THE “BIRTH OF THE VIRGIN”
Another picture that formed part of the loot taken by Napoleon’s general and was taken in 1855 from his son, the Duke of Dalmatia, in liquidation of a debt of £6000, is The Birth of the Virgin (No. 1710). The National Gallery in London owns a small preliminary study for this painting, which was executed in 1655 for Seville Cathedral. The centre is occupied by a beautifully disposed group of four women and four winged heavenly visitors attending to the Infant’s bath; in the background on the left St. Anne, raised in her bed, is receiving visitors, and on the right are seen two attendants airing linen at a fireplace. The strange assemblage, in which the earthly and the heavenly are without incongruity brought into such close contact that one of the boy-angels is actually occupied with a dog, is completed by another four angels floating in the air above the Infant. In composition, distribution of light and shade, and in harmonious blending of mellow colour this picture ranks among Murillo’s highest achievements. According to Cean Bermudez, the roundness, beauty of shape, and rosy complexion of the waiting-woman’s arm in the foreground “excited the jealous envy of the ladies of Seville.” It is interesting to note that before its acquisition by the Louvre the Birth of the Virgin was brought to England in 1823, when the owners vainly tried to find a purchaser.