Film: “Zurbaran and
His Twelve Sons”

This documentary directed by Arantxa Aguirre explores the meaning of “Jacob and His Twelve Sons,” a series of 13 canvases painted by Francisco de Zurbarán in Seville around 1640. Traveling with them to the Meadows Museum, the Frick and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, we learn how the canvases, probably commissioned for a cathedral in the Americas, disappeared for a century until they were acquired at auction by the London merchant James Mendez. A few years later, in 1756, Bishop Richard Trevor of Durham made a significant gesture in support of English Jews when he obtained the paintings and hung them in his dining room at Auckland Castle, where they have returned and remained. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Power and Piety in 17th-Century Spanish Art.”