Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was baptised in Seville on 1 January 1618 and spent his career there through the height of the Spanish Baroque. While religious commissions formed the core of his output, he devoted substantial energy to contemporary life — lively, realistic portraits of women and children from the city's lower ranks that now constitute an extensive record of 17th-century Spanish daily existence. He painted himself twice: once in his thirties, now in the Frick Collection, and again roughly twenty years later, held by London's National Gallery. In 2017–18, the two institutions mounted…