MURILLO
The most popular artist of the Spanish School is unquestionably Murillo.
He was the idol of his contemporaries in Andalusia; most admired by
connoisseurs and public in the eighteenth century, and, although during
the nineteenth century artists and connoisseurs have extolled Velasquez
and more recently Goya and El Greco at his expense, to the popular taste
Murillo is still in the ascendant.
There must be a good reason both for the depreciation of Murillo on the
part of artists and for the continuing appreciation of the public;
therefore one must try to discover them impartially. For, while the
popular estimation of any particular artist at a given period is apt to
be wrong--perhaps more often wrong, than right--it scarcely can hold its
own through the chances and changes of over two hundred years without
having in it some considerable element of right. What then is the
abiding something in Murillo’s art which makes this perennial appeal?
For my own part, I believe that, if you can sum it up in a word, it is
the spirit of Youth.
One imagines Murillo (not without plenty of justification for the idea)
as a man who, in a psychological sense, never grew old; retaining to the
end the naiveté and simple faith of a child. He continues, therefore,
to appeal to adults who have kept something of their youth with them or
to those whose study of art has not passed beyond the stage of instinct.
For, just as it is possible for a man to have matured understanding and
appreciation of a work of art, and yet be like a child amid the
intricacies of an electric power-house, wondering, admiring, but without
capacity to estimate the value of this plant as compared with another;
so a man may be full of knowledge, even to the length of sophistication,
and still exhibit the naiveté and unreasoning appreciation of a child in
the presence of a work of art. Necessity or chance determined that he
should cultivate his higher mental powers in another direction; art is
to him only an occasional distraction; his feeling toward it is
regulated solely by his instinct. As he would say himself, “I know what
I like.”
To tell such a man that he is wrong would be not only cruel but false.
From his own standpoint he is not wrong; he is very much in the right,
if the end of art is the heightening of a man’s nature through
contemplation of the beautiful. This thing is beautiful to him, and
through the beauty he sees in it he finds his nature refreshed, purified
and enlarged. What more could you advise for him at that particular
stage of his artistic development? It is true to the standpoint of his
own instinct. Would you have him substitute your standpoint for his? Are
you sure that your own leads to any better results for you than his for
him? Anyhow, unless he changes his standpoint through convictions that
have grown into his mental consciousness and been endorsed by his
experience, his last state may be worse than the first. He was honest
and sincere before; now he may be only a glib repeater of borrowed
preferences.
* * * * *
Bartolomé Estéban Murillo was born in Seville in 1618, probably on the
first day of January. The official catalogue of the Prado begins its
reference to the artist’s career with the following significant words:
“When this great artist came into the world, his parents, Gaspar Estéban
Murillo and Maria Perez, were living in a humble house in the Calle de
las Tiendas. It was but three months since the Virgin Mary, in the
mystery of her Immaculate Conception, had been proclaimed the patroness
of the Dominions of Philip IV. Under such happy auspices was born the
_Painter of the Conceptions_.”
This dogma of the Conception, which for centuries had occupied the minds
of theologians and scholars and captivated the imagination of the
faithful, was nowhere held in greater honor than in Spain, and the
center of the cult was Seville. Meanwhile, the authority of the Church,
as expressed in Councils and Bulls, had maintained a neutral attitude
toward the question. When, however, at the end of 1617, Paul V, yielding
to the repeated urging of the Crown and Church of Spain, issued a Bull
which forbade teaching or preaching in opposition of the dogma, the joy
of the Spanish people was profound. Seville herself celebrated the glad
tidings in a frenzy of religious rejoicing. A magnificent ceremony was
performed in the Cathedral and amid the strains of choir and organ,
salvoes of artillery and a
[Illustration:
MIRACLE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES MURILLO
HOSPITAL DE LA CARIDAD, SEVILLE]
[Illustration:
MOSES STRIKING THE ROCK MURILLO
HOSPITAL DE LA CARIDAD, SEVILLE]
pæan of the bells of the cathedral and churches, Archbishop de Castro
swore to maintain and defend this peculiar tenet of his see. It was
followed by a splendid entertainment in the bull-ring, where in the
presence of enormous throngs the nobles appeared, accompanied by
magnificent retinues, and one in particular, Don Melchior de Alcázar,
attended by his dwarf and four gigantic negroes, performed prodigies of
valor and dexterity. It was recognised that a new era had commenced;
that the old dark days of inquisitorial rigor were passed and love and
gentleness were to reign henceforth. It was into this atmosphere of
sweet religious ecstasy that Murillo was born, destined to become the
artist who best succeeded in expressing it.
Murillo’s only teacher was his uncle, Juan de Castillo, who gave his
pupil a thorough grounding in drawing, though his own style could not do
much to help his pupil’s advance in painting. After a time Juan moved to
Cadiz and his nephew, without father or mother, was left to face life
alone. He gained a living by painting “bodegones,” or still-life
subjects, and pictures of saints, which he sold in the _feria_ or weekly
market. His ambition was to study in Rome and, as a first step, to visit
Madrid. Having saved a little money, he made his way on foot to the
capital and presented himself to his fellow townsman, Velasquez. The
latter received him kindly and obtained permission for the young man to
paint in the royal galleries. Here Murillo studied and copied the works
of Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck, Ribera and Velasquez himself, to such
purpose that the last-named advised him to go to Rome. But Murillo, who
had now been three years away from Seville, determined to return
thither. The same independent spirit which had enabled him to shift for
himself and to leave home and study in wider fields, now assured him
that he had gained what he needed without further travel. From the
various influences which he had experienced, he discovered a style for
himself. He returned to Seville without friends or influence, but
opportunity presented itself. The monks of the convent of S. Francis
wished their cloister decorated. Murillo applied to them for the
commission. They would have preferred a well known artist of the city,
but, having little money to offer, engaged the young, unknown painter.
Murillo spent three years on this work, and, when it was completed,
found himself the most famous painter in Seville. He had taken something
from the several styles of the artists he had studied and imprinted upon
it his own individuality. This expressed itself particularly in an
ability to give reality to his picturing of the story involved in the
legends of S. Francis. He had proved himself to be a great illustrator.
This term to-day perhaps involves a certain depreciatory significance.
Men are often illustrators because they cannot find a market for their
easel-pictures; or, having obtained a reputation as illustrators, are
ambitious to be painters. The fact is, that illustration to-day is
confined to books and magazines, and from the publisher’s point of view
is designed rather to attract attention to the text than to illuminate
it. But in Murillo’s day, as in Raphael’s, illustration was a noble and
honored art, the readiest and most efficient way of bringing the sacred
truth home to the minds of the unlettered masses, and permitted so grand
a scope, that it was also a decoration to monumental buildings. Thus the
value of an illustration at that date, while it incidentally might be
decorative, depended primarily on the appeal which it made to the hearts
and understandings of the people. Murillo was a sincere Catholic; he
could feel his subject in accordance with the Church’s teaching, and
moreover he had the gift of telling the story in the vernacular;
depicting it in familiar guise and investing it with those touches of
everyday life that pique and hold the interest of the simplest mind.
To be indifferent to the genius and value of such a gift is to admit
oneself a careless student of human nature. It is either that we refuse
to be interested in what interests the masses, or that we underrate the
virtue of the latter being thus interested. To-day, in our modern
experience, there are thousands of illustrators; but if one looks back,
say, twenty years, how many are there who have been leaders, in the
sense that they have caught the spirit of the age for the first time and
given it an expression which the educated and unlearned alike recognise
as something vital? This is the point. For the thousands who can
perpetuate a tradition, imitate somebody else, or carry on the accepted
convention, there will be found but one or two who can synthetise the
time-spirit into a new expression. And for the worth-while of doing
this? I repeat that, to-day, illustration is mainly a method of amusing
vacant minds. But it was not so in the seventeenth century, any more
than during the early and the great days of the Renaissance. It was
something that influenced the lives of millions in their attitude to
what, then at least, was of supreme moment, religion. Therefore, to
estimate the genius and value of Murillo’s gift of illustration we must
not judge it from the standpoint of to-day, but in the light of the
needs and desires of his contemporaries. Then we shall realise that what
Murillo did for the simple, religious folk of Seville is akin to
Raphael’s contribution to the mingled Humanistic and Christian needs of
Rome. Both were great illustrators, whose subject matter was religion,
and who told their story in the medium that appealed to the sympathy and
understanding of the largest number of people of their day. But the very
freedom from Humanistic influence which characterised Murillo’s art
encreased its value to the people of Seville. It was essentially Spanish
in its naturalism and specifically Andalusian in its sentiment.
* * * * *
Murillo’s method of painting has been described as exhibiting three
styles--cold, warm and vaporous. According to this arrangement, the
first style (_estilo frio_) is distinguished by cold coloring and dark
shadows; the second (_estilo calido_) by warmth of coloring, stronger
contrasts of luminous light and shade, and by increased plasticity of
form; the third, (_estilo vaporoso_) by the vaporous or misty effects of
atmosphere, enveloping the whole or part of the composition. But while
his works show this variety of method, they cannot be distributed into
periods, definitely characterised by one or another style. Nor will it
repay the student to try to docket the different pictures according to
any such pigeon-hole
[Illustration:
SS. JUSTA AND RUFINA MURILLO
PROVINCIAL MUSEUM, SEVILLE]
system of division. He will rather become aware that, as Murillo
attained to facility and confidence in his own way of rendering his
intentions, he perfected his pictorial representation both of the
naturalistic motive and of the spiritualised conception, which in whole
or in part for the time being occupied his imagination. In some pictures
you find the naturalistic motive either predominating or in complete
control; in others it is combined with the spiritualised motive; while
again, particularly in the _Conceptions_, the spiritualised intention is
exclusively apparent. Whether it satisfies your own spiritual sense is
another matter.
Nor can these varieties of motive be assigned to special periods of
Murillo’s career. For example, after he had established his reputation
as a painter of _Conceptions_, he executed the series of works for the
Hospital de La Caridad, in Seville. Two of these are produced on page
150. They were selected because they redounded to the reputation of
Murillo in his lifetime, and yet exhibit a weakness which more or less
is evident in all his works of illustration.
Neither the _Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes_, nor _Moses Striking the
Rock_, contains any spiritual suggestion; for to the modern imagination
at least the figure of Christ in the one and those of Moses and Aaron in
the other seem to be invested only with a little symbolical distinction.
Further, even the significance of the events is not suggested. If you
take away the Christ, whose importance in the composition is already
belittled by the group of women on the right, is there anything in the
action of the figures and the expression of their faces to indicate
that they are witnesses of a miracle? The scene becomes nothing more
than a huge picnic, conducted on an absurdly meagre commissariat. So
too, in _Striking the Rock_--where is the hint of the agony of thirst or
of high-wrought emotion at the miraculous deliverance? But for the two
central figures, whose impressiveness, such as it is, is confined to
themselves, the incident might be simply that of a party of people
gathered about a spring. To myself a very suggestive indication of the
shallowness and insincerity of the whole conception is the introduction
of the small boy on the sleek plump horse. It is a mere studio device
for getting a spot on which to concentrate the light and for lifting one
figure above the line of the others.
Another example of this series of Hospital subjects is the very famous
_S. Elizabeth of Hungary_, now in the Prado. The scene is being enacted
in the shadowed arcade of an imposing classical building. The saintly
Queen, attended by two young ladies, charmingly attired, is washing the
scalp of an urchin, who leans over a silver basin. A beggar sits on the
ground removing a bandage from a festering sore, and a boy, with an
expression on his face of exasperated distress, scratches his head and
chest. Meanwhile an old woman sits looking up in worshipful gratitude at
the face of the queen, who possibly returns her gaze. For she is turning
her head away from the business in which she is engaged, as well as she
may, since the head she is bathing shows a disgusting sore. Perhaps you
may say that such details are incidental to a clinic, and may quote the
example of Rembrandt’s _Clinic of Dr. Tulp_. But the latter is frankly
a naturalistic picture in which the cadaver forms the explanation and
focus of the group of eager, intellectual heads, absorbed in the
instruction of the master-surgeon. But Murillo’s is an academically
disposed composition, involving splendid classical accessories. It is,
in the manner of its form, idealised according to the Italian tradition,
while in its details grossly naturalistic. Yet Théophile Gautier, moved
to a characteristic burst of sentiment, exclaims--“In his picture of S.
Elizabeth Murillo takes us into the most thorough-going reality. Instead
of angels we are here shown lepers. But Christian art, like Christian
charity, feels no disgust at such a spectacle. Everything which it
touches becomes pure, elevated and ennobled, and from this revolting
theme Murillo has created a masterpiece.” This begs the question which
still remains:--Is the reality in this case so rendered, that it becomes
“pure, elevated and ennobled”? The answer will depend upon the
individual student’s temperament and intellectual attitude.
This picture, indeed, and many others in the Prado arouse a suspicion
which becomes more pronounced, when we visit the Museum and the Church
of the Hospital de La Caridad in Seville, that, after all, Murillo was
not so great a naturalist as he is credited with being. His Street
urchins, such as appear in the National Gallery, Dulwich Gallery and the
Munich Pinakothek are vigorous transcripts of nature, racy with
Sevillian character; but in the _Holy Family_, called _Pajarito_ (little
bird) of the Prado, one discovers already a weakening of the
naturalistic grip. The types are local, and the scene, as the mother
stops in the winding of her thread to watch the child playing with a
dog, while the father holds him tenderly, is such as might be enacted in
any happy home of the people. But why the voluminous yellow mantle
spread in graceful folds over Joseph’s knees? It is a recollection of
Raphael that has inspired this solecism in the everyday naturalness of
the scene. Similarly, in one picture after another of Murillo’s you can
find the realities of the scene sacrificed to the picture-making devices
learned from the Italians. Frequently, as in the _Vision of S. Antony of
Padua_, and corresponding subjects, the miraculous nature of the
incident gives a plausibility to these formal designs, which I venture
to believe is lacking in the _S. Elizabeth_, _Loaves and Fishes_ and
_Striking the Rock_.
Nor is much of the nobility of the Italian method reproduced in
Murillo’s use of it. Too frequently its stateliness is invaded by a
homeliness which borders on the commonplace. One finds little or nothing
of the aristocrat in Murillo’s equipment. He views his subject with the
naiveté of an untutored mind and represents it with a simple disregard
of anything that might lift it above the commonplace. And this is
practically as true of his technique as of his mental approach. There
are beautiful passages of color scattered through his works; fine
rendering of textures, and precious _morceaux_ of still-life. But his
color-schemes are regulated by temperament rather than by knowledge and
calculation; his brush-work is rarely distinguished and his chiaroscuro
frequently has grown blackened with time. It would be impossible to view
one of his acknowledged masterpieces beside even a work of secondary
interest by Velasquez, without realising at once the hopelessly
unbridgeable gulf both of mentality and execution that separates them.
In fact, it is not until one comes to his _Conceptions_, that Murillo
acquires distinction. In these he shows an originality of idea, to which
he has moulded for himself a suitable technique. He has learned to
preserve the plasticity of form and yet invest it with a suggestion of
being impalpable, and also buoyant, so that it floats of its own
lightness. The arrangement of the subject, even to the colors, was
prescribed by the Church; being founded upon the vision, recorded in
Revelation XII. 1. “And there appeared a great wonder in Heaven; a woman
clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a
crown of twelve stars.” It is Murillo’s triumph that he dematerialized
the concrete suggestion; created about the figure the luminousness of
unearthly light and, while he took for his model a girl of the people,
invested herself and her angelic surroundings with the imagined reality
of a vision. This, it is needless to add, represents a triumph of
technique. In these subjects Murillo proved himself a superior and
original painter. As to the quality of feeling expressed in them
opinions may differ; but it can scarcely be questioned that it is
emotional rather than spiritual. There is nothing in it of soul ecstasy,
as in El Greco’s visions; it is the sweet, rapturous sentiment of the
warm-blooded, emotional South. The _Conceptions_, in fact, are the most
characteristic product of the Andalusian School and the highest
achievement of Murillo.
In conclusion let me quote the observations of the French critic, C. E.
Beulé, concerning that portrait of Murillo’s which he painted of himself
when he was in the flush of youth with all his possibilities before him.
“We find him brilliant, ardent, fresh-colored, the warm blood flowing
close under his skin; his eyes black, penetrating, full of fire and
fuller still of passion; his forehead high, and modeled with those
slight bosses which show a quick but rather feminine intelligence; the
lower part of his face (as is frequently the case with his countrymen)
less finely cut, and marred by a coarse mouth and the heavy outline of
the chin. The total impression is that of a nature in which ardor serves
instead of force, a facile but superficial rather than profound
intelligence, and, as a prime trait, highly mundane and sensual. Are not
these the very qualities we find written in his works?”
Murillo’s end was brought about by a fall from a scaffold. He lingered
for a short time, spending his days in contemplation of Campaña’s
_Descent from the Cross_ in the Church of Santa Cruz. He died on the
third of April, 1682, and was buried, in accordance with his request,
beneath this picture.