The Little Fruit Seller

Murillo made his name on solemn altarpieces, but he also painted the poor children of Seville, the beggars and urchins and young sellers like these two counting coins over a basket of grapes and figs. He knew that world closely. The plague of 1649 to 1652 had killed something near half of Seville and left the once-rich port in long decline, its streets full of orphans, and Murillo lost several of his own children over the years. He paints these two without pity or sermon, warmly lit, the girl absorbed in the coins in her hand. Buyers for such scenes were often foreign merchants, and pictures like this travelled early out of Spain into collections in the north.