Painted in oil on canvas.
9 ft. 0 in. × 6 ft. 3 in. (2·74 × 1·90.)
Apparently of earlier date is the other version of the same subject at the Louvre. This Immaculate Conception (No. 1708) is not painted in the same spirit of exaltation as the version just described, but has a happy passage of realistic character-painting in the six kneeling figures on the left. On the right two angels carry a scroll with the inscription in principio dilexit eam. The picture was painted in 1656–57 for the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca at Seville, and was carried off to France, with many other of the master’s works, by Marshal Soult.
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.
“THE ANGELS’ KITCHEN”
Yet another deservedly famous work by Murillo, removed from a Franciscan convent at Seville by the insatiable greed of Marshal Soult, is the now extensively restored large picture known as The Miracle of San Diego, or The Angels’ Kitchen (No. 1716). The composition is divided by two large figures of angels into two halves. On the left two knights of Calatrava are shown in by a Franciscan brother and behold St. Diego in prayer miraculously raised into the air and surrounded by a flood of light. On the right the angels are occupied with the preparation of the repast for which the Saint has sent his prayer to the Virgin. A Franciscan is watching the scene from the distance with a gesture of amazement. Here again the real and the supernatural are blended with unaffected naïveté, the unity of the contending elements being established by the masterly rendering of light and atmosphere. An account of the miracle is given on a cartouche in the foreground; whilst a piece of paper on the left holds the signature
BART-EST. MURILLO, 1646.
The Angels’ Kitchen was bought from the despoiler’s heirs for £3420.
The Virgin of the Rosary (No. 1712), unlike the majority of Murillo’s representations of the Mother of God, has scarcely a trace of spiritual exaltation, but is merely a handsome type of a happy and contented Spanish mother. The folds of her outer garment are arranged in florid and meaningless profusion.