MURILLO, Bartolomé Esteban

According to tradition, the models were from the province of Galicia and attained a certain notoriety as courtesans in Seville. A man of the people, Murillo obviously intended this picture to both surprise and amuse the spectator. Yet the casualness of this painting masks a sure sense design - note how the girls’ heads form a diagonal that bisects the canvas - and great technical skill. Although he had begun by selling his pictures at fairs, Murillo became conversant with and influenced by the works of Vel�zquez, Titian and Rubens, presumably as a result of studying the royal collections in Madrid. But Murillo never lost his popular appeal or his gift for the telling expression, such as the smile of the uppermost woman, indicated only by her eyes and cheeks.

Murillo, like Vel�zquez and Ribera, is one of the few Spanish artists with an international reputation. In his own lifetime Murillo’s genre scenes were exported to Flanders, but much greater interest was aroused by his work in the early nineteenth century, when, following the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, the agents of French and other collectors were able to acquire and export pictures by him of other types.

In this early painting the typical characteristics of the Seville school, by which he was formed, can be observed. There is an accent on clear detail, emphasized by the contrasts of light and shade. The rather high viewpoint creates the impression that one has just walked in on to the scene represented: such effects of intimacy and directness were typical of the aims of Counter-Reformation Baroque.

This painting is one of the seven canvases given by a Genoese merchant, Giovanni Beilato, to the Capuchin convent in Genoa.

In his early pictures Murillo seems to have drawn the figures one by one, without attempting to unify the composition. But in the famous painting known as the Angels’ Kitchen there is a greater narrative cohesion. Although the name of the protagonist is still somewhat uncertain, he may be the lay brother Francisco P�rez from the nearby town Alcal� de Guadaira, who spent thirty years as an assistant in the kitchen of the monastery San Francisco el Grande. According to the story he was much given to fervent prayer and one day became so lost in his devotions that he neglected his duties. Upon returning to consciousness, he was surprised to see that his chores had been miraculously accomplished.

Murillo has embellished the legend with irresistibly charming details. Fray Francisco, who is bathed in an aura of golden light, floats above the ground in a mystical rapture. Next to him stand exquisitely painted angels, with richly coloured wings, while at the right putti and angels tackle the work of preparing the meal, grinding spices, stirring the hotpot, and setting the table in the midst of a delicious still-life of vegetables and cookware. Painted when the artist was approaching thirty years of age, this painting announces the arrival of a new talent and temper in Sevillian painting.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes):

C�sar Franck: Panis angelicus

She is not shown in the thralls of mystical rapture, nor in those of devotion. Murillo’s Mary is a very young woman with an almost childlike face, who is kneeling at her prie-dieu, her eyes cast pensively downwards. She has set aside her basket of handiwork and seems to have been disturbed by an angel in the midst of her prayers. Were it not for the presence of his wings, even the angel would seem to be a very worldly creature. He is not floating in some uncertain sphere, nor is he a vision, but is kneeling on the floor tiles. Strong-limbed and barefoot, almost like a peasant, his pretty face is framed by dark locks. With one hand, he points towards the dove of the Holy Spirit, which floats above their heads in a truly unearthly and intangible celestial vision. With the other hand, he makes a gesture of persuasion: he seems to be explaining the purpose of his mission quite vigorously to Mary.

Although the event seems plausible in a distinctly earthly manner - even the putti in the clouds do not alter this impression - the miracle is clear. Mary’s innocence, underlined by the lily as a symbol of purity, is of such intensity that the spectator senses her quiet reservation, the excited anticipation of the prophesied miracle and her astonishment at the experience.

This painting belongs to a cycle of the life of St John the Baptist that Murillo painted c. 1655 for the refectory of the Augustinian monastery of S. Leandro in Seville. The canvas has been cut down on all sides.

This is the first dated work executed after Murillo’s return to Seville from Madrid. It was intended for the chapel of the Immaculate Conception in the cathedral. In this painting Murillo abandons the hard-edged technique of his youth and adopts the open, sketchy brushwork learned in Madrid. Under the glow of soft light, the figures dissolve into the ambient space, intensifying the tender sentiment of the narrative. St Anne lies in a canopied bed, attended by Joachim, while the newborn infant is removed from the bath by a rotund, matronly woman. The baby is handed for drying to a helper, with assistance from two putti, who remove toweling from a wicker basket. A young woman carrying the clothing emerges from the shadow, and two angels sweetly genuflect before the radiant child.

The young Murillo first made his name with small genre scenes from the life of simple urban folk and homeless children, painted at a time when a plague was raging in his native Seville. His works are always full of a natural realism, free of ideological content. By the end of the 1640s, after he had traveled to Madrid and become acquainted with the painting of Vel�zquez and Venetian artists, his use of chiaroscuro grew finer and his compositions acquired a more stylised and sentimental character.

A journey to Madrid in about 1643 enabled Murillo to study the Venetian and Flemish paintings forming part of the royal collections. Otherwise, he remained permanently in Seville, his native city, and his life was a simple one, free of serious problems. By 1645 his style had hardened in its final mold, as may be seen in the paintings executed about this time for the Franciscans, with the first of those figures of rascals and beggars in which he was to specialize. This is the spirit, for example, of the Boys Eating Melon, in Munich, and the Boy, in the Louvre, which is a study in yellowish ochers and browns.

Murillo finished the paintings commissioned for Santa Mar�a Blanca in Seville in 1665. The commission consisted of four paintings, two in the arched spaces beneath the small dome of the nave and two more in the same format placed at the head of the aisles. The nave paintings represent the pious legend of the founding of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, the mother church of Santa Mar�a Blanca. According to this story, a Roman patrician, John, and his wife had pledged their wealth to the Virgin. She rewarded their piety by appearing in a dream and instructed them to build a church in her name on the Esquiline Hill, in accordance with a plan that would be traced on the surface of a miraculous summertime snowfall. The couple rushed to report their vision to Pope Liberius (352-366), who had also been visited by the Virgin, and all proceeded to the designated place, where they witnessed the miraculous fall of snow. Following the heaven-sent plan, they built the church and named it Santa Maria della Neve, the Italian word for “snow,” which coincides with the name of the Sevillian canon, Justino de Neve (1625-1685), who was one of Murillo’s principal patrons and who commissioned the redecoration of the Santa Mar�a Blanca, originally a synagogue and later converted into a church.

In the two lunettes dedicated to this story (Dream of Patrician John and Patrician John Reveals his Dream to Pope Liberius, both in the Prado, Madrid), Murillo intensified the sketchy, sfumato technique first used in the Birth of the Virgin (Louvre, Paris). The consonance between the gentle narrative and the warm, intimate style seems effortless, so much so that it is easy to overlook the confident artistry of the complicated poses and the dextrous brushwork in the background.

Depictions of the Ecce Homo and Mater Dolorosa were highly popular within Spain during the Counter Reformation and Murillo is credited with being one of the main artists to develop a strong demand for the subjects, images of which were proliferated throughout Spain during the Baroque period.

Murillo may have been inspired in his treatment of the subjects by a famous diptych by Titian painted for Charles V, which is recorded in the Escorial by 1574.

Murillo painted several variants of this popular subject, this is not the best among them. There is an autograph variant of this painting in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

The painting depicts Fray Juli�n of Alcal�’s Vision of the Ascension of the Soul of King Philip II of Spain. The friar Juli�n directs the attention of the figures around him to a miraculous apparition in the distance - angels welcoming King Philip II of Spain into heaven. Philip died almost fifty years before this canvas was painted, and although he was never canonized, the inscription refers to him as a saint in recognition of his defense of Catholicism. Among Murillo’s first major commissions, this work belonged to a decorative cycle celebrating the miracles of Franciscan saints painted for a cloister in Seville.

The companion-piece of the Holy Family (The Rest on the Flight to Egypt), also in the Budapest museum. The two playing children in the foreground are typical children representations of the artist, however, more sentimental than those in his genre paintings.

The theme of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception was of unsurpassed importance to the faithful of Seville in the seventeenth century. The dispute over the immaculacy of the Virgin Mary was one of the most divisive in the history of the Renaissance church. There were two parties to the debate: the immaculist, lead by the Franciscan order, who believed that the Virgin had been miraculously conceived without original sin, and the sanctification party, lead by the Dominicans, who held that Mary had been conceived in sin and subsequently sanctified, or purified, in the womb of her mother. From the late Middle Ages the church of Castile had been an ardent proponent of the immaculist doctrine and repeatedly attempted to persuade the popes to elevate it to the status of a dogma. Finally in 1661 Pope Alexander VII issued a constitution declaring the immunity of Mary from original sin and forbidding further discussions of the issue.

News of the papal ruling intensified in Seville the demand for images of the Virgin Immaculate. Murillo’s rendition, executed for the Escorial, is faithful to the spirit of the times: the youthful Mary is a lovely creation, her physical beauty a sufficient expression of her purity; only a few putti are needed as supporting players. Murillo’s appealing vision of the Immaculate Conception became canonical.

Murillo painted over thirty versions of the Immaculate Conception, each with its own peculiarities, unique grace, richness of detail, and delicate colours. However, conventionalism can be observed in some of these paintings.

Murillo’s Immaculada has nothing of a Queen of Heavens. Standing on a crescent moon, as described in the Apocalypse, surrounded by angels holding the mirror as a sign of purity and the palm frond as a sign of suffering, she stands in a relatively unaffected poses. Her face is pale, her eyes gaze upwards in yearning. We can sense the pain she has experienced and her mourning for her son. Quiet and introverted, she epitomises the humble anticipation of the hereafter, transfigured only by a mild smile, that is a hallmark of Murillo’s paintings of this period; the ‘Estilo vaporoso’ - the vaporous style.

Murillo received a commission from the hospital of Venerable Sacerdotes for a significant group of paintings. This institution had been started by Justino de Neve in 1676 as an asylum for retired members of the clergy. Murillo was asked to paint three pictures soon after the construction was started. One of these proved to be his culminating version of the Virgin Immaculate, a glorious picture in which the last of the traditional attributes is eliminated except for the crescent moon, and the putti, flutter around the triumphant Virgin, some painted so thinly that they seem to dissolve into the fluffy clouds.

In 1813 the painting was taken to France by Marshal Soult. It was returned to the Prado in 1941.

Murillo was one of the great devotional artists of all time, especially in his later years when he produced ingratiating compositions that inspire gentle, pious feelings. This painting is a superb example the sort of imagery that established Murillo’s reputation in the seventeenth century and demolished it in the twentieth.

The subject of this painting, taken from the Old Testament was very popular in seventeenth-century painting. Sold into slavery in Egypt, Joseph served in the house of Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh’s guard. Potiphar’s wife made eyes at him, but he resisted her attempts at seduction. On one occasion, when she tried to entice him to bed, Joseph escaped and she was left with only his coat. Disappointed by yet another rejection, she told her husband that Joseph had made advances to her, whereupon the angry Potiphar had Joseph thrown into prison.

Murillo’s depiction is reminiscent of a scene in the theatre, showing the dramatic climax of the story; both figures are as if floodlit before the dark background. With arms outstretched, Joseph flees from the half-naked woman on the bed, who only succeeds in getting hold of his yellow cloak. In its division between of light and shade, this large picture betrays a preoccupation, typical of Murillo’s early work, with the painting of Caravaggio and his circle, much of which was to be seen in Seville until the mid-seventeenth century.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 5 minutes):

�tienne Nicolas M�hul: Joseph, aria

This mature work is one of the rare paintings of Old Testament subject by Murillo. There is an earlier treatment of the subject by Murillo, now in Kassel. Although the overall setting recalls Murillo’s earlier treatment, the mature work is rendered with the soft handling, fluent brushwork and light palette which characterises the artist’s work from the 1650s onwards. It is notable that this is one of very few depictions of nudes within Spanish painting of the 17th century, for at the time the doctrine of the Counter-Reformation was uncompromisingly enforced by the representatives of the Spanish Inquisition.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 5 minutes):

�tienne Nicolas M�hul: Joseph, aria

The half-naked woman on the bed only succeeds in getting hold of Joseph’s yellow cloak.

This is a particularly beautiful work from Murillo’s late period. Over the decades, Murillo’s painting became increasingly delicate and gossamer-like as the boundaries between his forms progressively dissolved. In this last phase of his creative production, he applies paint so thinly in places that the structure of the underpainting can clearly be seen. The white of the swaddling clothes has been given more strength, although the painter was not concerned here about creating a unified surface and simply placed one brush stroke directly beside the next. A delicate hint of pink shimmers on the Virgin’s cheeks, and the pink of her fingers makes them stand out from the more pallid flesh tones of the infant Jesus. The subject has been reduced to its essence and the colours restricted to a few basic tones, although the effect of Mary’s cloak has been spoilt by the changes that take place in blue pigments over time. The neutral background and the child’s gaze, which appears to have moved spontaneously from its mother to a visitor who has suddenly entered, heighten the work’s sense of intimacy.

Murillo’s Madonna was pierced by several bullets during the revolutionary unrest of May 1849. X-rays and the circular craquelure around the bullet holes confirm that these reports should not be dismissed as mere legends. The holes, which immediately afterwards were patched and retouched, are at the end of Mary’s right thumb, to the left above her headscarf, and to the left in the background. The painting’s present state is due to restoration work carried out in 1970.

Murillo’s fame as an artist, in his own lifetime and ever since, has rested mainly on his Madonnas, where he uses the tender female figures of Andalusia as models, introduces starry-eyed children and depicts saints in some intimate, contemporary milieu.

There are several versions of this painting in different museums.

Depictions of the Ecce Homo and Mater Dolorosa were highly popular within Spain during the Counter Reformation and Murillo is credited with being one of the main artists to develop a strong demand for the subjects, images of which were proliferated throughout Spain during the Baroque period.

Murillo may have been inspired in his treatment of the subjects by a famous diptych by Titian painted for Charles V, which is recorded in the Escorial by 1574.

The sitter is identified as Nicol�s Omazur, a Flemish silk merchant living in Seville. He commissioned Murillo to paint portraits of both himself and his wife, Dona Isabel Malcampo. He assembled one of the finest collections of art in Seville and was the most important private patron of Murillo, owning thirty-one paintings by the artist, a total only surpassed today by the extensive holdings of the Prado.

This painting shows an old woman trying to hide her plateful of broth from a street urchin. It is a typical Murillo genre scene, illustrating why he was so popular: he depicts poverty without suffering in a humane and humorous setting.

Murillo finished the paintings commissioned for Santa Mar�a Blanca in Seville in 1665. The commission consisted of four paintings, two in the arched spaces beneath the small dome of the nave and two more in the same format placed at the head of the aisles. The nave paintings represent the pious legend of the founding of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, the mother church of Santa Mar�a Blanca. According to this story, a Roman patrician, John, and his wife had pledged their wealth to the Virgin. She rewarded their piety by appearing in a dream and instructed them to build a church in her name on the Esquiline Hill, in accordance with a plan that would be traced on the surface of a miraculous summertime snowfall. The couple rushed to report their vision to Pope Liberius (352-366), who had also been visited by the Virgin, and all proceeded to the designated place, where they witnessed the miraculous fall of snow. Following the heaven-sent plan, they built the church and named it Santa Maria della Neve, the Italian word for “snow,” which coincides with the name of the Sevillian canon, Justino de Neve (1625-1685), who was one of Murillo’s principal patrons and who commissioned the redecoration of the Santa Mar�a Blanca, originally a synagogue and later converted into a church.

In the two lunettes dedicated to this story (Dream of Patrician John and Patrician John Reveals his Dream to Pope Liberius, both in the Prado, Madrid), Murillo intensified the sketchy, sfumato technique first used in the Birth of the Virgin (Louvre, Paris). The consonance between the gentle narrative and the warm, intimate style seems effortless, so much so that it is easy to overlook the confident artistry of the complicated poses and the dextrous brushwork in the background.

The painting, showing the influence of Titian, Rubens and Van Dyck, depicts a story from the Genesis: the servant of Abraham, who was sent to Mesopotamia to look for a wife to Isaac, Abraham’s son, selects the the charming girl who gave water to him and his camels.

In the final years of the 1660s Murillo increased his already considerable productivity. In 1667 he began to work for the Brotherhood of Charity, one of Seville’s major lay confraternities. The Caridad, as it is known, was founded in 1565 with the mission of providing a decent burial for paupers. From 1663 the charitable activities were expanded to provide care for the needy sick, and a hospital was built, simultaneously enlarging and renovating the already existing chapel.

The scheme for the decoration of the chapel is a tripartite exposition of Christian charity as the way of salvation. The first part comprises two memorable paintings by Vald�s Leal, demonstrating the futility of earthly pursuits and honours. A life devoted to accumulating wealth, power, and even learning is shown to lead only to the grave. Charity, which constitutes the second part of the program, provides the way to salvation, as seen in the seven acts of mercy, six of which are depicted by Murillo; the seventh, burying the dead, the Caridad’s foundation charity, is embodied in a sculptural group, the Entombment of Christ by Pedro Rold�n, placed in the altarpiece. The third component consists of two paintings by Murillo for lateral altars, depicting St Elizabeth of Hungary and St John of God, both illustrating the efficacy of good works and the necessity of personal participation in charitable deeds.

Murillo’s paintings of the acts of mercy, which were installed on the walls of the chapel, have long been recognized as among his greatest. In order to impart maximum authority to the message, each of the acts is performed by Christ or a biblical character. In the Return of the Prodigal Son, which represents clothing of the naked, Murillo emphasizes the protective embrace of the forgiving father and underscores the good deed by showing a pile of fresh clothes held by a servant. The vaporous clouds that invade the background unobtrusively reinforce the warm sentiments of the joyful reunion.

The tablet beneath the fictive frame of this self portrait is inscribed in Latin: ‘Bart [olo] m� Murillo portraying himself to fulfil the wishes and prayers of his children.’ By 1670, when this portrait was probably painted, only four of Murillo’s nine children were still living. His only daughter had entered a Dominican convent, and his youngest son was deciding on a career in the church; he was later to become a canon of Seville Cathedral.

After the artist’s death, the painting was engraved in Antwerp at the request of Murillo’s friend Nicolas de Omazur, a Flemish poet and silk merchant established in Seville. The portrait itself borrows a device from Netherlandish engravings, much used in the frontispiece of books. A gilded oval frame, set against a wall on a shelf or console table, encloses Murillo’s half-length likeness. But in a feat of legerdemain only possible in art, it is the painter himself, not his image, who paradoxically extends his hand beyond the frame. Dressed in sober black, with a soft lace collar at his throat, he looks at the viewer with a dignified and slightly melancholy air. Nothing within this portrait betrays that he is anything other than a gentleman. Around the frame, however, are disposed the tools of his profession: a palette laid out with paint, brushes, a drawing in red chalk, the chalk itself, a pair of dividers and a ruler. The white on the palette is a real, three-dimensional swirl of white lead paint, not the image of one. The dividers and ruler tell us that he is a learned artist, creating pictures according to the rules and proportions of mathematical laws and not merely imitating appearances. A drawing - the academic basis of all the visual arts - recalls that in 1660 Murillo co-founded the Academy of Seville of which he was the first president.

As in all his portraits, in contrast to his other pictures, Murillo emphasises truthfulness above charm. Strong light, casting dark shadows, is used to model the forms, and his famous ‘soft’ brushwork is apparent only in the hair and lace. The sombre colour scheme of black, white and ochre is relieved only by red - as indicated on the palette, where its undiluted presence helps to clarify the spatial construction of the painting and enlivens its solemn play on the art of reality and the reality of art.

St Lesmes is a 11th-century saint of French origin. He spent part of his life in Burgos, Spain and he became the patron saint of this city. In Murillo’s painting, probably an altarpiece, St Lesmes is portrayed standing, wearing a Benedictine habit, his head turned towards the sky, his right hand on his chest as if to assert his faith and a breviary and a rosary in his left hand. At the entrance to a cave behind him there is an altar that contains the image of a bishop in the act of blessing. In the distant landscape we are able to make out a bridge to the left and two pilgrims.

While the composition is indebted to the standing figures of saints ( e.g. St Lawrence) painted by Zurbar�n, Murillo’s sensitivity has little in common with the austerity of the Estremaduran artist and his pictures of saints, with their delicate and free-flowing technique, are the very expression of holiness.

This pathetic image of St Peter repented of his denial of Christ, according to the Gospels, was attributed to Ribera on account of its naturalism and the tenebrist lighting that makes the figure stand out against a dark uniform background. Nonetheless, it has been unanimously recognised as the work of the Sevillian painter Murillo, dated relatively early in his production, around the years 1650-1655, when the influence of Ribera, although attenuated, has a strong impact on the former.

A characteristic feature of the painting is that St Joseph is depicted as a rather old man. Thus Murillo ignored the iconograhic rule generally respected in that period.

This is a little-known genre scene: intimate, lyrical and very different from Murillo’s customary representations of floating putti and healthy street Arabs. Here the Holy Family is portrayed as a simple human family: the artist shows a carpenter and his wife as he might have seen them at home in seventeenth-century Spain, dressed in the costume of the day. There are no haloes in this picture, nor is there any hint of the schematic arrangement seen in Baroque religious pictures. There is an element of sentimentality in the scene: the parents watch fondly as the Child plays with the dog and the bird. There could hardly be a more unambiguous example of the infusion of naturalism into a religious theme which is so characteristic of Spanish art; there is also in this picture something reminiscent of the homely atmosphere found in Netherlandish painting.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 5 minutes):

Cl�ment Jannequin: The Birds (Le chant des oiseaux)

Murillo painted this picture when he was sixty; it was commissioned by Canon Justino de Neve for the refectory of a home for retired priests in Seville, hence the choice of theme: the distribution of bread to the elderly, an action symbolizing charity.

It is a characteristically vertical Baroque composition with the Child in the centre; his face, however, bears no trace of the light-heartedness characteristic of Murillo’s young beggar boys. It is a childish face, charming, yet exalted and spiritualized; but the painting of the body indicates how closely Murillo observed the proportions and movements of small children. Equally beautiful and exalted is the face of the ministering angel. But Mary, seated behind the Child, is the embodiment of motherhood, a human being of this earth, comely but without true beauty, anxious and concerned as she watches her little son. In the seventeenth century subtle brushwork and carefully selected hues were used to separate what was earthly from what was heavenly. The angel, the Infant Jesus and the putti floating among the clouds are represented as visionary beings; but Mary, the daughter of earthly people, and the group of three pilgrims are all represented as human beings of this earth as real as the basket of bread which is as closely observed as any still-life.

It is assumed that the pilgrim with a book is the portrait of Canon Justino de Neve. Several later (19th century) copies of the painting are known (e.g. Cadiz, Seville, etc.).

It is assumed that the pilgrim with a book is the portrait of Canon Justino de Neve who commissioned the painting.

A little girl with the face of a Madonna, a contented little boy examining the earnings she holds in her hand and a basket full of grapes which is, in itself, a still-life of the highest quality. Does this painting show us a life free from worry?

The apparent poverty of the two figures, their unchild-like but necessary employment suggest a sense of hopelessness and misery. And yet these children seem to exude an air of rapt serenity and contented enjoyment of life. Herein lies Murillo’s Christian message: because these children do not see their poverty as a burden, and because they do not regard their existence as joyless, they are beautiful and “dignified”. It is thus a painting that could adorn the walls of any ruler’s palace.

One of Murillo’s favourite themes among secular subjects is the depiction of boys “of the baskets”, as those encountered in Cervantes’s novel Rinconete y Cortadillo (1613) are called. Such little boys ran errands throughout the city of Seville, selling food or simple carrying it for shoppers from the market to their home. These are poor boys, as indicated by the clothing. As is usual in Murillo’s paintings of children, they are poor but not sad, they are smiling.

This painting is an oil sketch for a larger composition.

The room is so dark that we can hardly make out the objects in it: beneath the little window aperture stands a rough-hewn wooden table, on which there is an earthenware jug and a white cloth. Another earthenware jug stands on the floor. At the right-hand edge of the painting, we see a spindle and distaff on a stool. The old woman who has just set them aside is now crouching down to look for lice in the little boy’s hair. He is sitting on the floor, leaning against her knee and petting a little dog that is begging for a piece of the bread the boy is stuffing into his mouth. Both figures are very poorly dressed, and the few details of the room further emphasize the impression of poverty.

Murillo is probably the only Baroque painter of rank to have portrayed poverty with such kind and conciliatory traits. There is no sign here of the wealthy man’s notion of the picturesque simple life, so frecquently found in this genre. Murillo chooses the colours of the earth. The earthenware dishes, the stones of the wall, the wood of the furniture, the faces and clothes of the two figures, all are united by this warm colouring which seems so natural that it does not even raise the question of poverty or wealth, happiness or unhappiness.

Murillo was one of the leading artists in seventeenth-century Spain, surpassed in his lifetime only by Vel�zquez. Both artists were from Seville, but their temperament, careers and critical success could hardly have been more different. Vel�zquez spent the greater part of his life at court in Madrid. Murillo remained in Seville, painting mainly religious subjects for pious foundations; his death was the result of a fall from a scaffold in the Capuchin church in Cadiz. His secular paintings included a few masterly portraits, but otherwise consisted almost entirely of scenes of childhood, an unprecedented genre in Spain.

Murillo’s fame eclipsed Vel�zquez’s through the eighteenth century, when he was ranked second only to Raphael and influenced, among others, Gainsborough and Reynolds. Only around 1900 did his manner, so well attuned to the religious sensibilities of his time, begin to cloy. For Murillo is the great interpreter of a range of feelings we have come to mistrust: avoiding scenes of martyrdom, he specialised in tender Holy Families, lovable infant saints, graceful Madonnas and Immaculate Conceptions. In later life he was charmingly reassuring even in his portrayal of vagrant children. But the emotional springs of his work were not what they might seem to a twentieth-century viewer. The youngest of fourteen siblings, his parents died when he was nine, and he outlived his wife and all but three of their nine children. From 1635 Spain was interminably at war throughout Europe. In 1649 half the population of Seville died in the plague; there was a popular uprising in 1652. As the world about him sank further into grim despair, it was not sentimentality but heroism which impelled Murillo to cloak his painted world in clouds of incense and of roses. The visitor who flinches from uplifted eyes and pink-cheeked cherubs should perhaps first focus on the firm drawing of the hands, here masterfully foreshortened and individually characterised in eloquent communion. The artist’s impeccable draughtsmanship, at first sight concealed under the ‘vaporous’ brushwork of his late style, influenced by Rubens and Van Dyck, is the visible sign of his underlying stoicism.

Murillo had treated the subject of the Two Trinities before, early in his career, when he depicted the Holy Family returning from the Temple (Luke 2:51). The compositions of both pictures derive from sixteenth-century engravings made for Jesuit devotional books by the Flemish Wierix brothers. These images, designed to appeal to a broad lay audience, stressed the humble labours of the Holy Family, and glorified Saint Joseph, carpenter, protector of the Virgin and earthly father of Christ. As God the Father, the dove of the Holy Spirit and Christ form the Celestial Trinity, so Mary, Joseph and Jesus mirror them on earth in a Terrestrial Trinity. In this painting, probably commissioned as an altarpiece, Joseph - the only character directly to address us - holds the flowering rod, sign of God’s will that he become Mary’s husband. The Christ Child is raised on a dressed stone, both a compositional device to set him at the apex of a triangle in the centre of the painting and symbolic: ‘thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion…a precious corner stone, a sure foundation’ (Isaiah 28:16). As the clouds part to reveal the divine light, their shadows temper the bold red and ultramarine blue, the apricots, pinks, gold and white of the highlights to a wonderful overall harmony, a haze of grey, sky-blue and saffron.

In his mature religious canvases Murillo follows schemes tried and tested by his predecessors, including those for the Immaculate Conception. Here the Mother of God is depicted in heaven, surrounded by angels and transfused by divine light. The typical Baroque dynamic movement and expressive use of light and shade are coupled with a note of tender joy that brought the artist broad approbation.

In the 18th century the painting was in the collection of Sir Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall.

This painting was painted at the beginning of Murillo’s career. It is without doubt one of the first of the genre scenes in which he shows street urchins. Later his taste for the picturesque sometimes became merely anecdotal, but here the sincerity of his observation and the vigour of his technique place Murillo in the pure tradition of the Spanish ‘tenebrismo’ of the young Vel�zquez and of Zurbar�n. It is not surprising that later painters like Courbet, Manet, and Monet admired such works.

The children genre in Baroque art of the Roman countries is usually regarded as Murillo’s original creation, although the Danish Bernard Keil concentrated on images of children before him.

Murillo had a life-long interest in drawing. He produced drawings in almost every medium, including pen, ink and wash, and coloured chalk, sometimes mixing ink and crayon together. Among these drawings are many preliminary studies, in which he carefully planned the compositions and experimented with posing the figures.

This drawing is a preliminary study for a painting, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Murillo lived an intense professional life and exercised prolonged influence by virtue of his religious works, which are gentle and reposed, and expressed with solid outlines and increasingly flowing and expressive brushstrokes.

Murillo’s religious works are sometimes dismissed as sentimental. Rather, this compelling work demands an emotional response.

Traces of Murillo’s knowledge of northern painting are evident in his genre paintings. These enchanting pictures seemingly appear out of nowhere; they are without precedent in Spanish painting. Scenes of everyday life were a staple in the repertory of Dutch and Flemish painters, and were certainly familiar Murillo’s merchant clientele.

Murillo’s genre paintings - there are about twenty in existence - are innocent and even incongruously poetic, given the impoverished condition of the subjects - usually young boys and girls wearing tattered, old clothing. For the most part, the composition follows a pattern: two or three figures are involved in an idle pastime, such as playing games or eating bread, fruit, or sweet confections. In the background there are vaguely defined ruins and one or two notional landscape motifs, all bathed in soft light and enveloped in hazy clouds.

The best evidence that Murillo knew northern genre paintings is found in the works themselves. Although the precise compositional type is unique to Murillo, the constituent parts are often encountered in northern painting, especially in the paintings of the Bamboccianti. The motifs in the Young Boys Playing Dice - the boys in ragged clothes playing simple games in the open air, the irregular architectural forms, and the poetic landscape with delicately tinted clouds - can be compared with the motifs found in the paintings of the Bamboccianti. Murillo subordinates the landscape to the figures and infuses a stronger sentiment into is subjects.