Two Women at a Window

Two Women at a Window is one of the most enigmatic paintings by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. It shows two women leaning out of a window, attentive to something or someone beyond the edge of the frame that has caught their interest. Murillo often moved between the world of ordinary, humble people and everyday scenes, and here he seems less concerned with a specific event than with the spontaneous reactions of the figures to what they see. The catalogue date given is 1657, while another account places the work between 1665 and 1675, so the dating should be treated with some caution.

Since the nineteenth century, the scene has been read as possibly set in a brothel. This is a probable interpretation rather than a confirmed one, based largely on the anecdotal tone of the composition and the women's attitude. That reading has kept the picture under discussion and has drawn attention to its narrative character, which is less typical of many of the artist's works.

The painting has a documented ownership history. Its first recorded owner was Pedro Francisco Luján y Góngora, Duke of Almodóvar del Río. His heirs sold it to William A'Court in 1823. After remaining in that family, it passed to an art dealer in 1894 and, later that same year, to Peter Arrell Browne Widener, who left it in 1915 to its present owner. It is now held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where it stands as an example of Murillo's interest in everyday life.

Painter

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

Date

1657

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

125 × 104 cm

Museum

Galería Nacional de Arte, Washington, D.C.

Genre

genre art

Depicts

décolletage, waist-length hair, part, standing, dress, brown hair, shutter, window

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