BARTOLOME ESTEBAN, BY MURILLO.
BARTOLOME ESTEBAN, BY MURILLO.
chosen for reproduction two that all the world has acclaimed to be the most wonderful imaginings of soulful beauty and tender youthfulness that man has given to the world. Devout in purpose and idea, tender and exquisite in execution, his picture of the Sacred Family—called the Pajarito from the little bird held in the Christ’s hand—is one of the most purely devotional pictures of the youthful Saviour in existence. An altarpiece, known as La Porciuncula, from a plot of ground near Assisi, where Christ appeared in a vision to St. Francis, is in the artist’s best style, and El Divino Pastor is another most characteristic and most popular of the master’s works.
THE DIVINE FAMILY, BY MURILLO.
Murillo’s heart was divided between beggars and babyhood—he seems to have taught the Spaniards benevolence towards the one and devotion to the other. Most of the beggar-boy pictures have been transferred to foreign collections, but remains the Holy Families and the cherub-peopled Annunciations. Of those Andalusian cherubs a charming American author, Katharine Lee Bates, has written, “Such ecstatic rogues as they are! Their restless ringlets catch azure shadows from the Virgin’s mantle; they perch tiptoe on the edges of the crescent moon; they hold up a mirror to her glory and peep over the frame to see themselves; they pelt St. Francis with roses; they play bo-peep from behind the fleecy folds of cloud; they try all manner of aerial gymnastics. But a charm transcending even theirs dwells in these baby Christs that almost spring from the Madonna’s arms to ours, in those Christs that touch all boyhood with divinity. The son of the Jewish carpenter, happy in his father’s workshop with bird and dog; the shepherd lad whose earnest eyes look toward his waiting flock; the lovely playmates, radiant with innocent beauty, who bend together above the water of life—from these alone might Catholic Spain have learned the sacredness of childhood. But Spain first showed Murillo the vision that he rendered back to her.”
THE DIVINE SHEPHERD, BY MURILLO.