Saint John of God

Saint John of God is an oil on canvas painted by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in 1672. It shows the saint carrying a sick man, accompanied by an angel. The scene brings together two aspects of John of God's life, care for the poor and attention to the sick, in a moment of direct and close help. The composition draws the eye to the frail body of the invalid and to the saint's compassionate gesture, while the rest of the space recedes. The painting is now held in the Hospital de la Santa Caridad in Seville, the institution it was connected with from the start.

The canvas belongs to a group of eight works commissioned for the Hermandad de la Caridad in Seville, a confraternity to which Murillo himself belonged. One of its duties was to clothe the naked, and the series was conceived as a visual reflection of the charitable works the brotherhood carried out. Three of the eight remain in Seville alongside this one, while four others left the city after Napoleon's army looted them in 1810 and are now in museums in Washington, London, Ottawa and Saint Petersburg. That dispersal makes the series a telling example of how war affected Spain's artistic heritage.

As a painting, the work reflects Murillo's mature handling of light and warm tones, along with his ability to convey feeling without excessive drama. Its importance lies both in its devotional purpose and in its place within a group that documents the relationship between Seville's Baroque art, the religious life of its confraternities and the city's charitable activity in the seventeenth century.

Painter

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

Date

1672

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

79 × 62 cm

Museum

Hospital de la Santa Caridad, Seville

Genre

religious art

Depicts

John of God

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