Francisco de Zurbarán was born in Fuente de Cantos in Extremadura, Spain, in 1598. He was the son of a merchant and received his artistic training in Seville.
Beginning in 1614, Zurbarán studied with the painter Pedro Díaz de Villanueva. During these formative years he also encountered the artistic environment in which Francisco Pacheco, Diego Velázquez, and other important painters were active.
In 1617 Zurbarán moved to Llerena in Extremadura. He remained there for approximately eleven years while establishing himself professionally and raising a family.
Religious commissions became increasingly important to his career. His ability to create monumental figures with a strong sense of physical presence made his work particularly attractive to monasteries and religious orders.
Zurbarán returned to Seville in 1628. The city was one of the great commercial and religious centers of seventeenth-century Spain and maintained extensive connections with the Americas.
He soon became one of Seville's leading painters. Large commissions from monasteries and convents required cycles of paintings devoted to saints, founders of religious orders, biblical figures, and other sacred subjects.
Zurbarán developed a successful workshop to meet this demand. Assistants participated in the production of paintings, particularly as orders arrived from clients throughout Andalusia and from Spanish territories in the Americas.
In 1634 Zurbarán traveled to Madrid to participate in the decoration of the Buen Retiro Palace for King Philip IV. His contributions included paintings devoted to the Labors of Hercules and Spanish military victories.
The visit exposed Zurbarán to the royal collections and to artists working at court. His subsequent paintings show a broader range of color and an increased awareness of other European artistic traditions.
After returning to Seville, Zurbarán undertook some of the greatest commissions of his career. These included extensive projects for the Carthusian monastery at Jerez de la Frontera and the monastery at Guadalupe.
Biblical paintings formed important parts of these commissions, but Zurbarán became equally famous for individual saints and members of religious orders. His figures often stand alone against dark or simplified backgrounds.
Zurbarán was also a remarkable painter of physical objects. Cloth, ceramics, fruit, flowers, books, and other materials are rendered with careful attention to their surfaces and forms.
This observational ability contributed to his still-life paintings as well as his religious art. Ordinary objects could acquire an unusual sense of stillness and significance.
During the 1640s and 1650s Zurbarán faced increasing competition in Seville, particularly as the work of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo gained popularity.
In 1658 Zurbarán moved to Madrid. His later production included smaller religious paintings intended for private devotion.
He died in Madrid in 1664. His distinctive combination of naturalism, stillness, strong lighting, and religious concentration established him as one of the major painters of the Spanish Golden Age.