The Baptism of Christ

Around 1655 the Augustinian nuns of San Leandro in Seville, or a patron acting for them, commissioned Murillo to paint four pictures on the life of John the Baptist. This is one of the four. He was 38, living in the city he almost never left, and his customers were its convents and hospitals rather than the court in Madrid. The canvases stayed in San Leandro until 1812, when Seville was under French occupation and a great many of its church paintings left the city. This one was acquired by the Berlin museums in 1968. Christ kneels on the bank while John pours the water over him, and the two faces are set along a single diagonal, which is the sort of quiet ordering Murillo used instead of drama.