PLATE VIII.—THE MARRIAGE OF THE VIRGIN
Murillo must have loved little children; he is never so happy and free from his besetting sin of posing figures stiffly as when he turns for inspiration to the little ones. We have several examples of this branch of his art in and round London. The National Gallery holds the "Drinking Boy," while Dulwich has several groups of beggar children and the delightful "Flower Girl." One may remark in passing that it is a thousand pities that the beauties of the Dulwich Collection are so little known to the general body of picture lovers. It can be reached on foot in two hours from the Bank of England, and is served by bus and train. Nearly all the Murillos are early ones, and the Velazquez (Philip IV.) is not altogether above suspicion, but the collection is a remarkable one, and sadly neglected by the public. It has often been urged against the Murillo children at Dulwich that they exhibit the painter's sin of theatrical posing in a very glaring light, but surely those who make this charge have overlooked the extraordinary self-consciousness of the Spanish beggar be he old or young. For once Murillo is justified. Among the beggars of Spain, rags that only hold together by grace of Providence are worn as though they were purple and fine linen; and the writer has seen the outcast, whose only possession beyond his rags was the cigarette that had just been given him, swagger along a dusty country high-road as though he were a grandee in electric motor passing through the ranks of his friends in the Park by the Prado when Madrid is in full season. There is much justification for the pose of the beggar children, the serious blame that attaches to the painter is for treating his divinities and saints as though they were no whit better than the exquisites of Sierpes or the beggars of the Macarena. Even his lambs are profoundly conscious that they are sitting for their portrait, and have made up their mind that if they are spared to grow up and become sheep they will be worthy of their pastures. The painter was not justified in this, although we must never forget, if we would do him justice, that the Church kept a watchful eye on everything he did, and spoke to him with an authority he would have been the last to disregard. The Catholic Church is essentially spectacular in its worship, and surely the high dignitaries of the seventeenth-century Church would never have suffered Murillo to go unrebuked had he presented his figures in simpler pose and without any ostentation in their attitude. As things were he had brought the Godhead dangerously close to earth.
Our entire conception of the province of art has altered beyond recognition since Murillo lived and died. The modern artist, whether he work with paint or words, keeps his morality and his art distinct from one another. Art, he says, is not concerned with a rule of life, it is essentially non-moral. Murillo, on the other hand, accepted the theory that art is the handmaiden of the Church, that only the handling of the chosen picture is the affair of the painter. Where faith was concerned he was not far removed from Beato Angelico, and those who like to compare the products of an age in different countries, may remember that Carlo Dolci, the Florentine painter of cardinal virtues, was born about the same time as Murillo. The Church did for him in Italy what it did for Murillo in Spain, but the latter artist was made of sterner stuff, and had infinitely more brains and talent than his Florentine contemporary. But between Carlo Dolci's best work and Murillo's worst, there is a measure of resemblance that justifies one in remembering that they were born within a year of each other, and that both passed in the penultimate decade of the seventeenth century.
In conclusion it may be said for Murillo that, quite apart from his merits as a man, he may claim the admiration of the unbiassed critic of all time for some of his finest pictures. There were occasions when he painted figures that neither Velazquez nor Titian would have felt ashamed to own, there were times when his saints and Redeemer were expressed with exquisite dignity and restraint. Judged by the light of modern criticism, he was uneven in his work, but that criticism has no reason to believe that its arguments would have conveyed anything to Murillo himself. His entire output suggests that he knew what his message was to be, and delivered it as he received it. We can find pictures in which the proportions of the figures are bad, and the outlines are hard and unpleasing, there are a few in which the colour scheme is poor and ineffective. But if against his worst moments we are content to put his best, the artist has not much to fear. Apart from the value of his labours on purely artistic grounds, let us remember that he brought the Madonna and Infant Christ from the Heaven in which they had been inaccessible to the rank and file of Spain, to the earth where they might be seen and known, by those who walk in darkness.
The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., Derby and London
The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh
"MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR" SERIES
ARTIST. AUTHOR.
VELAZQUEZ. S. L. Bensusan.
REYNOLDS. S. L. Bensusan.
TURNER. C. Lewis Hind.
ROMNEY. C. Lewis Hind.
GREUZE. Alys Eyre Macklin.
BOTTICELLI. Henry E. Binns.
ROSSETTI. Lucien Pissarro.
BELLINI. George Hay.
FRA ANGELICO. James Mason.
REMBRANDT. Josef Israels.
LEIGHTON. A. Lys Baldry.
RAPHAEL. Paul G. Konody.
HOLMAN HUNT. Mary E. Coleridge.
TITIAN. S. L. Bensusan.
MILLAIS. A. Lys Baldry.
CARLO DOLCI. George Hay.
GAINSBOROUGH. Max Rothschild.
TINTORETTO. S. L. Bensusan.
LUINI. James Mason.
FRANZ HALS. Edgcumbe Staley.
VAN DYCK. Percy M. Turner.
LEONARDO DA VINCI. M. W. Brockwell.
RUBENS. S. L. Bensusan.
WHISTLER. T. Martin Wood.
HOLBEIN. S. L. Bensusan.
BURNE-JONES. A. Lys Baldry.
VIGÉE LE BRUN. C. Haldane Macfall.
CHARDIN. Paul G. Konody.
FRAGONARD. C. Haldane Macfall.
MEMLINC. W. H. J. & J. C. Weale.
CONSTABLE. C. Lewis Hind.
RAEBURN. James L. Caw.
JOHN S. SARGENT. T. Martin Wood.
LAWRENCE. S. L. Bensusan.
DÜRER. H. E. A. Furst.
MILLET. Percy M. Turner.
WATTEAU. C. Lewis Hind.
HOGARTH. C. Lewis Hind.
MURILLO. S. L. Bensusan.
WATTS. W. Loftus Hare.
INGRES. A. J. Finberg.
Others in Preparation.