
Baroque painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) became the most popular Spanish religious artist of his era through tender, accessible imagery. Born in Seville, the youngest of 14 children, he was orphaned by age 11 and raised by his older sister. He trained in the workshop of his uncle and godfather Juan del Castillo, absorbing a style characterized by soft expressions and loving sentiment. His 1645 marriage to Beatriz Cabrera produced 11 children, though at least four died in the devastating 1649 plague that killed half of Seville's population.
Murillo's religious paintings featured sweetly idealized Madonnas and saints that appealed to both clergy and lay audiences. His version of the Immaculate Conception, showing the Virgin on a crescent moon surrounded by cherubs, established an iconographic type followed for generations. His images of street children constitute a remarkable record of Seville's poor: The Young Beggar (c. 1645, now at the Louvre) shows a ragged boy picking fleas in a shaft of light. These works, often acquired by foreign collectors, reflected the bitter poverty ravaging 17th-century Seville. Murillo helped found the Seville Academy of Painting in 1660 and served as its first president. He fell from a scaffold while painting for the Capuchin church of Cadiz in 1682 and died from his injuries. He was the first Spanish artist to achieve wide European fame. Major works hang at the Prado, the Louvre, the Hermitage, and the National Gallery London.
16 paintings catalogued with museum locations

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Fitzwilliam Museum (University of Cambridge), Cambridge, Cambridge

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Museum of Fine Arts of Seville, Seville, Seville

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Louvre, Paris, Paris

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Madrid

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, Toulouse

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 1678
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Madrid

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, Madrid

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Palazzo Pitti, Florence
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, Antwerp

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Museo del Prado, Madrid, Madrid
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dole, Dole, Dole

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
11 museums display Murillo's works. Click any museum to see visiting info and the specific works they hold.

Paris, France
1 work on display



St. Petersburg, Russia
3 works on display


Madrid, Spain
2 works on display

Munich, Germany
1 work on display


Florence, Italy
2 works on display

Cambridge, UK
1 work on display

Seville, Spain
1 work on display


Madrid, Spain
2 works on display
Dole, France
1 work on display

Toulouse, France
1 work on display
Antwerp, Belgium
1 work on display
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