Santa Isabel da Hungria curando os pobres

Murillo painted this around 1672 for the church of a charitable brotherhood in Seville, the Hermandad de la Caridad, whose members buried the abandoned dead and cared for the destitute sick. Their leader, Miguel de Manara, had a set of large canvases made on the theme of mercy, to hang where the brothers could see them while they worked. This one shows Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, a medieval princess who left palace life to nurse the poor, bending over a boy to clean the sores on his scalp, an unglamorous act of care painted for men who did the same. Murillo softens nothing about the sickness in front of her. The painting still belongs to the hospital the brotherhood ran.