Trained under Juan de Castillo, Murillo did not begin to work on his own until 1639. A few years later he achieved h
is first major success with the cycle of paintings in the small cloister of the Franciscans in Seville (1646). A journey to Madrid allowed him to make a closer study of the paintings by great masters in the royal collection. This brought about a change i
n his style, which grew softer and more refined. Murillo specialized in sacred subjects, interpreted with sincere religious piety, but he also painted portraits and genre pictures. A well-known example of this is the \i Children Eating Grapes and a Melon
\i0 , 1645-55. Even in his profane paintings, Murillo, though more realistic in his approach, tended to bring out the ideal beauty of the subject. One of the works of his maturity is the canvas depicting \i Jesus and the Young Saint John the Baptist\i0
(ca. 1760), which is a fine example of his poetics, with a charming range of colors based on tones of mellow and delicate luminosity and a skillfully balanced composition. The founder of an Academy of Fine Arts, he left Seville only around 1680, to decor
ate the church of the Capuchins in Cadiz. He died two years later in Seville, amidst general esteem and admiration for the high quality of his work.
