Bartolome Esteban Murillo: The Complete Story
Bartolome Esteban Murillo was Seville's painter of soft Virgins and grinning street children, baptised on 1 January 1618 and dead in 1682 after a fall from a scaffold. For two centuries Europe ranked him beside Raphael. Then taste turned on him.
The gentlest of the Spanish Baroque masters was also the one with the strangest afterlife. Here is the whole arc.
Murillo at a glance
1617. Born in Seville, the youngest of fourteen children, orphaned by ten.
1645. The cloister cycle for the Franciscans made his name in Seville.
1660. Co-founded Seville’s academy of drawing and served as its first president.
1682. Fell from a scaffold in Cádiz while painting an altarpiece and died in Seville soon after.
1810. Marshal Soult stripped Seville of Murillos during the French occupation, seeding half the museums of Europe.
An orphan who painted orphans
Murillo lost his father in 1627 and his mother in 1628, before he turned eleven, and was raised by an older sister.
Decades later, in a Seville gutted by the plague of 1649, he painted the children of the streets, beggars picking fleas, boys grinning over fruit and dice, with a dignity nobody had given them before.
The Young Beggar, from around 1645, now hangs in the Louvre.
The 1645 breakthrough
His name was made by a cycle of eleven canvases painted in 1645 and 1646 for the cloister of the Franciscan monastery in Seville. From then on he was the city's favourite painter, the tender answer to the severity of Spanish Baroque art around him. In 1660 he co-founded Seville's academy of drawing and served as its first president, alongside Herrera the Younger.
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Two dozen Immaculate Conceptions
Murillo painted the Virgin floating among clouds and cherubs at least two dozen times. The most famous version was looted from Seville by Napoleon's Marshal Soult in 1813.
When France auctioned Soult's estate in 1852, the Louvre paid 615,300 francs for it, the highest price ever recorded for a painting at that date. It returned to Spain in 1941 and hangs in the Prado.
The academy he presided
In 1660 Murillo helped found Seville’s academy of drawing and took the first presidency.
Sessions ran by candlelight, and members paid for the model by the week.
The sweet painter of beggar boys was also the city’s chief organizer of artistic training.
Soult’s wagons
Around 1810 Marshal Soult, Napoleon’s man in Andalusia, hauled Murillos out of Seville by the wagonload.
The pillage made Murillo a European celebrity and eventually flooded the market that later turned on him.
His great Immaculate Conception from the Soult haul only returned to Spain in 1941. It hangs in the Prado.
A self portrait for his children
Murillo painted himself in a stone frame, resting his hand over its edge as if leaning out of the picture.
A Latin inscription explains the reason: made at the request of his children.
It is in the National Gallery in London, a private gift that became public property.
The myth: sweet means shallow
Nineteenth century critics, Ruskin loudest among them, dismissed Murillo as sentimental, and the crash was steepened by the thousands of weak copies trading under his name.
The reassessment came late but decisively: the technique is among the subtlest of the century, and the street children have no precedent in European painting. The sweetness was a choice, not a limit.
The fall
In 1682, working high on a scaffold on an altarpiece of the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine for the Capuchin church in Cadiz, the 64 year old painter fell. Badly injured, he was carried home to Seville and died there on 3 April 1682, leaving the altarpiece for his workshop to finish.
Where to see Murillo
The Museo de Bellas Artes in Seville, a converted convent, holds the deepest collection, with the Prado in Madrid close behind. The Louvre keeps The Young Beggar, and his beggar boys are scattered from Munich to London.
The Bartolome Esteban Murillo questions that keep coming up
What is he known for? Soft Immaculate Conceptions and street children painted with dignity.
Why did his reputation collapse? Victorian critics called him sentimental, and floods of fake Murillos made it worse.
How many Immaculate Conceptions did he paint? Around two dozen documented versions.
How did he die? From a fall off a scaffold in Cadiz in 1682, at 64, mid-commission.
Who looted Murillo’s paintings? Marshal Soult, during the French occupation of Seville around 1810. His Immaculate Conception came back to Spain only in 1941.
Did Murillo paint himself? Yes. The London self portrait carries an inscription saying he made it at the request of his children.
More secrets to unlock
A whole year with his name on it
Four centuries after his baptism, his city gave him a year: Seville declared 2018 the Year of Murillo, with exhibitions across the town he almost never left. The painter the critics had written off filled every venue.
