“A perfect woman nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.”
However this may be, we know that she is often painted as the Virgin in Murillo’s great pictures. Her liquid eyes and dark hair inspired him to forget the rigid rules laid down regarding the Virgin’s having blue eyes and fair hair or, at all events, to disregard them. We shall see the Mary in some of his [loveliest] pictures with the dark hair and eyes of his countrymen. Three children were born into Murillo’s home, two boys and one girl. One boy for a time practised the art of his father, but he later became a clergyman. The other son came to America, while the daughter devoted herself to religion and entered a convent.
After Murillo’s marriage, his house was the gathering place for the most distinguished people of Seville. What a change was this from Murillo’s early condition, when he toiled at the weekly markets for bread and shelter! His power in his work increased, so that every new picture was an additional pledge of his greatness.
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.
Murillo.
It was in middle life that Murillo began painting the subject that more than any other distinguished him. It was to glorify a beautiful idea, that Mary was as pure and spotless as her divine son. It is called the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and so much did it appeal to Murillo that he painted it over and over again. He has left us at least twenty different pictures embodying this doctrine. The one most familiar is perhaps the greatest. It is the one that now graces the gem-room of the Louvre. I so name this room, for in it, within a few feet of one another, are pictures by Raphael, Da Vinci, Correggio, Rembrandt, Veronese, in short, by the foremost masters of the world. Among all these the vision of Murillo takes an equal rank. To many, the idea which the picture represents is of secondary importance, save perhaps as giving a reason for the name it bears. But all can see the exquisite loveliness of this young woman in her blue mantle and her white robe, with her feet concealed by the voluminous folds of her drapery, and with the crescent moon, the symbol of all things earthly, in the midst of a throng of child-angels “hovering in the sunny air, reposing on clouds, or sporting among their silvery folds”—“the apotheosis of womanhood.” It is as if an unseen hand had suddenly drawn aside an invisible curtain and we, the children of earth, were for a moment permitted to view the interior of heaven itself. In this vision of a poet, so masterfully painted, the lover of pictures rejoices.
How did the Louvre come by this magnificent monument of Spanish art when so much that is glorious has been kept within the boundaries of Spain? We have but to turn to the wars of Napoleon and the campaigns in the Spanish peninsula, when the marshals of the mighty warrior swept everything before them. One of these, Marshal Soult, brought back, after his victorious invasion, pictures enough to enrich a Czar. One of these stolen treasures was the picture we are studying. In 1852, the French government bought it of him for more than $120,000. There is but one mitigating thought regarding this rapine of the French, and that is that many art treasures, heretofore virtually locked to the public, were opened to the world—were made easily accessible.
From this fair vision of womanhood let us turn to another, fairer still, where a little child is the central figure, “St. Anthony of Padua.” Although he did not repeat this subject so often as he did the Conception, yet he has left us several representations of this beautiful and much adored saint.