Madonna and Child

By the 1670s Murillo was the leading painter of Seville, a city well past its glory. The great port that had once handled the silver of the Americas was silting up and losing its trade, and a plague in 1649 had killed close to half its people. Against that decline Murillo built a career on tenderness. His Virgins are soft, close, and human, more a young mother than a queen of heaven, set in the hazy, gentle light that became his signature. Here Mary holds the child simply, her cheek near his, with none of the hard splendor of an earlier age. Pictures like this were made for private devotion, to be prayed before at home rather than raised on a public altar.