The Pie Eaters

Murillo spent his whole career in Seville, a city still recovering from the plague of 1649 that killed something like half its people and left the streets full of orphaned children. He painted them again and again, ragged boys eating fruit or, here, sharing a pie, absorbed and unbothered. There is no moral lecture in it and no obvious pity. He renders the torn clothes and dirty feet with the same warm care he gave his altarpieces of saints. Pictures like this were not really made for Seville's own patrons. Northern European merchants and collectors bought them eagerly, and most of Murillo's beggar-boy scenes left Spain early, which is why this one hangs in Munich rather than at home.