Bartolome Estaban Murillo was born on December 31, 1617 in Serville, Spain (Bartolome Estaban Murillo). He is known as one of “the most popular Baroque religious painters of the 17th-century Spain…” (Bio.com). Murillo grew up with a love of art due in part to his uncle and cousins being artists. “After being orphaned at age ten, Murillo was taken in by his older sister and her husband, who apprenticed him to the local painter Juan de Castello about two years later”. One of his first jobs was “painting decorations for local fairs as well as canvases for exports for the Americas”. His first “major commissions” began in 1654, when he marriaged a wealthy lady by the name of Beatric Cabrera y Villalobos. “In 1658, Murillo visited Madrid, likely in the hopes of wooing Villalobos into …show more content…
Francisco de Zurbaran “was the most popular artist in Serville during the period in which Murillo was trained to become a painter”. Zurbaran taught Murillo “the power of dramatic chiaroscuro and realism”. Murillo learned so much from Zurbaran that he came “to replace his more ascetic elder as the most coveted artist of the mid-17th century…”.Peter Paul Rubens provided influence to Murillo from his paintings. Murillo never met Rubens, but from his paintings “he learned to use richer, bolder colors, warmer hues, and bolder, more expressive brushstrokes. Federico Barocci was known as “a pioneer artist for the Italian Baroque painting at the tail end of the Mannerist period”. He was known for his use of “syrupy sweet and poignantly pious religious paintings…”.It is said that Murillo’s paintings could be mistaken for Barocci’s painting, because Murillo painting also had a “sentimental softness”. Many of Murillo’s painting contained religious subject matters such as Adoration of the Shepherds, The Holy Family, The Immaculate Conception, and Madonna and Child (Bartolome Estaban