Murillo's Devotional Paintings and the Late Baroque Culture of Prayer in Seville

This dissertation examines Murillo's production of devotional paintings within the wider context of the religious culture in Seville at the end of the Golden Age. The diversity of Murillo's devotional output, from small intimate canvases to large-scale altar paintings, challenges traditional definitions of the devotional image as small, non-narrative and essentially private works of art. This study proposes a new definition of the devotional image in the Golden Age that corresponds to the emphatic spirituality that flourished in Seville during the seventeenth century, in which pious displays were performed publicly with self-conscious display. Within this baroque climate of obligatory religious compliance, Murillo's religious paintings became desirable symbols of social and economic status as well as personal piety to a diverse assembly of ecclesiastical and secular patrons. These collectors used Murillo's devotional images to publicly proclaim their financial success, civic loyalty to the city's cults, and conformity to the dominant religious culture. Following the catastrophic plague of 1649, Seville's artistic patrons sought reassuringly beautiful images of spiritual communion. Murillo's characteristically aesthetic religious paintings facilitated the spiritual encounter and supported the theological justifications for the efficacy of images as aids to devotion. Eschewing the narrative images of suffering and persecution, Murillo's paintings of the Holy Family and ecstatic saints demonstrate the reward that comes from faith and prayer in the spiritual union with the divine. This thesis presents an overview of Murillo's religious output, and seeks to understand how Murillo's depictions of conventional devotional themes surpassed those of his contemporaries in serving the unique spiritual needs of Sevillan society at the end of the Golden Age.