Murillo's manner of painting changed now from what the Spanish call
_frio_, or his cold style, to _cálido_, or his warm style, where the
outlines were less pronounced, the figures rounder, and the coloring
more luminous and tender. "The works of the new manner," says Sweetser,
"are notable for graceful and well-arrayed drapery, skilfully disposed
lights, harmonious tints, soft contours, and a portrait-like naturalness
in the faces, lacking in idealism, but usually pure and pleasing. His
flesh-tints were almost uniformly heightened by dark gray backgrounds,
and were so amazingly true that one of his critics has said that they
seemed to have been painted with blood and milk (_con sangre y leche_)."
Many of the Madonnas which Murillo painted were evidently from the same
sweet, pure-faced model, and it is believed that they are the likeness
of his wife. His boys were his models for the infants Jesus and John.
His first work in the so-called warm manner was "Our Lady of the
Conception," a colossal picture for the Brotherhood of the True Cross.
The monks were at first displeased, thinking that the finishing was not
sufficiently delicate; but when Murillo caused it to be hung in the
dome, for the high position for which it was intended, they were greatly
delighted. Murillo, however, made them pay double the original price for
their fault-finding.
"Saints Leander and Isidore," two archbishops of Seville, in the sixth
and seventh centuries, who fought the Arian heresy, was his next
picture, followed by the "Nativity of the Virgin,"--a much admired
work,--a group of women and angels dressing the new-born Mary.
In 1656, for one of the canons of Santa Maria la Blanca, Murillo painted
four large semicircular pictures, the "Immaculate Conception," where the
Virgin is adored by several saints, "Faith," and two pictures, "The
Dream" and "The Fulfilment," to illustrate Our Lady of the Snow, the two
latter now in the Academy of San Fernando at Madrid.
According to a fourth-century legend, the Virgin appeared by night to a
wealthy Roman senator and his wife, commanding them to build a church in
her honor on a certain spot on the Esquiline Hill, which they would find
covered with August snow. They went to Pope Liberius, and, after
obtaining his blessing, accompanied by a great concourse of priests and
people, sought the hill, found the miraculous snow in summer, and gave
all their possessions to build the church.
One picture of Murillo represents the senator in a black velvet costume,
asleep in his chair, while his wife reposes on the floor, the Madonna
and Holy Child above them; the other picture shows them telling their
dream to the Pope. Viardot calls these paintings the "miracles of
Murillo." These were painted in the last of the three manners of
Murillo, the method usually adopted in his Madonnas,--the "vapory"
style, "with soft and tender outlines, velvety coloring, and shadows
which are only softened lights."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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