The latter and characteristic style of Murillo may be generally described as possessing more suavity, and softer transitions of light and shade, than that of the naturalistas of his time. It is remarkable, besides, for a general harmony of hues; for considerable, but by no means uniform, softness of contour; for simplicity and propriety of attitude and expression; for physiognomies, if not always distinguished by beauty or refinement, yet interesting from a certain character of purity and goodness; for free yet well-arranged drapery; for a force of light on the principal objects, and, above all, for surprising truth in the colour of the flesh, heightened by an almost constant opposition of dark-grey backgrounds. The two pictures of St. Leander and St. Isidore, in the sacristy of the Cathedral, were done in 1655. In the same year Murillo painted the Nativity of the Virgin, now in the Cathedral; and in 1656 the great picture of St. Antony of Padua, the altar-piece of the Baptistery of the same church: the picture of the Baptism of Christ in the same Retablo, or architectural frame, is also by Murillo, but by no means equal to the St. Antony. The four half circles, formerly in the church of Santa Maria la Blanca, belong to the same time, as well as a Dolorosa, and St. John the Evangelist, done for the same church. In 1658 Murillo undertook, without any aid from the government, to establish a public academy in Seville; and, after great difficulties, owing to the imperious temper of his rivals Juan de Valdes Leal and Francisco de Herrera el Mozo, who was just returned from Italy, he succeeded in his object, and the academy was opened in 1660. Murillo was the first president, but, from whatever cause, he was not re-elected to that office after the first year: the multitude of his occupations is, however, the most probable reason to be assigned for this. Although the best Spanish painters, such as Velasquez, Murillo, Zurbaran, and others, arrived at the excellence they attained without an early acquaintance with the antique, there being, as we have seen, no casts from the Greek statues in the private schools of Seville, yet, on the establishment of a public academy, it might be supposed that it would have been furnished with the best examples of form. Such, however, does not appear to have been the case: except a few drawings by the professors, which were copied by mere beginners, there were, it seems, no other models than the living figure and the draped mannequin; and when once admitted to copy from the life, the students were in the habit of confining their practice to painting, without considering that of drawing at all essential. This method of instruction was peculiar to the Academy of Seville, as distinguished from other similar establishments in Spain; and it is evident that the object was to follow up the method which had already been sufficient by itself to render the school illustrious. It may be observed that the study of drapery in this school had the effect, to a certain extent, of ennobling the style of the painters; and they were perhaps led to pay attention to this branch of the art, from so often witnessing the fine effect of drapery in the dresses of the religious orders. Sir Joshua Reynolds has somewhere justly observed, that a grand cast of drapery is sometimes of itself sufficient to give an air of dignity to a picture.
About 1668, Murillo began the celebrated series in the Hospital de San Jorge, or de la Caridad, whence came several of the pictures now in the possession of Marshal Soult. Among those that remain, the most remarkable and most copious compositions, are the Moses striking the Rock, and the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. The Prodigal Son, Abraham receiving the Angels, the Pool of Bethesda, and the Deliverance of Peter from Prison are now in Paris; they are all excellent specimens of the master. The Picture of San Juan de Dios bearing an infirm mendicant, is celebrated for its strength of effect, and has been compared, and even attributed, to Spagnoleto. Another composition, now in Madrid, representing Santa Isabel curing the diseased poor, a wonderful specimen of imitation, was the greatest favourite of the series with the common people, when in its original place, owing, perhaps, to the very familiar and disgusting details of the subject; it was generally known by the name of el Tiñoso, from the principal figure, a boy whose sore head the Saint is dressing. The habit of copying to illusion the merest accidents of nature without distinction, naturally led the Spanish painters to all the deformities that can be excused by the epithet “picturesque.” The details of the picture just mentioned would be loathsome, even in words, yet other Sevillian painters went beyond it; and Murillo himself, on seeing a picture in which some dead bodies are painted with repulsive reality by Juan de Valdes, in the church of the Caridad, observed to that artist, that “it could only be looked at while holding the nostrils.”
Cean Bermudez remarks of the Tiñoso, that the figure of the Queen Santa Isabel (whom by the way he makes a Queen of Portugal in one of his works and a Queen of Hungary in another) is equal to Vandyck; the face of the boy illuminated by the reflection of a basin of water, worthy of Paul Veronese; and an old woman and a mendicant unbinding his leg, as fine as Velasquez. He concludes by asserting, that if instead of the numbers of copies, good, bad, and indifferent, that have been made from all the pictures of the Caridad, a series of accurate engravings after them had been executed, these compositions would be as much celebrated and admired as those of the best Italian painters. The pictures of the Caridad were finished in 1674. The Capuchin Convent is another vast gallery of the fine works of Murillo. Without reckoning smaller pieces, there are twenty pictures by his hand in the convent with figures the size of life. Among these one is said to have obtained the especial preference of the painter himself; the subject is Santo Tomas di Villanueva distributing alms. In the Nativity, Murillo has followed the artifice of Correggio, by making the light emanate from the infant: this picture is one of the best of the series. The Annunciation is remarkable for the beauty and dignity of the Angel, and for the graceful humility of the Virgin. Three pictures, done for the Hospital de los Venerables, about 1678, are mentioned by the author already quoted as admirable performances: among them the Penitence of St. Peter is described as surpassing the same subject by Ribera, and an Immaculate Conception as superior in colour and admirable management of light and shade to every similar composition by the artist himself. In the refectory of the convent is the portrait of Don Justino Neve, by whom Murillo was employed to paint the pictures just mentioned; his biographer says it is in all respects equal to Vandyck. The altar pictures of the Convent of San Agustin, and a long list of single figures of saints, some larger than life, together with many portraits of superiors of religious orders, scarcely complete the catalogue of Murillo’s public works in Seville, and it would be too long to enumerate those which exist in other parts of Spain. The pictures which he executed for private collections were almost equally numerous, and his biographer asserts, that at the beginning of the last century there was scarcely a house of respectability in Seville that was not ornamented with some work of his. They began to disappear when Philip V. and his court visited the city. Many were presented or sold to the noblemen and ambassadors who accompanied the king, and are now in galleries of Madrid and other cities of Europe. Since that time, however, several of the principal families have made their pictures heir-looms, and thus guarded, as far as possible, against a further dispersion of their countryman’s works. Murillo’s last work was the altar-piece of the Capuchins, at Cadiz, representing the Marriage of St. Catherine. While employed on this picture he fell from the scaffold; and a serious malady, which was the consequence, compelled him to return to Seville, where he soon after died, April 3, 1682. He was buried in a chapel of the Church of Santa Cruz. It was to this chapel he was in the habit of going to contemplate Campana’s picture of the Descent from the Cross; and shortly before his death, being asked by the sacristan, who wanted to shut the church, why he lingered there, he answered, “I am only waiting till these holy men shall have taken down the Lord from the Cross.” The picture of the marriage of St. Catherine was finished by Francisco Menéses Osorio, one of the eleven scholars of Murillo enumerated by Cean Bermudez.
The short account of Murillo, in Cumberland’s “Anecdotes of eminent Painters in Spain,” is taken from the incorrect but amusing “Parnaso Español pintoresco laureado” of Palomino. A very good general and concise history of the Spanish school (though containing several errors of the press in dates), with an interesting list, not to be found elsewhere, of the early pictures of Murillo, is contained in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 26. There are, probably, no other English works on the subject, except in a Dictionary of Spanish Painters, not yet complete, and the incidental notices in books of travels. The foregoing account is chiefly taken from a Letter by Cean Bermudez, “Sobre el estilo y gusto en la Pintura de la Escuela Sevillana, &c. Cadiz, 1806,” published subsequently to his “Diccionario Histórico de los mas ilustres profesores de las Bellas Artes en España, Madrid, 1800,” which has also been consulted.
[Holy Family of Murillo.]
Engraved by E. Mackenzie.
CERVANTES.
After the Spanish Print, engraved by D. F. Selma.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.
