Zurbarán. Reinventing a masterpiece

The Zurbarán exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and the Guido Reni exhibition being held at the same time in Orléans (see the article) are a cross between a focus exhibition and a retrospective. Like the former, they share the same specialised subject, which is centred around a work or a group of works. While their size can be considered intermediate - although one can see a significant number of works - they are closer to the second because, beyond the theme, they allow for a better understanding of the way in which an artist worked and a more facile grasp of his career. Such exhibitions, while worth the detour - and even the trip - have a lower cost than a retrospective and a much broader interest than a focus exhibition.

They still have to be successful and not stray off topic. The gamble paid off for Orléans, and the Lyon exhibition is just as remarkable. While the former focuses on examining the practices of Guido Reni’s workshop, beyond the reassigned David and Goliath, the latter focuses more on one theme: the representation of Saint Francis in 17th-century Spanish art. Both, however, organised around a painting from the collection, also examine the posterity that it may have enjoyed in the following centuries.

The Saint Francis of Lyon (ill. 1) is part of a particular iconography, carefully studied by the exhibition, and extensively developed in the excellent catalogue that accompanies it. Legend has it that in 1459, in the lower basilica of Assisi, Pope Nicholas V and his entourage…