Painted during the heights of the Spanish Catholic Reformation, Francisco de Zurbarán’s Agnus Dei is shocking in its simplicity of a lone Christian icon. The religious art of the Baroque period is frequently characterized by the dramatic works of Bernini, Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Rubens. Zurbarán, however, abandons drama for subtle poignancy. 

Set against a black backdrop and laying upon a gray table, a live merino lamb is tied and bound in a sacrificial position; its legs are thrust into the foreground and its eyes avert our gaze. There is no other iconography only the heartbreaking sense that the melancholy lamb is resigned to its sad fate. While technically there is no iconography to suggest the allegory of Christ as the ‘Lamb of God’, the image was widespread throughout Christian imagery, especially in (predominantly) Catholic Spain.

Between 1631-40 he painted five versions of Agnus Dei for private patrons, with slight iconographic variants. Yet, it is the unadorned version that is considered the finest of the five. Its poignancy highlighted through Zurbarán’s ability to “concentrate the viewer’s attention on a lamb that seems to meekly accept its fatal destiny.” There is nothing to detract the viewer from the lamb’s sacrifice. No halo, no lilies. Only life–a life that will be given to pardon the sins of the world. 

Agnus Dei is often treated as a still-life, a genre of painting frequently associated with food or perishables acting as a memento mori (an artistic trope about the inevitability of death). The lamb is indeed edible and its life coming to an end. Unlike most still-lifes, however,  the process of death and/or decay is not shown for this is the food of life. The symbolism is two-fold. The unblemished sacrifice refers to the lamb of Passover, whose blood saved the Jews in Egypt and Christ, the Lamb of God, whose blood redeemed the sins all mankind. Zurbarán utilizes his artistic skill in rendering the texture of the lamb’s wool with a technical subtlety that further underscores this is a lamb without blemish. This indeed is the Agnus Dei who is acting as the pardon for our sins. It is also his body we are symbolically consuming during the Lord’s Supper.  

Zurbarán forces the viewer to confront the paradoxical nature of Christ Biblically and as seen art historically. He is both the Good Shepherd and the lamb, divine and humble, the triumphant and the slain. As a relatively new religion, early Christian imagery favored more Johannine depictions of the Agnus Dei. Their god could not be shown as meek and humble, but rather as a glorious deity who conquered death. 

By the 13th century, Franciscan theology created a shift in Christian imagery. Gone was the triumphant Lamb of Revelation, now replaced by a meek animal, humbly offering itself to humanity. This is the Lamb of God we encounter in Zurbarán’s poignant masterpiece. Agnus Dei enables us to “recognize in this wooly lamb, bound and patiently waiting on a slab for the butcher’s knife, the Saviour on the altar, the Son of Man suffering in atonement for our sins.” And it is this recognition of Christ’s complete and sorrowful surrender to death so that we shall live that makes Zurbarán’s Agnus Dei one of the most moving of all images in Christianity. (From blog The Artist’s Job: t.ly/6QvmH)