In the picturesque city of Seville, "the glory of the Spanish realms,"
the greatest painter of Spain, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, was born,
probably on the last day of the year 1617. He was baptized on New Year's
Day, 1618, in the Church of La Magdalena, destroyed in 1810 by the
French troops under Marshal Soult.
[Illustration: MURILLO.]
His father, Gaspar Esteban, was a mechanic, renting a modest house which
belonged to a convent, and keeping it in repair for the use of it. His
mother, Maria Perez, seems to have been well connected, as her brother,
Juan de Costillo, was one of the leaders of art in Seville. It is said
that the family were once wealthy and distinguished, but now they were
very poor.
The boy, Bartolome, was consecrated to the church, with the fond hope of
his mother that he would become a priest. However, he soon exhibited
such artistic talent that this project was abandoned. One day when the
mother went to Church, leaving the child at home, he amused himself by
taking a sacred picture, "Jesus and the Lamb," and painting his own hat
on the Infant Saviour's head, and changing the lamb into a dog.
Probably the reverent mother was shocked, but she thereby gained a
knowledge of the genius of her only son. In school, the boy used to make
sketches on the margins of his books and on the walls.
Before he was eleven years old, both father and mother died, leaving him
to the care of a surgeon, Juan Agustin Lagares, who had married his
aunt, Dona Anna Murillo. Probably from this family name the boy derived
his own. A little sister, Teresa, was also left an orphan.
He was soon apprenticed to his uncle, Juan del Castillo, who taught him
carefully all the details of his art,--correct drawing, how to prepare
canvas, mix colors, and study patiently. The lad was very industrious,
eager to learn, extremely gentle and amiable, and soon attached himself
to both teacher and pupils.
From this it is easy to judge that he had had a lovely mother, one who
encouraged, who preserved a sweet nature in her son because sweet
herself. How often have I seen a parent lose the confidence of a child
by too often reproving, by over-criticism, by disparagement! Praise
seldom harms anybody. We usually receive and give too little
commendation all our lives.
One of my most precious memories is the fact that my widowed mother made
it her life-rule not to find fault with her two children. She loved us
into obedience. She told us her wishes and her hopes for us, and the
smile with which she spoke lingers in my heart like an exquisite
picture. Long ago I learned that no home ever had too much love in it.
For nine years the Spanish lad worked in his uncle's studio, studying
nature as well as art, as shown in his inimitable "Beggar Boys" and
other dwellers in the streets of Seville. When he was twenty, he painted
two Madonnas, "The Virgin with St. Francis," for the Convent of Regina
Angelorum, and the "Virgin del Rosario with San Domingo," for the Church
of St. Thomas.
It was natural that the young artist, loving the Catholic faith, should
paint as one of his first pictures the "Story of the Rosary." Mrs.
Jameson, in her "Legends of the Monastic Orders," thus gives the history
of St. Dominick: "His father was of the illustrious family of Guzman.
His mother, Joanna d'Aza, was also of noble birth.... Such was his early
predilection for a life of penance that when he was only six or seven
years old he would get out of his bed to lie on the cold earth. His
parents sent him to study theology in the university of Valencia, and he
assumed the habit of a canon of St. Augustine at a very early age.
"Many stories are related of his youthful piety, his self-inflicted
austerities, and his charity. One day he met a poor woman weeping
bitterly, and when he inquired the cause she told him that her only
brother, her sole stay and support in the world, had been carried into
captivity by the Moors. Dominick could not ransom her brother; he had
given away all his money, and even sold his books, to relieve the poor;
but he offered all he could,--he offered up himself to be exchanged as a
slave in place of her brother. The woman, astonished at such a proposal,
fell upon her knees before him. She refused his offer, but she spread
the fame of the young priest far and wide....
"He united with himself several ecclesiastics, who went about barefoot
in the habit of penitents, exhorting the people to conform to the
Church. The institution of the Order of St. Dominick sprang out of this
association of preachers, but it was not united under an especial rule,
nor confirmed, till some years later, by Pope Honorius, in 1216.
"It was during his sojourn in Languedoc that St. Dominick instituted the
Rosary. The use of a chaplet of beads, as a memento of the number of
prayers recited, is of Eastern origin, and dates from the time of the
Egyptian Anchorites. Beads were also used by the Benedictines, and are
to this day in use among the Mohammedan devotees. Dominick invented a
novel arrangement of the chaplet, and dedicated it to the honor and
glory of the Blessed Virgin, for whom he entertained a most especial
veneration. A complete rosary consists of fifteen large and one hundred
and fifty small beads; the former representing the number of
_Paternosters_, the latter the number of _Ave Marias_.... The rosary was
received with the utmost enthusiasm, and by this single expedient
Dominick did more to excite the devotion of the lower orders,
especially of the women, and made more converts, than by all his
orthodoxy, learning, arguments, and eloquence.
"St. Dominick, in the excess of his charity and devotion, was
accustomed, while preaching in Languedoc, to scourge himself three times
a day,--once for his own sins; once for the sins of others; and once for
the benefit of souls in purgatory." He preached in all the principal
cities of Europe, and died at Bologna in 1221.
In 1640, when Murillo was twenty-two, the Castilli home was broken up,
the uncle Juan going to Cadiz to reside. Without fame and poor, the
youth was thrown upon his own resources. There were many artists in the
city of Seville, and Murillo, shy and retiring, could not expect much
patronage. He decided to go to the _Feria_, a weekly market, held in
front of the Church of All Saints, and there, in the midst of stalls
where eatables, old clothes, and other wares were sold, he set up his
open-air studio, and worked among the gypsies and the muleteers.
Rough, showy pictures were painted to order and sold to those who
frequented the market-place. For two long years he lived among this
humble class, earning probably but a scanty subsistence. Here,
doubtless, he learned to paint flower-girls and squalid beggars. "There
was no contempt," says Sweetser, "in Murillo's feelings towards these
children of nature; and his sentiments seemed to partake almost of a
fraternal sympathy for them. No small portion of his popularity among
the lower classes arose from the knowledge that he was their poet and
court painter, who understood and did not calumniate them. Velasquez had
chosen to paint superb dukes and cardinals, and found his supporters in
a handful of supercilious grandees; but Murillo illustrated the lives of
the poorest classes on Spanish soil, and was the idol of the masses.
With what splendor of color and mastery of design did he thus illuminate
the annals of the poor! Coming forth from some dim chancel or
palace-hall in which he had been working on a majestic Madonna-picture,
he would sketch in, with the brush still loaded with the colors of
celestial glory, the lineaments of the beggar crouching by the wall or
the gypsy calmly reposing in the black shadow of the archway. Such
versatility had never before been seen west of the Mediterranean, and
commanded the admiration of his countrymen.
"We do not find in his pictures the beggar of Britain and America, cold,
lowering, gloomy, and formidable; but the laughing child of the
sunlight, full of joy and content, preferring to bask rather than to
work, yet always fed somehow, and abundantly; crop-haired, brown-footed,
clad in incoherent rags, but bright-eyed, given to much joviality, and
with an affluence of white teeth, often shown in merry moods; not so
respectable as the staid burghers of Nuremberg and Antwerp, but far more
picturesque and perhaps quite as happy."
But for Murillo's life of poverty he could not have had this sympathy
with the poor. Doubtless every experience is given us with a purpose,
that either through the brush or the pen, or by word or deed, we may the
better do our part for the elevation of mankind.
In 1642, Murillo had a new inspiration. A fellow-pupil in Castillo's
school, Pedro de Moya, after joining the Spanish army and campaigning in
Flanders, had spent six months in London under Van Dyck. Now he came
back to Seville aglow with his delights in travel and the wonders of the
Flemish painters.
Murillo was fired with ambition. He too would see famous painters and
renowned cities, and become as great as his young friend Moya. But how?
He had no money and no influential friends. He would make the effort. He
might stay forever at the _Feria_, and never be heard of beyond Seville.
He bought a piece of linen, cut it into pieces of various sizes, and, in
some obscure room, painted upon them saints, flowers, fruit, and
landscapes. Then he sallied forth to find purchasers. One wonders
whether the young man did not sometimes become discouraged in these
years of toil; if he did not sometimes look at the houses of the
grandees and sigh because he was not rich or because he was homeless and
unknown?
He sold most of his pictures to a ship-owner, by whom they were sent to
the West Indies and other Catholic portions of America. Then he started
on foot over the Sierras,--a long and tedious journey to Madrid. In the
Spanish capital he could find the works of art which he wished to study.
He had no money nor friends when he arrived in the great city, but he
had courage. He had learned early in life a most valuable lesson,--to
depend on himself. To whom should he go? Velasquez, formerly of Seville,
was at the height of his fame, the favorite of the king, the friend of
the wealthy and the distinguished. Murillo determined to seek the great
artist in his own home; at least he could only be refused admittance.
Velasquez kindly received the young man, who told him how he had come on
foot over the mountains to study. There was no jealousy in the heart of
the painter, no fear of rivalry. He was pleased with the modesty,
frankness, and aspiration of the youth, and, strange to say, took him
into his own home to reside. What a contrast to painting in the _Feria_,
and living in a garret!
Murillo at once began to study in the royal galleries where Philip II.
and his father Charles V. had gathered their Titians, their Rubenses,
and their Van Dycks. For three years, through the kindness of Velasquez,
he met the leading Spanish artists and the prominent people of the
court. The king admired his work, and greatly encouraged him. Murillo
was fortunate,--yes; but Fortune did not seek him, he sought her!
Ambition and action made him successful.
Early in 1645, Murillo returned to Seville. Velasquez offered to give
him letters of introduction to eminent artists in Rome, but he preferred
to go back to his native city. Probably he longed for the old Cathedral,
with La Giralda, the Alcazar, the Moorish palaces, and the Guadalquivir.
The Alcazar, says Hare, in his "Wanderings in Spain," begun in 1181, was
in great part rebuilt by Pedro the Cruel, 1353-64. "The history of this
strange monarch gives the Alcazar its chief interest. Hither he fled
with his mother as a child from his father, Alonzo XI., and his
mistress, Leonora de Guzman. They were protected by the minister,
Albuquerque, at whose house he met and loved Maria de Padilla, a
Castilian beauty of noble birth, whom he secretly married. Albuquerque
was furious, and, aided by the queen-mother, forced him into a political
marriage with the French princess, Blanche de Bourbon. He met her at
Valladolid; but three days after his nuptials fled from the wife he
disliked to the one he loved, who ever after held royal court at
Seville, while Queen Blanche,--a sort of Spanish Mary Stuart,--after
being cruelly persecuted and imprisoned for years, was finally put to
death at Medina-Sidonia.
"In this Alcazar, Pedro received the Red King of Granada, with a promise
of safe-conduct, and then murdered him for the sake of his jewels, one
of which--a large ruby--he gave to the Black Prince after Navarete, and
which is 'the fair ruby, great like a rachet-ball,' which Elizabeth
showed to the ambassador of Mary of Scotland, and now adorns the royal
crown of England....
"It was in the Alcazar, also, that Pedro murdered his illegitimate
brother, the master of Santiago, who had caused him much trouble by a
rebellion. Maria de Padilla knew his coming fate, but did not dare to
tell him, though from the beautiful _ajimez_ window over the gate she
watched for his arrival, and tried to warn him by her tears. Six years
after, this murder was avenged by Henry of Trastamare, the brother of
the slain, who stabbed Pedro to the heart. But Maria de Padilla was
already dead, and buried with queens in the royal chapel, when Pedro
publicly acknowledged her as his lawful wife, and the marriage received
the sanction of the Spanish Church....
"Within the Alcazar all is still fresh and brilliant with light and
color. It is like a scene from the 'Arabian Nights,' or the wonderful
creation of a kaleidoscope.... The Hall of Ambassadors is perfectly
glorious in its delicate lace-like ornaments and the rich color of its
exquisite _azulejos_."
"The cathedral," says Hare, "stands on a high platform, girdled with
pillars, partly brought from Italica and partly relics of the mosques,
of which two existed on this site. The last, built by the Emir Yusuf in
1184, was pulled down in 1401, when the cathedral was begun, only the
Giralda, the Court of Oranges, and some of the outer walls being
preserved. The chapter, when convened for the building of the cathedral,
determined, like religious Titans, to build 'one of such size and
beauty that coming ages should proclaim them mad for having undertaken
it.'...
"Far above houses and palaces, far above the huge cathedral itself,
soars the beautiful Giralda, its color a pale pink, incrusted all over
with delicate Moorish ornament, so high that its detail is quite lost as
you gaze upward; so large that you may easily ride on horseback to the
summit, up the broad roadway in the interior....
"In the interior everything is vast, down to the Paschal candle, placed
in a candlestick twenty-five feet high, and weighing twenty-five hundred
pounds, of wax, while the expenditure of the chapter may be estimated by
the fact that eighteen thousand seven hundred and fifty litres of wine
are consumed annually in the sacrament. Of the ninety-three stained
windows many are old and splendid. Their light is undimmed by curtains,
for there is an Andalusian proverb that the ray of the sun has no power
to injure within the bounds in which the voice of prayer can be heard.
In the centre of the nave, near the west door, surrounded by sculptured
caravelas, the primitive ships by which the New World was discovered, is
the tomb of Ferdinand Columbus, son of the great navigator (who himself
rests in Havanna), inscribed,--
"'A CASTILLA Y A LEON
MUNDO NUEVO DIO COLON.'
At the opposite end of the church is the royal chapel, where St.
Ferdinand, who was canonized in 1627, 'because he carried fagots with
his own hands for the burning of heretics,' rests beneath the altar, in
a silver sarcophagus. Here also are his Queen, Beatrix, his son Alonzo
el Sabio, father of our Queen Eleanor, and Maria de Padilla, the
beautiful Morganatic wife of Pedro the Cruel....
"Many of the services in this church reach a degree of splendor which is
only equalled by those of St. Peter's; and the two organs, whose
gigantic pipes have been compared to the columns of Fingal's Cave, peal
forth magnificently. But one ceremony, at least, is far more fantastic
than anything at Rome."
Frances Elliot, in her "Diary of an Idle Woman in Spain," thus describes
this remarkable ceremony: "To the left, within the bars, I am conscious
of the presence of a band of stringed instruments,--not only violins and
counter-bass, but flutes, flageolets, and hautboys, even a serpent, as
they call a quaint instrument associated with my earliest years,
forthwith all beginning to play in a most ancient and most homely way,
for all the world like a simple village choir, bringing a twang of damp,
mouldy, country churches to my mind, sunny English afternoons, and odors
of lavender and southern-wood.
"As they play--these skilled musicians--a sound of youthful voices comes
gathering in, fresh, shrill, and childlike, rising and falling to the
rhythm.
"All at once the music grows strangely passionate, the voices and the
stringed instruments seem to heave and sigh in tender accents,
long-drawn notes and sobs wail out melodious cries for mercy and
invocations for pardon, growing louder and intenser each moment.
"Then, I know not how, for the great darkness gathers round even to the
gates of the altar, a band of boys, the owners of the voices, appears as
in a vision in the open space between the benches on which the chapter
sits, and, gliding down the altar steps, move in a measure fitting in
softly with the music.
"How or when they begin to dance, singing as if to the involuntary
movement of their feet, I know not; at first 'high-disposedly,' their
bodies swaying to and fro to the murmur of the band, which never leaves
off playing a single instant, in the most heavenly way. Then, as the
music quickens and castanets click out, the boys grow animated, and move
swifter to and fro, raising their arms in curves and graceful
interlacing rounds. Still faster the music beats, and faster and faster
they move, crossing and recrossing in mazy figures, the stringed
instruments following them with zeal, the castanets, hautboys, and
flutes, their interlacing forms knotting in a kind of ecstasy, yet all
as grave and solemn as in a song of praise, a visible rejoicing of the
soul at Christmas time and the Divine birth. As David danced before the
ark for joy, so do these boys dance now with holy gladness.
"I made out something of their costume,--broad Spanish hats, turned up
with a _panache_ of blue feathers, the Virgin's color, a flowing mantle
of the same hue over one shoulder, glittering in the light, white satin
vests, and white hose and shoes.
"The dance is most ancient, _archi-old_, as one may say--of an origin
Phoenician or Arab, sanctified to Christian use. The music, like the
dance, quaint and pathetic, with every now and then a solo so sweet it
seems as if an angel had come down unseen to play it. I have inquired on
all hands what is the origin of this singular rite, which takes place
twice a year, at Advent and Easter, but no one can tell me. About two
centuries ago an Archbishop of Seville objected to the dance as giddy
and mundane, and forbade it in his cathedral, causing a terrible
scandal. The Sevillians were enraged; their fathers had loved the dance,
and their fathers before them, and they were ready to defend it with
swords and staves.
"As the Archbishop was inexorable, an appeal was made to Rome. The Pope
of that day, a sensible man, replied that he could give no judgment
without seeing the dance himself; so the whole troop--stringed
instruments, castanets, serpent, cavalier hats and cloaks, and the boys
who wore them--were carried off to Rome at the expense of rich citizens.
Then the measure was tried before the Pope in the Vatican, and he
approved. 'Let the citizens of Seville have their dance,' the Pope said;
'I see no harm in it. As long as the clothes last it shall continue.'
"Need I add that those clothes never wore out, but, like the widow's
curse, renewed themselves miraculously, to the delight of the town, and
that they will continue to last fresh and new as long as the gigantic
walls of the cathedral uprear themselves, and the sun of Andalusia
shines on the flat plains!"
Murillo loved this old cathedral, and later he painted for it some of
his wonderful pictures, among them "The Guardian Angel," in which "a
glorious seraph with spreading wings leads a little, trustful child by
the hand, and directs him to look beyond earth into the heavenly light,"
and "St. Anthony of Padua visited by the infant Saviour." The saint is
kneeling with outstretched arms, looking above to the child, who
descends through a flood of glory filled with cherubs, drawn down by the
prayers of the saint. On the table beside him is a vase of white lilies,
which many persons averred were so natural that the birds flew down the
cathedral aisles to peck at the flowers. For this picture the cathedral
clergy paid ten thousand reals. Mrs. Jameson declares this the finest
work ever executed in honor of St. Anthony, a subject chosen by Titian
and scores of other artists.
When the nephew of Murillo's first master, Castillo, looked upon this
work, he exclaimed, "It is all over with Castillo! Is it possible that
Murillo, that servile imitator of my uncle, can be the author of all
this grace and beauty of coloring?"
The canons told M. Viardot that the Duke of Wellington offered to pay
for this picture as many gold pieces as would cover its surface of
fifteen feet square, about two hundred and forty thousand dollars. In
1874 the figure of St. Anthony was cut out, stolen, and sold to a Mr.
Schaus, a picture-dealer of New York, for two hundred and fifty dollars.
He turned his purchase over to the Spanish consul, who restored it to
the cathedral.
St. Anthony was a Portuguese by birth, and taught divinity in the
universities of Bologna, Toulouse, Paris, and Padua. Finally he became
an eloquent preacher among the people. It is said that when they refused
to listen he preached to the dwellers in the sea, "and an infinite
number of fishes, great and little, lifted their heads above water, and
listened attentively to the sermon of the saint!"
Very many miracles are attributed to him. He restored to life by his
prayers Carilla, a young maiden who was drowned; also a young child who
was scalded to death; renewed the foot of a young man who had cut it off
because the saint rebuked him for having kicked his brother; caused the
body of a murdered youth to speak, and acquit an old man who had been
accused of his death; made a glass cup remain whole when thrown against
a marble slab, while the marble was shivered.
"The legend of the mule," says Mrs. Jameson, "is one of the most popular
of the miracles of St. Anthony, and is generally found in the Franciscan
churches. A certain heretic called Bovidilla entertained doubts of the
real presence in the sacrament, and, after a long argument with the
saint, required a miracle in proof of this favorite dogma of the Roman
Catholic Church. St. Anthony, who was about to carry the host in
procession, encountered the mule of Bovidilla, which fell down on its
knees at the command of the saint, and, although its heretic master
endeavored to tempt it aside by a sieve full of oats, remained kneeling
till the host had passed."
After Murillo's return from the house of Velasquez to Seville, he worked
incessantly for nearly three years upon eleven paintings for the convent
of the Franciscans near Casa del Ayuntamiento. The cloisters contained
three hundred marble columns. For the decoration of a minor cloister the
priests offered so small an amount that no leading artist in Seville
would attempt it. But Murillo, still poor, and not well known, gladly
accepted the work. It was a laborious undertaking, with perhaps scarcely
enough compensation to provide for his daily needs; but it made him
famous. Henceforward there was neither poverty nor obscurity for the
great Spanish master.
The first picture for the Franciscans represented "St. Francis, on an
iron bed, listening to an angel who is playing on a violin." The second
portrayed "St. Diego blessing a pot of broth," which he is about to give
to a group of beggars at the gate of his convent. Another picture,
called, "The Angel Kitchen," now in the Louvre, represents a monk who
fell in a state of ecstasy whilst cooking for the convent, and angels
are doing his work. Still another represents a Franciscan praying over
the dead body of a friar, as if to restore it to life. This is now owned
by Mr. Richard Ford, of Devonshire, England.
The finest picture of the series represents "The Death of St. Clara of
Assisi." She was the daughter of a noble knight of great wealth, and
much sought in marriage. Desiring to devote herself to a religious life,
she repaired to St. Francis for counsel, who advised her to enter a
convent. She fled from her home to where St. Francis dwelt, and he with
his own hands cut off her luxuriant golden tresses, and threw over her
his own penitential habit of gray wool. Her family sought to force her
away, but later her sister Agnes and mother Ortolana joined her in the
convent.
On the death of her father, St. Clara gave all her wealth to the poor.
She went, like the others of her order, barefoot or sandalled, slept on
the hard earth, and lived in silence. The most notable event of her life
was the dispersion of the Saracens. Emperor Frederic ravaged the shores
of the Adriatic. In his army were a band of infidel Saracens, who
attacked the Convent of San Damiano. The frightened nuns rushed to the
side of "Mother Clara," who had long been unable to rise from her bed.
At once she arose, took from the altar the pyx of ivory and silver which
contained the Host, placed it on the threshold, knelt, and began to
sing. The barbarians were overcome with fear, and tumbled headlong down
their scaling-ladders.
Mrs. Jameson says, "The most beautiful picture of St. Clara I have ever
seen represents the death of the saint, or, rather, the vision which
preceded her death, painted by Murillo.... St. Clara lies on her couch,
her heavenly face lighted up with an ecstatic expression. Weeping nuns
and friars stand around; she sees them not, her eyes are fixed on the
glorious procession which approaches her bed: first, our Saviour,
leading his Virgin-mother; they are followed by a company of
virgin-martyrs, headed by St. Catharine, all wearing their crowns and
bearing their palms, as though they had come to summon her to their
paradise of bliss. Nothing can be imagined more beautiful, bright, and
elysian than these figures, nor more divine with faith and transport
than the head of St. Clara."
These paintings of Murillo were the one topic of conversation in
Seville. Orders for pictures came from every side; artists crowded to
the convent to study works so unlike their own; the chief families of
the city made the hitherto unknown young man a welcome guest at their
palaces; fame and position had come when he was only thirty years old.
For one hundred and seventy years these pictures were the pride of the
convent, when they were taken by Marshal Soult under Napoleon, and
eventually scattered through Northern Europe. The convent was destroyed
by fire soon afterwards.
The old adage that "blessings never come singly" was realized in the
case of Murillo, for at this time he married a wealthy lady from a
family of high renown, Dona Beatriz de Cobrera y Sotomayor, who dwelt at
Pilas, about five leagues from Seville. It is said that he first saw her
when painting an altar-piece in the Church of San Geronimo at Pilas, and
portrayed her as an angel in his picture while he was winning her love.
Their married life seems to have been an eminently happy one. Their home
became a centre for artists and the best social circles of the city.
Three children were born to them: Gabriel, who went to the West Indies;
Francisca, who became a nun; and Gaspar, afterwards a canon of Seville
Cathedral.
Murillo's manner of painting changed now from what the Spanish call
_frio_, or his cold style, to _calido_, or his warm style, where the
outlines were less pronounced, the figures rounder, and the coloring
more luminous and tender. "The works of the new manner," says Sweetser,
"are notable for graceful and well-arrayed drapery, skilfully disposed
lights, harmonious tints, soft contours, and a portrait-like naturalness
in the faces, lacking in idealism, but usually pure and pleasing. His
flesh-tints were almost uniformly heightened by dark gray backgrounds,
and were so amazingly true that one of his critics has said that they
seemed to have been painted with blood and milk (_con sangre y leche_)."
Many of the Madonnas which Murillo painted were evidently from the same
sweet, pure-faced model, and it is believed that they are the likeness
of his wife. His boys were his models for the infants Jesus and John.
His first work in the so-called warm manner was "Our Lady of the
Conception," a colossal picture for the Brotherhood of the True Cross.
The monks were at first displeased, thinking that the finishing was not
sufficiently delicate; but when Murillo caused it to be hung in the
dome, for the high position for which it was intended, they were greatly
delighted. Murillo, however, made them pay double the original price for
their fault-finding.
"Saints Leander and Isidore," two archbishops of Seville, in the sixth
and seventh centuries, who fought the Arian heresy, was his next
picture, followed by the "Nativity of the Virgin,"--a much admired
work,--a group of women and angels dressing the new-born Mary.
In 1656, for one of the canons of Santa Maria la Blanca, Murillo painted
four large semicircular pictures, the "Immaculate Conception," where the
Virgin is adored by several saints, "Faith," and two pictures, "The
Dream" and "The Fulfilment," to illustrate Our Lady of the Snow, the two
latter now in the Academy of San Fernando at Madrid.
According to a fourth-century legend, the Virgin appeared by night to a
wealthy Roman senator and his wife, commanding them to build a church in
her honor on a certain spot on the Esquiline Hill, which they would find
covered with August snow. They went to Pope Liberius, and, after
obtaining his blessing, accompanied by a great concourse of priests and
people, sought the hill, found the miraculous snow in summer, and gave
all their possessions to build the church.
One picture of Murillo represents the senator in a black velvet costume,
asleep in his chair, while his wife reposes on the floor, the Madonna
and Holy Child above them; the other picture shows them telling their
dream to the Pope. Viardot calls these paintings the "miracles of
Murillo." These were painted in the last of the three manners of
Murillo, the method usually adopted in his Madonnas,--the "vapory"
style, "with soft and tender outlines, velvety coloring, and shadows
which are only softened lights."
In 1660, Murillo founded an academy of art in Seville, of which he was
president for two years. The students were required to abstain from
swearing and ill behavior, and to give assent to the following: "Praised
be the most Holy Sacrament and the pure conception of our Lady."
Murillo was a most gentle and encouraging teacher. His colored slave,
Sebastian Gomez, who had listened to the teaching which he gave to
others, finished the head of the Virgin which his master had left on the
easel. Murillo exclaimed on seeing it, "I am indeed fortunate,
Sebastian; for I have created not only pictures, but a painter!" Many of
the works of Gomez, whom Murillo made free, are still preserved and
prized in Seville.
During the next ten years, Murillo did much work for the cathedral
clergy; eight oval, half-length pictures of saints, Justa, Rufina,
Hermengild, Sidon, Leander, Archbishops Laureano and Pius, and King
Ferdinand; the "Repose in Egypt;" the infants Christ and John for the
Antigua Chapel, and other works.
Saints Justa and Rufina were daughters of a potter, whom they assisted.
Some women who worshipped Venus came to the shop to buy vessels for
idolatrous sacrifice. The sisters declared that they had nothing to sell
for such purposes, as all things should be used in the service of God.
The Pagan women were so incensed that they broke all the earthenware in
the place. The sisters then broke the image of Venus, and flung it into
a kennel. For this act the populace seized them, and took them before
the Prefect. Justa expired on the rack, and Rufina was strangled. These
two saints have always guarded the beautiful tower Giralda. They are
said to have preserved it from destruction in 1504, in a terrific
thunder-storm. When Espartero bombarded Seville in 1843, the people
believed that Giralda was encompassed by angels led by these sisters,
who turned aside the bombs.
Murillo was now fifty-two years old, in the prime of life, famous and
honored. He was named by his admiring contemporaries "a better Titian,"
and it was asserted that even Apelles would have been proud to be called
"the Grecian Murillo." He lived in a large and handsome house, still
carefully preserved, near the Church of Santa Cruz, not far from the
Moorish wall of the city. "The courtyard contains a marble fountain,
amidst flowering shrubs, and is surrounded on three sides by an arcade
upheld by marble pillars. At the rear is a pretty garden, shaded by
cypress and citron trees, and terminated by a wall whereon are the
remains of ancient frescos which have been attributed to the master
himself. The studio is on the upper floor, and overlooks the Moorish
battlements, commanding a beautiful view to the eastward, over
orange-groves and rich corn-lands, out to the gray highlands about
Alcala."
Murillo's only sister, Teresa, had married a noble of Burgos, a knight
of Santiago, judge of the royal colonial court, a man of great
cultivation, and later chief secretary of state at Madrid. The artist
was also urged by King Charles II. to enter the royal service at Madrid,
especially since a picture of the Immaculate Conception, exhibited
during a festival of Corpus Christi, had awakened the greatest
enthusiasm among the people. But he loved Seville, and would not leave
it. And the Sevillians equally loved the man so generous that he gave
all he earned to the poor; so diligent at his work that he had no time
for evil speaking; with so much tact and sweetness and vital piety that
he left no shadow upon his name.
In 1670, Murillo began his great works for La Caridad, or the Hospital
of St. George. The Brotherhood of Holy Charity built a church about
1450, but it had fallen into ruin. In 1661, Don Miguel Manura Vicentelo
de Leca determined to restore and beautify the church and its adjacent
buildings, and secured over half a million ducats for this purpose. His
history was a strange one.
Frances Elliot says of this dissolute man, "Returning at midnight from a
revel given by some gallants, in the now ancient quarter of the
Macarena, Don Miguel falls in with a funeral procession with torches and
banners. Some grandee of high degree, doubtless, there are so many
muffled figures, mutes carrying silver horns, the insignia of knighthood
borne upon shields, a saddled horse led by a shadowy page, and the dim
forms of priests and monks chanting death dirges.
"Don Miguel can recall no death at court or among the nobles, and this
is plainly a corpse of quality. Nor can he explain the midnight burial,
a thing unknown except in warfare or in time of plague; so, advancing
from the dark gateway where he had stood to let the procession pass, he
addresses himself to one of the muffled figures, and asks, 'Whose body
are they carrying to the Osario at this time of night?'
"'Don Miguel de Manara,' is the answer; 'a great noble. Will you follow
us and pray for his sinful soul?'
"As these words are spoken, the funeral procession seems to pause, and
one advances who flings back the wreaths and flowers which shroud the
face, and lo! Don Miguel gazes on his own visage.
"Spellbound, he seems to join the ghostly throng which wends its slow
way into the Church of Santa Inez, where spectral priests appear to meet
it, and carry the bier into the nave, where, next morning, Don Miguel is
found, by the nuns coming to matins, insensible upon the stones."
He at once reformed his vicious life, erected a great cloistered
hospital, with one of the most beautiful churches in Seville, and
endowed it, so that a large company of priests, sisters of charity,
physicians, and domestics could be provided for. Don Miguel caused this
inscription to be cut on the facade of the hospital: "This house shall
stand as long as God shall be feared in it, and Jesus Christ be served
in the persons of His poor. Whoever enters here must leave at the door
both avarice and pride."
The noble was buried at the church door, so that all who passed in might
trample upon his grave. The monumental slab bears the perhaps not
inappropriate words, dictated by himself: "To the memory of the greatest
sinner that ever lived, Don Miguel de Manara."
Murillo painted for the new Church of St. George eight pictures for the
side walls, and three for the altars, for which he received over
seventy-eight thousand reals. The "Annunciation," the "Infant Saviour,"
and the "Infant St. John" were destined for the side altars; the
remaining eight, "Moses striking the Rock," the "Prodigal's Return,"
"Abraham receiving the Three Angels," the "Charity of San Juan de
Dios," the "Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes," "Our Lord healing the
Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda," "St. Peter released from Prison by
the Angel," and "St. Elizabeth of Hungary tending the Sick," were
intended for the walls. Only three of these eight are left at La
Caridad,--"Moses," the "Loaves and Fishes," and "San Juan,"--the rest
having been carried to France by Marshal Soult.
Of these three, "San Juan" is considered the "most spirited and
powerful." This saint was the founder of the Hospitallers or Brothers of
Charity. Born of very poor parents, at nine years of age he ran away
from home with a priest, who deserted him on the road to Madrid, at a
little village near Oropesa, in Castile. He hired himself to a shepherd;
later he entered the wars between Charles V. and Francis I., and became
a brave but profligate soldier. He was about to be hanged for allowing
some booty to be carried off, over which he had been placed as sentinel.
The rope was already around his neck, when an officer, touched with
pity, interfered to save his life, on condition that he should quit the
camp.
After various wanderings, he returned to his native town, only to find
that both his father and mother had died of grief in consequence of his
flight. He nearly lost his reason through remorse, became converted, and
began to devote his life to the poor and the sick. To the deserted shed
which served for his home, he brought the starving and wretched whom he
found in the streets, and worked for them and begged for them. He
finally obtained a large building, where, in the winter, he kept a great
fire to warm homeless travellers.
"Thus passed ten years of his life," says Mrs. Jameson, "without a
thought of himself; and when he died, exhausted in body, but still
fervent and energetic in mind, he, unconsciously as it seemed,
bequeathed to Christendom one of the noblest of all its religious
institutions.
"Under how many different names and forms has the little hospital of
Juan de Dios been reproduced throughout Christian Europe, Catholic and
Protestant! Our houses of refuge, our asylums for the destitute; the
brotherhood of the 'Caridad,' in Spain; that of the 'Misericordia,' in
Italy; the 'Maisons de Charite,' in France; the 'Barmherzigen Brueder,'
in Germany,--all these sprang out of the little hospital of this poor,
low-born, unlearned, half-crazed Juan de Dios! I wonder if those who go
to visit the glories of the Alhambra, and dream of the grandeur of the
Moors, ever think of _him_.
"The only representation of this good saint which can rank high as a
work of art is a famous picture by Murillo, painted for the Church of
the Caridad, at Seville. In a dark, stormy night, Juan is seen
staggering--almost sinking--under the weight of a poor dying wretch,
whom he is carrying to his hospital. An angel sustains him on his way.
The dark form of the burden and the sober gray frock of the bearer are
dimly seen in the darkness, through which the glorious countenance of
the seraph, and his rich yellow drapery, tell like a burst of sunshine."
Of the five pictures removed by Marshal Soult, the "St. Elizabeth of
Hungary," called "El Tinoso," now in the Madrid Academy, is considered
one of Murillo's finest works. It represents her dressed in her royal
robes, washing the head of a leprous boy, while around her are beggars
and the ladies of her court.
"The St. Elizabeth," says John Hay, in his "Castilian Days," "is a
triumph of genius over a most terribly repulsive subject. The wounds and
sores of the beggars are painted with unshrinking fidelity, but every
vulgar detail is redeemed by the beauty and majesty of the whole. I
think in these pictures of Murillo (his Madonnas and others) the last
word of Spanish art was reached. There was no further progress possible
in life, even for him. 'Other heights in other lives, God willing.'"
Of Murillo's "Marys of the Conception, that fill the room with light and
majesty," Colonel Hay beautifully says: "They hang side by side, so
alike and yet so distinct in character. One is a woman in knowledge and
a goddess in purity; the other, absolute innocence, startled by the
stupendous revelation, and exalted by the vaguely comprehended glory of
the future. It is before this picture that the visitor always lingers
longest. The face is the purest expression of girlish loveliness
possible to art. (Supposed to be the face of his daughter, Francesca.)
The Virgin floats, up-borne by rosy clouds; flocks of pink cherubs
flutter at her feet, waving palm branches. The golden air is thick with
suggestions of dim, celestial faces, but nothing mars the imposing
solitude of the Queen of Heaven, shrined alone, throned in the luminous
azure. Surely no man ever understood or interpreted, like this grand
Andalusian, the power that the worship of woman exerts on the religions
of the world. All the passionate love that has been poured out in all
the ages at the feet of Ashtaroth and Artemis and Aphrodite and Freya
found visible form and color at last on that immortal canvas, where,
with his fervor of religion, and the full strength of his virile
devotion to beauty, he created, for the adoration of those who should
follow him, this type of the perfect feminine,--
"'Thee! standing loveliest in the open heaven!
Ave Maria! only heaven and Thee!'"
The story of St. Elizabeth is both touching and beautiful. The daughter
of Andreas II., King of Hungary, born in 1207, she was betrothed, in her
childhood, to Duke Louis of Thuringia. She early developed the most
generous and spiritual character, giving to the poor, praying much, even
at midnight, on the bare, cold earth, winning for herself the hatred of
a fashionable court and the adoration of her subjects. Various legends
are told of her.
"When Elizabeth was ministering to her poor at Eisenach," says Mrs.
Jameson, "she found a sick child cast out from among the others because
he was a leper, and so loathsome in his misery that none would touch him
or even go nigh him; but Elizabeth, moved with compassion, took him in
her arms, carried him up the steep ascent to the castle, and, while her
attendants fled at the spectacle, and her mother-in-law, Sophia, loaded
her with reproaches, she laid the sufferer in her own bed. Her husband
was then absent, but shortly afterwards his horn was heard to sound at
the gate. Then his mother, Sophia, ran out to meet him, saying, 'My son,
come hither! See with whom thy wife shares her bed!' And she led him up
to the chamber, telling him what had happened. This time, Louis was
filled with impatience and disgust; he rushed to the bed and snatched
away the coverlid; but behold! instead of the leper, there lay a radiant
infant, with the features of the New-born in Bethlehem; and while they
stood amazed, the vision smiled, and vanished from their sight.
"Elizabeth, in the absence of her husband, daily visited the poor, who
dwelt in the suburbs of Eisenach and in the huts of the neighboring
valleys. One day, during a severe winter, she left her castle with a
single attendant, carrying in the skirts of her robe a supply of bread,
meat, and eggs for a certain poor family; and, as she was descending the
frozen and slippery path, her husband, returning from the chase, met
her, bending under the weight of her charitable burden. 'What dost thou
here, my Elizabeth?' he said. 'Let us see what thou art carrying away?'
and she, confused and blushing to be so discovered, pressed her mantle
to her bosom; but he insisted, and, opening her robe, he beheld only red
and white roses, more beautiful and fragrant than any that grow on this
earth, even at summer-tide; and it was now the depth of winter!
"Then he was about to embrace his wife, but, looking in her face, he was
overawed by a supernatural glory, which seemed to emanate from every
feature, and he dared not touch her; he bade her go on her way and
fulfil her mission; but, taking from her lap one of the roses of
Paradise, he put it in his bosom, and continued to ascend the mountain
slowly, with his head declined, and pondering these things in his heart.
"In 1226, a terrible famine afflicted all Germany; but the country of
Thuringia suffered more than any other. Elizabeth distributed to the
poor all the corn in the royal granaries. Every day a certain quantity
of bread was baked, and she herself served it out to the people, who
thronged around the gates of the castle, sometimes to the number of nine
hundred. Uniting prudence with charity, she so arranged that each person
had his just share, and so husbanded her resources that they lasted
through the summer; and when harvest-time came round again, she sent
them into the fields, provided with scythes and sickles, and to every
man she gave a shirt and a pair of new shoes. But, as was usual, the
famine had been succeeded by a great plague and mortality, and the
indefatigable and inexhaustible charity of Elizabeth was again at hand.
"In the city of Eisenach, at the foot of the Wartburg, she founded an
hospital of twenty beds, for poor women only; and another, called the
Hospital of St. Anne, in which all the sick and poor who presented
themselves were received; and Elizabeth herself went from one to the
other, ministering to the wretched inmates with a cheerful countenance,
although the sights of misery and disease were often so painful and so
disgusting that the ladies who attended upon her turned away their
heads, and murmured and complained of the task assigned to them.
"She also founded a hospital especially for poor children. It is related
by an eye-witness that whenever she appeared among them they gathered
round her, crying 'Mutter! Mutter!' clinging to her robe and kissing her
hands. She, mother-like, spoke to them tenderly, washed and dressed
their ulcerated limbs, and even brought them little toys to amuse them.
In these charities, she not only exhausted the treasury, but she sold
her own robes and jewels, and pledged the jewels of the state. When the
landgrave (her husband) returned, the officers and councillors went out
to meet him, and, fearing his displeasure, they began to complain of
the manner in which Elizabeth, in their despite, had lavished the public
treasures. But Louis would not listen to them; he cut them short,
repeating, 'How is my dear wife? how are my children? are they well? Let
her give what she will, so long as she leaves me my castles of Eisenach,
Wartburg, and Naumburg!' Then he hurried to the gates, and Elizabeth met
him with her children, and threw herself into his arms, and kissed him a
thousand times, and said to him tenderly, 'See! I have given to the Lord
what is his, and he has preserved to us what is thine and mine!'"
Louis was soon after killed in the Crusades, and she and her children
were driven out of Thuringia by his brothers, Henry and Conrad. Later,
some of her possessions were restored to her. She spun wool to earn more
money to give away, and wore ragged clothes that she might help the
destitute. She died at twenty-four, singing hymns, her sweet voice
murmuring, "Silence!" at the last.
"No sooner had Elizabeth breathed her last breath than the people
surrounded her couch, tore away her robe, cut off her hair, even
mutilated her remains for relics. She was buried amid miracles and
lamentations, and four years after her death she was canonized by
Gregory IX."
Murillo's "Abraham receiving the Angels" and "The Prodigal's Return"
were purchased of Marshal Soult by the Duke of Sutherland, and are now
in Stafford House. "The Healing of the Paralytic" was purchased of
Marshal Soult for thirty-two thousand dollars, and is now in the
possession of Mr. Tomline of London. The head of the Christ is thought
to be Murillo's best representation of our Lord. "The soft violet hue,
so dear to Valencian art, of the Saviour's robe, is skilfully opposed to
the deep brown of St. Peter's mantle, a rich tint then and still made by
Andalusian painters from beef-bones." "The Release of St. Peter" is at
the Hermitage, in St. Petersburg.
Before the paintings for La Caridad were finished, Murillo was asked to
decorate the new Capuchin church. For three years he worked here, not
leaving the convent, it is said, for a single day. Such diligence is
most suggestive to those persons who expect to win success without
unremitting labor! Of the more than twenty pictures painted here by
Murillo, nine formed the _retablo_ of the high altar, and eight were on
the side altars. Seventeen of these are now in the Seville Museum.
The immense altar-piece, "The Virgin granting to St. Francis the Jubilee
of the Porciuncula," is now in the National Museum of Madrid. This was a
feast in honor of the Cavern of St. Francis of Assisi, in which he
received a visit from the Virgin and Child. Thirty-three beautiful
cherubs are showering the kneeling St. Francis with red and white roses,
blossoms from the briers with which he scourged himself. Over the high
altar were pictures of "Saints Justa and Rufina," "St. Anthony of
Padua," "St. John in the Desert," "St. Joseph," "St. Felix of
Cantalicio," the "Veronica," "Saints Leander and Bonaventura," and a gem
called "The Madonna of the Napkin."
Murillo had so endeared himself to one of the lay brethren of the
convent, a cook, that he begged some token of remembrance from the hand
of the great artist. As he had no canvas, Murillo took the napkin which
the cook had brought with his food, and, before nightfall, made a most
beautiful Virgin, and a Child so natural that it seems, says E. G.
Minor, in her life of Murillo, "as if it would spring from its mother's
arms. The coloring of this picture, of which innumerable copies and
engravings have been made, was never surpassed even by Murillo himself."
St. Veronica was a noble-hearted woman, who, seeing the Saviour pass her
door, on his way to Calvary, wiped the perspiration from his brow with
her handkerchief or veil. To her surprise and delight, she found an
image of the Lord's face upon it. She suffered martyrdom under Nero.
The great pictures on the side altars of the church illustrated "St.
Thomas of Villanueva," which the artist himself esteemed the best of all
his works; "St. Francis of Assisi, embracing the Crucified Redeemer,"
"St. Anthony of Padua and the Infant Christ"; the "Vision of St. Felix,"
the "Annunciation," the "Immaculate Conception," the "Nativity," and the
"Virgin with the Head of the Saviour on her Knee."
St. Thomas is represented as at the door of his cathedral, giving alms
to beggars. "In the year 1544," says Mrs. Jameson, "Charles V. showed
his respect for him by nominating him Archbishop of Valencia. He
accepted the dignity with the greatest reluctance. He arrived in
Valencia in an old black cassock, and a hat which he had worn for
twenty-one years; and as he had never in his life kept anything for
himself beyond what was necessary for his daily wants, he was so poor
that the canons of his cathedral thought proper to present him with four
thousand crowns for his outfit; he thanked them gratefully, and
immediately ordered the sum to be carried to the hospital for the sick
and poor; and from this time forth we find his life one series of
beneficent actions. He began by devoting two-thirds of the revenues of
his diocese to purposes of charity.
"He divided those who had a claim on him into six classes: first, the
bashful poor who had seen better days, and who were ashamed to beg;
secondly, the poor girls whose indigence and misery exposed them to
danger and temptation; in the third class were the poor debtors; in the
fourth, the poor orphans and foundlings; in the fifth, the sick, the
lame, and the infirm; lastly, for the poor strangers and travellers who
arrived in the city or passed through it, without knowledge where to lay
their heads, he had a great kitchen open at all hours of the day and
night, where every one who came was supplied with food, a night's rest,
and a small gratuity to assist him on his journey. 'There were few
churches or convents on the sunny side of the Sierra Morena without some
memorial picture of this holy man,' but the finest beyond all comparison
are those of Murillo."
The "St. Francis" represents Christ appearing to the saint in his grotto
on Mount Alvernus when he received the stigmata, wounds similar to those
of the Saviour in the Crucifixion.
In 1678, Murillo painted for the Hospital de los Venerables, at Seville,
an asylum for aged priests, "St. Peter Weeping," the "Virgin and Child
enthroned on Clouds," the portrait of his friend Don Justino Neve y
Yevenes, and the "Immaculate Conception," now in the Louvre, for which
the French government paid, in 1852, at the sale of Marshal Soult's
collection, over one hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars. The
beautiful Virgin, in her mantle of exquisite blue, over her white robe,
floats upward toward the sky, attended by angels, her feet treading upon
the crescent, showing her triumph over the other religions of the world.
It is a marvel of color and pure saintly expression.
Viardot says: "Murillo comes up, in every respect, to what our
imagination could hope or conceive. His earthly daylight is perfectly
natural and true; his heavenly day is full of radiance. We find in the
attitude of the saints, and the expression of their features, all that
the most ardent piety, all that the most passionate exaltation, can
feel or express in extreme surprise, delight, and adoration. As for the
visions, they appear with all the pomp of a celestial train, in which
are marvellously grouped the different spirits of the immortal
hierarchy, from the archangel with outspread wings to the bodiless heads
of the cherubim. It is in these scenes of supernatural poetry that the
pencil of Murillo, like the wand of an enchanter, produces marvels. If
in scenes taken from human life, he equals the greatest colorists, he is
alone in the imaginary scenes of eternal life. It might be said of the
two great Spanish masters, that Velasquez is the painter of the earth,
and Murillo of heaven."
His next work was for the Augustinian convent church, the "Madonna
appearing to St. Augustine," and "St. Augustine and the little Child on
the Seashore," who is trying to fill a hole in the sand with water
carried from the ocean in a shell.
About this time, he painted the exquisite "St. John with the Lamb," now
in the National Gallery, for which the government paid ten thousand
dollars; "Los Ninos de la Concha," the "Children of the Shell," where
the Child Jesus holds the shell, filled with water, to the lips of St.
John, now in the Prado Museum at Madrid; and "St. Ildefonso receiving
the Chasuble from the Virgin," also at Madrid. This saint defended the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception at a time when it had many
opponents. In token of her appreciation, the Virgin came to his
cathedral, seated herself upon his ivory pulpit, and, with the angels
about her, chanted a service from the Psalter. He bowed to the ground,
and the Virgin said, "Come hither, most faithful servant of God, and
receive this robe, which I have brought thee from the treasury of my
Son." He knelt before her, and she threw over him a cassock of heavenly
tissue. The ivory chair remained thereafter unoccupied, till the
presumptuous Archbishop Sisiberto sat in it, and died a miserable death
in consequence.
Besides all this work, Murillo's various "Beggar Boys" are known
wherever art is loved; one is in the Louvre, "El Piojoso"; several, in
the Pinakothek at Munich; the "Flower-Girl" and a "Boy with a Basket and
Dog," at the Hermitage; and others, in London and Madrid. The "Education
of the Virgin," Mary kneeling by the side of St. Anna, her mother, the
faces portraits, it is believed, of his wife and daughter, is in the
Royal Gallery at Madrid. Five large paintings from the life of Jacob,
"Isaac blessing Jacob," "Jacob's Dream," "Jacob and Laban's Sheep,"
"Laban searching for his Gods in the Tent of Rachel," and one other, are
in various galleries.
Murillo was now growing old. All the time which he could possibly spare
from his work he passed in devotion. He often visited the Church of
Santa Cruz, where he spent hours before the altar-piece, "The Descent
from the Cross," by Pedro Campana. When lingering late one night, he
was asked by the sacristan why he thus tarried. He replied: "I am
waiting till those men have brought the body of our blessed Lord down
the ladder."
His last picture, the "Marriage of St. Catharine," was begun in 1680, in
the Capuchin Church at Cadiz, when he was sixty-two years of age. He had
finished the centre group of the Madonna and Child and St. Catharine,
when he fell from the scaffold on which he was climbing to his work, and
fatally injured himself. Whether this accident occurred in the chapel at
Cadiz, or in his own studio, is not positively known, but he died soon
afterward, at Seville, April 3, 1682, in the arms of his friend Canon
Neve and his pupil Pedro Nunez de Villavicencio. His wife was dead, and
his daughter had become a nun six years previous, but his second son,
Gaspar, stood beside the bed of death.
He was buried with distinguished honors, the bier being carried by two
marquises and four knights, and followed by a great concourse of people.
At his own request, he was buried beneath his favorite picture, the
"Descent from the Cross." His grave was covered with a stone slab on
which were carved his name, a skeleton, and the words, "Vive moriturus,"
"Live as one who is about to die."
During the French occupation, the Church of Santa Cruz was destroyed,
and its site is now occupied by the Plaza Santa Cruz. A tablet was
placed in the adjacent wall in 1858, stating that Murillo was buried
there. A bronze statue of the painter has been erected by the city of
Seville, near the Provincial Museum.
More than five hundred of the works of Murillo are scattered through
Europe. Self-made, he left a name honored alike for great genius and
great beauty of character. Says Emelyn W. Washburn, in "Spanish
Masters," "We shall not err when we say that Murillo is the sweetest and
richest painter of his day.... He has a glowing fancy, an eye for all
beauty of nature and life, and a lofty mind and moral purpose. His magic
pencil writes the heart of his saints on the face; none better than he
can draw the pure brow of childhood; and, above all, his conceptions
suggest a mystery hidden beneath the outward coloring.
"His name recalls Spanish art in the noon of its glory. There is in that
series of great and small artists not one who has so won the heart of
all time; none depicts so much of that personal beauty which gives life
to the past. We approach Zurbaran with somewhat of awe; Velasquez is the
grand historical painter. But in Murillo we see the mingling of the two,
with a milder grace. In him, we see the sweet singer with the golden
harp strung always before him, the man with all the chords of his fine
nature touched by the Holy Ghost.
"There is, perhaps, no point where Murillo appears in more winning
beauty than in his relations with other painters. He shows the most
generous soul, the rarest gentleness, a heart where the struggles of
youth have only brought forth the richest fruits. We see the picture of
a man too great for little hates. His is a character shaped by the mild
spirit of Christ's religion....
"Murillo stands forth as a mind which most faithfully represents Spanish
genius, art, religion; who lived a Spaniard of the Spaniards in that
brilliant world; who wore the same long cloak and grave dignity as is
now met with in the narrow, dirty lanes of Seville; nay, more, who had a
living human heart, and who pondered as we now ponder the problems of
art and life; who taught a nation and an age."