SEVILLE.- Curated by Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez and
Benito Navarrete, the exhibition will include fifty or so works by the young
Murillo (Seville, 1617-82) from a crucial period in his career, one
represented—through some particularly fine works—in the collections of both
Bilbao and Seville Fine Arts Museums: St. Peter Weeping (c.1650-55) and
St. Lesmes (c. 1655) in Bilbao, and St Francis (c.1645-50) and San Jerome (c.
1665-75) in Seville. Around 1640 Murillo achieved his first artistic successes,
launching a career in the ascendant. During this early period Murillo produced
an oeuvre marked by a taste for tenebrism and naturalism, a reflection of the
durable influence of masters from the previous generation, like Zurbarán and
Ribera, particularly in the way he plays with the light and dark and his close
observation of his subject.