Saint François embrassant le Christ en croix

Seville in these years was still recovering from the plague of 1649, which had carried off nearly half its people, and its churches wanted art that consoled. Around 1668 the Capuchin friars asked Murillo, the city's leading painter, for a series on Franciscan devotion. This one shows a vision in which Saint Francis is embraced by Christ on the cross. Murillo makes it startlingly physical. Christ has worked one arm loose from the nails and reaches down to gather the kneeling friar against his side, while Francis presses his face to the wounded body. With one foot Francis shoves away a globe, the whole world he has renounced. The friars kept the picture until their convent was closed in the 19th century, when its paintings passed to the city museum.