Grape and Melon Eaters

Murillo spent his whole career in Seville, and alongside the altarpieces that made his name he kept painting the city's poorest children, like these two boys sharing grapes and a melon in a bare corner around 1650. Seville had reason to have such children on its streets. The plague of 1649 had killed close to half the city's population within about a year, and Murillo was working in the aftermath. He gives the boys ragged clothes, bare feet, and the deep shadow he handled so well, but no moralising and no pity on display, just two children eating with real appetite. Paintings like this found buyers far to the north, in Antwerp, Rotterdam and London, where collectors wanted exactly these Spanish urchins. The melon slice one boy lifts to his mouth is the brightest thing in the picture.