Part 15

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 Mañara,' 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 façade 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 Mañara."

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 Charité,' in France; the 'Barmherzigen Brüder,' 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 Tiñoso," 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.