Two Women at a Window
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo·c. 1655/1660
Historical Context
Murillo's Two Women at a Window, painted around 1655-1660, is one of his most celebrated genre paintings, depicting two young women leaning on a windowsill — one smiling openly at the viewer while the other hides behind a shawl. The subject likely represents women of easy virtue soliciting from a window, a theme with roots in Dutch and Flemish genre painting. The painting's directness and charm made it one of Murillo's most widely admired and copied works, particularly in Britain.
Technical Analysis
Murillo's naturalistic technique captures the women's expressions with remarkable immediacy. The warm, golden palette and soft modeling of flesh tones create an inviting warmth, while the architectural frame of the window provides a trompe-l'oeil effect that draws the viewer into the scene.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the two women's contrasting behavior — one smiling openly at the viewer, one hiding behind a shawl — the trompe-l'oeil window framing their different degrees of invitation.
- ◆Look at the architectural frame of the window creating the near-realistic effect that drew the window's interior and the viewer's exterior world together.
- ◆Observe the naturalistic technique capturing the women's expressions with remarkable directness and warmth.
- ◆Find the social encoding of the scene: women soliciting from a window, the subject made entirely charming through Murillo's warm, non-judgmental treatment.
Provenance
Pedro Francisco Luján y Góngora, Duque de Almodóvar del Rio, Madrid;[1] his heirs; sold 1823 to William A'Court, later 1st baron Heytesbury [1779-1860], Heytesbury, Wiltshire;[2] by descent to his eldest son, William Henry Ashe, 2nd baron Heytesbury [1809-1891]; by descent to his grandson, William Frederick Ashe, 3rd baron Heytesbury [1862-1903]; sold 1894 to (Stephen T. Gooden, London);[3] purchased 3 December 1894 by Peter A. B. Widener [1834-1915], Elkins Park, Pennsylvania;[4] inheritance from the Estate of Peter A. B. Widener by gift through power of appointment of Joseph E. Widener [1860-1943], Elkins Park.[5] [1] For this provenance see William Stirling-Maxwell, _Annals of the Artists of Spain_, 3 vols., London, 1848: 2:920 n. 2, who presumably had the information from Baron Heytesbury (d. 30 May 1860). Heytesbury was ambassador extraordinary in Madrid in 1822-1823. Pedro Francisco Luján y Góngora, Duke of Almodóvar del Rio (1728-1794) was a Spanish diplomat and man of letters. The ownership is established by the inscription on an undated print after the painting by Joaquín Ballester, which employs the present tense: "Quadro original de Bartolomé Murillo que posee el Excmo. Sr. Duque de Almodóvar," reproduced in Diego Angulo Iñiguez, "Quelques tableaux de Murillo. Les femmes a la fenêtre de Murillo, de la Galerie Nationale de Washington," _Evolution générale et developpements regionaux en histoire de l'art_, Budapest, 1972: fig. 2. Gustav F. Waagen, _Galleries and Cabinets of Art in Great Britain_, 3 vols. and supplement, London, 1857: 389, mistakenly gives the provenance as the family of the count of Altamira. Duncan Kinkead, "The Picture Collection of Don Nicolas Omazur," _Burlington Magazine_ 128 (1986): 353, posits that the picture is identical to one in the 1703 inventory of the Sevillian painter, Matías Arteaga. However, the entry does not give the name of the artist and mentions only a single woman--"Un lienzo de vara y medio de alto de una mujer asomada a ventana" ("A canvas is a vara and a half high of a woman looking out of a window"). In a 7 September 1986 letter to unknown recipient, Professor Kinkead states that the same picture is mentioned in Arteaga's _capital_ (possessions of husband at marriage) of 1680, where the estimated value, in his opinion, "is simply too low for it to have been an original by Murillo." [2] _Burke's Peerage_, London, 1967: 1247-1248. [3] Gooden's name is found in the manuscript copy of the Widener catalogue. [4] Records from Edith Standen's (Widener's secretary) Lynnewood Hall card file, NGA curatorial files. [5] _Paintings in the Collection of Joseph Widener_ (1923), n.p.
