Bartolome Murillo: Death

"Nicolas Omazur" by Bartolome Murillo

"In 1682 Bartolome Murillo was sixty-four years of age. He was possessed of a sufficiency of this world's good, and a reputation second to that of no painter in Spain. Still an almost passionate love of Seville remained one of his strongest characteristics. It must, therefore, have been his sympathy with and affection for his friends the Franciscans that induced him to accept an offer to visit Cadiz and paint five pictures for the church of the Capuchin Friars.

He was engaged upon this work when he met with the accident which caused his death. He had almost completed the principal group of figures and was mounting a scaffolding to reach the upper part of his canvas when he stumbled so violently as to cause a rupture in the intestines. We are told that the natural modesty of the master deterred him from revealing the nature of the injury. His reticence cost him his life.

He was brought home to Seville, where he grew rapidly worse. His notary received instructions to draw up his will, but at six o-clock on the evening of the same day, the 3rd of April, 1682, and before he could sign the will, he expired. His friend and patron, Justino Neve, held him in his arms when the end came, and beside his deathbed was his second son, Gaspar Esteban Murillo, and his pupil, Pedro Nunez de Villavicencio.

During the long days of his painful illness Murillo had himself carried into his parish church of Santa Cruz. Here he performed his devotions before Pedro Campana's powerful painting of the 'Descent from the Cross,' which hung over the altar. It was Murillo's wish that his body should be laid beneath this picture, and thither it was conveyed on the day after his decease. 

His funeral was celebrated with great pomp, the bier being borne by two marquesses and four knights, and attended by a great concourse of people of all ranks, who loved and esteemed the great painter. At last in 1864, a bronze statue of Murillo was placed in the Plaza del Museo, at the entrance of the old Convento de la Merced, now the Museo Provincial, the shrine of his works. But his pictures are the noblest monuments of his fame, while the record of his life is a memory that will last while Spain endures."