“THE ANGELS’ KITCHEN”
Yet another deservedly famous work by Murillo, removed from a Franciscan convent at Seville by the insatiable greed of Marshal Soult, is the now extensively restored large picture known as The Miracle of San Diego, or The Angels’ Kitchen (No. 1716). The composition is divided by two large figures of angels into two halves. On the left two knights of Calatrava are shown in by a Franciscan brother and behold St. Diego in prayer miraculously raised into the air and surrounded by a flood of light. On the right the angels are occupied with the preparation of the repast for which the Saint has sent his prayer to the Virgin. A Franciscan is watching the scene from the distance with a gesture of amazement. Here again the real and the supernatural are blended with unaffected naïveté, the unity of the contending elements being established by the masterly rendering of light and atmosphere. An account of the miracle is given on a cartouche in the foreground; whilst a piece of paper on the left holds the signature
BART-EST. MURILLO, 1646.
The Angels’ Kitchen was bought from the despoiler’s heirs for £3420.
The Virgin of the Rosary (No. 1712), unlike the majority of Murillo’s representations of the Mother of God, has scarcely a trace of spiritual exaltation, but is merely a handsome type of a happy and contented Spanish mother. The folds of her outer garment are arranged in florid and meaningless profusion.
The Holy Family (No. 1713), also known as The Virgin of Seville, is a genuine and characteristic, though strangely overrated work by the master, and bears the signature
BARTOLOM DE MURILLO F. HISPAN.
The Virgin in Glory (No. 1711) is, to say the least, of doubtful authenticity. The small companion pictures, Christ in the Garden of Olives (No. 1714) and Christ at the Column and St. Peter (No. 1715), are painted on marble, to which fact they owe the unpleasant coldness of their colouring.
In the La Caze Room are two portraits, The Poet Quevedo (No. 1718) and The Duke of Ossuña (No. 1719), which the official Catalogue ascribes to Murillo. Quite apart from the fact that the artist was only six years of age when the Duke of Ossuña died, the quality of the painting does not justify these attributions. Like the head of Philip iv. in the same room, they were probably painted by Escosura, a late-nineteenth-century Spaniard