Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/68

Rh 56 M U R I L L O portraits, finished with great care and admirable effect, but the critics complain of the figures being rather short. His next picture, the Nativity of the Virgin, painted for the chapter, is regarded as one of the most delightful speci mens of his calido style. In the following year (1656) the same body gave him an order for a vast picture of San Antonio de Padua, for which he received 10,000 reals (104). This is one of his most celebrated performances, and still hangs in the baptistery of the cathedral. It was &quot; repaired &quot; in 1833 ; the grandeur of the design, however, and the singular richness of the colouring may still be traced. The same year saw him engaged on four large pictures of a semicircular form, designed by his fast friend and patron Don Justino Neve y Yevenes, to adorn the walls of the church of Santa Maria la Blanca. The first two were meant to illustrate the history of the festival of Our Lady of the Snow, or the foundation of the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. The one represents the wealthy but childless Roman senator and his lady asleep and dreaming ; the other exhibits the devout pair relating their dream to Pope Liberius. Of these two noble paint ings the Dream is the finer, and in it is to be noticed the commencement of Murillo s third and last style, known as the vaporoso or vapoury. It should be noted, however, that the three styles are not strictly separable into date- periods ; for the painter alternated the styles according to his subject-matter or the mood of his inspiration, the calido being the most frequent. In the vaporoso method the well - marked outlines and careful drawing of his former styles disappear, the outlines are lost in the misty blend ing of the light and shade, and the general finish betrays more haste than was usual with Murillo. After many changes of fortune, these two pictures now hang in the Academy of San Fernando at Madrid. The remaining pieces executed for this small church were a Virgin of the Conception and a figure of Faith. Soult laid his hands on these also, and they have not been recovered. In 1658 Murillo undertook and consummated a task which had hitherto baffled all the artists of Spain, and even royalty itself. This was the establishing of a public academy of art. By superior tact and good temper he overcame the vanity of Valdes Leal and the presumption of the younger Herrera, and secured their co-operation. The Academy of Seville was accordingly opened for the first time in January 1660, and Murillo and the second Herrera were chosen presidents. The former continued to direct it during the following year ; but the calls of his studio induced him to leave it, now flourishing and pros perous, in other hands. Passing over some half-length pictures of saints and a dark-haired Madonna, painted in 1668 for the chapter- room of the cathedral of his native city, we enter upon the most splendid period of Murillo s career. In 1661 Don Miguel Mafiara Vicentelo de Leca, who had recently turned to a life of sanctity from one of the wildest profli gacy, resolved to raise money for the restoration of the dilapidated Hospital de la Caridad, of whose pious guild he was himself a member. Mafiara commissioned his friend Murillo to paint eleven pictures for this edifice of San Jorge. Three of these pieces represented the Annun ciation of the Blessed Virgin, the Infant Saviour, and the Infant St John. The remaining eight are considered Murillo s masterpieces. They consist of Moses striking the Rock, the Return of the Prodigal, Abraham receiving the Three Angels, the Charity of San Juan de Dios, the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, Our Lord healing the Paralytic, St Peter released from Prison by the Angel, and St Eliza beth of Hungary. These works occupied the artist four years, and in 1674 he received for his eight great pictures 78,115 reals or about 800. The Moses, the Loaves and Fishes, and the San Juan are still to be found at Seville ; but the French carried off the rest. On these pictures Murillo evidently expended all his strength, and he has left in them an enduring monument of his genius. For compass and vigour the Moses stands first ; but the Pro digal s Return and the St Elizabeth were considered by Bermudez the most perfect of all as Avorks of art. The front of this famous hospital was also indebted to the genius of Murillo ; five large designs in blue glazed tiles were executed from his drawings. He had scarcely com pleted the undertakings for this edifice when his favourite Franciscans again solicited the aid of his pencil. He accordingly executed some twenty paintings for the hum ble little church known as the Convent de los Capucinos. Seventeen of these Capuchin pictures are still preserved in the Museum of Seville. Of these the Charity of St Thomas of Villanueva is reckoned the best. Murillo him self was wont to call it &quot; su lienzo &quot; (his own picture). Another little piece of extraordinary merit, which once hung in this church, is the Virgin of the Napkin, believed to have been painted on a &quot; servilleta &quot; 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 Immacu late Conception, St Peter Weeping, and the Blessed Virgin. As a mark of esteem, Murillo next painted a full-length portrait of the canon, in which all the artist s skill is visible. The sleek spaniel reposing at the feet of the priest has been known before now to call forth a snarl from a living dog as he approached it. 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 &quot; the glorious doctor &quot; 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 his beloved Seville only to die. He died as he had lived, a humble, pious, brave man, on the 3d 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 &quot;Murillo s Mulatto.&quot; Murillo left behind him two sons (one of them at first an indifferent painter, afterwards a priest) and a daughter, his wife having died before him. His body was laid in the church of Santa Cruz, which he had greatly frequented during his last illness ; and by his own desire it was covered with a stone slab bearing his name, a skeleton, and the words &quot; Vive moritums.&quot; Soult sacked this church, and nothing is to be seen of it now but a heap of rubbish. Murillo has always been one of the most popular of painters not in Spain alone. His works show great technical attainment with out 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, the themes of some of his most celebrated achievements, neither raise the mind nor seize upon the imagination ; but they stimulate sluggish per ceptions and lukewarm devoteeism, and are accepted as ravishing] y pious by mobs of the fashionable and the unfashionable. 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, perhaps the largest