Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and Website

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In December, my colleague, Suzanne Muchnic, reported on the cleaning and conservation of Francisco de Zurbaran’s 1633 ‘Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose.’ It’s been among the greatest European still lifes in an American collection since 1972, when the Norton Simon Foundation acquired it. By chance, I happened to be at the Getty Museum’s conservation labs shortly after the cleaning was completed, and the picture is even more astounding than before: Surface textures emerged from beneath varnish, slight compositional alterations made the display of fruits and vessels more weighty, newly revealed details directed the eye in surprising ways, spatial relations were brought into a new light.

If you didn’t manage to get over to Pasadena’s Simon Museum to see the Zurbaran during the brief window of opportunity after the cleaning and before it got shipped off to New York for a three-month exhibition at the Frick Museum (opening Tuesday), here’s the next best thing: The Frick has launched a page on its website about the cleaning, with a terrific interactive feature that lets you examine the work in detail--before conservation, during varnish removal and after the cleaning was complete. You can find it here (requires Java Script).

--Christopher Knight

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