(From the Wallace Collection)
This is a panel-picture of considerable merit, full of charm and very
sincerely felt. As is customary with Murillo, the grouping is better
than the colouring, which has a certain tendency to crudity, not
altogether restrained by the limits of the canvas.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN]
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Murillo must have loved little children; he is never so happy and free
from his besetting sin of posing figures stiffly as when he turns for
inspiration to the little ones. We have several examples of this
branch of his art in and round London. The National Gallery holds the
"Drinking Boy," while Dulwich has several groups of beggar children and
the delightful "Flower Girl." One may remark in passing that it is a
thousand pities that the beauties of the Dulwich Collection are so
little known to the general body of picture lovers. It can be reached
on foot in two hours from the Bank of England, and is served by bus and
train. Nearly all the Murillos are early ones, and the Velazquez
(Philip IV.) is not altogether above suspicion, but the collection is a
remarkable one, and sadly neglected by the public. It has often been
urged against the Murillo children at Dulwich that they exhibit the
painter's sin of theatrical posing in a very glaring light, but surely
those who make this charge have overlooked the extraordinary
self-consciousness of the Spanish beggar be he old or young. For once
Murillo is justified. Among the beggars of Spain, rags that only hold
together by grace of Providence are worn as though they were purple and
fine linen; and the writer has seen the outcast, whose only possession
beyond his rags was the cigarette that had just been given him, swagger
along a dusty country high-road as though he were a grandee in electric
motor passing through the ranks of his friends in the Park by the Prado
when Madrid is in full season. There is much justification for the
pose of the beggar children, the serious blame that attaches to the
painter is for treating his divinities and saints as though they were
no whit better than the exquisites of Sierpes or the beggars of the
Macarena. Even his lambs are profoundly conscious that they are
sitting for their portrait, and have made up their mind that if they
are spared to grow up and become sheep they will be worthy of their
pastures. The painter was not justified in this, although we must
never forget, if we would do him justice, that the Church kept a
watchful eye on everything he did, and spoke to him with an authority
he would have been the last to disregard. The Catholic Church is
essentially spectacular in its worship, and surely the high dignitaries
of the seventeenth-century Church would never have suffered Murillo to
go unrebuked had he presented his figures in simpler pose and without
any ostentation in their attitude. As things were he had brought the
Godhead dangerously close to earth.
Our entire conception of the province of art has altered beyond
recognition since Murillo lived and died. The modern artist, whether
he work with paint or words, keeps his morality and his art distinct
from one another. Art, he says, is not concerned with a rule of life,
it is essentially non-moral. Murillo, on the other hand, accepted the
theory that art is the handmaiden of the Church, that only the handling
of the chosen picture is the affair of the painter. Where faith was
concerned he was not far removed from Beato Angelico, and those who
like to compare the products of an age in different countries, may
remember that Carlo Dolci, the Florentine painter of cardinal virtues,
was born about the same time as Murillo. The Church did for him in
Italy what it did for Murillo in Spain, but the latter artist was made
of sterner stuff, and had infinitely more brains and talent than his
Florentine contemporary. But between Carlo Dolci's best work and
Murillo's worst, there is a measure of resemblance that justifies one
in remembering that they were born within a year of each other, and
that both passed in the penultimate decade of the seventeenth century.
In conclusion it may be said for Murillo that, quite apart from his
merits as a man, he may claim the admiration of the unbiassed critic of
all time for some of his finest pictures. There were occasions when he
painted figures that neither Velazquez nor Titian would have felt
ashamed to own, there were times when his saints and Redeemer were
expressed with exquisite dignity and restraint. Judged by the light of
modern criticism, he was uneven in his work, but that criticism has no
reason to believe that its arguments would have conveyed anything to
Murillo himself. His entire output suggests that he knew what his
message was to be, and delivered it as he received it. We can find
pictures in which the proportions of the figures are bad, and the
outlines are hard and unpleasing, there are a few in which the colour
scheme is poor and ineffective. But if against his worst moments we
are content to put his best, the artist has not much to fear. Apart
from the value of his labours on purely artistic grounds, let us
remember that he brought the Madonna and Infant Christ from the Heaven
in which they had been inaccessible to the rank and file of Spain, to
the earth where they might be seen and known, by those who walk in
darkness.