The Holy Family with a Bird

Murillo painted this around 1650 in Seville, and what is striking is how ordinary he lets it look. There is no gold, no throne, no ring of angels. Joseph sits with the Christ child standing against his knee, Mary works nearby with her spindle and thread, and the whole thing reads like a working family in a plain room. The child holds a small bird up out of reach of a little white dog that stretches toward it in the corner, a scrap of everyday play. Seville had been through years of plague and hard times when Murillo made pictures like this, and their gentle, homely warmth was exactly what drew people to him. This was one of the paintings that built his reputation, and by 1744 it had passed into the Spanish royal collection, where it went to the Prado.