The glories of Francisco de Zurbarán’s paintings | Letters

Paul McGilchrist, Jean Wilson and Chris Keil on the Spanish artist’s haunting images

• Charlotte Higgins’s appraisal of Francisco de Zurbarán is insightful and compelling (Simply divine: the extraordinary supernatural visions of Francisco de Zurbarán, 30 April). However, Zurbarán’s painting The Crucified Christ contains the same conundrum that haunts so many depictions of this scene. Whatever the style, however moving, whoever the artist and however painstaking the rendering, the crucified body rarely conveys the intolerable heaviness of a body hanging by a single nail in each hand and through the feet. Even those evocations that include a small platform beneath the feet mostly fail to show the excruciating slump of a body suspended in this way. It is not that suffering needs to be conveyed – this is often not the purpose of the artist’s rendering. The sheer heft of the body’s suspension would exert distorting pressures on the frame, distensions of the arms and probable contortions of the shoulders and rib-cage that are peculiarly absent in most of those within the genre, including those in a realist tradition. There are exceptions (Peter Paul Rubens, for example), but surprisingly few.
Paul McGilchrist
Cromer, Norfolk

• In the long dining room at Auckland Palace in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, there is a wonderful collection of Francisco de Zurbarán’s work: Jacob and his 12 sons. They have been there since 1756, after being purchased by Bishop Trevor, and went on display when the palace opened to the public in 2019 after an extensive renovation project. The bishop was outbid on one of the portraits and commissioned a copy to be made by Arthur Pond to complete his set. They are a reminder of Bishop Trevor’s religious tolerance, as he supported a bill giving equal rights to the Jewish community; the 12 sons of Jacob each headed one of the 12 tribes of Israel.
Jean Wilson
Carshalton, Surrey