Murillo, BARTOLOMÉ ESTEBAN, was born of humble parentage at Seville, and baptised January 1, 1618; and, after receiving some education, was placed with his relative, Juan del Castillo, to study painting. Having saved a little money, which he made by painting somewhat stiff and rough religious pictures for the fairs of Seville and for exportation to South America, he went to Madrid in 1641, being then in his twenty-fourth year; was favourably noticed by his celebrated townsman Velasquez; and through his influence was enabled to study the chefs-d'œuvre of Italian and Flemish art in the royal collections. In 1645 he determined to return to Seville, though advised to proceed to Rome by Velasquez, who offered him letters from the king. After settling in Seville, he painted eleven large and remarkable pictures for the convent of San Francisco. He at once became famous, and, receiving numerous important commissions, was soon acknowledged as the head of the school there. In 1648 Murillo married a lady of fortune; he now maintained a handsome establishment, and his house was the resort of people of taste and fashion. About this time he passed from his first or 'cold' style—dark with decided outlines—to his second or 'warm' style, in which the drawing is softer and the colour improved. Of the second style good examples are 'St Leander,' the 'Nativity of the Virgin,' and 'St Antony of Padua.' In 1656 he was engaged on four great semicircular pictures, which are the first examples of his third or 'vaporous' manner, the outlines vanishing in a misty blending of light and shade. The three styles, it should be said, are not strictly chronological, the warm style constantly reappearing. The Academy of Seville was founded by him in 1660, but he filled the office of president only during the first year. After this came Murillo's most brilliant period; eight of the eleven pictures painted in 1661-74 for the almshouse of St Jorge, including 'Moses striking the Rock,' 'Abraham and the Angels,' 'The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes,' 'St Peter released from Prison,' and 'St Elizabeth,' are accounted his masterpieces. He executed some twenty pieces for the Capuchin Convent after 1675. He frequently chose the Immaculate Conception or Assumption of the Virgin as a subject, and treated them much alike; the famous 'Conception' now in the Louvre was sold in 1852 at the sale of Marshal Soult's pictures for £24,000. In 1681 he went to Cadiz, and while there fell from a scaffold when painting an altarpiece in the church of the Capuchins, returned to Seville, and soon after died from the injury he received, April 3, 1682. Murillo's pictures naturally fall into two great groups—scenes from low life, Gypsies and beggar children (mostly executed early in his life), and scripture and religious works. Of the former, by which he is largely known abroad, very few are to be seen in Spain. Though his best pictures show much technical skill, truth to nature, and sentiment of a kind, they seldom show ideal beauty or sublimity of feeling.
See Miss E. E. Minor's Murillo ('Great Artists' series, 1882), and C. B. Curtis' Velasquez and Murillo (1883), the latter giving a list of 481 pictures by Murillo—105 in London, 99 elsewhere in England, 61 in Madrid, 59 in Seville, 21 in Paris, 24 in Russia, &c.