MURILLO, BARTOLOMÉ ESTEBAN. — Painter, born in Seville on 31 December 1617, died there on 3 April 1682. His father, Gaspare Esteban, was also a painter; but M., orphaned, was brought up by his aunt, Anna M., whose surname he adopted. A pupil of Juan de Castillo, in 1642 he went to Madrid, where he remained for two years.
Returning to Seville between 1645 and 1646, he received commissions for a series of canvases for the cloister of S. Francesco, now partly in the Louvre (Miracle of s. Diego) and partly in public and private collections. His Conception in the Archbishop’s Palace of Seville dates from 1652; in 1655 he painted a S. Isidore and a S. Leander for the sacristy of that Cathedral, and in 1656 the Apparition of Jesus to s. Anthony for the Baptistery. Subsequently he received the commission for the lunettes of S. Maria la Bianca, now in the Prado in Madrid, and then for the Conception with praying devotees, now in the Louvre. In 1672 he also executed numerous paintings for the chapel of the hospital in his native city and then, in 1678, two canvases for the Augustinians of Seville, one now in the Museum of that city, the other in the Prado in Madrid. At that time he also painted a series of pictures for the Hospital of the Priests of Seville. They were his last works: having gone to Cadige in 1680 to work in the Capuchin convent, he fell from a bridge and was so seriously injured that he could no longer work during the remaining two years of his life.
The journey he made as a young man to Madrid was certainly decisive for the formation of M.’s pictorial style; following his study of the works of Tiziano, van Dyck, and Rubens collected in that capital, he freed his original manner from the characteristic dryness of Seville. Indeed, from his earliest works following that experience, he painted with a rich, dense chromatic impasto, full of chiaroscuro, from which the forms emerge modeled with extreme delicacy, at times recalling Correggio and the Emilians of the late sixteenth century. Then, as time went on, M., while not substantially modifying his manner, progressively brightened it and, as it were, softened it in his choice of tones, while his curiosity also led him to emphasize realistic elements of representation, in accordance with a taste that is likewise typically Spanish.
Works by M., besides those in the churches and collections already mentioned, are found in the principal Italian and foreign museums. — Vedi tav. CI.