and that care for
sharp relief which they owed to the brilliancy of their sunshine, while
amid the fogs of the North the outline is more wavering and the vision
less clear. Under the influence of this original realism, their works
instinctively reproduced that two-fold character which the land of
Spain, smiling in her valleys and savage in her mountains, shows in
sharp contrast. But the Spaniards are, in truth, much more realistic in
their execution than in their inspiration.

The school of Seville, founded by Luis de Vargas, counted among its
illustrious masters the greatest painter of that sunlit and passionate
Andalusia, Murillo (Bartolome-Esteban), 1617-1682, Spain's most popular
painter, "the painter of the Conceptions," as she called him.

[Illustration: THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.
_Murillo_.]

His uncle, Juan del Castillo, a mediocre artist but a good teacher,
initiated him into his dry, stiff, and hard manner,--that of the old
Florentine school. In his studio young Esteban Murillo had young Pedro
de Moya as a fellow-student. One day the former took a fancy to go to
Cadiz, where, miserable enough, he painted on pieces of serge some
Madonnas for traffic in the West Indies, while the latter went to London
to work in Van Dyck's studio. On his return Pedro de Moya brought
several studies of the Flemish master, and Murillo, suddenly
revolutionized and suddenly illuminated, no longer dreamed of anything
but of going to Flanders or Italy, passing--happily--through Madrid. In
Madrid, the Velasquez of the Court of Charles II. stopped him on the
way, gave him admission to the royal collections, where he copied
Titian, Veronese, and Rubens, and then opened his purse to him, and,
lastly, revealed the secrets of his mighty art.

Thus taught and thus inspired, Murillo returned to Seville, where he
settled once for all, immuring himself in his studio, where--modest,
timid, and gentle--he lived with that single love for his art which soon
enriched him, two years later adding to it the adoration of his wife, a
noble lady of Pilas. It was from this studio that almost all of his
laborious, numerous, and superb works issued, sometimes scarcely signed.
From the very beginning, Murillo possessed all the qualities of a great
master, and henceforth we have only to separate his own personality and
originality.

Murillo had three periods, as he also had three styles according to the
nature of the subjects he had to treat: th