Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

Spanish artist

• Born: January 1, 1618 (baptized)
• Birthplace: Seville, Spain
• Died: March 28, 1682
• Place of death: Seville, Spain

Murillo, a major Spanish artist known for his religious paintings, portraits, and genre scenes, was extremely prolific, producing about five hundred paintings. Although some judge his religious paintings as overly pious and sweet, his artworks were perfectly in tune with the century’s taste and demonstrate the strong links between art and social context in early modern Spain.

Early Life

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (bahr-toh-loh-MAY ay-STAY-vahn muh-REE-yoh) was born into a well-off family in Seville. His father, Gaspar Esteban, was a barber-surgeon, and his mother, María Pérez, was a housewife. With the deaths of his parents in 1627 and 1628, respectively, Murillo was left an orphan and was raised by his brother-in-law. Murillo’s artistic training began shortly thereafter, probably around 1630, when he was about age twelve or thirteen. He studied with Juan del Castillo, an artist little known in modern times but one whose important connections to the Sevillian art scene benefited his talented student.

In 1633, at age fifteen, Murillo planned to travel to the Americas, following other family members who had emigrated there, but he seems never to have made the trip. In 1645, at the age of twenty-eight, he married Beatriz Cabrera y Villalobos, with whom he had eleven children in the twenty years they were married. Beatriz died in 1665. The artist’s Self-Portrait of 1670, which bears the inscription “for my children” (in Latin), provides a tantalizing glimpse of Murillo’s personal life.

Life’s Work

Murillo received his first major commission in 1645, a series of eleven paintings on the lives of Franciscan saints, for the friary of San Francisco in Seville. These early works demonstrate the Baroque realist style current at the time as practiced by such Sevillian artists as Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán . His most famous work from his first period (1645-1657) is the Holy Family of the Little Bird , painted before 1650. It depicts a scene of Christ’s childhood, a favorite theme of the Spanish Baroque. The Madonna, working at her needlework, looks to the main scene of Saint Joseph tending the Christ Child and family dog. The interpretation of the scene, with its emphasis on Saint Joseph, is typically Spanish. The artist’s representational strategies (earth tone colors, Tenebrist lighting, carefully described still-life elements, broad drapery, and a strong sculptural sense) attempt to re-create the effects of reality. Hints of Murillo’s soon-to-come style change, though, can be detected in the idealization of the figures of Christ and the Madonna.

In the late 1650’s, Murillo dramatically transformed his style, demonstrating his knowledge of changing artistic taste in Madrid and other European centers. His new approach can be appreciated in such paintings as The Immaculate Conception of the Escorial (c. 1660-1665). The subject represents one of the artist’s best-loved themes, a visualization of the doctrine that the Virgin Mary was conceived in the womb of her mother, Saint Anne, without original sin. This belief, which was not officially declared dogma by the Catholic Church until 1854, enjoyed great popularity in seventeenth century Seville.

Murillo’s approach to the subject was novel. By reducing the number of iconographic symbols seen in previous artists’ renditions of the theme, he focused instead on Mary’s chaste beauty as emblematic of her purity. His new, more idealized style perfectly matched his innovative interpretation. The delicate figure of Mary, with eyes raised to heaven, floats in a golden celestial ambient, abstracted from all earthly references. His brushwork has changed dramatically, the thickly applied oil paints typical of Baroque realism replaced by evanescent veils of pigment. As a result, the painted forms seem to dissolve in an all-encompassing vaporous atmosphere. Only the most essential iconographic symbols remain, drawn from the Song of Songs and the Book of Revelation: the rose without thorns; the spotless mirror; the crescent moon, an ancient symbol of chastity; and the serpent, symbol of heresy and sin.

The dramatic changes seen in his paintings in his second period (1657-1665) define the High Baroque style in Spanish painting. The shift has been attributed to Murillo’s exposure to new artistic influences. In 1655-1656, the artist Francisco Herrera, the Younger, with whom Murillo served as copresident of the Seville Academy, returned to Seville from Madrid, bringing with him knowledge of new High Baroque practices. In 1658, Murillo made a trip to Madrid, where he viewed at first hand the works in the Spanish royal collection, and in particular the paintings of the Flemish Dynamic Baroque artists Sir Anthony van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens , as well as the paintings of the Venetian school. Their greater idealization, painterliness, and energetic compositions served as sources of inspiration for Murillo’s High Baroque manner.

Murillo’s stylistic transformation can also be linked to changing political and social conditions in Spain. His move from Baroque realism to a more idealized style also parallels a more general shift in European painting, related to Catholic Church politics. Beginning as early as the 1620’s in Italy, artists began to abandon Baroque realism, which was associated with the austerities of the Catholic Reformation. In response to the Church’s declaration of triumph against Protestantism, a period known as the Catholic Restoration, artists began producing artworks that were not only didactic but also aesthetic in nature. In addition, extreme economic and social problems in Spain facilitated Murillo’s shift to a more pleasing, idealized style. In 1649 and 1650, the bubonic plague struck the city of Seville, killing half of its population within eight weeks. Crop failures followed, leading to increased poverty, starvation, and social unrest. Many have suggested that Murillo changed his style to please his viewers, offering in his pictures a taste of heaven to console them amid hard times.

Murillo’s late works demonstrate his continued commitment to graceful idealization and a delicate, pictorial style. His Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of around 1678 is typical. Compared to earlier versions of the theme, the spiral composition is now more dynamic, and the increased numbers of angels inhabiting the picture space add greater complexity. The pictorial effects are even richer and softer, leading some art historians to characterize his last style period, which dates from 1665 to 1682, as his “vaporous style.” During his final years, Murillo produced a great number of genre pictures, mainly idealized depictions of beggar children. Although possibly related to similar representations of poverty in picaresque literature, one wonders how patrons reconciled these romanticized views with the reality of homeless children begging for food on the city’s streets. Murillo died in 1682 while painting his final work, The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine , for the Capuchin Church in Cádiz, Spain, after falling from the scaffolding.

Significance

Murillo was the most important Spanish artist of the second half of the seventeenth century. Responsible for the spread of a new, more idealized style, his prolific output demonstrates that he was attuned to the latest developments in European Baroque art. His works inspired many later imitators in Spain and the Americas, and they influenced such painters as Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds in England and Jean-Baptiste Greuze in France. His pious, sweet religious paintings remain popular to this day, reproduced throughout the world as prayer cards for Catholic devotions.

In addition to being a masterful technician of oil painting technique, he was also a talented draftsman. About one hundred drawings by Murillo are extant, more than any other seventeenth century Spanish artist.

Bibliography

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 1617-1682. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1982-1983. The catalog of a seminal exhibition that brought Murillo to public attention. The text, in both English and Spanish, includes important essays on the artist’s life and works.

Brown, Jonathan. Painting in Spain, 1500-1700. Pelican History of Art. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991. This textbook, the best general survey of Spanish painting, includes two chapters that treat Murillo’s artworks, situating them within the Sevillian tradition.

Cherry, Peter, and Xanthe Brooke. Murillo: Scenes of Childhood. London: Merrell, 2001. An important study of Murillo’s genre scenes, most of which depict beggar children, that provides new patronage information. Includes an informative essay on the artistic and historical contexts of these paintings’ production.

Stratton-Pruitt, Suzanne L. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682): Paintings from American Collections. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002. The catalog of an exhibition of the artist’s works housed in U.S. collections. Includes several useful essays, including one detailing the artist’s life and works, a study of his devotional paintings, and analysis of his technique.