Murillo’s The Prodigal Son and the art of narrative in Andalusian Baroque painting

The four central decades of the 17^th century saw the emergence in Andalusia of a type of painting that is particularly representative of both the exceptional creative level achieved by the region’s leading painters and of the expectations and tastes of one of the most active sectors of their clientele. These are works organised in series, usually of medium size and commissioned by private individuals for domestic interiors and oratories. A number of these series recount the progress of a “story”, either the life history of a character with varying degrees of completeness or the events within a specific episode in their life. The result is to make them of enormous interest for understanding the compositional devices employed by their creators and their ability to narrate successive episodes. Among the artists who produced series of this type were Bartolomé E. Murillo, Antonio del Castillo, Juan de Valdés Leal and Alonso Cano; four of the leading figures of Andalusian Baroque painting.

The present exhibition is intended to introduce this context, taking three of these series as its principal points of reference: the one on the Parable of the Prodigal Son by Murillo, the series on Joseph in Egypt by Antonio del Castillo, and the one on the Life of Saint Ambrose by Valdés Leal. A fourth section includes works from other series in order to show how they were important vehicles for the depiction of landscape, the emotions and daily life.

Antonio del Castillo (Córdoba, 1616-1668) first trained in his native city then in Seville where he encountered the work of Zurbarán. He became one of the most important artists active in his city in the central decades of the 17^th century. During his career as a painter Castillo was less dependent on institutional commissions than previous Cordovan artists. Among the characteristics of his approach were his marked interest in drawing (around 190 examples survive) and the importance he placed on landscape. The latter is evident in both his works on paper and his paintings of outdoors scenes, in which the setting is of equal or greater importance than the “story”.

Castillo’s scenes from the life of Joseph, which is one of the series that has established his fame, reveals some of those characteristics. These are works intended for a private client in which the landscape acquires considerable importance. Castillo also achieves a striking balance between narrative and setting, revealing a notable ability to convey emotions and bodily gestures, while refining his narrative technique with the result that the episodes succeed each other in a dynamic, clear and uninterrupted manner.

The story of the Prodigal Son was particularly suitable for Bartolomé E. Murillo (Seville, 1617-1682), an artist notably interested in exploring the emotional potential of painting who depicted the subject in one of his major compositions for the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville. Murillo also produced the series of six paintings on display here, each depicting an episode from the parable. Together with the five paintings on the story of Jacob, these medium-format works constitute the principal narrative series created by the artist for a private client. In addition, it is the only group of this type that has remained together in its entirety in one collection. This offers a unique opportunity to appreciate Murillo’s skills as a narrator and the devices he employed to recount a narrative in a sequential manner.

Among all the options that the Gospel account offered him, Murillo opted to depict six key moments through which the progress of the story can be easily followed and the values and religious and moral connotations associated with it identified. The viewer can thus enjoy situations and details that are easily translatable to everyday experience.The series gave rise to four small paintings which are displayed here alongside their respective models.

In addition to the six medium-format paintings that narrate the parable of the Prodigal Son, four more small-format canvases exist which repeat four scenes from the larger series. For many years these were considered to be preliminary studies or works that Murillo used to show his client the appearance which the larger series would have. However, technical study of these smaller works confirms that they derive from the larger ones rather than preceding them.

The process that led to that solution is illustrated here through the example of The Prodigal Son tending the Swine. Firstly, Callot’s print provided Murillo’s starting point when organising his scene. The X-radiograph of the painting in Dublin reveals that he initially devised a much more complex background than the one in the engraving. That background was reduced in a subsequent stage, as the photograph of the painting shows. Both the reduced-scale version in the Prado and its X-radiograph have a background similar to the Dublin painting, indicating that the latter was executed before the Prado canvas, which copies its final state.

Together with Murillo, Juan de Valdés Leal (Seville, 1622-1690) was the most prestigious and active painter in Seville at the time when he was contracted to paint a series of paintings on the life of Saint Ambrose in 1673. The commission came from the city’s archbishop, Ambrosio Ignacio Spínola y Guzmán, who intended them for his private oratory in the episcopal palace. The series probably comprised seven paintings depicting episodes from the life of Saint Ambrose from his childhood to his death, now divided between different institutions. Particularly important within the group is the scene of the dispute between Ambrose and the Emperor Theodosius, a subject that represents an affirmation of religious over secular authority. In addition to these scenes from the saint’s life, the decoration of the oratory included other auxiliary paintings on allegorical themes.

The fact that Archbishop Spínola’s features are used for Saint Ambrose in the paintings, the presence of probable portraits in various scenes, and the use of architectural references familiar to Sevillians make the content of this series notably self-referential.