with pages leafing themselves apart as if to show us their contents.
The Premonition
The Virgin watches the adolescent, occupying himself with a crown of thorns – bizarre activity. For her, this is a premonition of evils to come. The embroidery needle she holds in her hand becomes the sister of those thorns, as if she is inscribing a prophecy with it. Next to the Virgin, on a small table lost in shadow, is set a bouquet of flowers, roses and lilies, prominent in litanies to Our Lady. At lower right, two white doves evoke the sweetness of this family life, revealed as so precarious. Near the feet of the two figures, a work basket with two swathes of fabric, one gleaming white, the other heavenly blue. On the left, an empty pottery bowl.
Through a window at upper right, we can make out storm clouds moving in a dim and sombre atmosphere, inadequate to illuminate the interior – which is instead lit from the left by a glowing beam inhabited by floating cherubs. The light falling on both objects and figures, though, is so harsh that it gives the impression of emanating also from us, who gaze along with the painter upon this scene of our meditation.
– translated and adapted from Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 2019)