Christ gathering his robes

This 1661 painting of Christ gathering his robes after the flagellation, in the church of Jadraque, is one of Zurbarán's final works, completed in the year of his death. The deeply personal devotional subject shows Christ in solitary suffering, stripped of the theatrical drama that characterized earlier Spanish Passion imagery. Francisco de Zurbarán, working primarily for the great religious institutions of Seville and Extremadura, was the most important painter of Spanish Counter-Reformation devotional art outside Velázquez's specific domain. His distinctive treatment of religious figures — the sculptural weight of cloth, the specific quality of Spanish late-afternoon light on faces, the complete absence of sentimentality — gave his saints a spiritual gravity that served the theological requirements of post-Trent Catholicism. The austerity of his manner, its reduction of the religious figure to an almost abstract presence of devotional intensity, connects Spanish devotional practice to the medieval heritage of contemplative prayer.

The isolated figure is modeled with restrained pathos against a dark ground. Despite Zurbarán's advancing age, the anatomical rendering and fabric painting retain considerable power and precision.