Virgin and Child in Glory by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

Virgin and Child in Glory by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

An archbishop’s private altarpiece

In 1673 Ambrosio Ignacio Spínola y Guzmán, Archbishop of Seville, commissioned this picture for the chapel of his own palace. It shows what he would have wanted to look at while he prayed: Mary standing on a bank of cloud with the Child held against her, and the whole upper part of the canvas filled with cherubs — not decorative putti at the edges but a crowd, pressing in, the ones nearest her feet almost tumbling out of the picture. The canvas has an arched top.

Cut apart and put back

The painting’s history is unusual. In the late eighteenth century the central group of Mary and the Child was cut out of the canvas and a copy set in its place — the original fragment presumably being easier to sell. The pieces were reunited in 1862, when the British collector Lord Overstone acquired them. The painting is now in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

About this print

Made from the Google Art Project scan of the painting, 3,979 pixels tall. The arched top is part of the work and is kept.

Sources: Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool · Google Art Project · Wikimedia Commons