Virgin and Child with a Rosary

When Murillo painted this in Seville around 1650, the city was crawling out from under one of the worst plague outbreaks in its history, which had killed a large share of the population only a few years before. You would not know it from the picture. There is no martyrdom here, no suffering saint, just a mother holding her naked child so their cheeks touch. That gentleness was partly the point. In those grief-stricken years the church in Seville was pushing devotion to the rosary hard, and Murillo, who belonged to the local Confraternity of the Rosary, likely made this as something to pray in front of. Look for what is missing above their heads. He gave neither Mary nor the child the usual gold halo, letting them read for a moment as simply a woman and her son.