Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/261

 left but little property, though he received large prices for his works.

MURILLO'S STYLE.

Few painters have a juster claim to originality of style than Murillo, and his works show an incontestible proof of the perfection to which the Spanish school attained, and the real character of its artists; for he was never out of his native country, and could have borrowed little from foreign artists; and this originality places him in the first rank among the painters of every school. All his works are distinguished by a close and lively imitation of nature. His pictures of the Virgin, Saints, Magdalens, and even of the Saviour, are stamped with a characteristic expression of the eye, and have a national peculiarity of countenance and habiliments, which are very remarkable. There is little of the academy discernible in his design or his composition. It is a chaste and faithful representation of what he saw or conceived; truth and simplicity are never lost sight of; his coloring is clear, tender, and harmonious, and though it possesses the truth of Titian, and the sweetness of Vandyck, it has nothing of the appearance of imitation. There is little of the ideal in his forms or heads, and though he frequently adopts a beautiful expression, there is usually a portrait-like simplicity in his countenances. In short, his pictures are said to hold a middle rank between the unpolished naturalness of the Flemish,