This catalogue raisonné offers the most comprehensive overview on the great 17th-century Spanish painter Zurbarán. It spans his entire career, from his earliest commissions to key works from his mature period.

A contemporary of Velázquez, Zurbarán developed an austere vision that combined exacting realism with a palpable mysticism. Though he was sometimes known as "the Spanish Caravaggio" for his harsh use of chiaroscuro, Zurbarán's particular achievement was his creation of a more austere quietism, and a less foreboding if more melancholy atmosphere--qualities which lent themselves ideally to such genres as still lifes and his portraits of monks and martyrs, and which also ensured his importance for early modernism.