El Niño Jesús repartiendo pan a los peregrinos

In the 1670s Seville was still recovering from a plague that thirty years earlier had killed nearly half the city, and its churches and hospices leaned heavily on private charity. This was painted for one of them, a rest home in Seville for elderly and infirm priests, founded by a canon named Justino de Neve. Neve was Murillo's friend and patron, and he is thought to appear here himself, the pilgrim holding a book at the right. The subject fit the house exactly, the Christ child handing out bread to weary travellers, an image of shelter given to the poor. A copy still hangs in the original building today. Murillo painted it four years before he died.