Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/509

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In Andalucia. 479 Without accepting all of these, we may, at least, mention a Conception, beautiful even among so many others; a Nativity which, in its arrangement, reminds us of Correggio's Notte. At Berlin there is an Ecstasy of S. Antony of Padua, which, without equalling the brilliant masterpiece that Murillo left as a last gift to the cathedral of his native city, yet, at all events, recalls the highest qualities of the painter of Seville. It is in his tender passionate style. Munich is still richer in possess- ing excellent works in different styles : S. Francis de Paula curing a Paralytic at the door of a church, and five of the best of his beggar subjects. A large picture, formerly an heirloom of the Marquises of Pedroso, at Cadiz, was in 1837 bought by the National Gallery in London for about four thousand guineas. It is a Holy Family. In this picture, between His mother and Joseph, who are worshipping on their knees, the Child Jesus stands on the broken shaft of a column, gazing towards heaven as if wishing to leave earth, and united in thought to the two other persons of the Trinity — the Holy Spirit, who in the form of a dove, is hovering over his head, and the Father, who is above, amidst a choir of seraphim. The National Gallery also possesses two other pictures by Murillo, a Spanish peasant Boy, doubted by some critics, and a S. John and the Lamb. In the Duke of Sutherland's gallery the places of honour are justly occupied by two large pictures by Murillo, brought from Seville to London through the collection of Marshal Soult — Abraham receiving the three Angels, and the Return of the Prodigal Son. They have been provided with magni- ficent frames, in which are the verses of Scripture which explain the subject, and surmounted by gilded busts of the