Bartolome Murillo: Marriage

"A Peasant Boy Leaning on a Sill" by Bartolome Murillo

"In 1648 Baratolome Murillo's circumstances were so secure that he was accepted as the husband of a rich and noble lady. Of Dona Beatriz de Cabrera y Sotomayor, who he married in that year, we know little beyond the fact that she possessed property at Pilas, a village situated five leagues from Seville. That she made him a discreet and dutiful wife is generally accepted, and there is certainly no evidence to the contrary.

There is a kind of legend that Murillo first met her at Pilas, where he was painting an altarpiece for the Church of San Geronimo. The story alleges that he wooed the lady by painting her as an angel in that composition. But it is extremely doubtful whether the painter employed her as a model in any of his pictures.

Murillo appears to have had great fondness for his models, and he reproduces the same faces as saints, angels or beggar boys with unfailing persistence. One of his favourite models is said to have been the son of Sebastian Gomez, the painter's Mulatto attendant, who profited so well by the tuition he acquired in the studio that he was able to finish the head of a Madonna that Murillo was prevented from completing. In appreciation of his skill, the artist gave the slave his freedom. The juvenile Gomez is immortalized in the head of the 'Boy Looking Out of Window' in the English National Gallery, and he is seen in other pictures by Murillo as an angel, a fruit seller and a figure in a crowd.

Murillo's house after marriage became the resort of the brethren of his craft and of the most cultured men in Seville. But the artist, instead of limiting his output, devoted himself to the production of pictures with unabated, self-assured industry and enthusiasm."

To be continued

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