THE EXTRAORDINARY ORDINARY

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Four Figures on a Step, c. 1655–60, oil on canvas. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth.

Kimbell at 50 opens with Murillo's masterful renderings of secular subjects.

BY BRIAN ALLEN

Murillo: From Heaven to Earth starts the Kimbell Art Museum’s 50th-anniversary celebration. This unique museum of masterpieces in Fort Worth isn’t shy about wrestling enigmas. Its exhibition about Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1618-1682) focuses on Four Figures on a Step, painted between 1658 and 1660. It belongs to the Kimbell and is one of the most curious Old Master paintings anywhere.

The picture raises questions about poverty, the vulnerability of children, and Christian duty in Seville in the mid-1600s. “The painting’s a great one, but it’s also a mystery,” Kimbell director Eric Lee said. “As an anniversary project, we wanted to draw the curtain on it but also look at Murillo overall.” The tart, gorgeous exhibition is the first big Murillo show in America in a generation.

Four Figures on a Step is indeed strange. Three adults look directly at us. On the right, a veiled old woman with Philip Johnson–style glasses sits. In the center is a much younger woman, possibly smirking, her face possibly part paralyzed, her look definitely weird, raising her own veil in a gesture that’s more bold than demure. At the picture’s left is a boy flapper, a charismatic teen with a jaunty pose, high-style hat, and a big, marquee-idol smile.

The pièce de résistance, or main course, or mystery guest is a child, back to the viewer, with the most enigmatic and flagrant pair of ripped trousers in the history of art. His little butt, exposed for all of Seville and now the world to see, has launched dissertations, smutty jokes, and furrowed brows. What does this painting mean?

Though Murillo was predominantly a painter of religious subjects, his depictions of children in everyday Seville are remarkable and

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, San Diego de Alcalá Feeding the Poor, c. 1645–46, oil on canvas. Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Three Boys, c. 1670, oil on canvas. Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Toilette, c. 1655–60, oil on canvas, 56 .62 x 42.87 in. © Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Saint Thomas of Villanueva Dividing His Clothes Among Beggar Boys, c. 1667, oil on canvas. Cincinnati Art Museum. Bequest of Mary M. Emery. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Prodigal Son among the Swine, 1650–55, oil on canvas, 63 5/8 x 41.12 in. The Hispanic Society Museum and Library, New York.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Marriage Feast at Cana, c. 1672, oil on canvas. © The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham.

at the heart of From Heaven to Earth. Coming from a family of 14 children, and himself the father of ten, Murillo certainly brought experience to the subject, as well as empathy and concern.

Aside from baby Jesus, whom Murillo painted in droves, the artist seems to have looked for religious scenes with children. San Diego de Alcala Giving Food to the Poor, from 1646, is part of Murillo’s biggest early multi-picture commission, and children are front and center. St. Thomas of Villanueva Dividing His Clothes Among Beggar Boys, from 1667, puts a good child in charge. Both are among From Heaven to Earth’s biggest hits.

The exhibition looks at class stratification among children. Three Boys, from around 1670, for instance, is a mixed-race painting. African slavery was a big part of Seville’s economy in Murillo’s time. Three Boys shows a Black boy, standing, asking a white boy, seated on the ground, for a piece of pie. The seated boy seems to refuse. Another white boy, sitting next to him, smirks. These two boys are barefoot and bedraggled. The Black boy, probably an errand boy and likely a slave, is far better dressed and, slave or not, is at least at work. The other boys are carefree but goofy, selfish, and off to a feckless life. Three Boys is one of Murillo’s beggar-boy pictures. He painted about twenty of these scenes of everyday life among Sevillian boys. Depending on how we count them, about eight are in the exhibition.

Three Boys is a teachable moment. There are good and bad poor. The idle, condescending boys denying a working slave a treat are among the bad. They won’t share. Did they steal their pie? Murillo also painted barefooted boys in rags playing dice. Yes, life’s a gamble, Murillo tells us, but don’t depend on lucky, freak chance. The Toilette from the late 1650s, a lovely picture from a Munich museum, shows a contented child munching on a piece of bread while a woman, possibly his grandmother, picks lice from his hair. There’s no substitute for care and concern from adults.

Where does Four Figures on a Step fit? First of all, it’s not pedophilic. The very thought would have filled the ultra-Catholic, father-of-ten Murillo with horror. It’s a big painting, nearly five feet wide, so it’s not a private fetish picture.

Guillaume Kientz, the curator of the exhibition, offers another view. “It seems likely—evident, really—that what the artist is depicting, or questioning, is moral judgment,” he says. “The three adults look searchingly at us, the viewer, and we’re the ones who see the hole in the boy’s trousers.” The boy’s vulnerable. He’s anonymous, which means he could be anyone. He’s exposed and disheveled like lots of impoverished children in Seville, but he’s wearing shoes, which means he’s not a beggar. There’s Every Man. Then there’s Every Child. Every child depends on we adults for guidance and comfort.

Kientz sees the painting as proposing two adult responses. “The old lady offers care and concern,” he says. “We can identify with her, or join the two figures on the right,” in ignoring the boy or, worse,

laughing at his exposure. “A child’s soul is up for grabs.”

The key, Kientz, says, is Murillo’s 1658 visit to Madrid, which we think is the only time he left Seville. Murillo went there to see the latest Royal Court style. He must have visited Velázquez, fellow Sevillian and Philip IV’s chief court painter. He probably saw Las Meninas, which Velázquez finished in 1656. This work enlisted the direct, critical inclusion of the viewer in activating the picture, Kientz says. Murillo took the concept and applied it to Four Figures on a Step.

Heaven and Earth might highlight the Kimbell’s Four Figures on a Step, but an anniversary is a celebration. Why not go all out? The exhibition is a Murillo mini retrospective. The Marriage Feast at Cana from 1672, peak Murillo, comes to Fort Worth from Birmingham in the UK. Three of his Prodigal Son paintings, among them the great Prodigal Son among the Swine, come from the Hispanic Society in New York. There are fantastic portraits by Murillo, too.

The splendid Meadows Museum in Dallas sent Jacob Laying Peeled Rods before the Flocks of Laban from 1660. At nearly 14 feet, it’s immersive. Murillo stayed a realist all his career. He never lost his documentarian skill, in big and small formats. His style after his Madrid trip, though, turns ever so gauzy. His contours soften, his figures lighten, and his palette adds pastel touches. His famous Assumptions are subtly aerodynamic.

Murillo was an astute artist. He catered to a high-end clientele, part Sevillian but also from all over Europe. He was attentive to styles and trends beyond Andalusia. This makes not a mishmash of looks but art that’s anticipatory. In some of the beggar boys paintings, The Marriage Feast at Cana, and especially the Meadows painting—part figural, part landscape—Murillo seems to have looked in a crystal ball and seen Fragonard and Boucher in the distance. P

Above: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, The Flower Girl, 1665–70, oil on canvas. Dulwich Picture Gallery, London; Below: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Jacob Laying Peeled Rods before the Flocks of Laban (Jacob pone las varas al ganado de Labán), c. 1665, oil on canvas, 87.75 x 142 in. Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas. Algur H. Meadows Collection. Photograph by Michael Bodycomb.