Calle de Zurbarán

The name recalls Francisco de Zurbarán, baptized in 1598 in Fuente de Cantos, in Extremadura, and dead in Madrid in 1664. He painted above all friars, nuns and martyrs cut out against dark backgrounds, as well as still lifes where a lemon, some oranges and a rose seem carved in silence. The extreme chiaroscuro with which he modeled those bodies earned him the nickname “the Spanish Caravaggio”. He worked for many years in Seville and only toward the end of his life settled in Madrid. The calle de Zurbarán has a modern layout, opened between the paseo de Santa Engracia and the paseo de la Castellana as Chamberí was being built up in the last third of the nineteenth century. It thus lies in the heart of Almagro, an area where the street names gathered several painters, so that the Extremaduran’s name shares the block with other masters of the brush a few steps away.