Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Murillo's self-portrait . London, National Gallery

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (〰1. January 1618 in Seville , Andalusia , † 3. April 1682 ) was a Spanish painter of the Baroque and from the mid-17th century the leading and most famous painter in Seville.

Life

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was born in Seville at the end of 1617 as the youngest son in a family of 14 children of the barber and field surgeon (surgeon) Gaspar Esteban and Maria Pérez Murillo. Only his baptism is documented, on January 1, 1618, in Seville. His mother came from a family of painters and silversmiths and he used her maiden name to sign his works. When he was nine and ten years old, his parents died (1627 his father, 1628 his mother), and the orphaned boy grew up in his sister Ana's household. The sister Ane was married to the wealthy doctor Juan Augustin de Lagares, with whom Murillo remained closely connected for life. When he was 15 he wanted to go to America, but such a trip did not take place. During his life he worked in Seville, which at that time was still at its height as the leading trading city in Spain, especially in trade with the colonies . The plague epidemic of 1649 killed almost half of the population. Earthquakes also contributed to the city's decline and was later replaced in rank by the port city of Cádiz .

The feeding of the poor of St. Diego de Alcalá from the cycle for the Franciscan monastery in Seville, 1645–1646, 173 × 183 cm, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando , Madrid

Murillo initially apprenticed to Juan del Castillo in Seville, who was distantly related to his mother. He was initially influenced by Spanish painters such as Jusepe de Ribera , Alonso Cano and the mid-century Sevillian artist Francisco de Zurbarán , who all cultivated a realistic Tenebroso style that was heavily influenced by the Italian Caravaggio . Also worn by Dutch works such as those by Raffael , van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens . When Castillo went to Cádiz in 1638, Murillo started his own business as a painter. According to legend, he lived in poverty and made cheap devotional paintings which he sold at fairs. Little is known about his early creative period in the 1630s and 1640s, however, and pictures have hardly been preserved or have not been identified. According to reports from older Spanish authors, he is said to have made a trip to Madrid around 1642, where he is said to have studied in the royal painting collections. Although there is no documentary evidence of this, it is certainly within the scope of what is possible. Because from this point on, there was a clear change in his style of painting. A surviving example of this is the painting "Virgin with the Rosary" from around 1642.

On February 26, 1645 Murillo married Beatriz Sotomayor y Cabrera in the church de la Magdalena in Seville, with whom he had at least ten children, some of whom died early.

Murillo had his artistic breakthrough in 1645/46 when he made 11 large paintings for the cloister of the monastery of St. Francis in Seville, which are now in various museums, including the feeding of the poor of St. Diego de Alcalá ( Real Academia de San Fernando , Madrid ), the Angel Kitchen of St. Diego de Alcalá ( Louvre , Paris) and the death of St. Clare ( Gemäldegalerie , Dresden). By the mid-1650s he was already regarded as one of Seville's leading painters and received several commissions for the cathedral . Including monumental portraits of the Sevillian city saints Isidore and Leander . Above all, however, he became known through the vision of St. Anthony of Padua (1656) for the baptistery, which shows him as a mature painter of the Baroque era. By this time, his painting style and the selection of motifs had matured to such an extent that he clearly stood out from the style of most of his contemporaries. This boosted his reputation, and he was now a sought-after painter. He had a particular success with his portraits of Mary in the form of the Immaculate Conception (lat. Immaculata conceptio ), which is already very popular and revered in Spain, and with the theme of the Virgin and Child . In addition, he painted countless other works on a wide variety of religious topics, many of them in such a natural and folk-like style that some of them are "barely distinguishable from genre pictures ". Landscapes and genre scenes took up quite a larger place in his work than with other Spanish artists of his time. His very personal peculiarity, which shape him in the art community to this day, were his depictions of poor children from the people in various poses ("Murillo's children" - playing dice, eating melon, etc.), which, along with his Madonnas, were in great demand outside of Spain (see gallery below).

Appearance of the Virgin Mary to Saint Bernard , ca.1655, 311 × 249 cm, Prado , Madrid

The signs of his prosperity increased. And Murillo was happy to use part of his wealth for charity. In 1657 he invested in an American trading company and bought slaves for his household. Murillo's trip to Madrid for about a year is documented for 1658, during which he met the painter Diego Velázquez and visited the royal collections to study paintings by Titian , Rubens and van Dyck in the royal painting collections. In 1660 he founded the Academy of Fine Arts in Seville and became its president, alongside Francisco de Herrera the Elder. J. On the one hand, it was very important to him to make his knowledge available to the following generations of artists. And on the other hand to upgrade the art of painting academically. He had numerous students in his workshop, whom he directed himself and accompanied on their way as an artist. In 1662 he became a member of several religious societies in Seville. Between 1660 and 1665 Murillo a. a. on an Old Testament cycle of paintings about the life of Jacob for the Marquis de Villamanrique, of which only four works have survived and which can be viewed in selected museums today. The focus of this cycle was on landscape painting.

In 1663 his wife died, and he was left alone with four of his children, who gradually left the house. This was a severe blow to Murillo which meant that he was unable to paint new pictures for over a year. That was also the reason for him to join the Order of the Brothers of Mercy. From then on, Murillo lived as a widower with his servants and his father Gaspar Esteban. In 1665 he finally joined the Order of the Brothers of Mercy , for whose hospital ensemble and Church de la Caridad he created a series of pictures on the subject of mercy in the following years (1666–1672). In the following time he painted many of his major religious works and received various important commissions, for example the altarpiece for the Augustinian monastery (1680) and paintings for Santa Maria La Blanca (1665), as well as for the Hospital de los Venerables Sacerdotes (1665–1667) .

Murillo's reputation as a very mature and artistically unmistakable painter from Seville spread throughout Spain and other European countries during his lifetime. According to the biographer Antonio Palomino , the court of King Charles II of Spain is said to have offered him around 1670 to move to Madrid in order to continue working there as a court painter . This anecdote is not documented and Murillo stayed in Seville until the end of his life.

According to legend, he died in poverty, mainly because he was willing to donate a lot of money to charity and his estate was modest. In 1682 he was commissioned to paint the wedding of St. Catherine and for the first time went to another city, to Cádiz, for a larger work . There he fell from a scaffold while painting in the Capuchin Church and died a few months later of the consequences of the fall in Seville.

Most of the information about Murillo's personality comes from his biographer Palomino, who described him as a person who "... was not only favored by heaven through the majesty of his art, but also through the gifts of his nature, as a good person, lovable Character, humble and humble ".

Murillos statue in Madrid

Appreciation

Together with Diego Velázquez, Murillo is considered to be the most important representative of painting in Spain's golden age , Spanish Siglo de Oro , although he himself was the better-known and more popular artist of the two during his lifetime and well into the 19th century. His focus was on religious painting, in altar and devotional pictures , especially Madonna pictures or pictures of other popular saints, such as B. Joseph , John the Baptist or Antony of Padua , who were also depicted together with the baby Jesus . He simplified the image type of the Immaculada Concepción to such an extent that they are sometimes difficult to distinguish from the related type of the Assumption of Mary ; this stands out in comparison to other Spanish painters, such as B. the much younger Antolínez , who was also very successful in the genus of Immaculada .
Murillo's equally important, but less numerous genre paintings primarily reflect the milieu of his native Seville; Typical are the already mentioned scenes with street boys and begging children, which arouse relatively great interest even in modern times in the late 20th and 21st centuries. A window portrait of The Two Galician Women (also called Girls at the Window , around 1660, Washington, National Gallery) is noteworthy, possibly showing two courtesans. He also left some portraits.

The inclusion of realistic motifs was a big step in the development of an independent Spanish art. The typical connection between extreme realism and inner spirituality can also be seen in the religious sculptures by Juan Martínez Montañés and Pedro de Mena . In the works of Murillo's predecessors Ribera , Zurbarán , Cano and Velázquez, one recognizes the naturalism of the time, the dramatic light, effective shadow plays and the sobriety of colors - elements that are influenced by the gloomy palettes of Caravaggio and his successors, the Caravaggists.

Murillo himself was often praised for his naturalness and truthfulness, and the special mixture of earthly and heavenly reality or mystical experience. Wassili Botkin (1811–1869) wrote about him: “Everything is accessible to this person: both the deepest, most hidden mysticism of the soul as well as the simple, everyday life ...; he presents everything in astonishing truth and reality. "

Santa Justa , ca.1665, Meadows Museum, Dallas

A stylistic development from a dark tenebroso style to a light-filled painting can be seen in Murillo's oeuvre . His biographers tried to differentiate between three epochs or styles: an early style of "shady chiaroscuro", a "silvery" and a "fragrant golden" style, which, however, cannot be clearly put into a chronological order. Clearly recognizable in his artistic development is “an emphasis on the lyrical and the emotional structure of the images” and a sensitive “enrichment of the color palette”. The “heavy, dense shadows” of the early work later give way to a very differentiated treatment of light and shadow with many semitones, and indirect lighting. The coloring is warm, the brushwork soft and free, outlines soft and (slightly) blurred, in the sense of a so-called stile vaporoso (Italian: hazy, light, airy, fragrant). Despite stylistic role models such as B. van Dyck , his very own elegant, “tender”, “sensitive” and progressive style: in certain details of his painting, “in expression, color and form”, in his Immaculadas , as in many other works, he already takes it Rococo in advance, long before it even existed. Last but not least, the beauty of the figures, especially the women (Madonnas), angels and children, is an important factor in his work.

From this perspective, it is hardly surprising that Murillo's works were in great demand, especially from the early 18th to the 19th centuries. In France he was the most famous Spanish painter in the middle of the 18th century and in the 19th century his works achieved top prices at auctions, for example in Paris in 1854. His genre scenes (around 25 have survived) were almost all abroad at the end of the 17th century (most likely directly via Dutch dealers in Seville), so that in 1779 an export ban was imposed in Spain. Three quarters of the approximately 2000 panel paintings have been lost. He also left an extensive graphic work behind.

Around 1900, after Impressionism and Post-Impressionism , and even more so with Expressionism , the standards changed, and Murillo's fame began to fade, not least due to the discovery of other and new idols, in particular of Velázquez by the Impressionists , and later of El Greco , which today (as of 2018) together with de Goya are considered the epitome of “Spanish” art. The 20th century Russian art historian Alexander Benois said: “Murillo, once the darling of the crowd and aesthetes, has lost some of its popularity today, largely because the whole psychology of the 17th century is alien to our time. … Murillo is too delicate, too sensitive for us. … And yet today's attitude towards Murillo is unfair. Because he is a very great master, and a very peculiar one too ... a virtuoso who conjured his pictures onto the canvas with great ease (this incomprehensibility of Murillo's technique is delicious) ... "

Two self-portraits have survived, one privately owned from the 1630s, the other from around 1670 in the National Gallery of London .

Murillo was honored with a banknote in Spain in 1940: his image appears on a banknote of 1,000 pesetas . The reverse shows his painting “The Little Fruit Trader”.

Paintings by Murillo can now be found mainly in Spain. In German-speaking countries he is u. a. Represented in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, in the picture gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud in Cologne.

On the occasion of his 400th birthday, the "Murillo Year" took place in Seville from mid-2017 to mid-2018. Guided tours through the city, exhibitions, concerts, music cycles up to an international congress helped to bring the life and work of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo into focus and to illustrate the essence of this artist as a pioneer of modern painting. As a prelude, the Museum of Fine Arts offered the exhibition "Murillo and the Capuchins" from November 28, 2017 to April 1, 2018. It was followed by the exhibition "Murillo and his trail in Seville" with some of his most original works. The end of this program is a retrospective with over 50 exhibits from international art galleries, which lasted until March 2019.

Images depicting Christian motifs

  • The Christ child distributes bread to the pilgrims , 1678

  • The Two Trinity , approx. 1675–1682

  • Maria Immaculata , approx. 1660-1665

  • Holy Family with the Bird , 1645–1650

  • Saint Rodrigo , approx. 1646–1655

  • The Christ Child Handing John the Baptist a Bowl of Water , 1675–1680

  • Vision of St. Francis in the Portiuncula , approx. 1670–1680

  • Madonna and Child , 1655–1660, Rijksmuseum , Amsterdam

  • Immaculate Conception (so-called Inmaculada de Soult ), 1678

Images depicting genre scenes

  • Children playing dice (1665–1675)

  • Boy and Dog (1655–1670)

  • Cake eater (1665–1675)

  • Girl with the Coin ( The Galician Woman ) (1650)

  • Girl at the Window (around 1665–1675)

  • Girl with Roses (1665-1670)

literature

  • Karin Hellwig: On the charm of the everyday - Bartolomé Esteban de Murillo , in Henrik Karge: Vision or Reality - modern Spanish painting , Klinkhardt u. Biermann 1991
  • August Mayer : Murillo , Stuttgart / Berlin 1913
  • Jonathan Brown: Murillo and his drawings , Princeton 1976
  • Diego Iñiguez: Murillo , 3 vols., Madrid 1981
  • Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo - the Spanish master of the 17th century , Parkstone / Aurora-Verlag, Bournemouth / St. Petersburg , 1995
  • Nina Ayala Mallory: Murillo , Madrid 1983
  • Murillo , Prado 1982 exhibition catalog, London Royal Academy 1983
  • Murillo - Children's Life in Sevilla , exhibition catalog Alte Pinakothek Munich 2001 (Xanthe Brooke, Peter Cherry and Helge Siefert)
  • Enrique Valdivieso González: "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", biography on the Prado website, online , seen on August 16, 2018 (Spanish)
  • Dirk Kurt Kranz:  Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 31, Bautz, Nordhausen 2010, ISBN 978-3-88309-544-8 , Sp. 917-943.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )

Web links

Commons : Bartolomé Esteban Murillo  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Enrique Valdivieso González: "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", biography on the Prado website, online , viewed August 16, 2018 (Spanish)
  2. ↑ Biography in the Encyclopedia Britannica in: https://www.barkica.com/biographie/Bartolome-Esteban-Murillo
  3. ↑ Enrique Valdivieso González: "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", biography on the Prado website, online , viewed August 16, 2018 (Spanish)
  4. ↑ A trip to America mentions e.g. B. Joachim von Sandrart (1675).
  5. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo - the Spanish master of the 17th century , Parkstone / Aurora-Verlag, Bournemouth / St. Petersburg , 1995, p. 9.
  6. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 9.
  7. ↑ Enrique Valdivieso González: "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", biography on the Prado website, online , viewed August 16, 2018 (Spanish)
  8. ↑ Enrique Valdivieso González: "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", biography on the Prado website, online , viewed August 16, 2018 (Spanish)
  9. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 14.
  10. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 12.
  11. ↑ Some authors doubt a stay in Madrid in the 1640s, which is passed down for example by Palomino. An encounter with Velázquez in Madrid in 1658 is documented.
  12. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 14.
  13. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, pp. 16-17.
  14. ↑ Enrique Valdivieso González: "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", biography on the Prado website, online , viewed August 16, 2018 (Spanish)
  15. ↑ Enrique Valdivieso González: "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", biography on the Prado website, online , viewed August 16, 2018 (Spanish)
  16. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 120.
  17. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, pp. 19-20 and 120.
  18. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, pp. 17-18.
  19. ↑ About the paintings for the Hospital de los Venerables Sacerdotes and Murillo's relationship with his client and friend Justino de Neve . Alexandra Matzner on the exhibition “Murillo and Justino de Neve” in the Dulwich Picture Gallery 2013. Accessed on March 24, 2013.
  20. ↑ Enrique Valdivieso González: "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", biography on the Prado website, online , viewed August 16, 2018 (Spanish)
  21. ↑ Enrique Valdivieso González: "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", biography on the Prado website, online , viewed August 16, 2018 (Spanish)
  22. ↑ "... no solo favorecido del cielo por la eminencia de su arte, sino por las dotes de su naturaleza, de buena persona y de amable trato, humilde y modesto". See: Enrique Valdivieso González: "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", biography on the Prado website, online , viewed August 16, 2018 (Spanish)
  23. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 14, p. 80-81, p. 124-133, p. 142ff.
  24. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, pp. 58–60 and pp. 148–154.
  25. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 23.
  26. ^ Richard Tüngel: "Bartolomé Esteban Murillo", in: Art, Culture and History in the Prado , Schweizer Verlagshaus AG, Zurich, 1964, pp. 135–141, here: p. 140
  27. ^ Richard Tüngel: "Bartolomé Esteban Murillo", in: Art, Culture and History in the Prado , ... Zurich, 1964, pp. 135–141, here: p. 140
  28. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 14.
  29. ^ Similar in: "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", in: Lexikon der Kunst , Vol. 8, ed. v. Wolf Stadler u. a., Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, p. 277
  30. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 14.
  31. ^ "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", in: Lexikon der Kunst , Vol. 8, ed. v. Wolf Stadler u. a., Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, p. 277
  32. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 14.
  33. ^ "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", in: Lexikon der Kunst , Vol. 8, ..., Erlangen 1994, p. 277
  34. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo… ,… 1995, p. 23. The description is based on quotations from Vasily Petrowitsch Botkin and Wissarion Belinski about Murillo's art.
  35. ^ Richard Tüngel: "Bartolomé Esteban Murillo", in: Art, Culture and History in the Prado , ... Zurich, 1964, p. 141
  36. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 7.
  37. ^ "Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban", in: Lexikon der Kunst , Vol. 8, ed. v. Wolf Stadler u. a., Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1994, p. 277
  38. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 22.
  39. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 24.
  40. ↑ Ludmila Kagané: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ... , ... 1995, p. 24.
  41. ↑ 2018, The Murillo Year in Seville in: https: www.spain.info/de/reportajes/ano-murillo-sevilla.html
personal data
SURNAME Murillo, Bartolome Esteban
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish baroque painter
DATE OF BIRTH baptized January 1, 1618
PLACE OF BIRTH Seville , Andalusia
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1682
Place of death Seville , Andalusia