(From the Dulwich Gallery)
The Virgin sits enthroned, with the Holy Child on her knee and
attendant cherubs at her feet. Her expression is full of sadness. The
composition is admirably thought out and the colouring effective.
[Illustration: PLATE IV.--MADONNA OF THE ROSARY]
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He was still poor, and his poverty induced him to accept an ill-paid
commission from the fathers of the Franciscan convent for eleven
pictures. Fresh from the long course of study in Madrid, conscious
that this his first chance might be his last if he did not do his best,
he set to work and produced a series that roused the city to
enthusiasm. Literally, he woke one morning to find himself famous.
The Franciscan convent was destroyed by fire in 1810, but the pictures
were not lost, for Marshal Soult had carried off ten out of eleven, and
the other had passed into the gallery of a Spanish grandee on its way
to this country. The French invaders of Spain were connoisseurs as
well as soldiers, and in consideration of their _flair_ we may at this
time of day overlook the shortcomings in their ethical code. Murillo
had made the Franciscan convent famous; the Franciscans had put their
painter beyond the reach of monetary trouble and had settled for him
the lines his talent was to follow. The painter of a picture, like the
writer of a book or a play, must pay this one tribute to success; he
must do the work that the public looks for. Should he venture to
discover himself in other directions his early patrons will turn and
rend him. Happily the whole trend of this artistic talent was in the
direction of sacred picture painting, and in the years that follow we
find little else from his hand save a few portraits and a landscape or
two of minor importance.
It may occur to the reader to ask what was the special quality of
Murillo's work that made so prompt an appeal to his countrymen, and the
answer is not far to seek. Hitherto sacred subjects had been dealt
with in most unattractive fashion. Art, the handmaiden of the Church,
had delighted in the presentation of ascetic figures as far removed
from struggling humanity as the heavens are above the earth. Saints
and martyrs looking as though they were newly escaped from the grip of
the Inquisition were to be met with on every side; the virtues, the
kindliness, and even the humanity of the lives of saints and devotees
altogether were ignored. Murillo peopled his canvas with an entirely
new class of people, as human and as fascinating as the Sevillians
themselves. On Murillo's canvases his fellow-countrymen saw no more
long-drawn agonies of martyrdom, but gracious Madonnas and delightful
Children, and Saints who had not been soured in the pursuit of
righteousness. It was a revelation to Andalusia this strange new view
of holiness, this mingling of the heavens with the earth, this
insistence upon a common bond that united the aureoled saint with the
sick beggar to whom he gave alms. Then, too, the rich almost sensuous
colouring of the new work was a quality hitherto unknown to Seville,
although we may wonder why some of the Spaniards from other cities, who
may have been warm colourists, had not been attracted to sun-loving
Seville, where they could have created an immediate market for work
that responded to the unvarying humour of the people.
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