Saint Bonaventure's Body Lying in State

Displaying the Body of Saint Bonaventure is an oil painting on canvas by Francisco de Zurbarán, dated 1629 and now held in the Louvre in Paris. It shows the wake of the Franciscan saint Bonaventure, whose body is laid out for those who come to pay their respects. The scene belongs to a series of paintings on his life; the Louvre also holds Saint Bonaventure at the Council of Lyon, which comes earlier in the chronological sequence.

The episode behind the image concerns his death. According to the account the painting draws on, the Tuscan monk was seized by convulsions so severe that he could not receive the last rites, and the Host then passed into his body, received miraculously. Zurbarán depicts him with a livid face, dressed in liturgical vestments, and with a bright red cardinal's hat resting on his white robes. That colour contrast is one of the devices that organise the scene.

The composition is what stands out most. Zurbarán was usually known for simple arrangements, but here the body lies in a diagonal foreshortening while the figures gather in a semicircle around it. Among them are Pope Gregory X and King James I of Aragon, shown in conversation. The arrangement is bold and well resolved, and the faces, strongly individualised, seem to have been painted from life, giving the scene an almost documentary presence.

The work matters because it shows Zurbarán tackling a crowded scene with a complexity rare in his output, and because it illustrates how seventeenth-century religious painting combined devotional narrative with a growing interest in portraiture and lifelike detail.

Painter

Francisco de Zurbarán

Date

1629

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

245 × 220 cm

Museum

Louvre Museum, Paris

Genre

religious art, history painting

Depicts

Gregory X, Franciscans, James I of Aragon, bishop, prayer, Bonaventure, man

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