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The Young Beggar
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo · Baroque & Dutch Golden Age
- Artist
- Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682)
- Date
- c. 1645–1650
- Dimensions
- 134 x 100 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
The Young Beggar shows a ragged boy sitting on the floor of a bare room, delousing himself, next to a basket of apples and a jug, as a shaft of sunlight falls on him through a window.
A closer look
The boy's dirty feet, torn clothes and the scattered shrimp shells on the floor speak of poverty, yet Murillo paints him without mockery. The strong light from the window, in the manner of Caravaggio, gives the humble scene the intensity of a religious picture, lighting up the boy's back and the folds of his shirt. Murillo's paintings of street children in Seville, a city struck by plague and famine, were among the first to make poor children the main subject of a painting. They became hugely popular with collectors in northern Europe.
