Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/52

 merit, which once hung in this church, is the “Virgin of the Napkin,” believed to have been painted on a “servilleta" and presented to the cook of the Capuchin brotherhood as a memorial of the artist’s pencil.

In 1670 Murillo is said to have declined an invitation to court, preferring to labour among the brown coats of Seville. Eight years afterwards his friend the canon Justino again employed him to paint three pieces for the Hospital de los Venerables: the “Mystery of the Immaculate Conception,” “St Peter Weeping,” and the “Blessed Virgin.” As a mark of esteem, Murillo next painted a full-length portrait of the canon. The spaniel at the feet of the priest has been known to call forth a snarl from a living dog. His portraits generally, though few, are of great beauty. Towards the close of his life Murillo executed a series of pictures illustrative of the life of “the glorious doctor” for the Augustinian convent at Seville. This brings us to the last work of the artist. Mounting a scaffolding one day at Cadiz (whither he had gone in 1681) to execute the higher parts of a large picture of the “Espousal of St Catherine,” on which he was engaged for the Capuchins of that town, he stumbled, and fell so violently that he received a hurt from which he never recovered. The great picture was left unfinished, and the artist returned to Seville to die. He died as he had lived, a humble, pious, brave man, on the 3rd of April 1682 in the arms of the chevalier Pedro Nunez de Villavicencio, an intimate friend and one of his best pupils. Another of his numerous pupils was Sebastian Gomez, named “Murillo’s Mulatto.” Murillo left two sons (one of them at first an indifferent painter, afterwards a priest) and a daughter—his wife having died before him.

Murillo has always been one of the most popular of painters—not in Spain alone. His works show great technical attainment without much style, and a strong feeling for ordinary nature and for truthful or sentimental expression without lofty beauty or ideal elevation. His ecstasies of Madonnas and Saints are the themes of some of his most celebrated achievements. Take as an example the “Immaculate Conception” (or “Assumption of the Virgin,” for the titles may, with reference to Murillo’s treatments of this subject, almost be interchanged) in the Louvre, a picture for which, on its sale from the Soult collection, one of the largest prices on record was given in 1852, some £24,600. His subjects may be divided into two great groups the scenes from low life (which were a new experiment in Spanish art, so far as the subjects of children are concerned), and the Scriptural, legendary and religious works. The former, of which some salient specimens are in the Dulwich Gallery, are although undoubtedly truthful, neither ingenious not sympathetic; sordid unsightliness and roguish squalor are their foundation. Works of this class belong mostly to the earlier years of Murillo’s practice. The subjects in which the painter most excels are crowded compositions in which some act of saintliness, involving the ascetic or self-mortifying element, is being performed—subjects which, while repulsive in some of their details, emphasize the broadly human and the expressly Catholic conceptions of life. A famous example is the picture, now in the Madrid Academy, of St Elizabeth of Hungary washing patients afflicted with the scab or itch, and hence commonly named “El Tiñoso.” Technically considered, it unites his three styles of painting, more especially the cold and the warm. His power of giving atmosphere to combined groups of figures is one of the marked characteristics of Murillo’s art; and he may be said to have excelled in this respect all his predecessors or contemporaries of whatever school.

Seville must still be visited by persons who wish to study Murillo thoroughly. A large number of the works which used to adorn this city have, however, been transported else whither. In the Prado Museum at Madrid are forty-five specimens of Murillo—the “Infant Christ and the Baptist” (named “Los Niños della Concha”), “St Ildefonso vested with a Chasuble by the Madonna,” &c.; in the Museo della Trinidad, “Christ and the Virgin appearing to St Francis in a Cavern” (an immense composition), and various others. In the National Gallery, London, the chief example is the “Holy Family”; this was one of the master’s latest works, painted in Cadiz. In public galleries in the United Kingdom there are altogether twenty-four examples by Murillo; in those of Spain, seventy-one. Murillo, who was the last pre-eminent painter of Seville, was an indefatigable and prolific worker, hardly leaving his painting-room save for his devotions in church; he realized large prices, according to the standard of his time, and made a great fortune. His character is recorded as amiable and soft, yet independent, subject also to sudden impulses, not unmixed with passion.

 MURIMUTH, ADAM (c. 1274–1347), English ecclesiastic and chronicler, was born in 1274 or 1275 and educated in the civil law at Oxford. Between 1312 and 1318 he practised in the papal curia at Avignon. Edward II. and Archbishop Winchelsey were among his clients, and his legal services secured for him canonries at Hereford and St Paul’s, and the precentorship of Exeter Cathedral. In 1331 he retired to a country living (Wraysbury, Bucks), and devoted himself to writing the history of his own times. His Continuatio chronicarum, begun not earlier than 1325, starts from the year 1303, and was carried up to 1347, the year of his death. Meagre at first, it becomes fuller about 1340 and is specially valuable for the history of the French wars. Murimuth has no merits of style, and gives a bald narrative of events. But he incorporates many documents in the latter part of his book. The annals of St. Paul’s which have been edited by Bishop Stubbs, are closely related to the work of Murimuth, but probably not from his pen. The Continuatio was carried on, after his death, by an anonymous writer to the year 1380.

 MURNER, THOMAS (1475–1537?), German satirist, was born on the 24th of December 1475 at Oberehnheim near Strassburg. In 1490 he entered the order of Franciscan monks, and in 1495 began a wandering life, studying and then teaching and preaching in Freiburg-in-Breisgau, Paris, Cracow and Strassburg. The emperor Maximilian I. crowned him in 1505 poeta laureatus; in 1506, he was created doctor theologiae, and in 1513 was appointed custodian of the Franciscan monastery in Strassburg; an office which, on account of a scurrilous publication, he was forced to vacate the following year. Late in life, in 1518, he began the study of jurisprudence at the university of Basel, and in 1519 took the degree of doctor juris. After journeys in Italy and England, he again settled in Strassburg, but, disturbed by the Reformation, sought an exile at Lucerne in Switzerland in 1526. In 1533 he was appointed priest of Oberehnheim, where he died in 1537, or, according to some accounts, in 1536. Murner was an energetic and passionate character, who made enemies wherever he went. There is not a trace of human kindness in his satires, which were directed against the corruption of the times, the Reformation, and especially against Luther. His most powerful satire—and the most virulent German satire of the period—is Von dem grossen lutherischen Narren, wie ihn Dr Murner beschworen hat. Among others may be mentioned Die Narrenbeschwörung (1512); Die Schelmenzunft (1512); Die Gäuchmatt, which treats of enamoured fools (1519), and a translation of Virgil’s Aeneid (1515) dedicated to the emperor Maximilian I. Murner also wrote the humorous Chartiludium logicae (1507) and the Ludus studentum freiburgensium (1511), besides a translation of Justinian’s Institutiones (1519).

All Murner’s more important works have been republished in