Saint John of God

By 1672 Murillo belonged to the Brotherhood of Charity in Seville, a group of laymen who buried the dead, fed the hungry, and nursed the sick poor in their own hospital. They asked him for a set of paintings about acts of mercy, and this is one of them. It shows John of God, the 16th-century friar who founded a nursing order, hauling a sick, half-collapsed man on his back through the dark, an angel stepping in to take some of the weight. Murillo knew the scene first-hand, since the brothers he was painting for did much the same in the wards next door. Two of the largest canvases from the series still hang where he left them, in the hospital church.