LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.- The United States’ first comprehensive retrospective of renowned Spanish artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo will be on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—LACMA—from July 14 through October 6, 2002. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682): Paintings from American Collections, co-organized by LACMA and the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, will feature more than 30 of the artist’s works from the golden age of Spanish painting. Paintings in the exhibition were drawn from the considerable number of fine examples of Murillo’s work in American museums and private collections. They range from religious subjects to scenes of everyday life, and portraits. The exhibition will provide the American public an opportunity to appreciate the quality and range of the artist’s work, and to understand the extraordinary reputation he enjoyed in his lifetime as one of the greatest European painters.
As a very young man, Murillo wrote his will, apparently with the intention of leaving his native Seville to seek fortune in the New World. Although the artist never made it to America, a great number of his paintings did, thus making an exhibition comprised entirely of works in private and public American collections a representative survey of his career. The paintings in the exhibition represent the stylistic development and thematic variety of Murillo’s oeuvre, and also illustrate an important chapter in the history of taste and collecting in America.
Murillo, Spanish Master
Murillo’s posthumous reputation remained strong in the 18th century when he was as well known as Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, or Rubens. Still very much admired in the 19th century, a period of particular interest in Spanish culture outside of Spain (French King Louis Phillipe’s large collection of Spanish paintings was shown at the Louvre in the mid-19th century), Murillo fell out of fashion only in the 20th century. His devotional paintings were judged too emotional, and his secular paintings—particularly of children—too sentimental. In both cases, the judgment was undeserved and did not take into consideration the rich and complex culture of 17th -century Seville, the background of Murillo’s works. His religious works, for instance, are best understood if one considers both the role of the Church in Spanish society, its patronage and promotion of devotional images, and the importance of the contemporary Spanish sacred literature that informs the very nature of these representations. Likewise, the puritanical eyes of the Victorian age seemingly could not appreciate the audacious nature of Murillo’s genre paintings of street urchins or young girls. Today these works are lauded specifically for their frank and vigorous realism.
With the exception of a visit to the royal court in Madrid in 1658, Murillo spent his entire, very productive life in his native Seville, where he created great numbers of religious paintings for the churches and monasteries, as well as for a circle of admiring private patrons. The lively artistic environment of Seville enhanced Murillo’s training as a painter. His work reflects a broad knowledge of styles and subjects from both the north of Europe and from Italy, and demonstrates a truly cosmopolitan culture.
Particularly important to his body of work, and well represented in American collections, are his cycles of paintings executed for religious orders and confraternities. The hieratic Saint John the Baptist Pointing to Christ was painted for the convent of San Leandro, and The Return of the Prodigal Son for the Hospital of Charity in Seville. Painted to be displayed on the façade of the Palace of the Marques de Villamanrique on the occasion of the dedication of the church of Santa Maria la Blanca in 1665, the large paintings with stories from the life of Jacob not only rank among the most famous works of the artist, they also display his ability to paint landscapes.
For private patrons, Murillo provided numerous smaller devotional pictures, often painted on panel, copper, or, as in a case in this exhibition, on Mexican obsidian. Among his most famous devotional images are his depictions of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, of which he painted more than two dozen variations. The exhibition includes an early, clearly delineated version as well as a later example that reflects the softer tone and loose brushwork of his final years.
Curiously underrepresented in American collections are the genre paintings that established Murillo’s fame in England. Yet the Kimbell Museum’s extraordinary Four Figures on a Step, as well as the famous Two Women at a Window (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC) in this exhibition are strong reminders of Murillo’s extraordinary progressive vision.
Murillo’s last large commission, The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine (c. 1682), for the altar of the church of Santa Cataline in Cádiz, was not completed by his hand. His biographers report that Murillo fell from scaffolding while working on the project and died, presumably from his injuries, several months later. His oil sketch for the altarpiece, now in LACMA’s permanent collection, will be seen in the exhibition. It is a poignant closure to an overview of Murillo’s long career, and reflects the evolution of his style.
