Future of the Humanities - Gabriele Finaldi - Making Art for Friends

good evening everyone thank you very much for having me this evening it's a great pleasure to be back at the Dulwich picture gallery I was here I was at Dodgers college for sixth form and was was was really introduced to our history here so my origins as an artist or implied just a few meters across the way there in the galleries in front of Rembrandt's skeletal window that's where I offered but my life to our history it has been very good to me I have to say I feel very privileged in my relationship with Dulwich but then also of course with the National Gallery the court hold and II and the Prado to I get to talk a little bit about Murillo this evening now normally when you're planning your your your exhibition programs you look at centenary that seems to be a good way to kind of organize your your program and of course Murillo was born at the very very end of of 1617 he was baptised on the 1st of January 2016 18 and of course the celebrations will take us into 19 so that's how you stretch out a centenary into into three years at the National Gallery on the other hand if you look at our program for this term no reason why you should have but anyway we we open whyyyy just a few weeks ago and we've opened soraia today so we're doing it with artists who have a double L in their name it's a different way of planning your program and in fact if you stick with us you'll see a Shaun Scully in the summer so but anyway it's your real oh we're going to talk about today I just wanted to give a special welcome to an old school friend of mine from primary school I've Justin gada r2i mess at the doors great pleasure to see each other again after nearly 50 years goodness it's anyway let's talk about Murillo here's my this is the reason why I thought we should talk about marilla because the Dulwich picture gallery is in a way the home of Murillo in this country together with the National Gary there are one or two other institutions across the country that have works by Marilla who is remarkably well represented in this country and you have to remember that in the 19th century Yarilo was more highly valued than Velasquez himself it seems strange to us nowadays that Murillo should have had such prominence in people's imagination in their writing and their critical appreciation in the purchases they made marilla's of course were very expensive they were easier to find than Velasquez is because most of the Velasquez were in the Royal Collection whereas of course Marilla was never a royal artist so his pictures didn't end up in the Royal Collection and consequently in the product so this was a picture that for a long time used to sit in the Masters office I put up at the college and I imagine it was sometime during the 20th century was decided it should really be shown in the in the gallery and of course it is one of mirros most beautiful works it also turns out to be one of the pictures that were made for Morelos friend who steno danava and it's that relationship between Christina de Navy and Marilla that I'd like to talk about this evening at the National Gallery we have these two portraits on the left is the self portraits of Morello and on the right is Murillo's portrait of his friend Christina they're never these are two faces of the civilian baroque they constitute as it were the identikit of an ideal relationship between patron and painter where the artistic and spiritual concerns of the two men overlapped to perfection where ambition and skill on both sides of the relationship aligned to create the circumstances for the production of the very finest artistic works Morello and Cassino were also very good friends Murillo on the left here is about 50 years old in this self-portrait it's the later of the two self-portraits that we have by him it's the one in the national gallery as I said by this time in the late 1660s he had been the town's most famous painter for over a decade he was also one of the most celebrated artists in Spain and his work was being admired abroad his works were beginning to be exported from Spain Casino on the right was a priest he was a canon of Seville Cathedral he was about 40 years of age when that portrait was made he was seven years younger than Murillo and was recognized for his piety for his kindness he was an able administrator and a collector of paintings and a bibliophile now the friendship between these two men gave rise to a remarkable group of paintings public and private commissions as well as gifts from the artists to the churchmen and they include several of what we today consider the artists masterpieces all the paintings dates from the sixteenth 60s and 70s appears which saw the two men engaged in some of the most significant artistic endeavors of the period in Seville and they constitute a corpus of mature works from the time when you really was at a peak of his fame producing pictures of a consistently high aesthetic and expressive level they are illustrative of his remarkable painterly technique his astounding command of his palette of colors and also of his iconographic inventiveness the personal relationship between artists and patron and the paintings that came out of it take us to the very heart of the civilian barak so on the right you have a detail of this picture here his afternoon prayer momentarily interrupted Don Faustino turns to greet the visitor who has just entered the room his gaze is lively and focused he keeps his finger marking the page in his the ulnar his little prayer-book suggesting that the encounter will not be a long one his right hand grips the chair arm and he's caught between stasis and action as if he's about to rise and make his welcome that much more effusive the color of his robe is a discrete black but it is long and flowing with split sleeves made with generous lengths of cloth and his shoes are a soft chinois leather take my word for it his Pug adorned with a collar with little bells and a dainty red bow it looks up dreamily at his master he's both a pet and an allegory an allegory of devotion on the table and three objects speak eloquently of his wealth learning and his refined taste the albergue style gilt table clock alludes to an orderly existence defined by the canonical hours of the day the liturgical feasts of the Roman calendar and the duties of service to the Cathedral of Seville where he exercised his ministry from the time of his priestly ordination in 1646 the large leather-bound book with clasps is one of the volumes from his considerable library now in the 17th century Sevilla considerable library means several hundred books he had 325 books in his library we know from his inventory his post-mortem inventory on religion history and poetry and testifies to his intellectual curiosity so far we don't know any writings by him he doesn't seem to have published himself with the silver bell he summons his servants and his slaves in the large and well-appointed house he shares with several family members in the parish of San Bartolome very close to the Cathedral he was born in 1625 from a Flemish father his coat of arms appear at upper left on the painting his Flemish father was called a Navy and the Navy arms appear on the on the left there his mother was from Malaga and she was called chaves chaves and her arms appear on the right and Chaves of course is the same as yeah vez which is keys that's why you have the keys for the Chaves family Navy of course in Latin means snow and the keys the symbol of San Peter would feature in a significant way in cocina de neighbors life as we will see the inscription in Latin is a testament to the friendship between artists and sitter his age forty Bartolome Murillo of Seville painted this with the intention of making a gift of it in the year 1665 their friendship probably began in the early 1660s and grew ever stronger based on shared spiritual family and business interests Murillo acted as a valuer of the pictures which had belonged to Kristina's mother Murillo's daughter professed in the same Dominican convent in which Christine Oh sister and niece were also nuns stay with me Murillo son Gaspard became a priest and also a Canon of the cathedral no doubt due to Don Kristina's support and very significantly when Murillo in 1682 drew up his will he named Don Faustino as one of the executives of his estate ordained in 1649 from what we can garner from descriptions of Don Faustino and from the documents regarding his activities he was a devoted churchmen a model of the Tridentine presbyter concerned with maintaining the prerogatives and status of the church but also its spiritual and moral discipline he displayed a special devotion to the Immaculate Conception and to the sacrament of the Eucharist as well as a mark veneration for the saints of the Diocese of Seville like his contempt praise the Archbishop of Seville Ambrosio Spinella and the laymen the renewer of the city's most important charitable institution they carry dad many of you will have heard of it Miguel de manyara he was involved in the establishment and maintenance of charitable bodies that aim to alleviate the suffering of the poor the aged and the infirm and he participated actively in the life of these confraternities Navy was born wealthy and successfully managed the portfolio of properties and investments he inherited and acquired for the benefit of his family and of the various religious foundations he was associated with in 1658 he became a canon of Seville Cathedral which is the nerve center of civilian religious life and his successful career in the cathedral chapter reflects his administrative abilities and what today we would call his fundraising skills his tombstone in the cathedral states that he was vir temple status a man born to serve the church he must also have been a person of some social grace as marilla's portraits I think indicates Seville Cathedral which you see here was and remains one of the largest and most spectacular cathedrals in the world built in the area of the city's Grand Mosque it's impressive bell tower the repurposed minarets dominates the city's skyline richly endowed and magnificently decorated the Cathedral played a role of great importance in the life of the city which in the 17th century was one of the largest cities in Europe Seville was the Gateway to the Americas and was renowned for its wealth and beauty its palaces churches and religious foundations as well as its painters very interesting that's Seville basis part of its reputation on the skill of its painters Francisco Pacheco Velasquez himself who have caught leaves Seville as a young man to go and serve the king in Jared Murillo Zubrin and Valdez Leal among others this is the corral de the minaret of course this is the so-called Batio de los nevados the orange tree patio adjacent to the cathedral this is the Archbishop's palace here again adjacent to the Cathedral and you can just about make up you can see here something I'll talk about in just a moment which is the hospital of the venerable Sofia dhatus which is a retirement home for priests which hosts Ino de nube was very closely associated with the sort of processional route in Seville passes in front of the facade of the cathedral along here it did in the 17th century it still does today the canons of the Cathedral are responsible for looking after the cathedral building attending to religious services and administering the cathedrals possessions its archive and its properties they elect a Dean and are all under the authority of the bishop but they have a certain amount of autonomy very often there's a bit of tension in the running of these big cathedrals between the Dean and chapter and the bishop himself these are the current canons of the Cathedral one is who have died since this photograph was taken and so they are effectively the descendants of Don Ho steno in marilla's time they were often quite wealthy in their own right and we know that some of them were like Don Faustino collectors and patrons of painting in don casinos time I haven't been able to see that any Cathedral Canon was a more significant collector of paintings than Don Faustino himself was so the relationship between Yarilo and the cathedral begins in the 1650s one of the cathedral cannons a man called quan federighi gives two pictures to the cathedral and at that moment the donation is accompanied by a legal document which says that amarillo was by then the most famous painter in the city we're talking of the year 1655 shortly after that he's commissioned to paint what is one of the biggest pictures in the cathedral and that's the son Anthony and the Christ child which still today stands on the altar in the Baptist Street chapel a work that seemed to sort of confirm Murillo as the Seville's leading painter remember that Zubrin was still very much active in in in seville at this time but i think partly as a result of the success of Murillo these youngsters kind of snapping at his heels particularly Murillo himself but also Val this layout and an artist called Frankie Scott briefly he decides to move to Madrid so Zubrin spends his last six years in the capital away from Seville where he'd really been since the mid 1620s just return for a moment to that portrait of a steno danava I think it's important to point out just how extraordinary a portrait it is and cathedral canons weren't represented in the way that you saw in the portrait that we had on the screen a few moments ago that was the way that you represented Cardinals and Pope's on the left you have el greco's wonderful portrait of probably Cardinal near the gerado which is at the mess and on the right you have a sort of similar Roman Cardinals portrait dating from the 1630 30s the formal parallels are obvious but I do think it is remarkable that that host Eno has himself painted really looking like a cardinal when he's but he's still nonetheless just a cannon very recently it's been proposed that this print here is the specific model that Marilla used for the portrait of Don Christina danava chose Cardinal Mazarin so again it's a Cardinals portrait which is the precedent for this canons portrait by Murillo while the portrait of Don Faustino on the right hand side retains a distinctively Spanish reticence and gravitas to my mark to my knowledge no Spanish Cathedral Canon had ever had himself portrayed in such a grandiose manner before 1665 now the format for length seated like a cardinal may reflect marilla's high appreciation of his friend and it is clear from the inscription that it was a gift from the artist that portrait we know that the portrait remained in D'Agostino's possession in his house and that his death he bequeathed it to the hospital for retired priests as I mentioned a moment ago that he himself founded he declared in his gift to the hospital he says this is Christine oh I especially want that a full-length portrait of me a painting by Tom Bartolome Murillo be entrusted to the current or future administrator of the said house for retired priests and I request that he place it wherever he pleases in the house where they the priests can remember to pray to God a merciful Lord for my soul the date on the portrait 1665 coincides with the completion of a church rebuilding and redecoration project that had been led by Don Cortino and for which Murillo had painted a set of four major works so you can see how friendship business religious associations sort of all these interests align in this relationship the church that you see here Santa Maria la Blanca was a former mosque and a former synagogue it was administered directly by the cathedral and dong casino as Cathedral cannon had taken a special interest in it since the late 1650s the dedication was the same as the Roman Basilica of st. Mary major santa maria maggiore known in its original name as sancta maria ad nevis this is all very important Saint Mary of the snows and it therefore combined an allusion to the Virgin snowy whites purity with a completely fortuitous but significant reference to casinos surname the rebuilding of the church was motivated by the desire to respond to the publication of a papal brief at the end of 1660 one by Alexander the 7th qiji which defended the belief in the Virgin's Immaculate Conception that is that she was sinless from the first instance of her existence this belief was very very strongly held and promoted by the diocesan authorities in Seville and by the Spanish crown so the bull of 1661 was seen as a spiritual and diplomatic triumph and it was celebrated with a host of activities special processions singing of today ohms new artistic Commission's the construction of new chapels and also a complete rebuilding of this church here whose name as I've pointed out already alluded to the belief in the Virgin's immaculate state this is the interior it's a kind of classic Spanish baroque interior with this elaborate scroll plaster work yes idea in Spanish designed by the sculptor Pedro or then and executed by two brothers who were experts in plaster interior decoration the Borja brothers you can impress your friends with that a bit of information every surface was covered with plaster scrollwork or angels and much of it was also painted in gold the crowning achievement of the redecoration of santa maria la Blanca were the four pictures that Murillo painted for this church at the instigation of Postino de Navy these are the two great the two great loonette's showing the origins of the basilica of santa maria maggiore in rome with which this church shared the dedication and then two smaller loonette's that i'll just come to in a moment so what you have is the first of the two lunettes these were placed just beneath the dome at the end of the nave this is the origins of the basilica in the dream of the patrician johannes one there he is asleep with his wife wonderfully sort of choir representation with a couple not in bed but resting adjacent to the big bed that appears behind them she's just laid aside and her sewing the little dog sitting at her feet and these beautiful little details sort of domestic details that me release a wonderful and introducing into his paintings they both have the same dream of the Virgin Mary appearing to them telling them that they must go to see the Pope and tell him that they've had a dream that they must build a chapel in her honor where there has been a snowfall now the reason why this is very extraordinary is because the date is the 5th of August and in Rome you don't have snow falls on that date so where there is a miraculous snowfall that is where the church must be built not only that but the snowfall will have given the ground plan of the church that has to be built so they're rather astonished by this dream and what they do the following days they go and talk to the Pope Pope liberius and this is the following scene where johannes and his wife are addressing the pope he happens have had exactly the same dream himself and so they go out in procession to the Esquiline Hill where they've heard that there has been a miraculous snowfall there it is at the back and there indeed is where the first church in honor of the Virgin is built in Rome and goes on to become the great Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore interestingly here Pope liberius has the likeness of Pope Alexander qiji who promoted that bull of 1661 so everything fits very nicely together the lunette shape of course is the shape of the architecture what you see here are additions which were made to these works when they were removed by the French in 1810 and taken to the Mosin apollyon by marshal salt and where they hung for a very short time because after Waterloo quite a number of these works were returned to Spain at the end of the two side aisles Murillo painted two scenes the first of which on the Left shows the Immaculate Conception being venerated by a group of devout figures the text of the scroll in the Immaculate Conception here reads or may be translated in the beginning he delighted in her alluding to the Immaculate Conception origin in the mind of God the iconography of the inaccurate conceptions you all know I don't need to go into it is based on a text of the apocalypse which refers to the woman crowned with twelve stars and standing upon the moon Murillo transforms the Immaculate Conception to a beautiful ethereal vision which seduces the believer through its sheer beauty and its persuasiveness as a heavenly apparition all the six figures that appear on the left of this painting this did remain in the Louvre actually the two figures in the background we're generic kind of biblical dress those two there and they I think must be the Virgin's pair it's Joachim and Anna who sometimes appear with her in images of the Immaculate Conception these two are certainly portraits and I think you might recognize one of them I think we can fairly confidently identify that priest on the left with his arms crossed on his chest as Don Ho steno so he appears in his painting both as a devotee of the umma colada and as the patron of the work in fact although we don't know specifically about the payments for these works a later source fairbell moola 'the in the late 18th century confidently declared that ho steno had in fact paid for all Morelos paintings for santa maria la Blanca a few years ago and the church was being restored and I was able to identify that this bitter frame that had stayed there was part of the original frame of this picture so what you're seeing is a reconstruction of what that picture looked like at the end of the left hand aisle in the church and we've sort of repeated more or less the the idea of the design around the around the upper part of the lune s the picture at the other end of the or rather at the end of the other aisle was this one here it bears a text from the Gospel of st. John he loved them on to the end the female figure carries the chalice and host rests her left arm on a large book and carries the keys which allude to the authority of the church she is a sort of amalgam of faith and the church triumphant the prominence of the keys I think can be read as a sort of private homage to Don Faustino whose second surname you'll recall was Chaves the two paintings reflects two manifestation of God's love his love for the Virgin Mary from the very beginning and his love for the church until the end of time the theological link between the two scenes is readily made the Virgin Aries the Incarnate God in her womb and the church administers the Eucharistic body of Christ this of course is in Britain at Buskett Park it's a wonderful wonderful picture we restored it at the Pride Day for the show that we showed at the Prado in Seville and then of course here in Dulwich about five or six years ago that juxtaposition of Eucharist and Immaculate Conception was the light motif of the spectacular celebrations that were held on the 5th of August the feast of Santa Maria had Nevis in 1665 to mark the reopening of the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca in Seville we know a great deal about that event because a book was produced to mark is published by the city chronicler at that time a very young writer called Roderick - and this was published very very soon after in several of the sermons that were delivered on the occasion and reported in Florida for a friend's book the following phrase is repeated blessed and praised be the Holy Sacrament of the altar and the immaculate conception of the Most Holy Virgin conceived without the stain of original sin from the first moment of her existence the festivities spilled out onto the streets and the author describes in quite a lot of detail a large temporary altar erected outside the church in the plaza and the Piazza just in front of the church where mass was celebrated in the open air and which included several paintings lent by the Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament that was based at the cathedral and by Don Ho steno himself three of them by Murillo now the drawing you see on the right is an artist's impression based on the description given in authority for fan I mean this is very recent 2008 and this would have been an open-air altarpiece it's difficult for us these things just don't survive anymore so it's difficult for us to imagine you know how you would do this in an open-air setting well essentially have wooden and cardboard architecture and for the occasion local were these local collectors would lend pictures pictures will be hung around the square and tapestries will be thrown over the balconies it still happens today for Corpus Christi processions and the setting would be turned into a kind of open-air church environment some very careful detective work a few years ago as part of that exhibition I referred to enabled us to identify the three pictures that hosteen eau de navy had lent and so what you're seeing now is the reconstruction based on that drawing of 2008 but with Kristina's paintings introduced into it at the top of the old piece was arrayed at the youngers triumph of the Eucharist and we know that Postino lent an immaculate conception of his own that's the one that you see there we'll come back to that in a moment and he also lent two pictures of Saint John the Baptist's on the left that's the National Gallery picture you may recognize it and on the right a painting of Christ as the Good Shepherd the Christ child as the Good Shepherd which is in a private collection in this country so there's the the painting by air ADA this was the artist who I think together with mural I mentioned briefly I meant a rare actually who is the artist who was sort of snapping at the heels of Zorba ran and led I think this all around eventually to decide that his market was being eaten up by others and he should head off to - to Madrid see very interesting this painting he's a wonderful artist there aren't many works by him he dies quite young he's fantastically gifted artist but you can see here that it's something very similar to what Murillo had done in Santa Maria la Blanca so you have the monstrance with the with the host in it so it's the the adoration of the Eucharist and here in is the Virgin Mary herself as the Immaculate Conception who is adoring that the Eucharist in the monstrance here you have the Fathers of the Church and so on so it's similar in theme to those to Lynette pictures that we saw just a moment ago and here's the Immaculate Conception that I see nurdinov a Lent for the celebrations this is me relays most famous version of the subjects it was taken to France in the 1810s and was bought by the Louvre in 1852 at that time it was the most expensive picture ever acquired by a museum it was returned to Spain in 1941 in a special exchange of works and handed to the prodigious today so marshal Patton and General Franco signed a deal it was partly to ensure that Spain didn't enter into the Second World War and the deal involved in exchange of works of art as well it's a sort of mixture of assumption and inmaculada and it is mural a most perfect rendition of this theme theology appears to have taken a back seat here and Marilla has represented a sublime image a wondrous feminine beauty more divine than human surrounded by a golden glow of heavenly lights the Virgin rises up into the Imperium accompanied by dozens of rosy angels tumbling around her both playful and adoring curiously there are relatively few symbols in the pictures kind of symbols that normally accompany the Immaculate Conception and they flowers they palm those stars in fact none of the emblems associated with the listening of the Virgin which usually accompany her are here the reason for this is given by photographer fan who says that the emblems of the Virgin were not in the picture but they were carved in the very expensive frame which was guilt and painted we started to look for the fray of this picture in the hope that it's still existed and sure enough we found it on the altar of the venerable esophagus in Seville so this is a reconstruction of what the frame looked like in its original or what the picture looked like in its original frame the frame was described in the inventory of non-cost Eno's collection made in 1685 at his death I quote a painting of the pure and stainless conception of Our Lady for Baris four yards in height a painting by Murillo with its frame in which are carved her attributes and in fact if you look carefully you'll see in fact I've got a DJ I think some of the attributes of the Virgin's usually appear inside the picture but in this case had migrated to the frame and clearly the frame and the picture were conceived together so what you're seeing on the left is the cedar of Lebanon one of the Appalachians of the Virgin Mary and on the right and the Tower of David which appear in these car to she's on the frame even the temporary altar set up outside the church the Immaculata as I said before was flanked by two smaller paintings on the left the young son john the baptist's on the right the good chef had both of which have ended up in british collections these two are identifiable in the inventory of Don Kristina's collection drawn up at his death in 1685 so 1665 therefore the date that that church's rien augured newly refurbished with-with-with mural is great paintings there I think give us the context for the creation of the port race so I imagine the portraits made as a gesture of friendship - danke steno in thanks for having given him these wonderful commissions the following year at the end of 1666 Don casino was named Maori normally fabrica effectively canon superintendents of the fabric of the Cathedral he was responsible for the upkeep and decoration of the building and had a considerable budget at his disposal he engaged Murillo to help him in the refurbishment of this remarkable beautiful 16th century building which is the chapter house of the Cathedral that's where the canons would gather to discuss a cathedral business and also to pray very significantly Don casino commissioned Yarilo to paint the picture that you see up here the Immaculate Conception and these little roundels of civilian saints so the chapter house was a celebration of civilian devotion in particular devotion to thee in my colada and indeed to the Saints that the diocese itself had produced over the ages there's a detail of the inmaculada which sits at the top of the chapter house very very beautiful picture painted on panel actually it's not been taken down for a long long time so it's difficult to to see out from down below you can see that the inscription that's there appears up there in macular then they're pretty made instantly this or cell rings with in sympathy with that description that I've referred to that phrase that's constantly repeated in Dora riffraff an immaculate from the first instant of her being I'd like to devote just a few moments to the collection formed by a host Enid in a way given that we're talking about friendships in art and how Murillo is friendship with hosts II know also yielded pictures for austie knows private collection so the main source for understanding Christine owes interest in painting is the inventory of his collection drawn up immediately after his death in 1685 the document lists about 160 pictures which for non-aromatic collection is a considerable number most significantly it contained important group of paintings are given to Murillo described as mural Oh in that list 18 as well as a portrait of the artist not described by his hand demonstrating Kristina's loyalty and personal commitment to the painter the only other artists who's mentioned in that inventory is Morales but otherwise the only named artist is is Marella himself of the hundred and sixty works over a hundred were religious subjects there are sort of dozen or so historical mythology mythological or allegorical pictures and one very large paintings of Nimtz dancing naked eight are landscapes and Hasina also had ten still lifes 11 portraits including his own some family members some priests a deceased man wearing a Franciscan habit and six pictures that we today would classify as Jean repeating z' including a girl with a bunch of grapes a water cellar and a boy with a crossbow as regards the Murillo's in Hoss Tino's collection the very first work listed there is the Immaculate Conception that we just saw a moment ago which had the highest valuation 7,200 realice very very substantial sum nearly five times more than the next most highly valued pictures which also happen to be by Murillo and remember Marilla at this time was the most famous painter in the city the in maculata I'm sure would have hung in his private oratory perhaps flanked as they were on that temporary altar by the Good Shepherd and the son John the Baptist with a lamb in his will don't casino bequeath two works to the venerable saturd ortus the home for retired priests his own portrait we heard that a moment ago and a penitence and Peter the penitence and Peter was known about it was one of the pictures that was taken to France but it was subsequently taken to England and then lost but during the course of the preparation of the exhibition we found it and we found it on the Isle of Man and here it is the penitents and Peter we managed to persuade the owner of the picture to lend it to the exhibition of the Prada there what problems because the TTI races were happening there and there was there was not a ferry that could take the picture on - on to the mainland here in order to bridge to Spain but it did arrive just as the press was was coming in to the exhibition and we opened the box unfortunately it was the rice picture here you see it after cleaning at the Prado subsequent to the exhibition I'm very pleased that it was reacquired for Seville and it's now shown in the funda Theon focus which is the foundation that is housed in the venerable authorities so this picture has actually returned to its home and this is a very sensitive topic in Seville because they're very conscious that so much of their of their artistic heritage was essentially swiped and by the French and ended up elsewhere so for pictures a sort of return home was a great moment of kind of triumph for them and I that was part of the work that came up around that exhibition so it was very very kind of pleasing outcome Don Kristina's collection of Murillo's is interesting because it includes a variety of works including our allegories flower paintings and small devotional pictures the inventory lists two paintings of spring and summer which correspond we have no doubt - these two pictures so the Dulwich picture here on the left-hand side and the picture that you see on the right that was recently acquired by the National Gallery's of Scotland they're described in the inventory as spring and summer curiously only - there are no other two pictures to complete the allegories of the of the four seasons although a navy was interested in genre paintings as we seen from that list of works that he had unlike another important Flemish collector in Seville he wasn't a cannon was a very wealthy merchant called Oma's or oh ma su or owned several of the beggar children of the kind that you know from the Dulwich collection here in addition to these pictures there are also three small devotional paintings described in the inventory as on stone su are in the Louvre this is one of them and third is a nativity scene in Houston which was recently identified as having a crostino provenance as well in fact although Navy had other small works on stone copper wood and in wax these three are painted on a much rarer and intriguing support they are actually painted on Mexican obsidian mexican obsidian of course is solidified lava has come out of a volcano and it's a vitreous substance not actually a stone it can be made into very very sharp objects as well traditionally you used obsidian for for surgical operations for example but these three paintings I've shown you one of them I'll show you the other two as well this is the other one in the Louvre and the third one as I said recently identified is this one here which is in Houston they're reminiscent of small paintings on slate of the kind executed by the Bassano Zoar by Alessandro to Keita that the the portrait the picture gallery here in Dulwich has a fine painting on slate with this black background which I think I can't remember who the author is is it Torquay as well sorry marina okay so there was a tradition in 17th century Italy for painting on on on stone in particular on slate so the appearance is similar but it's a different kind of material in this case and you use the background to play an aesthetic role in the design and it has been suggested probably slightly fancifully let's just go back to this one here so you get a sense of the material itself that the intention of murillo in painting these Christian subjects on obsidian was to Christianize objects that may have been known in the 17th century to have had a ritualistic significance in astok religious practice so these would have been pagan objects which potentially Marella was sort of Christianizing by painting you know the Holy Family or Christ himself on them and the these objects are known in a stick culture as smoking mirrors so they were mirrors whereby you could enter into contact with souls that had passed on but in fact we're not actually sure that Marella would have known that this was the way in which this material was used in a stick culture it is possible but we have no evidence of it and in fact even Christina when he refers to these objects in his will he describes them as on stone rather than on this wonderful obsidian and this picture here casino donated to the Charter house of Seville the car fusion monastery there with the instruction that the prior should put it wherever he thought fit in memory of the great affection in which the cannon held the monastery so you can see that amarilla is actually producing quite a variety of different sorts of works for him portrays big public commissions and paintings on obsidian flower paintings which don't survive I'm afraid genre pictures which we've just seen paintings also some miniatures now again during the course of the preparation of this exhibition this miniature you've seen back in front emerge it was an unknown work until the exhibition so you can see that when we put on an exhibition there our museum colleagues here all kinds of interesting things happen around an exhibition the research sort of throws up new ideas throws off in some cases new works as well and enables us to give a much more accurate view of the artists achievement or the particular subject that we're trying to treat in the exhibition I said that some of the Morelos remain unidentified those flower paintings for example but there were these four miniatures for ovals on copper which later passed into the collection of Alma's or that Flemish merchant that I mentioned to you just a moment ago now in Navy's inventory this is little bit complicated don't worry if you forget about all this in Navy's inventory they're not given an attribution but enormous ores inventory they are described as mirrors as Marilla so we can be pretty confident that they're the same works and so they're by gorilla so this confirms something very interesting which we didn't know before and that is that Morello also produced miniature paintings and even more significantly for the purposes of this talk anyway it adds another four works by the artist to Novaes already impressive tally of 18 so he had at least 22 works by Murillo in his collection it would have made a monographic show in its own right so this was discovered as I say very recently if they're very small I think the dimensions are just 58 millimeter so 6 centimeters something like that here's the dream of son Joseph on the left and on the other side is st. Francis of Paola the stone under which the earthly remains of kostina de Neve a lie in the cathedral in Seville records only two of his achievements his 40 years of service in the chapter and his role as venerable eum's such a doting hospital promote or the foundation and decoration of this charitable institution engaged him very intensively he was the promoter of the hospital for retired priests of a novelist suffered Octus as it's called it functioned in fact as a care home for priests until a generation ago this is it as you see is it sore a beautiful sort of Moorish patio with beautiful fountain in the middle it has a wonderful Church attached to it and decorated by Valdis Leal and other civilian artists from the last quarter of the 17th century and here's a picture that shows how the how the hospital operated it was meant for priests who were elderly and infirm and in need of housing and care and there were the nobles of Seville would serve the priests as you see in this painting by lucas valdez so the hospital was built with funds which came partly from the land and properties that had owned and partly from the Archdiocese of Seville and partly from private donations now danke steno played a very important role in the construction of the building which began in the 1670s and was not completed until after his death it was completed in the late 60s he was also responsible for elaborating the statutes of the Brotherhood which were published in 1676 now as we have seen Don Faustino bequeathed to Murillo paintings from his own collection to the venerable s suffer doctors his own portrait he wanted the retired priest to pray for him and the penitence and Peter but we rediscovered recently but in 1679 some years before he died Orsino was instrumental in getting mural o the Commission to paint this picture here which is now in Budapest the Virgin and Child distributing thread to priests this work was painted very appropriately for the refectory of the venerable s saturd ortus I said that house served the needs of sick and elderly priests and also clergymen who were travelling and if you look at the three priests on the right you can see that they represent these three categories the balding white-haired priest the sallow face sickly cleric behind him and the priests were the pilgrims staff the subject matter illustrates the charitable purposes of the hospital and also alludes to the theme of Christ distributing the bread of the Eucharist food for the body food for the Soul for more than a century this work hung in the refectory where the retired priests would eat their meals constantly reminded that the charity that they benefited from had ultimately come from Christ himself and at the same time praying for the soul of Don kostina the founder of the parabola Theodotus the relationship between Don Kristina was at its most intense in the mid to late 1660s in the 1670s dong cocina seems to have focused his attention on his Cathedral duties on a construction of the venerable is suffered Octus and on taking care of his large extended family he was very close to Archbishop Spinelli who was asked bishop until his death in 1684 bow this liao continued to work all say for the benevolence a faded Octus after me relays own death Murillo died in 1682 Don Kristina died three years later the epitaph on the lattice tombstone in Seville Cathedral is brief but eloquent here lies Don Casino de Navy each Avice cannon of this patriarchal church for 40 years a man born for the service of the temple founder of the hospital of the venerable Saturday's he died on the 14th of June 1685 at the age of 16 may he rest in peace so death of me Rallo shortly afterwards the death of his friend Don Faustino brought to an end that wonderful collaboration between so enlightened devout patron and the most wonderful painter of his journey in Seville Murillo in 1686 this is the epilogue to this story 1686 said the year after Christina had died the hospital-acquired host Eno's Immaculate Conception from his heirs they installed it in its frame in the church there it remained until 1810 when it was removed from its frame and taken to Paris as I said before in 1813 by marshal salt the frame as we saw remained in situ and was filled with another rather mediocre Immaculata by an anonymous artist in 2012 we had the exceptional opportunity to reunite frame and picture in the Church of the venerable s suffered Otis and that's what you see happening there this was a risky business because the civilians of course are very keen on repatriating their heritage and when you show that your great masterpiece in the Priory fits perfectly into their frame which sits on the original altar for which the paint on which the painting was placed from the mid 1680s it becomes very difficult to and persuade them they have to give you the work back at the end of the show but the painting did indeed returned to its altar for three months in the church over the mayor of Allis just after just two centuries after it had left these things do not happen very often it was a remarkable event in the context of a very special exhibition and I'm delighted that we were able to continue that celebration here at the dollish picture gallery and painting and frame did indeed come to South London for the celebration of that exhibition and that brings to an end my reflections on Don Faustino & marelli thank you very much for listening [Applause]

Channel: Las Casas Institute

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Id: 9VUXcA_eW4A

Length: 57min 25sec (3445 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2020