Chapter VII: Part 7

The finest picture of the series represents "The Death of St. Clara of Assisi." She was the daughter of a noble knight of great wealth, and much sought in marriage. Desiring to devote herself to a religious life, she repaired to St. Francis for counsel, who advised her to enter a convent. She fled from her home to where St. Francis dwelt, and he with his own hands cut off her luxuriant golden tresses, and threw over her his own penitential habit of gray wool. Her family sought to force her away, but later her sister Agnes and mother Ortolana joined her in the convent.

On the death of her father, St. Clara gave all her wealth to the poor. She went, like the others of her order, barefoot or sandalled, slept on the hard earth, and lived in silence. The most notable event of her life was the dispersion of the Saracens. Emperor Frederic ravaged the shores of the Adriatic. In his army were a band of infidel Saracens, who attacked the Convent of San Damiano. The frightened nuns rushed to the side of "Mother Clara," who had long been unable to rise from her bed. At once she arose, took from the altar the pyx of ivory and silver which contained the Host, placed it on the threshold, knelt, and began to sing. The barbarians were overcome with fear, and tumbled headlong down their scaling-ladders.

Mrs. Jameson says, "The most beautiful picture of St. Clara I have ever seen represents the death of the saint, or, rather, the vision which preceded her death, painted by Murillo.... St. Clara lies on her couch, her heavenly face lighted up with an ecstatic expression. Weeping nuns and friars stand around; she sees them not, her eyes are fixed on the glorious procession which approaches her bed: first, our Saviour, leading his Virgin-mother; they are followed by a company of virgin-martyrs, headed by St. Catharine, all wearing their crowns and bearing their palms, as though they had come to summon her to their paradise of bliss. Nothing can be imagined more beautiful, bright, and elysian than these figures, nor more divine with faith and transport than the head of St. Clara."

These paintings of Murillo were the one topic of conversation in Seville. Orders for pictures came from every side; artists crowded to the convent to study works so unlike their own; the chief families of the city made the hitherto unknown young man a welcome guest at their palaces; fame and position had come when he was only thirty years old.

For one hundred and seventy years these pictures were the pride of the convent, when they were taken by Marshal Soult under Napoleon, and eventually scattered through Northern Europe. The convent was destroyed by fire soon afterwards.

The old adage that "blessings never come singly" was realized in the case of Murillo, for at this time he married a wealthy lady from a family of high renown, Dona Beatriz de Cobrera y Sotomayor, who dwelt at Pilas, about five leagues from Seville. It is said that he first saw her when painting an altar-piece in the Church of San Geronimo at Pilas, and portrayed her as an angel in his picture while he was winning her love.

Their married life seems to have been an eminently happy one. Their home became a centre for artists and the best social circles of the city. Three children were born to them: Gabriel, who went to the West Indies; Francisca, who became a nun; and Gaspar, afterwards a canon of Seville Cathedral.

Murillo's manner of painting changed now from what the Spanish call _frio_, or his cold style, to _calido_, 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."

In 1660, Murillo founded an academy of art in Seville, of which he was president for two years. The students were required to abstain from swearing and ill behavior, and to give assent to the following: "Praised be the most Holy Sacrament and the pure conception of our Lady."

Murillo was a most gentle and encouraging teacher. His colored slave, Sebastian Gomez, who had listened to the teaching which he gave to others, finished the head of the Virgin which his master had left on the easel. Murillo exclaimed on seeing it, "I am indeed fortunate, Sebastian; for I have created not only pictures, but a painter!" Many of the works of Gomez, whom Murillo made free, are still preserved and prized in Seville.

During the next ten years, Murillo did much work for the cathedral clergy; eight oval, half-length pictures of saints, Justa, Rufina, Hermengild, Sidon, Leander, Archbishops Laureano and Pius, and King Ferdinand; the "Repose in Egypt;" the infants Christ and John for the Antigua Chapel, and other works.

Saints Justa and Rufina were daughters of a potter, whom they assisted. Some women who worshipped Venus came to the shop to buy vessels for idolatrous sacrifice. The sisters declared that they had nothing to sell for such purposes, as all things should be used in the service of God. The Pagan women were so incensed that they broke all the earthenware in the place. The sisters then broke the image of Venus, and flung it into a kennel. For this act the populace seized them, and took them before the Prefect. Justa expired on the rack, and Rufina was strangled. These two saints have always guarded the beautiful tower Giralda. They are said to have preserved it from destruction in 1504, in a terrific thunder-storm. When Espartero bombarded Seville in 1843, the people believed that Giralda was encompassed by angels led by these sisters, who turned aside the bombs.

Murillo was now fifty-two years old, in the prime of life, famous and honored. He was named by his admiring contemporaries "a better Titian," and it was asserted that even Apelles would have been proud to be called "the Grecian Murillo." He lived in a large and handsome house, still carefully preserved, near the Church of Santa Cruz, not far from the Moorish wall of the city. "The courtyard contains a marble fountain, amidst flowering shrubs, and is surrounded on three sides by an arcade upheld by marble pillars. At the rear is a pretty garden, shaded by cypress and citron trees, and terminated by a wall whereon are the remains of ancient frescos which have been attributed to the master himself. The studio is on the upper floor, and overlooks the Moorish battlements, commanding a beautiful view to the eastward, over orange-groves and rich corn-lands, out to the gray highlands about Alcala."

Murillo's only sister, Teresa, had married a noble of Burgos, a knight of Santiago, judge of the royal colonial court, a man of great cultivation, and later chief secretary of state at Madrid. The artist was also urged by King Charles II. to enter the royal service at Madrid, especially since a picture of the Immaculate Conception, exhibited during a festival of Corpus Christi, had awakened the greatest enthusiasm among the people. But he loved Seville, and would not leave it. And the Sevillians equally loved the man so generous that he gave all he earned to the poor; so diligent at his work that he had no time for evil speaking; with so much tact and sweetness and vital piety that he left no shadow upon his name.

In 1670, Murillo began his great works for La Caridad, or the Hospital of St. George. The Brotherhood of Holy Charity built a church about 1450, but it had fallen into ruin. In 1661, Don Miguel Manura Vicentelo de Leca determined to restore and beautify the church and its adjacent buildings, and secured over half a million ducats for this purpose. His history was a strange one.

Frances Elliot says of this dissolute man, "Returning at midnight from a revel given by some gallants, in the now ancient quarter of the Macarena, Don Miguel falls in with a funeral procession with torches and banners. Some grandee of high degree, doubtless, there are so many muffled figures, mutes carrying silver horns, the insignia of knighthood borne upon shields, a saddled horse led by a shadowy page, and the dim forms of priests and monks chanting death dirges.

"Don Miguel can recall no death at court or among the nobles, and this is plainly a corpse of quality. Nor can he explain the midnight burial, a thing unknown except in warfare or in time of plague; so, advancing from the dark gateway where he had stood to let the procession pass, he addresses himself to one of the muffled figures, and asks, 'Whose body are they carrying to the Osario at this time of night?'

"'Don Miguel de Manara,' is the answer; 'a great noble. Will you follow us and pray for his sinful soul?'

"As these words are spoken, the funeral procession seems to pause, and one advances who flings back the wreaths and flowers which shroud the face, and lo! Don Miguel gazes on his own visage.

"Spellbound, he seems to join the ghostly throng which wends its slow way into the Church of Santa Inez, where spectral priests appear to meet it, and carry the bier into the nave, where, next morning, Don Miguel is found, by the nuns coming to matins, insensible upon the stones."

He at once reformed his vicious life, erected a great cloistered hospital, with one of the most beautiful churches in Seville, and endowed it, so that a large company of priests, sisters of charity, physicians, and domestics could be provided for. Don Miguel caused this inscription to be cut on the facade of the hospital: "This house shall stand as long as God shall be feared in it, and Jesus Christ be served in the persons of His poor. Whoever enters here must leave at the door both avarice and pride."

The noble was buried at the church door, so that all who passed in might trample upon his grave. The monumental slab bears the perhaps not inappropriate words, dictated by himself: "To the memory of the greatest sinner that ever lived, Don Miguel de Manara."

Murillo painted for the new Church of St. George eight pictures for the side walls, and three for the altars, for which he received over seventy-eight thousand reals. The "Annunciation," the "Infant Saviour," and the "Infant St. John" were destined for the side altars; the remaining eight, "Moses striking the Rock," the "Prodigal's Return," "Abraham receiving the Three Angels," the "Charity of San Juan de Dios," the "Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes," "Our Lord healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda," "St. Peter released from Prison by the Angel," and "St. Elizabeth of Hungary tending the Sick," were intended for the walls. Only three of these eight are left at La Caridad,--"Moses," the "Loaves and Fishes," and "San Juan,"--the rest having been carried to France by Marshal Soult.

Of these three, "San Juan" is considered the "most spirited and powerful." This saint was the founder of the Hospitallers or Brothers of Charity. Born of very poor parents, at nine years of age he ran away from home with a priest, who deserted him on the road to Madrid, at a little village near Oropesa, in Castile. He hired himself to a shepherd; later he entered the wars between Charles V. and Francis I., and became a brave but profligate soldier. He was about to be hanged for allowing some booty to be carried off, over which he had been placed as sentinel. The rope was already around his neck, when an officer, touched with pity, interfered to save his life, on condition that he should quit the camp.

After various wanderings, he returned to his native town, only to find that both his father and mother had died of grief in consequence of his flight. He nearly lost his reason through remorse, became converted, and began to devote his life to the poor and the sick. To the deserted shed which served for his home, he brought the starving and wretched whom he found in the streets, and worked for them and begged for them. He finally obtained a large building, where, in the winter, he kept a great fire to warm homeless travellers.

"Thus passed ten years of his life," says Mrs. Jameson, "without a thought of himself; and when he died, exhausted in body, but still fervent and energetic in mind, he, unconsciously as it seemed, bequeathed to Christendom one of the noblest of all its religious institutions.

"Under how many different names and forms has the little hospital of Juan de Dios been reproduced throughout Christian Europe, Catholic and Protestant! Our houses of refuge, our asylums for the destitute; the brotherhood of the 'Caridad,' in Spain; that of the 'Misericordia,' in Italy; the 'Maisons de Charite,' in France; the 'Barmherzigen Brueder,' in Germany,--all these sprang out of the little hospital of this poor, low-born, unlearned, half-crazed Juan de Dios! I wonder if those who go to visit the glories of the Alhambra, and dream of the grandeur of the Moors, ever think of _him_.

"The only representation of this good saint which can rank high as a work of art is a famous picture by Murillo, painted for the Church of the Caridad, at Seville. In a dark, stormy night, Juan is seen staggering--almost sinking--under the weight of a poor dying wretch, whom he is carrying to his hospital. An angel sustains him on his way. The dark form of the burden and the sober gray frock of the bearer are dimly seen in the darkness, through which the glorious countenance of the seraph, and his rich yellow drapery, tell like a burst of sunshine."

Of the five pictures removed by Marshal Soult, the "St. Elizabeth of Hungary," called "El Tinoso," now in the Madrid Academy, is considered one of Murillo's finest works. It represents her dressed in her royal robes, washing the head of a leprous boy, while around her are beggars and the ladies of her court.

"The St. Elizabeth," says John Hay, in his "Castilian Days," "is a triumph of genius over a most terribly repulsive subject. The wounds and sores of the beggars are painted with unshrinking fidelity, but every vulgar detail is redeemed by the beauty and majesty of the whole. I think in these pictures of Murillo (his Madonnas and others) the last word of Spanish art was reached. There was no further progress possible in life, even for him. 'Other heights in other lives, God willing.'"

Of Murillo's "Marys of the Conception, that fill the room with light and majesty," Colonel Hay beautifully says: "They hang side by side, so alike and yet so distinct in character. One is a woman in knowledge and a goddess in purity; the other, absolute innocence, startled by the stupendous revelation, and exalted by the vaguely comprehended glory of the future. It is before this picture that the visitor always lingers longest. The face is the purest expression of girlish loveliness possible to art. (Supposed to be the face of his daughter, Francesca.) The Virgin floats, up-borne by rosy clouds; flocks of pink cherubs flutter at her feet, waving palm branches. The golden air is thick with suggestions of dim, celestial faces, but nothing mars the imposing solitude of the Queen of Heaven, shrined alone, throned in the luminous azure. Surely no man ever understood or interpreted, like this grand Andalusian, the power that the worship of woman exerts on the religions of the world. All the passionate love that has been poured out in all the ages at the feet of Ashtaroth and Artemis and Aphrodite and Freya found visible form and color at last on that immortal canvas, where, with his fervor of religion, and the full strength of his virile devotion to beauty, he created, for the adoration of those who should follow him, this type of the perfect feminine,--

"'Thee! standing loveliest in the open heaven!
Ave Maria! only heaven and Thee!'"

The story of St. Elizabeth is both touching and beautiful. The daughter of Andreas II., King of Hungary, born in 1207, she was betrothed, in her childhood, to Duke Louis of Thuringia. She early developed the most generous and spiritual character, giving to the poor, praying much, even at midnight, on the bare, cold earth, winning for herself the hatred of a fashionable court and the adoration of her subjects. Various legends are told of her.

"When Elizabeth was ministering to her poor at Eisenach," says Mrs. Jameson, "she found a sick child cast out from among the others because he was a leper, and so loathsome in his misery that none would touch him or even go nigh him; but Elizabeth, moved with compassion, took him in her arms, carried him up the steep ascent to the castle, and, while her attendants fled at the spectacle, and her mother-in-law, Sophia, loaded her with reproaches, she laid the sufferer in her own bed. Her husband was then absent, but shortly afterwards his horn was heard to sound at the gate. Then his mother, Sophia, ran out to meet him, saying, 'My son, come hither! See with whom thy wife shares her bed!' And she led him up to the chamber, telling him what had happened. This time, Louis was filled with impatience and disgust; he rushed to the bed and snatched away the coverlid; but behold! instead of the leper, there lay a radiant infant, with the features of the New-born in Bethlehem; and while they stood amazed, the vision smiled, and vanished from their sight.

"Elizabeth, in the absence of her husband, daily visited the poor, who dwelt in the suburbs of Eisenach and in the huts of the neighboring valleys. One day, during a severe winter, she left her castle with a single attendant, carrying in the skirts of her robe a supply of bread, meat, and eggs for a certain poor family; and, as she was descending the frozen and slippery path, her husband, returning from the chase, met her, bending under the weight of her charitable burden. 'What dost thou here, my Elizabeth?' he said. 'Let us see what thou art carrying away?' and she, confused and blushing to be so discovered, pressed her mantle to her bosom; but he insisted, and, opening her robe, he beheld only red and white roses, more beautiful and fragrant than any that grow on this earth, even at summer-tide; and it was now the depth of winter!

"Then he was about to embrace his wife, but, looking in her face, he was overawed by a supernatural glory, which seemed to emanate from every feature, and he dared not touch her; he bade her go on her way and fulfil her mission; but, taking from her lap one of the roses of Paradise, he put it in his bosom, and continued to ascend the mountain slowly, with his head declined, and pondering these things in his heart.

"In 1226, a terrible famine afflicted all Germany; but the country of Thuringia suffered more than any other. Elizabeth distributed to the poor all the corn in the royal granaries. Every day a certain quantity of bread was baked, and she herself served it out to the people, who thronged around the gates of the castle, sometimes to the number of nine hundred. Uniting prudence with charity, she so arranged that each person had his just share, and so husbanded her resources that they lasted through the summer; and when harvest-time came round again, she sent them into the fields, provided with scythes and sickles, and to every man she gave a shirt and a pair of new shoes. But, as was usual, the famine had been succeeded by a great plague and mortality, and the indefatigable and inexhaustible charity of Elizabeth was again at hand.

"In the city of Eisenach, at the foot of the Wartburg, she founded an hospital of twenty beds, for poor women only; and another, called the Hospital of St. Anne, in which all the sick and poor who presented themselves were received; and Elizabeth herself went from one to the other, ministering to the wretched inmates with a cheerful countenance, although the sights of misery and disease were often so painful and so disgusting that the ladies who attended upon her turned away their heads, and murmured and complained of the task assigned to them.

"She also founded a hospital especially for poor children. It is related by an eye-witness that whenever she appeared among them they gathered round her, crying 'Mutter! Mutter!' clinging to her robe and kissing her hands. She, mother-like, spoke to them tenderly, washed and dressed their ulcerated limbs, and even brought them little toys to amuse them. In these charities, she not only exhausted the treasury, but she sold her own robes and jewels, and pledged the jewels of the state. When the landgrave (her husband) returned, the officers and councillors went out to meet him, and, fearing his displeasure, they began to complain of the manner in which Elizabeth, in their despite, had lavished the public treasures. But Louis would not listen to them; he cut them short, repeating, 'How is my dear wife? how are my children? are they well? Let her give what she will, so long as she leaves me my castles of Eisenach, Wartburg, and Naumburg!' Then he hurried to the gates, and Elizabeth met him with her children, and threw herself into his arms, and kissed him a thousand times, and said to him tenderly, 'See! I have given to the Lord what is his, and he has preserved to us what is thine and mine!'"

Louis was soon after killed in the Crusades, and she and her children were driven out of Thuringia by his brothers, Henry and Conrad. Later, some of her possessions were restored to her. She spun wool to earn more money to give away, and wore ragged clothes that she might help the destitute. She died at twenty-four, singing hymns, her sweet voice murmuring, "Silence!" at the last.

"No sooner had Elizabeth breathed her last breath than the people surrounded her couch, tore away her robe, cut off her hair, even mutilated her remains for relics. She was buried amid miracles and lamentations, and four years after her death she was canonized by Gregory IX."

Murillo's "Abraham receiving the Angels" and "The Prodigal's Return" were purchased of Marshal Soult by the Duke of Sutherland, and are now in Stafford House. "The Healing of the Paralytic" was purchased of Marshal Soult for thirty-two thousand dollars, and is now in the possession of Mr. Tomline of London. The head of the Christ is thought to be Murillo's best representation of our Lord. "The soft violet hue, so dear to Valencian art, of the Saviour's robe, is skilfully opposed to the deep brown of St. Peter's mantle, a rich tint then and still made by Andalusian painters from beef-bones." "The Release of St. Peter" is at the Hermitage, in St. Petersburg.

Before the paintings for La Caridad were finished, Murillo was asked to decorate the new Capuchin church. For three years he worked here, not leaving the convent, it is said, for a single day. Such diligence is most suggestive to those persons who expect to win success without unremitting labor! Of the more than twenty pictures painted here by Murillo, nine formed the _retablo_ of the high altar, and eight were on the side altars. Seventeen of these are now in the Seville Museum.

The immense altar-piece, "The Virgin granting to St. Francis the Jubilee of the Porciuncula," is now in the National Museum of Madrid. This was a feast in honor of the Cavern of St. Francis of Assisi, in which he received a visit from the Virgin and Child. Thirty-three beautiful cherubs are showering the kneeling St. Francis with red and white roses, blossoms from the briers with which he scourged himself. Over the high altar were pictures of "Saints Justa and Rufina," "St. Anthony of Padua," "St. John in the Desert," "St. Joseph," "St. Felix of Cantalicio," the "Veronica," "Saints Leander and Bonaventura," and a gem called "The Madonna of the Napkin."

Murillo had so endeared himself to one of the lay brethren of the convent, a cook, that he begged some token of remembrance from the hand of the great artist. As he had no canvas, Murillo took the napkin which the cook had brought with his food, and, before nightfall, made a most beautiful Virgin, and a Child so natural that it seems, says E. G. Minor, in her life of Murillo, "as if it would spring from its mother's arms. The coloring of this picture, of which innumerable copies and engravings have been made, was never surpassed even by Murillo himself."

St. Veronica was a noble-hearted woman, who, seeing the Saviour pass her door, on his way to Calvary, wiped the perspiration from his brow with her handkerchief or veil. To her surprise and delight, she found an image of the Lord's face upon it. She suffered martyrdom under Nero.

The great pictures on the side altars of the church illustrated "St. Thomas of Villanueva," which the artist himself esteemed the best of all his works; "St. Francis of Assisi, embracing the Crucified Redeemer," "St. Anthony of Padua and the Infant Christ"; the "Vision of St. Felix," the "Annunciation," the "Immaculate Conception," the "Nativity," and the "Virgin with the Head of the Saviour on her Knee."

St. Thomas is represented as at the door of his cathedral, giving alms to beggars. "In the year 1544," says Mrs. Jameson, "Charles V. showed his respect for him by nominating him Archbishop of Valencia. He accepted the dignity with the greatest reluctance. He arrived in Valencia in an old black cassock, and a hat which he had worn for twenty-one years; and as he had never in his life kept anything for himself beyond what was necessary for his daily wants, he was so poor that the canons of his cathedral thought proper to present him with four thousand crowns for his outfit; he thanked them gratefully, and immediately ordered the sum to be carried to the hospital for the sick and poor; and from this time forth we find his life one series of beneficent actions. He began by devoting two-thirds of the revenues of his diocese to purposes of charity.

"He divided those who had a claim on him into six classes: first, the bashful poor who had seen better days, and who were ashamed to beg; secondly, the poor girls whose indigence and misery exposed them to danger and temptation; in the third class were the poor debtors; in the fourth, the poor orphans and foundlings; in the fifth, the sick, the lame, and the infirm; lastly, for the poor strangers and travellers who arrived in the city or passed through it, without knowledge where to lay their heads, he had a great kitchen open at all hours of the day and night, where every one who came was supplied with food, a night's rest, and a small gratuity to assist him on his journey. 'There were few churches or convents on the sunny side of the Sierra Morena without some memorial picture of this holy man,' but the finest beyond all comparison are those of Murillo."

The "St. Francis" represents Christ appearing to the saint in his grotto on Mount Alvernus when he received the stigmata, wounds similar to those of the Saviour in the Crucifixion.

In 1678, Murillo painted for the Hospital de los Venerables, at Seville, an asylum for aged priests, "St. Peter Weeping," the "Virgin and Child enthroned on Clouds," the portrait of his friend Don Justino Neve y Yevenes, and the "Immaculate Conception," now in the Louvre, for which the French government paid, in 1852, at the sale of Marshal Soult's collection, over one hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars. The beautiful Virgin, in her mantle of exquisite blue, over her white robe, floats upward toward the sky, attended by angels, her feet treading upon the crescent, showing her triumph over the other religions of the world. It is a marvel of color and pure saintly expression.

Viardot says: "Murillo comes up, in every respect, to what our imagination could hope or conceive. His earthly daylight is perfectly natural and true; his heavenly day is full of radiance. We find in the attitude of the saints, and the expression of their features, all that the most ardent piety, all that the most passionate exaltation, can feel or express in extreme surprise, delight, and adoration. As for the visions, they appear with all the pomp of a celestial train, in which are marvellously grouped the different spirits of the immortal hierarchy, from the archangel with outspread wings to the bodiless heads of the cherubim. It is in these scenes of supernatural poetry that the pencil of Murillo, like the wand of an enchanter, produces marvels. If in scenes taken from human life, he equals the greatest colorists, he is alone in the imaginary scenes of eternal life. It might be said of the two great Spanish masters, that Velasquez is the painter of the earth, and Murillo of heaven."

His next work was for the Augustinian convent church, the "Madonna appearing to St. Augustine," and "St. Augustine and the little Child on the Seashore," who is trying to fill a hole in the sand with water carried from the ocean in a shell.

About this time, he painted the exquisite "St. John with the Lamb," now in the National Gallery, for which the government paid ten thousand dollars; "Los Ninos de la Concha," the "Children of the Shell," where the Child Jesus holds the shell, filled with water, to the lips of St. John, now in the Prado Museum at Madrid; and "St. Ildefonso receiving the Chasuble from the Virgin," also at Madrid. This saint defended the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception at a time when it had many opponents. In token of her appreciation, the Virgin came to his cathedral, seated herself upon his ivory pulpit, and, with the angels about her, chanted a service from the Psalter. He bowed to the ground, and the Virgin said, "Come hither, most faithful servant of God, and receive this robe, which I have brought thee from the treasury of my Son." He knelt before her, and she threw over him a cassock of heavenly tissue. The ivory chair remained thereafter unoccupied, till the presumptuous Archbishop Sisiberto sat in it, and died a miserable death in consequence.

Besides all this work, Murillo's various "Beggar Boys" are known wherever art is loved; one is in the Louvre, "El Piojoso"; several, in the Pinakothek at Munich; the "Flower-Girl" and a "Boy with a Basket and Dog," at the Hermitage; and others, in London and Madrid. The "Education of the Virgin," Mary kneeling by the side of St. Anna, her mother, the faces portraits, it is believed, of his wife and daughter, is in the Royal Gallery at Madrid. Five large paintings from the life of Jacob, "Isaac blessing Jacob," "Jacob's Dream," "Jacob and Laban's Sheep," "Laban searching for his Gods in the Tent of Rachel," and one other, are in various galleries.

Murillo was now growing old. All the time which he could possibly spare from his work he passed in devotion. He often visited the Church of Santa Cruz, where he spent hours before the altar-piece, "The Descent from the Cross," by Pedro Campana. When lingering late one night, he was asked by the sacristan why he thus tarried. He replied: "I am waiting till those men have brought the body of our blessed Lord down the ladder."

His last picture, the "Marriage of St. Catharine," was begun in 1680, in the Capuchin Church at Cadiz, when he was sixty-two years of age. He had finished the centre group of the Madonna and Child and St. Catharine, when he fell from the scaffold on which he was climbing to his work, and fatally injured himself. Whether this accident occurred in the chapel at Cadiz, or in his own studio, is not positively known, but he died soon afterward, at Seville, April 3, 1682, in the arms of his friend Canon Neve and his pupil Pedro Nunez de Villavicencio. His wife was dead, and his daughter had become a nun six years previous, but his second son, Gaspar, stood beside the bed of death.

He was buried with distinguished honors, the bier being carried by two marquises and four knights, and followed by a great concourse of people. At his own request, he was buried beneath his favorite picture, the "Descent from the Cross." His grave was covered with a stone slab on which were carved his name, a skeleton, and the words, "Vive moriturus," "Live as one who is about to die."

During the French occupation, the Church of Santa Cruz was destroyed, and its site is now occupied by the Plaza Santa Cruz. A tablet was placed in the adjacent wall in 1858, stating that Murillo was buried there. A bronze statue of the painter has been erected by the city of Seville, near the Provincial Museum.

More than five hundred of the works of Murillo are scattered through Europe. Self-made, he left a name honored alike for great genius and great beauty of character. Says Emelyn W. Washburn, in "Spanish Masters," "We shall not err when we say that Murillo is the sweetest and richest painter of his day.... He has a glowing fancy, an eye for all beauty of nature and life, and a lofty mind and moral purpose. His magic pencil writes the heart of his saints on the face; none better than he can draw the pure brow of childhood; and, above all, his conceptions suggest a mystery hidden beneath the outward coloring.

"His name recalls Spanish art in the noon of its glory. There is in that series of great and small artists not one who has so won the heart of all time; none depicts so much of that personal beauty which gives life to the past. We approach Zurbaran with somewhat of awe; Velasquez is the grand historical painter. But in Murillo we see the mingling of the two, with a milder grace. In him, we see the sweet singer with the golden harp strung always before him, the man with all the chords of his fine nature touched by the Holy Ghost.

"There is, perhaps, no point where Murillo appears in more winning beauty than in his relations with other painters. He shows the most generous soul, the rarest gentleness, a heart where the struggles of youth have only brought forth the richest fruits. We see the picture of a man too great for little hates. His is a character shaped by the mild spirit of Christ's religion....

"Murillo stands forth as a mind which most faithfully represents Spanish genius, art, religion; who lived a Spaniard of the Spaniards in that brilliant world; who wore the same long cloak and grave dignity as is now met with in the narrow, dirty lanes of Seville; nay, more, who had a living human heart, and who pondered as we now ponder the problems of art and life; who taught a nation and an age."

RUBENS.

Taine says, in his "Philosophy of Art in the Netherlands": "Rubens is to Titian what Titian was to Raphael, and Raphael was to Phidias. Never did artistic sympathy clasp nature in such an open and universal embrace. Ancient boundaries, already often extended, seem removed purposely to expose an infinite career. He shows no respect for historic proprieties: he groups together allegoric with real figures, and cardinals with a naked Mercury.

"There is no deference to the moral order; he fills the ideal heaven of mythology and of the Gospel with coarse or mischievous characters; a Magdalen resembling a nurse, and a Ceres whispering some pleasant gossip in her neighbor's ear. There is no dread of exciting physical sensibility; he pushes the horrible to extremes, ... all the animal instincts of human nature appear; those which had been excluded as gross he reproduces as true, and in him, as in nature, they encounter the others. Nothing is wanting but the pure and the noble; the whole of human nature is in his grasp, save the loftiest heights. Hence it is that this creativeness is the vastest we have seen, comprehending as it does all types, Italian cardinals, Roman emperors, contemporary citizens, peasants and cowherds, along with the innumerable diversities stamped on humanity by the play of natural forces, and which more than fifteen hundred pictures did not suffice to exhaust.

"For the same reason, in the representation of the body, he comprehended more profoundly than any one the essential characteristic of organic life; he surpasses in this the Venetians as they surpass the Florentines; he feels still better than they that flesh is a changeable substance in a constant state of renewal; and such, more than any other, is the Flemish body, lymphatic, sanguine, and voracious; more fluid, more rapidly tending to accretion and waste than those whose dry fibre and radical temperance preserve permanent tissues.

"Hence it is that nobody has depicted its contrasts in stronger relief, nor as visibly shown the decay and bloom of life; at one time the dull, flabby corpse, a genuine clinical mass, empty of blood and substance; livid, blue, and mottled through suffering, a clot of blood on the mouth, the eye glassy, and the feet and hands clayish, swollen, and deformed because death seized them first; at another, the freshness of living carnations, the handsome, blooming, and smiling athlete, the mellow suppleness of a yielding torso in the form of a well-fed youth, the soft rosy cheeks and placid candor of a girl whose blood was never quickened or eyes bedimmed by thought, flocks of dimpled cherubs and merry cupids, the delicacy, the folds, the exquisite melting rosiness of infantile skin, seemingly the petal of a flower moistened with dew and impregnated with morning light.

"His personages speak; their repose itself is suspended on the verge of action; we feel what they have just accomplished, and what they are about to do. The present with them is impregnated with the past and big with the future; not only the whole face, but the entire attitude conspires to manifest the flowing stream of their thought, feeling, and complete being; we hear the inward utterance of their emotion; we might repeat the words to which they give expression. The most fleeting and most subtle shades of sentiment belong to Rubens; in this respect he is a treasure for novelist and psychologist; he took note of the passing refinements of moral expression as well as of the soft volume of sanguine flesh; no one has gone beyond him in knowledge of the living organism and of the animal man....

"There is only one Rubens in Flanders, as there is only one Shakespeare in England. Great as the others are, they are deficient in some one element of his genius."

This great painter, Peter Paul Rubens, whom Sir Joshua Reynolds called "the best workman with his tools that ever managed a pencil," was born at Siegen, June 29, 1577, on the day commemorating the martyrdom of these saints at Rome, hence the names given to the child. Antwerp and Cologne have claimed his birth, but subsequent historical investigation has shown Siegen as his birthplace. Jans Rubens, the father of Peter, was a distinguished councilman and alderman of Antwerp, having taken his degree of Doctor of Laws at Rome when he was thirty-one. When he was about that age he married Marie Pypelincx, a woman of good family, unusual force of character, and the idol of her son Peter as long as she lived.

Antwerp was now the scene of a desolating war. Charles V., Emperor of Germany and King of Spain, had abdicated, leaving the Netherlands to his son Philip II. Religious dissensions, the presence of Spanish soldiers, and other matters, led to revolts, which the Duke of Alva, with twenty thousand soldiers, was sent to suppress in 1576. Seven thousand of the people of Antwerp were slain, and five hundred houses burned.

Jans Rubens had been accused of Calvinistic tendencies, and thought it prudent to retire to Cologne before the arrival at Antwerp of the Roman Catholic Duke of Alva, placing himself on the side of Prince William of Orange, the Silent, who had married Annie of Saxony. She had quarrelled with her husband, had come to Cologne, and had employed Jans Rubens as one of her counsellors in obtaining her property, which Philip II. had confiscated. Forgetting his high position and his family, Jans Rubens sacrificed his good name and character by his immorality, was arrested and thrown into prison by Count John of Nassau, the brother of Prince William, and Annie was divorced by her husband. By German law Rubens was under the penalty of death. He wrote to his wife, confessing his guilt and imploring her pardon. She determined at once to save his life, if possible. The noble-hearted woman wrote him tenderly--only great souls know how to forgive,--

"How could I push severity to the point of paining you when you are in such affliction that I would give my life to relieve you from it? Even had this misfortune not been preceded by a long affection, ought I to show so much hatred as not to be able to pardon a fault against me?... Be, then, assured that I have entirely forgiven you, and would to Heaven that your deliverance depended on this, for then we should soon be happy again.

"Alas! it is not what your letter announces that affects me. I could scarcely read it. I thought my heart would break. I am so distressed, I hardly know what I write. This sad news so overwhelms me it is with difficulty I can bear it. If there is no more pity in this world, to whom shall I apply? I will implore Heaven with tears and groans, and hope that God will grant my prayer by touching the hearts of these gentlemen, so that they may spare us, may have compassion on us; otherwise, they will kill me as well as you, my soul is so linked to yours that you cannot suffer a pain without my suffering as much as you. I believe that if these good lords saw my tears they would have pity on me, even if they were of stone; and, when all other means fail, I will go to them, although you write me not to do so."

Marie could not reach William the Silent, for he was away in the country, consolidating the Dutch Republic; but she visited in person his mother, and his brother, Count John. All her entreaties availed nothing. It was publicly stated that Jans Rubens had been imprisoned for political treason to Prince William, and must suffer death. Marie was forbidden access to any of William's family, and for two years was not allowed to enter the dungeon where her husband was confined.

At length she declared that the whole truth should be told, and Annie of Saxony be forever disgraced. This threat moved the proud Orange family, and procured the release of Jans Rubens, under bonds of six thousand thalers, that he would never go outside the little town of Siegen. Here he lived for some years, broken in health by his prison life, and under the strict surveillance of Count John. Finally, Marie obtained permission for them to reside in Cologne, where he died in 1587, when his boy Peter was ten years of age.

The next year Marie Rubens returned to their old home at Antwerp, and by her good sense and persistence recovered the estates of her husband, which had been confiscated during the wars, thus placing her family in very comfortable circumstances. Peter entered a Jesuits' college, where he showed great aptitude for languages. In childhood he had been taught Latin by his father, and French by a tutor. Later, he learned Italian, Spanish, German, and English, besides, of course, speaking his native Flemish. His mother had destined him for the law, but it was distasteful to him.

At the age of thirteen, as was often the custom, the frank and handsome boy was made a page in the household of his godmother, the Countess Lalaing, but he took no pleasure in mere fashionable surroundings, and begged his mother that he might become an artist.

This choice did not attract the mother, whose ambitions and hopes centred largely in her enthusiastic Peter, but she had the wisdom to lead rather than to dictate. Parents who break the wills of their children usually have spoiled children as the result.

She placed her boy with Tobias Verhaeght, a landscape painter, from whom the lad learned that close study of nature which made him thereafter a reader of her secrets. Conrad Busken Huet says, in his "Land of Rubens": "Man and nature as the Creator made them were quite sufficient for Rubens's inspiration, no matter where he found them, far from home or close to it. What attracted him most in nature was the unchangeable, the imperishable, and the grand. He knew how to find these everywhere. Artists less gifted and born by the seashore have before now felt the want of sniffing the mountain breeze. Did their cradle stand among the meadows, they longed for running streams and rivers. Rubens's pictures prove that such contrasts had no value for him.

"Within the narrow limits of his native soil, he found every condition necessary to the practice of his art. His imagination had no need of anything more stirring than that presented to him by the recollection of human vicissitudes amidst glebe and glade. The twinkling of the eye sufficed to transform them into battlefields in his productions....

"When the sun shines, he shines everywhere. Such is Rubens's motto. He knows but one moon, but one starry vault, but one gloaming, but one morning dew. Every raindrop on which there falls a ray of light reminds him of a diamond. Each stubble-field whence uprises the lark supplies music to his ears. Each swan to which he flings bread-crumbs on his arrival at 'Steen' (his country home) teaches him to keep the most sublime song of his art for the end."

"It is curious to note that Rubens," says Charles W. Kett, in his "Life of Rubens," "who began with scenes of country life, returned in his last days to his first love, so that when he could no longer cover his huge canvases with heroic figures, he would retire to his chateau at Steen, and paint landscapes, even though the gout almost incapacitated him from holding his brushes."

After about ten years spent with Verhaeght, young Rubens, thinking that he would devote himself to historical subjects, became a pupil of Adam van Noort, a teacher skilled in drawing, and in the use of brilliant color, with study of light and shade. He is said to have been intemperate and quick-tempered, but for four years Rubens found him a useful teacher.

"It is related," says George H. Calvert, "that one day, when the master was absent, the pupil took a fresh canvas to try what he could do by himself towards representing a weeping Madonna. He worked for hours, and so intently that he did not hear the returning footsteps of the master, who from behind gazed in admiration and wonder at his performance."

The young painter was restless, not an unnatural condition for an ardent, ambitious boy or girl. Such a life, fruitful for good or evil, must be filled with the best activities.

When Rubens was nineteen, he entered the studio of Otto Venius, a kind and learned man, of courtly manners, a free-master of the Guild of St. Luke, and court painter to Archduke Albert of Austria and the Infanta Isabella of Spain. She was the daughter of Philip II., to whom he had ceded the "Spanish Netherlands." They were distinguished patrons of art, and did everything to restore the war-worn country to peace and prosperity. Venius became deeply attached to his pupil, made him acquainted with the Regents Albert and Isabella, and inspired him to go to Italy to study art, the country in which he had studied for seven years.

Rubens had already painted some admirable works: the "Adoration of the Three Kings," a "Holy Trinity," a "Dead Christ in the Arms of the Father," and a portrait of Marie Pypelincx, "the true-hearted wife," says Mr. Kett, "of the faithless Jans, the mother of the artist, the upholder of the family after the death of the father, the educator of his children, and the restorer of the fallen greatness of the name of Rubens. Calmly and beautifully does the pale face still look forth from the canvas as of old. She must have smiled with satisfaction on the rising fame of her youngest surviving son, now going forth into the world to have those talents acknowledged which her maternal heart was assured were in his keeping. Carefully attired, like a matron of good family, in velvet dress, mourning coif, and muslin cuffs, denoting her widowed state, she carries in her face the traits of a shrewd woman of the world, who has battled bravely with the times, and now sees victory crowning her endeavors.

"Her very chair, somewhat similar to the one still preserved in the Academy at Antwerp as the gift of her son, speaks of a home of comfort; her book, held in her still handsome hand, a forefinger marking the page she has not finished reading, tells of a certain amount of learned leisure; and her whole surroundings recall a home whence an artist, a man of culture, and a courteous gentleman might derive those early impressions and first inspirations which would develop, when he came in contact with a larger world, into masterpieces of art."

On May 8, 1600, Rubens, at twenty-three years of age, having said good-by to his fond mother, started for Italy. His first visit was to Venice, where he studied the wonderful colorists, Titian, Paul Veronese, and Tintoretto. He is said to have copied twenty portraits by Titian, so earnest was he in obtaining the secret of these marvellous tints.