Brother Juniper and the Beggar

In 1810, with Seville under French occupation, the paintings in the small cloister of the city's great Franciscan friary were taken down on the orders of Joseph Bonaparte, then king of Spain. Murillo had painted the set from around 1646, and it has been scattered ever since. This canvas tells a tale from the Fioretti, the old collection of stories about Saint Francis and his first companions. Brother Juniper gave away so much that his superior forbade him to hand over his clothes. So when a beggar asked for help, Juniper told the man to take the habit off him himself, and the order stayed unbroken. Marshal Soult took the picture to Paris, and the Louvre bought it in 1964. Along the bottom edge run lines of Spanish verse, now only partly legible, on obedience and charity.