Abraham Receiving the Three Angels

Murillo painted this for a brotherhood in Seville devoted to charity, the Hermandad de la Caridad, which ran a hospital for the poor and dying and which he had joined himself. Their rule listed the duties of mercy: feed the hungry, shelter the stranger. So Murillo took the Old Testament scene of Abraham welcoming three travellers and staged it as an act of hospitality, the old man bowing to angels dressed as tired pilgrims. It was one of a series lining their church. In 1810, during the war against Napoleon, French troops stripped Seville of much of its art, and this canvas was among the pieces carried off. It passed through private hands until Canada's national gallery bought it in 1948.