Spanish master Murillo's long journey back into fashion
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Version 0 of 1. The Penitent St Peter, hands locked in prayer and with battered bible at his bare feet, can expect admiring looks when he goes on display at London's Dulwich Picture Gallery on Wednesday. This major work by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo is part of the first exhibition in decades of work by the 17th-century Spanish painter, once the most famous – and expensive – artist in the world. "He's tremendous, isn't he?" said Xavier Bray, chief curator at Dulwich, who used Google Earth and family connections to track down the painting, which had been considered lost for more than a century. "When I first saw it, I was amazed by its quality and its excellent state of preservation." The condition of the painting is something of a miracle. Like many other pictures in the show, St Peter left Seville in 1812, after it had been cut from its original frame and packed into a mule wagon by the French occupying army. It was part of the spectacular loot acquired by Napoleon's marshal Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult, who is said to have left Andalucia with works of art worth 1.5m francs (around £200,000). When his collection was sold by his heirs in 1852, paintings regarded as Seville's greatest treasures were scattered across the world. St Peter was known only from an ancient black-and-white photograph, last catalogued in 1905. The last recorded owners lived at Newick, near Lewes in Sussex – as, by chance, do Bray's in-laws. He interrogated them about known inheritances among local families, and once he got a lead, settled down with Google Earth to track houses that might have walls large enough to take the painting. After he narrowed it down, Bray lost his nerve about marching up a very long drive, probably with guard dogs, and knocking on the door. Instead, he ransacked the contact books of everyone he knew until he found an intermediary to break the news to the startled householders that they had inherited not just a mansion but a masterpiece. They had had no idea that the painting was of any significance. The show, which comes to Dulwich from exhibitions at the Prado in Madrid, and the Hospital de los Venerables in Seville, reunites paintings that were once owned by Murillo's friend and patron, Justino de Neve. When the paintings returned to Seville for the first time in 200 years, the reaction was more personal than mere admiration. Many visitors, whose opinions were echoed by a columnist in the daily ABC newspaper, suggested that since the paintings had finally come home, they should stay there. The paintings that did return to Spain, but got no further than Madrid – like a towering altarpiece of the Immaculate Conception, which forms the centrepiece of the exhibition – have caused even more contention than the ones still overseas. Murillo had Seville in his bones. He is only recorded as having left his native city once in his life, in 1658 – and then only to travel to Madrid. Seville still holds scores of his works, including a Baptism of Christ which has come down from its high wall in the cathedral for the first time in centuries to be included in the exhibition – but the city still mourns every lost painting. In his will, Justino de Neve left St Peter to the city charity he had founded, the Venerables home for poor and elderly priests – the same building in which the exhibition was held in Seville. The original frame, now holding a later and much worse painting, is still on the walls of the chapel next door. The beautiful buildings, grouped around a fountain courtyard, have been restored as a gallery space and headquarters by the Focus Foundation, whose director, Anna Morillo said diplomatically: "It has been an honour to have these pictures under our roof again." The Dulwich exhibition will feature works by Murillo from the gallery's own collection. When in 1811 Sir John Soane designed Dulwich Picture Gallery – the world's first purpose-built, public gallery – built to hold a dazzling collection of old masters originally assembled for the king of Poland – the Murillos were among its greatest stars. The critic John Ruskin grumbled: "I have never entered the Dulwich gallery for 14 years without seeing at least three copyists before the Murillos. I have never seen one before Paul Veronese." At the Museum of Fine Arts Seville, a former convent which still holds a gallery full of his works, curator Ignacio Cano has been researching what the French took – and he has no doubts, they went first for the Murillos. In 1852, the Louvre bought the artist's Immaculate Conception for 615,000 francs, then a record for any work of art. Yet by the 1930s, the artist's reputation was in freefall. When the present Lord Faringdon's uncle, Gavin Henderson, bought a vast Murillo for his country home, the luscious figure of a pink and pretty woman representing the church triumphant, it was seen as a highly eccentric choice. "Murillo was seen as too foreign and too Catholic," Bray said, "and his reputation suffered from his very popularity because most people only knew his work from millions of poor-quality reproductions." Lord Faringdon, who has loaned the painting in return for a work to fill the gap on his walls, has written of his uncle and the particular atmosphere of his house, where politicians mingled with artists and horticultural enthusiasts: "It was the contrasts that were so memorable – the huge bath towels and delicious greenhouse peaches (both were white and warm), and then Cypriot sherry and, some say, squirrel pie. It was the same with his collecting; he never minded being unfashionable, but he particularly liked the unusual. It went for his choice of furniture as well as his friends." The painting and the others in the exhibition may slowly be coming back into fashion. Bray thinks the show will prompt a reassessment of Murillo that is long overdue. "There can be no question of his quality as a painter, he is an absolute master. But it is time to ask again about his position in the history of art – a bit kitsch, or one of the greats?" <em>• Maev Kennedy travelled to Seville courtesy of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and the Spanish tourist board.</em> |