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Juan de
Zurbaran

Spain • 1620−1649

Biography and information

Zurbaran, Juan de (Juan de Zurbarán) (1620, Llerena – 1649, Sevilla) Spanish painter of the Baroque era.

Juan, son of the famous painter, Francisco de zurbarán was born in the town of Llerena in Extremadura, where his father settled in 1617 There were born other children of Francisco Maria Isabel and Paula. The boy grew in abundance, were brought up first in Llerena (father and stepmother with Dona Beatriz de Morales), and then in Seville. In the workshop of Francisco de zurbarán, Juan studied art craft.

Juan grew a brilliant young man, very ambitious (e.g., signing, he'd put before his name the aristocratic "don"). In addition to artistic gift he possessed literary abilities; his contemporaries also noted his dancing skills, which he mastered under the guidance of renowned dance teacher Jose Rodriguez Tirado.

In the first half of the 1640s Juan married Mariana de Quadros, the daughter of a wealthy moneylender.

Surely Juan worked in the Studio of his father and was his assistant (his son's hand, the researchers see, for example, in the painting of Francisco de Zurbaran "still life with a clay jug and cups). The young painter received separate orders for religious paintings, but is known primarily for his still lifes. Many features of the works by the younger Zurbaran share them with paintings of his father, but the paintings of Joan inherent and distinctive features.

Unfortunately, Juan did not have time to fully Express his artistic talent, he became one of many victims of the plague that struck Seville in the mid-seventeenth century.