Murillo, or the soul of seville in painting
Imagine an autumn morning in Seville, 1660. The cathedral bells ring the Angelus, their echo mingling with the cries of street vendors and the scuff of sandals on worn cobblestones. In Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s studio, a golden light filters through wooden shutters, brushing a canvas where a Virgin and Child come to life. This is no distant Madonna draped in Byzantine gold, but a young woman with a round face and rosy cheeks, cradling a child with unruly curls. At her feet, a little Saint John the Baptist, barefoot and dressed in animal skins, offers a bunch of grapes to the Christ Child. The scene breathes the warmth of a modest home, as if Murillo had captured a stolen moment from a neighbor’s house rather than a sacred tableau.
By Artedusa
••12 min readYet this apparent simplicity conceals a revolution. At a time when Spanish religious art wavered between Zurbarán’s austere mysticism and Ribera’s harsh realism, Murillo invented a new visual language: that of popular devotion. His paintings are not sermons in image, but painted prayers, where the divine takes flesh in the daily lives of Sevillians. His Immaculate Conceptions—Virgins in midnight-blue mantles floating on clouds of cherubs—are not distant icons, but familiar presences, like the statues carried through the streets during Holy Week processions. And his genre scenes—street children biting into melons, beggars with dirty feet—are not moralizing allegories, but portraits of a humanity the Church often preferred to ignore.
Let us dive into the world of this painter who, more than any other, captured the soul of a city where the sacred and the profane have danced for centuries.
01The light of Seville, or how to paint the invisible
There is in Murillo’s paintings a quality of light that belongs to him alone. It is not Caravaggio’s harsh light, which carves faces like a scalpel, nor Velázquez’s golden, diffuse glow. No, Murillo’s light is Sevillian: warm, slightly veiled, as if filtered through the rush blinds of Andalusian patios. It envelops his subjects without crushing them, creating an atmosphere both intimate and celestial.
Take The Immaculate Conception of the Venerables (1678), one of his most famous works. The Virgin, standing on a crescent moon, seems to float in a pale azure sky, surrounded by a cloud of chubby-faced angels. But what strikes is the way the light appears to emanate from her, as if her body were a luminous source. Art historians have long debated his technique: some mention superimposed glazes, those transparent layers of oil paint that capture and diffuse light; others speak of a subtle blend of pigments—lead white for highlights, ultramarine for shadows, vermilion for flesh tones. Whatever the case, the result is magical: a Virgin who is neither entirely earthly nor entirely divine, but somewhere in between, like those statues the faithful touch with their fingertips while murmuring a prayer.
This light is not merely a technical effect. It reflects a spirituality unique to Seville, where the sacred hides in the humblest details. In The Holy Family with a Little Bird (1650), the golden light bathing the scene seems to come from the left, as if an invisible window opened onto a sunlit patio. Joseph, often relegated to the background in religious iconography, appears here as an attentive father, holding a bird that the Christ Child gazes at with tenderness. The composition, triangular, creates a near-musical harmony, where each figure seems to breathe in unison. And this light, both natural and supernatural, unites the group in a bubble of affection.
Murillo does not paint light: he paints what it reveals. And what it reveals is a devotion that needs no grand gestures to be profound.
02The children of Seville, or the art of painting innocence
If Murillo is today considered the painter of children, it is no accident. His genre scenes, populated by street urchins with dirty cheeks and bare feet, fascinated all of Europe in the 18th century. But behind their apparent simplicity lies theological boldness.
Take Boys Eating Melon and Grapes (1645–1655). Two boys, one sitting on the ground, the other crouching, devour a melon with a hunger that betrays their need. Their clothes are worn, their faces marked by the sun, but their eyes shine with pure, almost animal joy. Nothing in this scene recalls the moralizing allegories of Flemish or Dutch painters. No vanity, no warning against excess. Just two children, a melon, and the golden light of the afternoon.
Yet some historians see in this work far more than a genre scene. The melon, in Christian iconography, often symbolizes the sweetness of Christ; grapes evoke the Eucharist. By painting these hungry children, did Murillo mean to remind us that Christ’s body is also given to the poorest? The question remains open. What is certain is that these paintings shocked—and seduced—with their realism. At a time when street children were often invisible, Murillo gave them a dignity that borders on the sacred.
His Young Beggar (1645–1650) goes even further. The boy, sitting on a stone bench, scratches his foot with almost comical concentration. His rags reveal skin marked by insect bites, and his tangled hair falls in greasy strands over his forehead. Yet his face expresses neither shame nor despair. There is, in his gaze, a resilience that touches the sublime. Some have seen in him a metaphor for the suffering Christ; others, a simple character study. But one thing is sure: Murillo does not judge. He observes, and his brush transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary.
These children are not subjects of picturesque charm. They are the heroes of a Seville where misery rubs shoulders with grace, and where beauty hides in the most unexpected details.
03The Virgin and the crescent moon: when theology becomes poetry
If Murillo is today associated with the Immaculate Conception, it is because he gave visual form to a dogma still debated in the 17th century. The doctrine, which holds that the Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin, was fiercely defended by Spain—and Seville was one of its strongholds. But how to paint the ineffable? How to represent an idea that, by definition, eludes reason?
Murillo found the answer in poetry. His Immaculate Conceptions are not theological treatises, but dreamlike visions, where the Virgin floats on a crescent moon like a celestial dancer. In The Immaculate Conception of Soult (1678), now in the Louvre, Mary wears a white robe that seems woven from clouds, and a midnight-blue mantle studded with stars. Her hands are joined in prayer, but her gaze is turned toward the sky, as if listening to an invisible melody. Around her, angels with diaphanous wings play with roses and lilies, symbols of purity.
What strikes in these paintings is their softness. Unlike Zurbarán’s Immaculate Conceptions, where the Virgin appears as a hieratic statue, Murillo’s breathe. Their faces are those of young Sevillian women, their curly hair cascading over their shoulders, their bare feet barely brushing the crescent moon. They are not goddesses, but women—women one might encounter in the alleys of Triana, Seville’s working-class district.
This humanization of the sacred earned Murillo as many admirers as detractors. Some theologians reproached him for "vulgarizing" the Virgin by making her too accessible. Others, on the contrary, saw it as a way to bring the faithful closer to God. An anecdote tells that when The Immaculate Conception of the Venerables was installed in the hospital of the same name, the sick crowded before the painting to touch the frame, convinced the Virgin would protect them.
Today, these works still speak to us. They remind us that devotion need not be austere to be profound, and that beauty can be a path to the divine.
04The brush and faith: Murillo, painter of the confraternities
To understand Murillo, one must understand Seville’s cofradías. These religious brotherhoods, which organized Holy Week processions, were at the heart of the city’s social and spiritual life. And Murillo was one of their favored painters.
Take Saint Francis Embracing the Crucified Christ (1668–1669). The saint, dressed in the Franciscan habit, embraces Christ with a tenderness that borders on the erotic. Their faces nearly touch, their lips a hair’s breadth apart. For a 17th-century viewer, accustomed to distant representations of the Passion, this intimacy must have been shocking. Yet Murillo merely translated into paint what the brotherhood members experienced: a carnal devotion, where Christ’s suffering mingles with mystical ecstasy.
These paintings were not meant to adorn church walls, but to be carried through the streets during processions. They had to move, impress, and above all, remind the faithful that faith was not the business of theologians, but of all. In The Virgin of the Towel (1666), the Virgin appears to Saint Francis as a young woman in an apron, holding a towel—a detail that would have scandalized purists, but spoke directly to Sevillians.
Murillo knew that popular devotion needed strong images, but also accessible ones. His saints are not distant figures, but companions on the road. His Christs are not abstract martyrs, but men whose suffering is written in every muscle, every drop of blood.
And perhaps that is the secret of his success: Murillo understood that faith, to be alive, had to be incarnate.
05The studio and the market: when painting becomes industry
Murillo was not only an artist: he was also an entrepreneur. His studio, one of the most active in Seville, produced paintings in series, meeting an insatiable demand. The Immaculate Conceptions, in particular, were so popular that he painted at least fifteen versions, each slightly different.
How did he work? The archives of the time give us some clues. Murillo often began with a preparatory drawing, which he then transferred to canvas using poncifs—perforated cartoons that allowed the design to be traced by blowing charcoal powder. He then painted the backgrounds, often executed by his assistants, before focusing on the faces, which he rendered with near-photographic precision.
This division of labor explains why some of his works seem less finished than others. In The Wedding at Cana (1672), for example, the faces of the guests are remarkably refined, but the tablecloths and dishes lack detail. Murillo supervised, but he did not do everything. And yet, even in these "mass-produced" works, his touch remains: that golden light, those expressive faces, that sense of life pulsing beneath the paint.
This mass production earned Murillo criticism. Some reproached him for "selling his brush," sacrificing quality for quantity. But this overlooks the fact that, without this quasi-industrial organization, his paintings would never have reached such a wide audience. Thanks to his studio, Murillo could meet the demands of the brotherhoods, but also those of private collectors, who flocked to acquire his works. And so his Immaculate Conceptions crossed the Atlantic, to adorn churches in Mexico and Peru.
Murillo was not just a painter: he was a businessman who turned his talent into an empire.
06The legacy of Murillo: when tenderness becomes subversive
Today, Murillo is often reduced to the image of "the painter of children and Madonnas." Yet his legacy is far more complex. By humanizing the sacred, he paved the way for a new form of devotion, where faith needs no grandeur to be deep.
His genre scenes, in particular, influenced generations of artists. Goya, in his early works, drew inspiration from his street children to paint the urchins of Madrid. The Pre-Raphaelites, in the 19th century, found in his Madonnas that melancholic sweetness that characterizes their own female figures. And even Picasso, who scorned his sentimentality, copied his beggars during his Blue Period.
But Murillo’s influence extends beyond art. His paintings have become symbols of Seville, a city where the sacred and the profane have mingled for centuries. Even today, during Holy Week, processions draw from his compositions, and his Immaculate Conceptions continue to move the faithful.
Murillo did not merely paint Seville: he captured its soul. And that soul, both tender and tumultuous, still speaks to us through his canvases.
07Epilogue: the last painting
In April 1682, Murillo fell from a scaffold while painting a retable for the Capuchins of Cádiz. He died a few days later, at the age of 64. According to legend, his last words were: "I have not finished."
Yet his work was complete. Murillo had achieved what few artists manage: he gave visual form to the invisible, and transformed the everyday into the sacred. His paintings, now scattered in the world’s greatest museums, continue to move us with their tenderness, their light, and that humanity that makes them timeless.
The next time you encounter one of his works, take a moment to look. Observe how the light caresses the faces, how the colors respond to one another, how each detail tells a story. For Murillo did not merely paint pictures: he painted prayers, dreams, and the soul of a city that, four centuries later, still dances between heaven and earth.