Famous European Artists

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

"He united with himself several ecclesiastics, who went about barefoot in the habit of penitents, exhorting the people to conform to the Church. The institution of the Order of St. Dominick sprang out of this association of preachers, but it was not united under an especial rule, nor confirmed, till some years later, by Pope Honorius, in 1216.

"It was during his sojourn in Languedoc that St. Dominick instituted the Rosary. The use of a chaplet of beads, as a memento of the number of prayers recited, is of Eastern origin, and dates from the time of the Egyptian Anchorites. Beads were also used by the Benedictines, and are to this day in use among the Mohammedan devotees. Dominick invented a novel arrangement of the chaplet, and dedicated it to the honor and glory of the Blessed Virgin, for whom he entertained a most especial veneration. A complete rosary consists of fifteen large and one hundred and fifty small beads; the former representing the number of Paternosters, the latter the number of Ave Marias.... The rosary was received with the utmost enthusiasm, and by this single expedient Dominick did more to excite the devotion of the lower orders, especially of the women, and made more converts, than by all his orthodoxy, learning, arguments, and eloquence.

"St. Dominick, in the excess of his charity and devotion, was accustomed, while preaching in Languedoc, to scourge himself three times a day,—once for his own sins; once for the sins of others; and once for the benefit of souls in purgatory." He preached in all the principal cities of Europe, and died at Bologna in 1221.

In 1640, when Murillo was twenty-two, the Castilli home was broken up, the uncle Juan going to Cadiz to reside. Without fame and poor, the youth was thrown upon his own resources. There were many artists in the city of Seville, and Murillo, shy and retiring, could not expect much patronage. He decided to go to the Feria, a weekly market, held in front of the Church of All Saints, and there, in the midst of stalls where eatables, old clothes, and other wares were sold, he set up his open-air studio, and worked among the gypsies and the muleteers.

Rough, showy pictures were painted to order and sold to those who frequented the market-place. For two long years he lived among this humble class, earning probably but a scanty subsistence. Here, doubtless, he learned to paint flower-girls and squalid beggars. "There was no contempt," says Sweetser, "in Murillo's feelings towards these children of nature; and his sentiments seemed to partake almost of a fraternal sympathy for them. No small portion of his popularity among the lower classes arose from the knowledge that he was their poet and court painter, who understood and did not calumniate them. Velasquez had chosen to paint superb dukes and cardinals, and found his supporters in a handful of supercilious grandees; but Murillo illustrated the lives of the poorest classes on Spanish soil, and was the idol of the masses. With what splendor of color and mastery of design did he thus illuminate the annals of the poor! Coming forth from some dim chancel or palace-hall in which he had been working on a majestic Madonna-picture, he would sketch in, with the brush still loaded with the colors of celestial glory, the lineaments of the beggar crouching by the wall or the gypsy calmly reposing in the black shadow of the archway. Such versatility had never before been seen west of the Mediterranean, and commanded the admiration of his countrymen.

"We do not find in his pictures the beggar of Britain and America, cold, lowering, gloomy, and formidable; but the laughing child of the sunlight, full of joy and content, preferring to bask rather than to work, yet always fed somehow, and abundantly; crop-haired, brown-footed, clad in incoherent rags, but bright-eyed, given to much joviality, and with an affluence of white teeth, often shown in merry moods; not so respectable as the staid burghers of Nuremberg and Antwerp, but far more picturesque and perhaps quite as happy."

But for Murillo's life of poverty he could not have had this sympathy with the poor. Doubtless every experience is given us with a purpose, that either through the brush or the pen, or by word or deed, we may the better do our part for the elevation of mankind.

In 1642, Murillo had a new inspiration. A fellow-pupil in Castillo's school, Pedro de Moya, after joining the Spanish army and campaigning in Flanders, had spent six months in London under Van Dyck. Now he came back to Seville aglow with his delights in travel and the wonders of the Flemish painters.

Murillo was fired with ambition. He too would see famous painters and renowned cities, and become as great as his young friend Moya. But how? He had no money and no influential friends. He would make the effort. He might stay forever at the Feria, and never be heard of beyond Seville.