Zurbarán, a contemporary of Diego Velazquez but in contrast with the court painter, Zurbarán remained all his life a provincial painter and par excellence painter of religious life. His clients included Dominicans, Jeronims and Carthusian monks. He had very few royal commissions. His style is defined as a Caravaggesque naturalism and tenebrism (extreme chiaroscuros, great contrast between light and dark).

The combination of realism and religious sensibility relates the art of Zurbarán to the practical mysticism of the Jesuits. It was a style that lent itself well to portraiture and still life, but his most characteristic expression is found in his religious subjects. He uses naturalism more convincingly than other exponents for the expression of intense religious devotion. He renders traditional personages: apostles, saints and monks with heads rendered almost as portraits and sculptural modeling, with emphasis on the minute detail of their dress. At the end of his artistic career the figures become more idealized and less solid in form and the expression of religious emotions is a bit tinged with sentimentality. His pictorial art production is popular with monastic orders.