Bartolome Murillo: Apprenticeship

"The Young Beggar" by Bartolome Murillo

"As a non-paying apprentice in the studio of Juan del Castillo, Bartolome Murillo's duties consisted in the mixing of paints, the stretching of canvases, and other less artistic utillity work. Castillo, who was brought up in the Florentine traditions of a much earlier period was a dry and hard colourist, and although his design may perhaps be accounted good, he was certainly one of the worst painters the school of Seville has produced. Unfortunately young Murillo's early work understandably reflected his master's.

When Castillo moved to Cadiz, twenty-three year old Murillo remained in Seville to fend for himself and his younger sister - an obligation almost beyond his powers to fulfil. He was very poor, and, being without friends or influence, was often hard put to it to procure the means to satisfy their few modest needs. 

He was compelled to paint pictures on very rough cloth, and hawk them in the weekly fair, the Feria, held every  Thursday. The pictures he managed to produce were bright and pleasing, and while they hardly commanded decent prices, they found ready buyers, which were the poor folk in the area. Indeed his work must have excelled the norm since a picture which possesses exceptional merit is commended to this day as a 'Murillo.'

It was in the Feria that Murillo studied the beggar boys, who were to be the subjects of so many of his famous pictures, and it is obvious that he studied them with an eye to their saleability. In order to sell they must please, and in his determination to please, the artist transformed these dirty, unkempt, disreputable mendicants of Seville into incarnations of picturesque innocence - smooth, smiling, and cherubic. Thse examples of 'genre' are as well known as any of Murillo's pictures.

But the day was approaching when he was to make his last descent upon the Feria before starting on his life's work."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Murillo, a Biography and Appreciation" by Albert Frederick Calvert.)