Bartolomme Estaban Murillo
Rarely has an artist ridden the rollercoaster of popular taste as wildly as 17th century Seville-based master Bartolomme Estaban Murillo. Championed for two centuries after his death as Spain’s finest Baroque painter, his reputation nosedived in the late 19th century, when his hefty religious canvases and genre paintings documenting Andalusian street life came to be viewed as over-sentimental and kitschy. Indeed, at one point, Murillo was practically written out of art history altogether, considered too tame and treacly for contemporary tastes. But, in the 21st century, the Sevillian’s oeuvre has quietly crept back into vogue - culminating in 2018 as cities on both sides of the Atlantic celebrate the 400th anniversary of his birth.
Who was Murillo?
He was born in Seville, Spain, on December 31st, 1617 towards the end of the Spanish Golden Age, Murillo grew up in a cosmopolitan city feasting on the riches of Spain’s vast colonial empire. By the time he was old enough to hold a paintbrush, the Andalusian capital had already produced two epoch-defining artists: the refined portraitist Diego Velzaquez and the sternly religious Franciso de Zurbaran Murillo’s early paintings were heavily influenced by Zurbrain's chiaroscuro style, featuring illuminated countenances of saints and angels against dark, dramatic backgrounds. As a devout Catholic with close associations to Seville’s religious orders, the fledgling artist quickly became known for his spiritual canvases.
Yet Murillo was no one-trick pony. Unlike his Spanish contemporaries, he ventured beyond religious themes to paint Sevillian street life. His touching (if idealized) depictions of street urchins, beggars, and flower girls were likely commissioned by itinerant Flemish merchants who frequented the city. While the gritty subject matter might have been familiar to viewers in the Protestant Dutch Republic and its bloody revolution in Catholic Spain.
Although Murillo’s early work was generally pious and somber in tone, his later paintings embraced a broader color palette. Earnest, life-like figures were bathed in a soft, smoky light; cherubic angels dissolved into fluffy celestial clouds. The metamorphosis was likely the result of a visit to Madrid, where the artist would have met Velázquez and been exposed to eclectic canvases in the royal collection, including work by Flemish masters Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck.
By the time of his death in 1682, Murillo had produced more than 400 paintings and cemented a legacy that would endure for some 200 years - making his paintings a magnet for collectors, top museums, and art thieves.
How can he be appreciated in 2018?
A reevaluation of Murillo’s subtle genius is long overdue. Alongside the artist’s masterworks, modern critics have begun to reassess his less-heralded skills as a draughtsman and portraitist. This renaissance has been aided by the discovery of several “lost” works, including a striking portrait of the historian Don Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga found in a Welsh castle in November, 2017. Quickly snapped up by the Frick, the painting was recently displayed at the New York museum alongside a duo of rare self-portraits in “Murillo: The Self-Portraits.” (The show will continue on to London’s National Gallery later this month.) It’s the first time that the two self-portraits have been shown together since 1709. “It is a unique opportunity to see them reunited,” Salomon, who co-curated the exhibition, notes.
Meanwhile, the “Artio Murillo” in Seville a public celebration of the artist’s quadricentennial organized by the city’s government- has reunited other notable Murillo paintings from across the world. The various sections of an altarpiece commissioned by a local Capuchin convent, scattered during the Napoleonic conquests of the 19th century, have been reassembled for a show at the city’s Museo de Bellas Artes. “Murillo and His Trail in Seville” at the Espacio Santa Clara studies his far-reaching influence on other painters, while the local cathedral has unveiled an exploration of his religious work. After centuries stuck in the doldrums, Murillo’s legacy is now poised to rejoin that of the Spanish greats.
_________________________________
Art by Bartolomme
