Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682). The Virgin of the Rosary, ca. 1650–55. Oil on canvas, 164 x 110 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Representations of the Virgin Mary occupy a prominent place in Spanish religious art. Spain’s fervent devotion to Mary has its roots in an ancient matriarchal cult that dates back to the country’s pre-Christian past. Even today, married women in Spain do not lose their maiden name and children occasionally choose to use their mother’s rather than their father’s surname (as did Diego Velásquez and Pablo Picasso).

In early Christian art and Byzantine iconography, the Madonna was widely venerated as the mediator between a suffering mankind and Christ. The prevailing idea of these images was to convey the endless, unbounded love of the Virgin for her son and for humanity. The tenderness of this mother toward her beloved child was intended to instill sympathy in the viewer. These images also expressed grief and compassion.

With the Renaissance, the focus of Western European art returned to the classical traditions of painting and sculpture in ancient Greece. Renaissance artists allowed themselves to be more emotional, secular, and humanistic, thereby creating bright masterpieces close to the hearts of their contemporaries. The art of this period is characterized by more anatomically correct proportions, sincere human emotions, color, and light. Throughout the Renaissance, painters focused on many themes derived from the life of the Virgin.

Despite changing times, twentieth-century Spanish artists including Picasso and Salvador Dalí would return to the eternal theme of the mother and child to explore it in both enduring and modern ways.

About the works

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s career is tied to Seville, the city where he lived and died, but he was also the first Spanish painter to achieve renown throughout Europe. In addition to the enormous popularity of his works in his native Seville, Murillo was much admired in other countries, particularly England. His many religious paintings emphasize the peaceful, joyous aspects of spiritual life.

Murillo’s parents died when he was a child, and he was sent to live with a local artist. Under his tutelage, Murillo learned to paint religious pictures that were sold to small churches in Spain and in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. His early works, depictions of the Madonna and of the Holy Family, were dry in character, but he soon developed a warm, atmospheric quality in his paintings.

Murillo was expert in expressing tranquility and devotion. He used light and dark not only as a technique, but also as a way to communicate with the viewer and to achieve luminous effects that highlighted the beauty of the commonplace. Murillo combined the humdrum with the extraordinary in scenes that often include very young children with an idyllic feminine figure. His subjects are depicted in poses of elegant dignity.

In The Virgin of the Rosary, Murillo achieved great dramatic effect through the use of chiaroscuro, a technique that imparts a sense of three-dimensionality through the contrasting use of lights and darks. The figures are set before a shallow, dark background, and their brightly lit faces appear to glow with a holy light.

At a time of great religious fervor, Munillo won broad acclaim for his ability to create religious compositions that were at once sacred images as well as portraits of figures of his day, dressed in current fashions. He portrayed the Madonna as a beautiful woman and saints as likable Spanish characters, anticipating the trend toward realism that would characterize eighteenth-century religious art. During the nineteenth century, Murillo’s genre paintings were widely admired and influenced many painters of that period.

In 1917, Pablo Picasso fell in love with Olga Koklova, a Russian ballerina. They married a few months later. In 1921, the year Picasso turned forty, their son, Paulo, was born. In his work, Picasso returned to the enduring archetype of the Holy Family, creating many renditions based on the theme of the Madonna and Child, using Olga and Paulo as models and inspiration.

Picaso’s Maternity belongs to the artist’s neoclassical period, during which he developed a style remininscent of classicism and used mythological images such as centaurs, minotaurs, nymphs, and fauns. He also created at least a dozen pictures inspired by and dedicated to motherhood and the special relationship between mother and child. The women in these paintings resemble antique statues suddenly given life. They are solid and powerful, like ancient goddesses, and are painted in quiet tones of gray and rose. They are all Great Mothers, connected to the earth.

Though some of Picasso’s neoclassical mother-and-child canvases are not large in themselves, the effect of any one of them seems larger than life. Maternity shows a woman clothed in a classic, toga-like white dress as she holds a squirmy baby on her lap. She is so totally absorbed with her child that she does not know we are watching them. Their interaction is both animated and tranquil, evoking a tender lyricism and the calming spirit of motherhood. Picasso’s neoclassical period lasted until about 1925, when his art moved in still another direction.

• Although these two paintings have much in common, they also have distinct differences. Create two lists: one that identifies the things these paintings share in common, and the other consisting of things that are unique to each. As a class, make cumulative lists and discuss your observations. Which list is longer?
• Describe how the artists provide the viewer with a feeling for who these people are, their importance, and their relationship to one another.
• What character traits do you imagine these people possess? For each of the four people depicted in these paintings, make a list of all of the attributes that come to mind. Which figure is the most playful, the most truthful, the most thoughtful, etc.? How many attributes overlap? How many seem to be unique to only one of the people pictured?
• Imagine that these two paintings could be brought to life. Write a paragraph that tells what would happen next and what the women and children would say and do. Be sure that your response is in keeping with the characters and clues that the artists have provided for you.
• Both Murillo’s and Picasso’s works achieve a sense of three-dimensionality. Describe how each artist, in his own way, has created a sense of sculptural form on a flat canvas.

• The theme of the mother and child is one of the most consistently reproduced subjects in the history of art. In Western art, its origins lie, according to legend, with the apostle Luke—the patron saint of painters—who is supposed to have painted the Virgin as she appeared to him in a vision. Its earliest recorded representations are Byzantine in origin. The theme of the mother and child is also an important one in African art, often seen seen in figurative sculptures that express concerns for fertility and continuity. Discuss the reasons that this theme is of such universal importance.
  Social Studies


• Picasso is known to have said, “You can write a picture in words just as you can paint sensations in a poem.” Try an experiment to test the reliability of this statement: Choose a work from this guide and write a careful description with the goal of creating the image in the mind’s eye of the reader. Then choose a favorite poem. Read the poem over several times and create a painting that visualizes the essence of the poem. When you are done, consider whether or not you agree with Picasso’s statement.
  English / Language Arts


• The opportunity to create your own work on the subject of the mother and child exists all around you. Take a sketchbook to a park or playground, or on a bus or subway. Try to capture in quick drawings the relationship between parent and child.
  Visual Arts