Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
1617–1682 · Baroque & Dutch Golden Age
Biography
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682), from Seville, was the most popular Spanish painter of his time, known for his gentle religious paintings of the Virgin and his tender scenes of street children.
From the artist’s life
Murillo is probably best known for his very popular religious pictures, but in many paintings the artist also presented the life of the streets of his native Seville, where we see mainly women and children. The Young Beggar (pictured), painted between 1645 and 1650, was one of his first pictures on this subject, a naturalistic depiction of a poor vagrant child. The figure sits in a dark place of unspecified location, trying to pick a flea off his shirt. Depictions of street life like this became a popular branch of genre painting.
From the page of The Immaculate Conception
