Part 13

In the picturesque city of Seville, "the glory of the Spanish realms," the greatest painter of Spain, Bartolomé Estéban Murillo, was born, probably on the last day of the year 1617. He was baptized on New Year's Day, 1618, in the Church of La Magdalena, destroyed in 1810 by the French troops under Marshal Soult.

His father, Gaspar Estéban, was a mechanic, renting a modest house which belonged to a convent, and keeping it in repair for the use of it. His mother, Maria Perez, seems to have been well connected, as her brother, Juan de Costillo, was one of the leaders of art in Seville. It is said that the family were once wealthy and distinguished, but now they were very poor.

The boy, Bartolomé, was consecrated to the church, with the fond hope of his mother that he would become a priest. However, he soon exhibited such artistic talent that this project was abandoned. One day when the mother went to Church, leaving the child at home, he amused himself by taking a sacred picture, "Jesus and the Lamb," and painting his own hat on the Infant Saviour's head, and changing the lamb into a dog.

Probably the reverent mother was shocked, but she thereby gained a knowledge of the genius of her only son. In school, the boy used to make sketches on the margins of his books and on the walls.

Before he was eleven years old, both father and mother died, leaving him to the care of a surgeon, Juan Agustin Lagares, who had married his aunt, Doña Anna Murillo. Probably from this family name the boy derived his own. A little sister, Teresa, was also left an orphan.

He was soon apprenticed to his uncle, Juan del Castillo, who taught him carefully all the details of his art,--correct drawing, how to prepare canvas, mix colors, and study patiently. The lad was very industrious, eager to learn, extremely gentle and amiable, and soon attached himself to both teacher and pupils.

From this it is easy to judge that he had had a lovely mother, one who encouraged, who preserved a sweet nature in her son because sweet herself. How often have I seen a parent lose the confidence of a child by too often reproving, by over-criticism, by disparagement! Praise seldom harms anybody. We usually receive and give too little commendation all our lives.

One of my most precious memories is the fact that my widowed mother made it her life-rule not to find fault with her two children. She loved us into obedience. She told us her wishes and her hopes for us, and the smile with which she spoke lingers in my heart like an exquisite picture. Long ago I learned that no home ever had too much love in it.

For nine years the Spanish lad worked in his uncle's studio, studying nature as well as art, as shown in his inimitable "Beggar Boys" and other dwellers in the streets of Seville. When he was twenty, he painted two Madonnas, "The Virgin with St. Francis," for the Convent of Regina Angelorum, and the "Virgin del Rosario with San Domingo," for the Church of St. Thomas.

It was natural that the young artist, loving the Catholic faith, should paint as one of his first pictures the "Story of the Rosary." Mrs. Jameson, in her "Legends of the Monastic Orders," thus gives the history of St. Dominick: "His father was of the illustrious family of Guzman. His mother, Joanna d'Aza, was also of noble birth.... Such was his early predilection for a life of penance that when he was only six or seven years old he would get out of his bed to lie on the cold earth. His parents sent him to study theology in the university of Valencia, and he assumed the habit of a canon of St. Augustine at a very early age.

"Many stories are related of his youthful piety, his self-inflicted austerities, and his charity. One day he met a poor woman weeping bitterly, and when he inquired the cause she told him that her only brother, her sole stay and support in the world, had been carried into captivity by the Moors. Dominick could not ransom her brother; he had given away all his money, and even sold his books, to relieve the poor; but he offered all he could,--he offered up himself to be exchanged as a slave in place of her brother. The woman, astonished at such a proposal, fell upon her knees before him. She refused his offer, but she spread the fame of the young priest far and wide....

"He united with himself several ecclesiastics, who went about barefoot in the habit of penitents, exhorting the people to conform to the Church. The institution of the Order of St. Dominick sprang out of this association of preachers, but it was not united under an especial rule, nor confirmed, till some years later, by Pope Honorius, in 1216.

"It was during his sojourn in Languedoc that St. Dominick instituted the Rosary. The use of a chaplet of beads, as a memento of the number of prayers recited, is of Eastern origin, and dates from the time of the Egyptian Anchorites. Beads were also used by the Benedictines, and are to this day in use among the Mohammedan devotees. Dominick invented a novel arrangement of the chaplet, and dedicated it to the honor and glory of the Blessed Virgin, for whom he entertained a most especial veneration. A complete rosary consists of fifteen large and one hundred and fifty small beads; the former representing the number of _Paternosters_, the latter the number of _Ave Marias_.... The rosary was received with the utmost enthusiasm, and by this single expedient Dominick did more to excite the devotion of the lower orders, especially of the women, and made more converts, than by all his orthodoxy, learning, arguments, and eloquence.

"St. Dominick, in the excess of his charity and devotion, was accustomed, while preaching in Languedoc, to scourge himself three times a day,--once for his own sins; once for the sins of others; and once for the benefit of souls in purgatory." He preached in all the principal cities of Europe, and died at Bologna in 1221.

In 1640, when Murillo was twenty-two, the Castilli home was broken up, the uncle Juan going to Cadiz to reside. Without fame and poor, the youth was thrown upon his own resources. There were many artists in the city of Seville, and Murillo, shy and retiring, could not expect much patronage. He decided to go to the _Feria_, a weekly market, held in front of the Church of All Saints, and there, in the midst of stalls where eatables, old clothes, and other wares were sold, he set up his open-air studio, and worked among the gypsies and the muleteers.

Rough, showy pictures were painted to order and sold to those who frequented the market-place. For two long years he lived among this humble class, earning probably but a scanty subsistence. Here, doubtless, he learned to paint flower-girls and squalid beggars. "There was no contempt," says Sweetser, "in Murillo's feelings towards these children of nature; and his sentiments seemed to partake almost of a fraternal sympathy for them. No small portion of his popularity among the lower classes arose from the knowledge that he was their poet and court painter, who understood and did not calumniate them. Velasquez had chosen to paint superb dukes and cardinals, and found his supporters in a handful of supercilious grandees; but Murillo illustrated the lives of the poorest classes on Spanish soil, and was the idol of the masses. With what splendor of color and mastery of design did he thus illuminate the annals of the poor! Coming forth from some dim chancel or palace-hall in which he had been working on a majestic Madonna-picture, he would sketch in, with the brush still loaded with the colors of celestial glory, the lineaments of the beggar crouching by the wall or the gypsy calmly reposing in the black shadow of the archway. Such versatility had never before been seen west of the Mediterranean, and commanded the admiration of his countrymen.

"We do not find in his pictures the beggar of Britain and America, cold, lowering, gloomy, and formidable; but the laughing child of the sunlight, full of joy and content, preferring to bask rather than to work, yet always fed somehow, and abundantly; crop-haired, brown-footed, clad in incoherent rags, but bright-eyed, given to much joviality, and with an affluence of white teeth, often shown in merry moods; not so respectable as the staid burghers of Nuremberg and Antwerp, but far more picturesque and perhaps quite as happy."

But for Murillo's life of poverty he could not have had this sympathy with the poor. Doubtless every experience is given us with a purpose, that either through the brush or the pen, or by word or deed, we may the better do our part for the elevation of mankind.

In 1642, Murillo had a new inspiration. A fellow-pupil in Castillo's school, Pedro de Moya, after joining the Spanish army and campaigning in Flanders, had spent six months in London under Van Dyck. Now he came back to Seville aglow with his delights in travel and the wonders of the Flemish painters.

Murillo was fired with ambition. He too would see famous painters and renowned cities, and become as great as his young friend Moya. But how? He had no money and no influential friends. He would make the effort. He might stay forever at the _Feria_, and never be heard of beyond Seville.

He bought a piece of linen, cut it into pieces of various sizes, and, in some obscure room, painted upon them saints, flowers, fruit, and landscapes. Then he sallied forth to find purchasers. One wonders whether the young man did not sometimes become discouraged in these years of toil; if he did not sometimes look at the houses of the grandees and sigh because he was not rich or because he was homeless and unknown?

He sold most of his pictures to a ship-owner, by whom they were sent to the West Indies and other Catholic portions of America. Then he started on foot over the Sierras,--a long and tedious journey to Madrid. In the Spanish capital he could find the works of art which he wished to study.

He had no money nor friends when he arrived in the great city, but he had courage. He had learned early in life a most valuable lesson,--to depend on himself. To whom should he go? Velasquez, formerly of Seville, was at the height of his fame, the favorite of the king, the friend of the wealthy and the distinguished. Murillo determined to seek the great artist in his own home; at least he could only be refused admittance.

Velasquez kindly received the young man, who told him how he had come on foot over the mountains to study. There was no jealousy in the heart of the painter, no fear of rivalry. He was pleased with the modesty, frankness, and aspiration of the youth, and, strange to say, took him into his own home to reside. What a contrast to painting in the _Feria_, and living in a garret!

Murillo at once began to study in the royal galleries where Philip II. and his father Charles V. had gathered their Titians, their Rubenses, and their Van Dycks. For three years, through the kindness of Velasquez, he met the leading Spanish artists and the prominent people of the court. The king admired his work, and greatly encouraged him. Murillo was fortunate,--yes; but Fortune did not seek him, he sought her! Ambition and action made him successful.

Early in 1645, Murillo returned to Seville. Velasquez offered to give him letters of introduction to eminent artists in Rome, but he preferred to go back to his native city. Probably he longed for the old Cathedral, with La Giralda, the Alcazar, the Moorish palaces, and the Guadalquivir.

The Alcazar, says Hare, in his "Wanderings in Spain," begun in 1181, was in great part rebuilt by Pedro the Cruel, 1353-64. "The history of this strange monarch gives the Alcazar its chief interest. Hither he fled with his mother as a child from his father, Alonzo XI., and his mistress, Leonora de Guzman. They were protected by the minister, Albuquerque, at whose house he met and loved Maria de Padilla, a Castilian beauty of noble birth, whom he secretly married. Albuquerque was furious, and, aided by the queen-mother, forced him into a political marriage with the French princess, Blanche de Bourbon. He met her at Valladolid; but three days after his nuptials fled from the wife he disliked to the one he loved, who ever after held royal court at Seville, while Queen Blanche,--a sort of Spanish Mary Stuart,--after being cruelly persecuted and imprisoned for years, was finally put to death at Medina-Sidonia.

"In this Alcazar, Pedro received the Red King of Granada, with a promise of safe-conduct, and then murdered him for the sake of his jewels, one of which--a large ruby--he gave to the Black Prince after Navarete, and which is 'the fair ruby, great like a rachet-ball,' which Elizabeth showed to the ambassador of Mary of Scotland, and now adorns the royal crown of England....

"It was in the Alcazar, also, that Pedro murdered his illegitimate brother, the master of Santiago, who had caused him much trouble by a rebellion. Maria de Padilla knew his coming fate, but did not dare to tell him, though from the beautiful _ajimez_ window over the gate she watched for his arrival, and tried to warn him by her tears. Six years after, this murder was avenged by Henry of Trastamare, the brother of the slain, who stabbed Pedro to the heart. But Maria de Padilla was already dead, and buried with queens in the royal chapel, when Pedro publicly acknowledged her as his lawful wife, and the marriage received the sanction of the Spanish Church....

"Within the Alcazar all is still fresh and brilliant with light and color. It is like a scene from the 'Arabian Nights,' or the wonderful creation of a kaleidoscope.... The Hall of Ambassadors is perfectly glorious in its delicate lace-like ornaments and the rich color of its exquisite _azulejos_."

"The cathedral," says Hare, "stands on a high platform, girdled with pillars, partly brought from Italica and partly relics of the mosques, of which two existed on this site. The last, built by the Emir Yusuf in 1184, was pulled down in 1401, when the cathedral was begun, only the Giralda, the Court of Oranges, and some of the outer walls being preserved. The chapter, when convened for the building of the cathedral, determined, like religious Titans, to build 'one of such size and beauty that coming ages should proclaim them mad for having undertaken it.'...

"Far above houses and palaces, far above the huge cathedral itself, soars the beautiful Giralda, its color a pale pink, incrusted all over with delicate Moorish ornament, so high that its detail is quite lost as you gaze upward; so large that you may easily ride on horseback to the summit, up the broad roadway in the interior....

"In the interior everything is vast, down to the Paschal candle, placed in a candlestick twenty-five feet high, and weighing twenty-five hundred pounds, of wax, while the expenditure of the chapter may be estimated by the fact that eighteen thousand seven hundred and fifty litres of wine are consumed annually in the sacrament. Of the ninety-three stained windows many are old and splendid. Their light is undimmed by curtains, for there is an Andalusian proverb that the ray of the sun has no power to injure within the bounds in which the voice of prayer can be heard. In the centre of the nave, near the west door, surrounded by sculptured caravelas, the primitive ships by which the New World was discovered, is the tomb of Ferdinand Columbus, son of the great navigator (who himself rests in Havanna), inscribed,--

"'A CASTILLA Y Á LEON MUNDO NUEVO DIO COLON.'

At the opposite end of the church is the royal chapel, where St. Ferdinand, who was canonized in 1627, 'because he carried fagots with his own hands for the burning of heretics,' rests beneath the altar, in a silver sarcophagus. Here also are his Queen, Beatrix, his son Alonzo el Sabio, father of our Queen Eleanor, and Maria de Padilla, the beautiful Morganatic wife of Pedro the Cruel....

"Many of the services in this church reach a degree of splendor which is only equalled by those of St. Peter's; and the two organs, whose gigantic pipes have been compared to the columns of Fingal's Cave, peal forth magnificently. But one ceremony, at least, is far more fantastic than anything at Rome."

Frances Elliot, in her "Diary of an Idle Woman in Spain," thus describes this remarkable ceremony: "To the left, within the bars, I am conscious of the presence of a band of stringed instruments,--not only violins and counter-bass, but flutes, flageolets, and hautboys, even a serpent, as they call a quaint instrument associated with my earliest years, forthwith all beginning to play in a most ancient and most homely way, for all the world like a simple village choir, bringing a twang of damp, mouldy, country churches to my mind, sunny English afternoons, and odors of lavender and southern-wood.

"As they play--these skilled musicians--a sound of youthful voices comes gathering in, fresh, shrill, and childlike, rising and falling to the rhythm.

"All at once the music grows strangely passionate, the voices and the stringed instruments seem to heave and sigh in tender accents, long-drawn notes and sobs wail out melodious cries for mercy and invocations for pardon, growing louder and intenser each moment.

"Then, I know not how, for the great darkness gathers round even to the gates of the altar, a band of boys, the owners of the voices, appears as in a vision in the open space between the benches on which the chapter sits, and, gliding down the altar steps, move in a measure fitting in softly with the music.

"How or when they begin to dance, singing as if to the involuntary movement of their feet, I know not; at first 'high-disposedly,' their bodies swaying to and fro to the murmur of the band, which never leaves off playing a single instant, in the most heavenly way. Then, as the music quickens and castanets click out, the boys grow animated, and move swifter to and fro, raising their arms in curves and graceful interlacing rounds. Still faster the music beats, and faster and faster they move, crossing and recrossing in mazy figures, the stringed instruments following them with zeal, the castanets, hautboys, and flutes, their interlacing forms knotting in a kind of ecstasy, yet all as grave and solemn as in a song of praise, a visible rejoicing of the soul at Christmas time and the Divine birth. As David danced before the ark for joy, so do these boys dance now with holy gladness.

"I made out something of their costume,--broad Spanish hats, turned up with a _panache_ of blue feathers, the Virgin's color, a flowing mantle of the same hue over one shoulder, glittering in the light, white satin vests, and white hose and shoes.

"The dance is most ancient, _archi-old_, as one may say--of an origin Phoenician or Arab, sanctified to Christian use. The music, like the dance, quaint and pathetic, with every now and then a solo so sweet it seems as if an angel had come down unseen to play it. I have inquired on all hands what is the origin of this singular rite, which takes place twice a year, at Advent and Easter, but no one can tell me. About two centuries ago an Archbishop of Seville objected to the dance as giddy and mundane, and forbade it in his cathedral, causing a terrible scandal. The Sevillians were enraged; their fathers had loved the dance, and their fathers before them, and they were ready to defend it with swords and staves.

"As the Archbishop was inexorable, an appeal was made to Rome. The Pope of that day, a sensible man, replied that he could give no judgment without seeing the dance himself; so the whole troop--stringed instruments, castanets, serpent, cavalier hats and cloaks, and the boys who wore them--were carried off to Rome at the expense of rich citizens. Then the measure was tried before the Pope in the Vatican, and he approved. 'Let the citizens of Seville have their dance,' the Pope said; 'I see no harm in it. As long as the clothes last it shall continue.'

"Need I add that those clothes never wore out, but, like the widow's curse, renewed themselves miraculously, to the delight of the town, and that they will continue to last fresh and new as long as the gigantic walls of the cathedral uprear themselves, and the sun of Andalusia shines on the flat plains!"

Murillo loved this old cathedral, and later he painted for it some of his wonderful pictures, among them "The Guardian Angel," in which "a glorious seraph with spreading wings leads a little, trustful child by the hand, and directs him to look beyond earth into the heavenly light," and "St. Anthony of Padua visited by the infant Saviour." The saint is kneeling with outstretched arms, looking above to the child, who descends through a flood of glory filled with cherubs, drawn down by the prayers of the saint. On the table beside him is a vase of white lilies, which many persons averred were so natural that the birds flew down the cathedral aisles to peck at the flowers. For this picture the cathedral clergy paid ten thousand reals. Mrs. Jameson declares this the finest work ever executed in honor of St. Anthony, a subject chosen by Titian and scores of other artists.

When the nephew of Murillo's first master, Castillo, looked upon this work, he exclaimed, "It is all over with Castillo! Is it possible that Murillo, that servile imitator of my uncle, can be the author of all this grace and beauty of coloring?"

The canons told M. Viardot that the Duke of Wellington offered to pay for this picture as many gold pieces as would cover its surface of fifteen feet square, about two hundred and forty thousand dollars. In 1874 the figure of St. Anthony was cut out, stolen, and sold to a Mr. Schaus, a picture-dealer of New York, for two hundred and fifty dollars. He turned his purchase over to the Spanish consul, who restored it to the cathedral.

St. Anthony was a Portuguese by birth, and taught divinity in the universities of Bologna, Toulouse, Paris, and Padua. Finally he became an eloquent preacher among the people. It is said that when they refused to listen he preached to the dwellers in the sea, "and an infinite number of fishes, great and little, lifted their heads above water, and listened attentively to the sermon of the saint!"

Very many miracles are attributed to him. He restored to life by his prayers Carilla, a young maiden who was drowned; also a young child who was scalded to death; renewed the foot of a young man who had cut it off because the saint rebuked him for having kicked his brother; caused the body of a murdered youth to speak, and acquit an old man who had been accused of his death; made a glass cup remain whole when thrown against a marble slab, while the marble was shivered.

"The legend of the mule," says Mrs. Jameson, "is one of the most popular of the miracles of St. Anthony, and is generally found in the Franciscan churches. A certain heretic called Bovidilla entertained doubts of the real presence in the sacrament, and, after a long argument with the saint, required a miracle in proof of this favorite dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. St. Anthony, who was about to carry the host in procession, encountered the mule of Bovidilla, which fell down on its knees at the command of the saint, and, although its heretic master endeavored to tempt it aside by a sieve full of oats, remained kneeling till the host had passed."