The Prodigal Son receiving his Inheritance

The Spanish title of this little canvas uses a legal word. The son is not simply given money, he collects his legítima, the share of the family estate the law reserved to him. That is the whole event here: a table, a chair, coins being handed over, and a household that is about to lose one of its sons. Murillo painted the story in six large canvases, now in Dublin, and four small ones like this, which the Prado owns. The two scenes missing from the small group are the expulsion from the brothel and the return home, which is the episode painters usually chose above all others. Nobody knows whether they were lost or never painted. This one is 34 centimetres wide, and it came to the museum from the royal collection.