Mediating otherness : discourses and images of poverty in the paintings of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682)

Macdonald, Anne Mairi (2018) Mediating otherness : discourses and images of poverty in the paintings of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682). Doctoral thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

The following chapters investigate the significance of visual representations of poverty in the paintings by the Seville painter, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) and their relationship to discourses on poverty of the period. During an active career spanning more than forty years which was based almost exclusively in Seville, Murillo’s paintings of poor people in both religious and genre paintings constitute the widest extant range of representations of the poor in Spanish art of the seventeenth century. By focusing on discourses on poverty of the period, the networks of charitable assistance which existed in Seville and the nature of the image at that time, this study explores the extent to which Murillo’s images of the poor express changing perceptions of the poor and poor relief in early modern Spanish culture. Through an examination of Murillo’s paintings of the Adoration of the Shepherds, c. 1665-1670, Wallace Collection, London, Saint Thomas of Villanueva Distributing Alms, 1665-1668, Museo de Bellas Artes, Seville, Saint Elizabeth, Queen of Hungary Attending the Sick, c. 1670, Church of the Hermandad de la Caridad, Seville, and Three Boys Playing Dice, c. 1679-1680, Alte Pinakothek, Munich, I have sought to expand upon other scholars’ interpretations of Murillo’s images to discuss what assumptions are drawn on in these images and what forms of engagement are being encouraged.

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