Ir is through the assistance of the fine arts that we are better acquainted with two of the most striking epochs in the history of Europe than with any other period in history. We allude, first, to that of the Reformation, the reign of Henry VIII., and Cardinal Wolsey, in England, with its corresponding period in Italy and Germany, the reign of the Emperor Charles V., extending to Spain, to that of his successor and son, Philip II., the husband of our Queen Mary.

The second period alluded to in the history of Europe, arrived a hundred years after; it extends over about fifty years of the seventeenth century, comprising the ministries of Cardinal Richelieu and his successor Mazarin in France, corresponding in England with the reign of Charles I., the Rebellion, and the restoration of the Stuarts to power. It is especially to painters that we are indebted for our knowledge of the car dinal ministers of both France and Spain, of their sovereigns, their friends, their enemies, and the courts that they so despotically governed.

The state of the fine arts in Europe at both these periods (the Reformation and the Rebellion) was glorious. At the time of the Reformation, Holbein resided in England; Albert Durer flourished in Germany; Titian, Tintoret, Georgione, and Paul Veronese were protected by the Emperor Charles V.; Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Janet, and Prismaticcio, by Francis I.; Michael Angelo was rather persecuted than protected by the different successive popes; and Pierin del Vago, along with several other artists, worked at Genoa for the great and generous Andrea Doria.

Richelieu and Mazarin were equally in their day surrounded by a halo of glory in painting, owing to their enormous wealth; commissions were sent to Italy on a large scale, which laid the foundation of all the collections of France; and, notwithstanding the poverty and the bad fortune of the sovereigns of England and Spain, they protected, as well as their ministers, the fine arts, and both loved and understood painting. Ac

cordingly, Rubens, Vandyke, Velasquez, and Murillo, along with the famous miniature painters, Oliver, Petitot, and Cooper, having transmitted to posterity the likenesses of all those by whom they were surrounded, we know the air and countenance, the figure and costume of the most celebrated persons of Europe; and thus are we become intimately acquainted with the beauties and wits, and the military and political leaders of the day.

We know the peculiar expression of the unfortunate Charles; the grace of Henrietta Maria; the portly grandeur of her mother, Mary of Medecis; the sternness of Wallstein, according so exactly with Schiller and Coleridge's description of that extraordinary man; the warrior looks of the great commander, Spinola ; the fatuity of Buckingham, so exactly in accordance with his character and conduct; and the vulgarity of feature of the minister of Spain, Olivares, joined to his expression of stern good sense.

It is to be regretted that the last great painter of Europe, Murillo, left but few portraits behind him of persons known to posterity. Murillo appears to have been as great in portrait-painting as he was in ideal or religious art. The portraits he has left are perfect in point of truth and nature, but Murillo was an unambitious man. He neither sought the society, the approbation, nor the patronage of kings or ministers. In his character of a mild and gentle nature, there was a sighing and struggling for independence of mind as well as habits, that was the marked characteristic of his life. His representations of himself more portray this spirit of independence than his contemplative and poetical nature, and there is more energy, vivacity, and animal life expressed, than would be expected in the gentleness and love of quiet and retirement that belonged to Murillo's character.

There are two portraits of Murillo at Paris; one is reckoned the chefd'œuvre of the Spanish gallery in the Louvre, the other belongs to Louis Philippe. Both have been engraved,

and are well known in England through the engravings. The one belonging to the king represents him older and more grave in character than the former. The former would suit the character of Columbus; it represents boldness, acuteness, and sagacity. The latter is more religious in feeling and intent on his art. Another portrait, by and of Murillo, is said to belong to Don Berardo de Friate in Spain, was engraved there, and the engravings sold in London ; and a fourth portrait is known in Holland and Belgium, and has been engraved in those countries.

There are also portraits in the Louvre of Murillo's mother and of his servant; but the most celebrated portrait by the hand of Murillo is now in England, and belongs to Lord Lansdowne, who bought it from Mr. Watson Taylor. It was brought to England by a Frenchman, but was seen, in 1806, in its original place, that is, hanging up in the repertory of the Hospital de los Venerables at Seville. It represents the superior, Don Justino Francisco Neve, the dear friend and patron of Murillo, in whose arms he died. It is an wholelength of an ecclesiastic, sitting in his arm-chair, and very perfect as portraiture. There is also in the Louvre the portrait of Don Andreas de Antrade, with his dog, a whole-length. Of this picture there are several repetitions in England. One of these repetitions belongs to the queen; another is at Longford Castle in Wiltshire. However, Murillo's portraits are rare. He painted many abbots, bishops, monks, and generals of monastic orders in Spain, for whose convents and chapter-houses he had commissions for large works of a religious nature. Of these persons, few are known out of Spain, and even in Spain their very names and histories are unknown or forgotten.

Murillo's reputation as a painter rests on the ideal in which he soared -on the earthly nature of the Spaniard raised by his imagination and traced to a heavenly nature-on a poetical feeling which came not forth in words, but that went direct from the mind to the hand; at the same time his art was so entirely national, that the most ignorant can immediately distinguish his pictures from

those of any of the Italian school. The religious feeling of his faith and creed is expressed in every performance. We read in his divine pictures the history of Spain and of the Spaniards; the strong and fiery passions of the South, held down by the Inquisition; and the gloom and superstition of its kings and nobles. In Murillo's compositions may be read many a well-known story in Spanish life, and of the greatest individuals of the nation; the wisdom of Ferdinand and Isabella, the gloom and intellect of the Emperor Charles V., the crime and superstition of Philip II., the sagacity and wisdom of Ximenes and Olivares, and even the weakness of the imbecile Charles II., that monarch who so much appreciated Murillo's paintings, that he passed a law prohibiting their exportation out of Spain, thus shewing sense and feeling enough to estimate their merit.

Alongside of the national characteristics of the Spaniards expressed in Murillo's composition, is a colouring that tells of the brilliancy of a fine climate; it is the beautiful on earth, in air and vegetation, allied to faith in God and in the saints; all these deeply imbued with the ferocity of the early religious wars, which made and created those same saints and martyrs. The moral gloom with which Murillo was surrounded only cleared off now and then under the influence of a bright sun by day, and a clear, starry firmament by night.

Like Spagnoletto, Murillo's representation of our Saviour are disagreeable in the extreme. They express human nature, not divine nature; Spaniards in feature, passions, and countenance. Of all the great painters, it is Titian who has best combined the divine and human nature of our Lord, blended and mingled as Scripture has authorised our belief. It must be rather to the pictures of the Virgin Mary and the martyred saints that we must turn to become acquainted with Murillo. See the Madonnas in Marshal Soult's gallery, the way that they float in air on the canvass. They are evidently painted at the hour of setting sun in the south of Europe, and not in the street of a crowded metropolis, under the influence of a chilling

easterly wind or a November fog. The play of colouring in these pictures is so harmonious, that the idler lingers long before them, scarcely able to tear himself away, and yet not able to explain why he is so attracted there. One might suppose that Milton had contemplated the crowd of sunny cherubims in which the figure of the Madonna is encircled, those lovely beings

"In the colour of the rainbow live, And play in the plighted clouds."

It is but Murillo, Correggio, and Guido that can paint cherubims.

But it is difficult to bring the mind to a belief that the same artist who painted these heavenly visions, and thus represented assumptions and martyrdoms, could have excelled in low life in the manner in which Murillo, as a painter, is classed in the gallery at Munich. There he is known but as the painter of real life. The ragged beggar-boys of Seville are there depicted, devouring grapes and melons, and playing at cards as eagerly as if they staked thousands. All objects are represented with a truth that has caused it to be said, with regard to these paintings," that the indifference to the external and the internal freedom amidst rags and poverty, raises these same paintings of beggar children to all that art can depict or express."

Painting began at once in Spain; not like the schools of Italy, gradually and successively, but dividing immediately into the schools of Seville and Madrid. That of Madrid owed its origin to El Mudo (Navarette), having belonging to it the families of Italian origin of Castillo, Carducci, and others, who formed Sanchez Coello (the favourite painter of Philip II.), Pereda, Collantes, and others.

The school of Seville owed its origin to Luis de Vargas, and Pietro Campana, both of whom were formed and educated in Italy, and this same school continued with Alonzo Cano, Zurbaran, Velasquez, &c. and ended with Murillo.

Murillo, like Velasquez his contemporary and master, was born at Seville; and baptised on the 1st of January, 1618, under the name of Bartolomé Esteban. His parents

At

were of humble origin, his youth was passed in obscurity, without education, without pleasures, without resource; "a most melancholy youth," as one of his biographers remarks of him, often leads to greatness. last Juan de Castillo, a distant relation, took the boy out of compassion and charity to his home, whose reputation, destined to be so celebrated in the history of art, was to carry down the name of the master to posterity. Castillo drew correctly, but could only instruct the youth in the dry and cold colouring of a professor of Seville; and Murillo shortly left him to go to Cadiz, where, as it may be said, he became self-taught. The poor boy, deprived of all instruction, of all study, had to gain his daily bread by his pencil, of which he scarcely knew the use, and could not make great proficiency in an art which he used but as the means of procuring daily food and clothing. He sold his religious paintings (painted on wood) by the dozen, to persons going to America, and to the newly converted population of Peru and Mexico; but in painting these daubs, he acquired the habit of handling a paint - brush, managing his colours, and nothing more.

Murillo had attained the age of twenty-four, when, fortunately for him, an enthusiastic Spanish painter, Pietro de Moya, passed through Seville, to which town Murillo had returned. Moya had been in London, and had been instructed by Vandyke, and brought with him, on his revisiting Spain, the brilliant colouring and the good taste with which Vandyke inspired his ad

mirers.

At the sight of Moya's paintings, Murillo fell into an ecstasy of delight; he was touched with the spark which sets the fire of genius into a flame. But what could he do? He had neither money nor patronage; and soon after Moya's visit to Seville, Vandyke died, so that it would have been useless to have gone to England; a journey to Italy was too expensive to think of undertaking; and Moya himself, then but a scholar, was going to Granada. In a fit of despair, Murillo took a desperate resolution; he bought a large canvass, cutting it into small pieces, which he covered with little figures of the Madonna,

of the Infant Saviour, with cherubims and garlands of flowers; and after disposing of these trifles at the fair at Seville, with a few pence in his pocket, neither asking advice nor taking leave of any one, he set out on foot for Madrid. It was in the year 1643. Arrived at Madrid, he presented himself to Velasquez, then in all the glory of his reputation and his good fortune. king's favourite painter received the young artist kindly, encouraged him, promised him work, gave him the means of studying the works of the great Italian masters in the palaces and at the Escurial, and in his own studio Velasquez finally instructed and advised him.

The

Murillo passed two years in studying the great colourists. The masters he preferred were Titian, Rubens, and Vandyke, Spagnoletto, and Velasquez. Less anxious for renown than for independence he left Madrid, notwithstanding Velasquez's wish to retain him in that city, and returned to Seville in 1645. It was said that Murillo took a disgust to courts and cities, in consequence of the disgrace of the prime minister Olivares, which happened in 1643. He was a great patron of the arts, and was sent into exile, where he shortly after died. His loss was deeply deplored by Velasquez; and it is probable that the pure and simple-minded Murillo may have taken a disgust to Madrid in consequence of this public event. No persuasions of Velasquez could get him to profit by the king's bounty, or recommendations to pursue his studies at Rome. Painters are as excitable as patriots or poets.

Hardly had Murillo's absence been noticed in his native town; but the astonishment was great when the following year he painted for the Convent of San Francisco three pictures, one was "The Death of Saint Claire," a picture that formed the principal ornament latterly of the Aguado Gallery at Paris. Every one inquired where Murillo could have learned this noble and attractive style, which partook of the manner of Spagnoletto, Vandyke, and Velasquez, and that was thought from its variety to be superior to all that they had produced.

Notwithstanding the envy which generally follows success, notwith

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCVI.

standing the rivalry and hatred of Valdez Leal, of Herrera the younger, whom Murillo had dethroned from being at the head of their profession as painters, he soon rose from indigence and obscurity to renown; and, in 1648, he was in a position good enough to obtain in marriage the hand of a rich and noble lady, Doña Beatrix de Cabrera y Sotomajor.

From the year that Murillo returned to Seville (1645), until his death in 1682, he rarely left his native place, nor indeed scarcely his studio; spending there thirty-seven years in constant and incessant employment, and by that means producing the enormous number of pictures that were the work of his pencil. Given up to his art, he sought neither the patronage of the great nor the applause of the multitude, but made his happiness in placing his talent at the disposal of those persons who pleased himself in indulging his taste for composing his pictures in retirement, and for being completely independent in his daily habits of life. The chapters, the monasteries, and the grandees of Spain sent incessant requests and orders to the artist of Seville; and there were few cathedrals, sacristies, or convents, that did not possess some representation of their patron saint by his hand. Most of the illustrious and ancient families of Spain also aspired to the portrait of some ecclesiastic, friend, or relation painted by him.

The Convent of Capuchins at Seville at the beginning of this century, possessed nineteen first-rate pictures painted by Murillo, and the Hospital de la Caridad had in its little church eight of his most famous compositions. He received from the hospital for the painting of "Moses Striking the Rock," 13,300 réaux de vellon; for the "Miracle of the Loaves in the Desert," 15,975; and for all the eight pictures together, 32,000 réaux de vellon, a sum amounting to about 8501. of our money-a large sum for those days, and for Spain. The most laborious and productive time of his life was from his fiftieth to his sixtieth year; proving in art as in literature, that the greatest works of a man of genius are towards his decline, when he can unite experience and habit to inven

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tion and imagination. Murillo is, of all the Spanish masters, the one who possessed the most of the ideal and of a poetical grandeur in his works. He seldom made use of allegory in his compositions, but went straight to his point to represent the scene as he imagined it, without having recourse to learning, or to tradition, or to legendary tale, as had the great Italian masters.

Murillo, like many of the great painters, had three successive manners; and these were called in Spanish, frio, calido, y vaporoso (cold, warm, and vaporous). These three terms sufficiently indicate the manner of each, the children, the beggars, and the scenes of every-day life, in which Murillo excelled, were painted in his first style, as were a few of his monastic scenes.

The silvery tone in which his Annunciations are painted, are in the style called vaporous; harmonising all throughout, and giving to the scene the appearance of the lightedup clouds, a miraculous but fantastic light, full of the charms of effect and the triumph of colouring, and attempted previously but by Guido and Correggio.

Murillo's third manner, the warm tint, was the one that he preferred. Some of his largest compositions, now in the Museum at Madrid, are painted in this manner, and they are all taken from the stories of saints. It is in such-like subjects of divine poetry that the pencil of Murillo, like the wand of the enchanter, can shew prodigies; and if in common life he is equal to the greatest of painters, he stands alone like Milton, in scenes of another world; and of the two great Spanish painters (him and his instructor Velasquez), it may be said that Velasquez was the painter of the earth, and Murillo that of the heavens.

In his Assumptions, Murillo takes a lofty flight into aërial regions amidst the ecstasies of saints and the visions of the enthusiast. As Velasquez aspired to the illustration of truth and to precision in details, so did his friend Murillo live above realities. He loved poetical life, and addressed himself to the imagination.

It was in the warm manner to which Murillo was so partial, that he painted what is esteemed his

greatest performance, "St. Anthony of Padua," a picture now in the chapel of the cathedral of Seville; however, many of his admirers prefer the picture of "St. Isabella of Hungary," now in the museum at Madrid. It represents the pious queen gaining a celestial crown, not by prayer, but by works. The scene takes place in a hall of simple and beautiful architecture, where Murillo has succeeded in combining all the perfection of each of his styles of painting, and of conveying to the eye and mind of the spectator a moral influence. In ancient times the kings of France and England were supposed to cure the evil. The kings of Hungary had another vocation, they cleansed and washed the lepers. The palace is converted into an hospital, where reigns a fearful and disgusting misery; the rags, dirt, and vermin, with which the children are covered, is suited but for Murillo's powers to represent. On one side are the ladies of the court, graceful, handsome, and magnificently dressed; on the other side are these wretched children, deformed, full of sores and suffering, amidst paralytic and almost lifeless old age. One profile of an old woman is brought out with great skill from a background, formed by the velvet robe of one of the court ladies. This is the triumph of colouring, as the whole picture is the triumph of contrasts. All that is brilliant in beauty, in health, and in luxury, is placed alongside of all the hideous ills to which human nature is subject. All of disease, all of splendour; but Charity approaches and unites these two extremes: a young and beautiful woman, wearing a royal crown beneath her nun's veil, is in the act of washing the impure head of a leper; her white and delicate hands seem to refuse the disgusting office that Religion calls on her to perform; her eyes are filled with tears, and her distress of mind is shewn on her countenance, but Charity overcomes disgust, and Religion carries her through her terrible task. Such is the scene of a picture which causes artists and travellers such an admiration of the varied powers of Murillo; each detail is admirable; the least change would destroy the harmony of the whole; and Viardot says, that this picture