Madonna and Child (c. 1655 – 1660) by Bartolomé Estebán Murillo

Bartolomé Estebán Murillo (1617–1682), Spanish, A master of the Spanish Baroque, this painter’s work effortlessly blended the sacred and the everyday, infusing religious scenes with warmth and humanity. Born in Seville, he trained under Juan del Castillo but soon developed a distinctive style marked by soft, luminous brushwork and an uncanny ability to capture tender emotion. While equally skilled in grand altarpieces and intimate genre paintings, his true genius lay in depicting the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child with an unprecedented sweetness—neither saccharine nor austere, but radiating quiet devotion.
His later years saw a shift toward lighter, almost ethereal tones, influenced by Flemish art and the Venetian use of color. Street urchins and beggars also became recurring subjects, treated not with pity but with a dignified realism that elevated the mundane. Though often overshadowed by contemporaries like Velázquez, his influence seeped into 18th-century Rococo and even British portraitists like Gainsborough. Financial success never dulled his productivity; if anything, it fueled experiments with composition and chiaroscuro. By the time of his fatal fall from a scaffold while working on *The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine*, he’d left a legacy that made Seville a beacon for artists seeking both technical precision and emotional depth.