Plato de Manzanas y Pera

(Juan de Zurbarán)

This small but extremely beautiful Still Life with Apples and a Pear is an unpublished canvas (33.7 x 42 cm) and belongs to a series of plates of fruits attributed to Juan de Zurbarán: It would appear to us to be a fascinating addition, of great interest, to the small known corpus by the son of Francisco de Zurbarán. It confirms the exceptional gifts and importance of this young painter who died so prematurely but who in the painting of fruit still lifes, these Fruteros, so often cited in inventories of 17th-century collections in Spain, achieved an exceptional degree of mastery. The Plate of Grapes, the small signed work on copper dated 1639, in a private collection in France, has served as we have said, as the point of departure to establish the pictorial career of Juan in the domain of the painting of inanimate objects: This refined work inaugurates a series of still lifes depicting fruits on a shiny metal, probably pewter, plate. Other examples are: the Bodegon with Apples (Placido Arango collection); the Plate with Pomegranates (Juan Abello collection): the Plate of Quinces, Grapes, Figs and Plums (Private collection, Paris); and the Plate with Lemons (Madrid, Real Academia de San Fernando). The very particular way in which Juan de Zurbarán paints the objects on a shelf, a table or even a windowsill or niche, with dramatic Caravaggesque lighting, derives from his father Francisco de Zurburán, whose 1630 Family of the Virgin (Juan Abello collection, Madrid) includes a comparable plate with fruit. Nevertheless, with unbelievable facility and without sacrificing the botanical accuracy of the fruits, the young artist quickly departs from the rigorous symmetry of his father’s still lifes. This painting perfectly illustrates the incredible virtuosity of our artist in this field.

Although seemingly simple, the composition of this little chef d’oeuvre is of extreme refinement while, at the same time, depicting the fruit with remarkable precision. Against the flat background of a dark niche, subtly placed at a height accessible for the spectator we can here admire at the center of the painting five magnificent eating apples arranged as a pyramid, three then two, on a platter of gleaming pewter; the central apple is placed precisely at the geometric center of the canvas; the three fruits in the foreground are reflected on the surface of the plate whose metallic luster brings out the beautiful rounded contour of the fruits. These five apples are of a single variety but appear presented at different angles, painted in subtle tones of yellow each distinct, with great precision and yet a sense of volume. These fruits belong to the summer season, gathered no doubt very recently, and pruned for the most part of their leaves, they seem ready to bite into. They are elements of nature, almost perfect and intentionally chosen and judiciously placed in the composition, standing out in strong relief against a uniform deep dark background accentuating an intentional trompe l’oeil effect Two of the apples are adorned with fine, delicate stems, decorated with leaves (three then two) painted with careful precision, which appear to break the uniformity of the dark background. To the left of the plate is placed vertically on the shelf a single pear, also yellow, attached to which is a curious, curved stalk. It is of a variety with irregular form, bulging to a round, wide base. In this canvas, the young painter brilliantly recreates the contrast of the different textures of the vessel and of the fruits, the shiny metal plate reflecting the exuberant apples, the smooth skin of the fruit, the exquisite delicacy of the leaves, each with a subtle play of greenish tonalities highlighted with dabs of yellow.

The true protagonists of the work are, of course, the fruits themselves, beautiful products of the garden painted from nature without concession to the imagination, with their little bruises. The apples and the pear impose themselves with a strong presence, contrasting with the slightly lighter flat shelf on which they rest and, as a consequence, each motif can be individually visualised. Juan de Zurbarán accentuates the realism of his work with a strong, natural and direct lighting on each object, creating shadows carried distinctly towards the background but not rigorously in parallel. This dramatic light confers on the fruits an almost unreal solidity. Although, by a lesser artist, this could have been a banal still life this little picture is, instead, realized with a masterful technique. In keeping with the qualities of the fruit still lifes of Francisco and Juan de Zurbarán where the objects transcend their simple natural state, father and son both possess an unbelievable capacity for observation.

Meanwhile, in this work by the young Juan de Zurbarán, his personal touch clearly appears in the presentation of the plate of apples and the isolated pear, not as objects symmetrically arranged but described from different viewpoints: the pear close to the edge of the shelf and the more volumetric plate of apples placed a little deeper in the composition. The artist gives all his care to the details, rendered by the effect of raking light and, thanks to this use of Caravaggesque chiaroscuro, the objects spring forward clearly from the dark background. The perspective is not sloping and the lighting gives substance to the full forms of the fruit, depicted here in their mature perfection, with extreme precision and such believability that they conjure up a trompe l’oeil effect: the illusion of being able to pick them up and to savor their taste.

This three-dimensional trompe l’oeil effect, so perfectly achieved by Juan de Zurbarán, is underlined by the precise placement of each object which has its own lighting and can be admired in isolation, and yet belongs to a perfectly coherent ensemble. The realism of the representation is achieved by the play of light which models each element of the fruit. This lighting captures the details of the fruit, the rounded contours of the apples, with little touches of white on the thalamus, and the smaller veins of the leaves. These subtle choices in palette are remarkable. The uniform black background creates a strong contrast with the rich and vivid colors of the fruits and leaves which are delicately painted in tones of greyish green darkened by shadow but highlighted with these subtle touches of yellow which one often encounters in Juan’s work. Three of the leaves are almost hidden in the darkness which envelops the background of the painting. This highly personal and audacious palette and the dramatic lighting creates in the work an impression of monumental truth as well as botanical precision. The maestria of which Juan de Zurbarán gives such compelling evidence in his paintings of plates of fruit make the dating of this type of small-scale bodegon extremely difficult, since within four years the young painter seems to abandon all references to his father’s style in his big Still Life of 1643, a sensual and fundamentally Italianate work. By comparison to the Plate of Grapes dated 1639 this more assured and sophisticated Still Life with Apples and a Pear may be dated ca. 1641-1642.

A Symbolic Work?

In 1952 the great specialist in still life painting, Charles Sterling justly defined the hispanic bodegones, “Spain took as models the most humble things and rendered them moving merely by virtue of their colour and line”. A different sensibility, one which is humble and profound and infused with a religious sentiment which gives to the motifs in 17th-century Spanish still lifes a transcendent quality entirely opposed to the opulent sensuality of the contemporaneous Italian, Flemish and Dutch examples of the genre. In the baroque period, the objects represented by the painters are often chosen with the intention of eliciting a reaction from the observer. The subject being depicted so artfully wants to show us that with time all commodities are perishable, thus leading the spectator to reflect on his own final destiny. These still lifes containing this message, named Vanitas, become paradoxical accessories: On the one hand delighting in the joy of the depiction of beautiful objects while at the same time warning the viewer to guard against overly material preoccupations. In this bodegon, the fruits, stained and bruised, are destined to rot and die. After the publication of the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the bible declared the authentic by the Council of Trent in 1546, the forbidden fruit which Eve picked tempted by the serpent would be the apple, in Latin Malum which signified both the apple and evil. From this we can see here an allusion to the Original Sin of Adam and Eve and also a prefiguration of our Redemption by Christ. We can only speculate on a hidden meaning of this composition which could be an allegorical painting with a reference to Original Sin or else, more simply, a charming depiction of inanimate objects seen and observed by the young and highly talented Juan de Zurbarán.

His father, Francisco, painted pure still lives only very rarely, but in a number of larger religious works he enriched his compositions with details of domestic life, painted with delicacy and great truth. Is it not possible that the numerous details of fruit on pewter plates, so close to the works of Juan, which suddenly appear in works dated to the end of Francisco’s career (such as the Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John, San Diego Fine Arts Gallery, signed and dated 1658), were conceived as a loving testament to his much-mourned son who was so gifted but who died so young?

Odile Delenda, 2023