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Updated: June 17, 2025
In the first room were three Murillos, all so beautiful that I could have spent the day happily in looking at either of them; for, methinks, of all painters he is the tenderest and truest. I could not enjoy these pictures now, however, because in the next room, and visible through the open door, hung the "Transfiguration."
Oh, it is all quite honest," he added, as Grady snorted derisively. "Some years ago, the directors of the Louvre needed a fund for the purchase of new paintings; needed also to clean and restore the old ones. They decided that it was folly to keep three millions of francs imprisoned in a single gem, when their Michael Angelos and da Vincis and Murillos were encrusted with dirt and fading daily.
It is like one of the old palaces at Rome, the Borghese or Colonna, that we used to admire so much, with vast halls opening into one another, hangings of tapestry and Cordovan leather, marble statues and old paintings family portraits by Titian and Velasquez, one or two Murillos, and but I cannot write a catalogue. You must come to see us and the pictures.
In fact we were but half-an-hour in this little queer Spanish town; and it appeared like a dream, too, or a little show got up to amuse us. Boom! the gun fired at the end of the funny little entertainment. The women and the balconies, the beggars and the walking Murillos, Pooch and the little soldiers in tinsel, disappeared, and were shut up in their box again.
In the first room were three Murillos, all so beautiful that I could have spent the day happily in looking at either of them; for, methinks, of all painters he is the tenderest and truest. I could not enjoy these pictures now, however, because in the next room, and visible through the open door, hung the "Transfiguration."
Six are in the church of the Caridad, and these six include his famous 'Moses striking the Rock, and his 'Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes; seven 'Murillos' are in the Convento de la Merced, among them Murillo's own favourite picture, which he called 'Mi Cicadro' of 'St Thomas of Villaneuva. 'St Thomas was the favourite preacher of Charles V., and was created Archbishop of Valencia, where he seemed to spend the whole of his revenues in charity, yet never contracted any debt, so that his people used to believe that angels must minister to his temporal wants.
What mastery of drawing, and what honest integrity of color after all these ages! It is reported of Juanes that he always confessed and prayed before venturing to take up his pencils to touch the features of the saints and Saviours that shine on his canvas. His conscientious fervor has its reward. Across the room are the Murillos.
Many of the toadstools are highly colored also; how do they profit by it? Many of the shells upon the beach are very showy; to what end? The cherry-birds find the pale ox-hearts as readily as they do the brilliant Murillos, and the dull blue cedar berries and the duller drupes of the lotus are not concealed from them nor from the robins.
I know not why my father favored you. I do know that my mother feared all Murillos, even as I fear you." "It is good for a woman to have a husband whom she fears and respects." "In this case fear and respect do not go together, señor. I have no respect for you." "Then I will teach you respect when you are mine." "That opportunity will never be given you.
The walls of the room in which he is just now lounging have their crimson and gold almost covered with pictures, copies of rare Murillos and Raphaels, and an original head of a boy, by Greuze, with the lips as fresh as they were a hundred years ago. An exquisite "Dying Stork," in bronze, stands on a bracket below Sassoferrato's sweetest Madonna, and Retzsch's "Hamlet" lies open on a side-table.
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