Bartolomé Estéban Murillo

Spanish, 1618 - 1682

BiographyBartolomé Esteban Murillo was the son of Gaspar Esteban Murillo, a mechanic, and María Pérez. He was orphaned at the age of ten and brought up by his maternal uncle, who placed him as an apprentice with his relative Juan del Castillo, a painter in the Italian manner. He provided Murillo with a sound artistic training. Murillo began by painting genre pieces, often taking beggar children as his subject and painting them with intense realism and a powerful expressiveness that showed great promise; many of these works were exported to the Spanish colonies. He is believed to have spent his whole life in Seville, and it was there that he became familiar with the work of the Flemish and Venetian painters he found so appealing; he did not need to visit Madrid, as has sometimes been suggested, and it is therefore unlikely that he met Velázquez, although he was doubtless as impressed by Velázquez's work as he was by that of Zurbarán or Van Dyck. However, he did meet Pedro de Moya, a pupil of Velázquez, in Seville. His first known work was a Madonna of the Rosary dated 1645. In that year and the following one, he painted 11 pictures for the Franciscan monastery in the city. Ten of these were seized by Marshal Soult and taken to France; the one remaining was sold to an art lover. In 1647 Murillo painted various works for another Franciscan monastery, and it was these that really established his reputation. In 1648 he married Doña Beatriz de Cabrera y Sotomayor who, tradition has it, became the model for his paintings of the Virgin. In these works Murillo depicts the Virgin in a particular manner, conveying an ideal of purity, calm and serenity; her face is balanced, her hair abundant and harmonious, falling over the shoulders, her gaze profound and thoughtful. In 1650 he executed paintings for the convent of the Merced Calzada. In 1654, with the death of Pacheco, he became the undisputed leader of the Seville School and commissions flooded in from every quarter. In 1655 Murillo painted St Isidore and St Leander for the archdeacon of Carmona; the following year he painted St Anthony of Padua for the cathedral chapter as well as four important paintings for his friend the canon Justino Neve y Yevenes, two of which show The Legend of Our Lady of the Snows. In 1668 Murillo was again summoned to work at Seville Cathedral, where he executed an Immaculate Conception and eight figures of saints. In 1669 Murillo founded the Seville academy and was appointed president, together with Valdés Leal. However, the disputes and jealousies that ensued caused him to resign from the post two years later. In 1671 he worked at All Saints' chapel on the decorations to celebrate the canonisation of Ferdinand III. The same year he began one of his most celebrated works, the decoration of the church of the Caridad hospital, where he painted eleven compositions, six of which remain in the church, the other five having been removed by Marshal Soult. Murillo spent four years executing this work and received 78,115 reales in payment. From 1674 to 1680 he worked for the Capuchins and executed no fewer than 20 important paintings, 17 of which are now in Seville museum. The artist was summoned to Cádiz to paint The Marriage of St Catherine; while working on this piece he fell from the scaffolding and although he managed to return to Seville, he died as a result of the accident. The painting was completed by one of his pupils, Meneses Osorio. Murillo had three children, the second of whom, Gaspar Esteban, became a priest and painted in the same manner as his father.

From the start of his career, Murillo's religious convictions influenced his work. His religious sense was typical of the period and informs his work in a manner that is sentimental; consequently his art is deeply vulnerable, marked by a banal sentimentality and is far less natural than any classical painting with which it might be compared; in classical pieces the composition is already decided and is based on actual models, whereas Murillo 'overloads his snapshots of life to give them artificial meaning'. Murillo worked in two different manners: one, associated mainly with his early career, involved the use of warm, golden tones, thickly applied, similar in some ways to Tenebrism; the other, from his later period, adopted lighter tones, more vaporous outlines and is reminiscent of Correggio. Examples of the first style include St James Giving Alms to the Poor and the Angels' Kitchen; those typical of his later style are St Thomas of Villanueva and Birth of the Virgin (in the Louvre). As well as his religious paintings, Murillo executed portraits; those that survive display a sober approach in tones of black and white. His work as a whole is tinged with a melancholic Romanticism.

Although it is not certain that all his paintings of beggar children date from his first period, works such as a Two Young Beggars from Seville, Two Street Urchins and a Small Dog and Two Beggars Playing Dice, now in Munich, are completely free from the affectation that marks his religious pieces; unusual in terms of 17th century Spanish painting, they reveal a movement towards realism in the depiction of the common people, entirely different from the 'exotic' realism which took as its models the dwarfs and jesters of the court.

"MURILLO, Bartolomé Esteban." In Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/benezit/B00127910 (accessed April 16, 2012).

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