Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Murillo He was born in Seville Between 1617 and 1618, the exact date is uncertain, and he died in 1682 at the age of 65. He adopted his mother's surname. His father was a barber-surgeon and his mother came from a family of silversmiths.
Murillo belongs to the next generation of Diego Velázquez. The differences between him and Velázquez are as follows: He never visited Italy. Furthermore, he resigned from the Court (citing health problems). And finally, he did not enjoy the life of a painter without commissions, as Velázquez did.
Our artist, however He became familiar with foreign art through the paintings in the churches and engravings that arrived at the port of Seville from other parts of Europe, destined for the Andalusian capital or America.
Death claimed his family. So he eased his loneliness with the teaching of drawingHe founded the Academy of Painting in 1660.
The same society rewarded him with fame for the beauty of their purest forms, the tenderness of the Child Jesus, and the delicacy of their Motherhoods.
The main themes in Murillo's painting
The Holy Childhood
Appreciated for his ability to represent traditional themes from a innovative mode. He reworks images based on Christian iconography by adding naturalistic features taken from reality.
His observational skills Along with his ability to capture emotions, he manages to move the viewer. This trait, highly valued in the 18th and 19th centuries, led to Murillo's work arousing special interest. effectiveness in communicating affection It manifests itself in a unique way in the devotional painting. The most famous examples of this renewal are the representations of the childhood of Jesus and Saint John the Baptist, as well as that of the Virgin with the Child sometimes accompanied by a saint.
A family from Nazareth
The 17th-century viewer felt a special empathy towards religious matters such as the Holy Family. In Murillo's paintings, sacred figures are depicted as approachable, frankly showing...our feelings.
To the descriptive naturalism In addition to the everyday objects that are integrated into this scene, there is one intense emotion which lends a sense of closeness to the subject matter represented.
Through emotion, their earthly appearance is transformed into figure of high spirituality, often made for private individuals. devotional images who commune privately and intimately with the individual without the mediation of the Church.
The presence of the figure of Saint Joseph It is a constant in the painter's production, being a sacred character of growing devotion at the time. They are representations of great affection, both when he appears accompanied by the Child Jesus and when he does so as part of the Holy Family.
Images that are based on a refined use of color and one remarkable freedom of brushstroke and drawing.
Glory on Earth
Murillo brings a new way of to represent traditional themes with originality, Reinterpreting and updating the religious iconography of the period, in many cases starting from old formulas but giving them a renewed meaning. One of these techniques is the incorporation of a group of angels or cherubs around the main subject, which leads the viewer to place the scene in an environment of glory that transcends any context of time and space. Since the Renaissance, this type of painting has been divided into two realms: earthly and celestial, which Murillo integrates into a single composition, thus reworking a practical and systematic approach in Sevillian painting up to the mid-17th century.
In the representations of Glory, he combines elements of everyday life, easily recognizable, with those of the divinity, interpreted through a successful use of lighting resources.
The Immaculate Conception
The Immaculate Conception is the most popular topic of all those the painter would create. The profound devotion Immaculate Conception which took root in Seville in the 17th century was reflected in numerous and delicate representations with versions as well known as those of Pacheco, Velázquez and Zurbarán in painting or that of Martínez Montañés in sculpture.
Murillo, who frequently painted the Immaculate Conception, culminated the development of her image in the Sevillian school. The sublime beauty of Mary combined with themoving spirituality that express their gestures, so the presence of countless angels of iidealized naturalism, definitively consolidate the prototype of this iconography.
The admiration caused by these images that reached widespread distribution in Spain and later abroad, turning this Marian figure into a model to follow in subsequent devotional painting, universally identified with the Sevillian master who came to be known as the painter of the Immaculate Conception.
Compassion
Meditation on the passion and death of Christ They have been practically used by the Christian faithful of the first centuries and recommended by the Church and by numerous saints as sources for repentance and conversion, a practice known as the Imitatio Christi.
The importance of this devotion This is reflected in Murillo's pictorial trajectory, which presents these images lacking excessive drama, but full of moving expressiveness.
His depictions of Ecce Homo and of Our Lady of Sorrows They will achieve widespread popularity through the various versions they produce in diverse formats, many of which have been copied and imitated countless times.
Murillo resorts to previous models of European origin, which, as with other iconographic themes, he reinterprets with great restraint and with the intimate luminosity that these passion themes require according to his particular vision of art.
Penance
The representations of the penitent saints Conceived as models for the faithful, they provide a fitting complement to their suffering Christs, with whom they share similar pathos. As with images of Jesus humiliated by the torments of the flagellation, these figures that They invite intimate contemplation They drift away from their luminous celestial visions filled with beautiful child angels.
For this type of painting, he used in his early decades a marked naturalism of intense contrasts of light and shadow, as is the case of the Penitent Magdalene.
In contrast, we find the soft and delicate luminosity which he sometimes resorts to when seeking tenebrist effects in works from his later period. We can appreciate this resource both in the Christ gathering his garments as in the figures of apostles, witnesses and, in some cases, chroniclers of the Passion.
Storyteller
Murillo's artistic ability This is also evident in the way he approaches narrative compositions, in which he must take into consideration episode description, generally with numerous characters and more complex special studies.
Although for this type of work, normally He sought inspiration in European engraving., solves the creative challenge with competence and without falling into the servile use of models.
The influence of its foreign clients is possibly behind some of these themes, as in The Wedding at Cana, novel in the Seville area and made with a new aesthetic, in accordance with the painting of other schools.
In the approach to this type of composition, his style evolved from the more static, shallow works of his early years to paintings of great luminosity and dynamism in his final stage, such as the Martyrdom of Saint Andrew.
Genre painting
Murillo is not oblivious to the world around him. The great interpreter of the main sacred themes of Baroque Seville, who created models of devotion such as the Virgin with Child, the Immaculate Conceptions, the Ecce Homo, shows a profound sensitivity and with the clear-eyed perspective with which he approaches religious matters, It also reflects the harsh social reality of its time..
This exceptional collection of canvases, unique in the history of European Baroque art, is a a moving look at the world of poverty and misery, in which the artist, endowed with a great and profound dignity of marginalized characters.
Murillo is the Spanish painter of his time who devoted the most effort to genre painting because influence of its clientele from the Netherlands. He interprets this secular theme, more widespread in Italy and Northern Europe, in a highly innovative and personal way. In it, he reaches unprecedented levels of quality, which will be the seed of the nascent market for his work.
The portrait
In Murillo's work, the lesser-known facet It is probably the portrait. The overwhelming presence of his more elaborate iconographic themes, both religious and secular, has overshadowed his of great importance as a portraitist in Spanish Baroque painting.
Just as his beggar children are a reflection of the working classes of his hometown, so too are his illustrious subjects—nobles, clergymen, and merchants., They bring us closer to the dominant classes of complex society of 17th-century Seville.
These large-scale representations typological variety and symbolic content They display a personal originality of various influences such as the Flemish painting that demonstrates Murillo's knowledge of European painting of his time and shows how his obstinacy in remaining settled in his city did not isolate him from the change in the prevailing artistic currents in the Madrid Court and the rest of the continent.
