19/12/2025
Reframing ZURBARÁN Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose, 1633
This is an extraordinary still life, in which the fruit and flowers are vividly realistic but also somehow outside the passage of time and decay, and are simultaneously infused with Catholic symbolism. The lemons refer to the Virgin and her bitter grief at Christ’s death; the oranges are a variant on the apple which caused the Fall of Adam and Eve; the rose and orange blossom, like the white cup of water, stand for the Virgin’s sweetness and purity. The three grouped objects signify the Trinity. The painting as a whole is quite large for a domestic altarpiece (62.2 x 109.5 cm), and may have been painted for one of the monasteries or convents for which Zurbarán worked - perhaps for a refectory, where the fruit would be both appropriate and a spur to meditation.
The refined technique and layered meanings in this work had unfortunately been overpowered by the weighty and busy 19th century copy of a Renaissance garland frame - carved, gilded, fighting with the painted colours, and casting a dense shadow over the delicate orange leaves at the top.
It was rescued by the frame offered by Paul Mitchell Ltd - a 17th century reverse profile Spanish frame with minimal ornament, its frieze canted back towards the wall and painted in subdued browns and blacks. These colours may be intended to suggest tortoiseshell - an exotic, precious and costly material appropriate for a sacred work, but here only represented, in an economic form suitable for a monastery or a convent. In this plainly constructed frame with its suggestion of an opulent finish the painting shines again: strange, hyper-real and fraught with profound significance.
