THE MELON EATERS
Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1618-1682)
hen the Spanish artist Murillo was a young painter he was very poor and hardly knew where to get enough to eat. He would go to the market-place and set up his easel and rapidly paint the scenes around him. The people who came to the market to buy and sell saw these pictures and bought them for a mere pittance.
Often beggar boys, who were everywhere in the market snatching fruits and other eatables from the stalls, would pose for him as they hid in some corner to eat their stolen dainties. These beggar-boy pictures that Murillo sold for a song to keep his soul and body together began to attract attention until finally they were looked upon as the greatest pictures Murillo ever painted. People outside of Spain, Murillo's native country, bought them until to-day scarcely a beggar-boy picture of his is found in Spain.
This picture of "The Melon Eaters" is known far and wide as a great masterpiece, and yet the boys were little rag-a-muffins, the pests of the market people. Murillo knew the joys and sorrows of those boys because he too at that time was very poor and hungry and no one was giving him a helping hand. Do you suppose that when he was famous as a painter he ever saw those boys? I think so, for he was greatly beloved by his townspeople of Seville. They probably came to his studio many times. Murillo painted many religious pictures for the churches of Seville.
Courtesy of Pratt Institute
Fig. 17. The Melon Eaters. Murillo. Pinakothek, Munich
[Please click here for a modern color image]
![[Please click here for a modern color image]](#697048112262924874_image_035_1.jpg.id-630675980378424516.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}