The Patrician's Dream
Historical Context
The Patrician's Dream of around 1665, one of two large canvases Murillo painted for the Church of Santa María la Blanca in Seville, depicts the founding legend of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome — the Roman patrician John dreaming that the Virgin Mary commanded him to build a church where snow would fall in August. Seville's Santa María la Blanca was being renovated in 1665 to celebrate the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and Murillo was commissioned to create a cycle of paintings for the newly decorated church. The nocturnal setting of the dream gave him the opportunity to explore contrasting light sources — the ordinary lamplight of the patrician's bedroom against the supernatural luminosity of the Virgin's apparition — a problem he solved with the mastery of light effects that characterises all his celestial visions. The companion canvas, The Patrician's Foundation, depicts the actual building of the church on the Esquiline Hill; together they form one of Murillo's most ambitious narrative pairs, demonstrating his command of both intimate domestic scenes and visionary supernatural subject matter.
Technical Analysis
The sleeping patrician and his wife are visited by the luminous apparition of the Virgin, rendered in Murillo's soft, atmospheric manner with the contrast between the warm domestic interior and the supernatural vision.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the division of the composition into two registers: the sleeping patrician and his wife at the bottom, the luminous Virgin apparition above — Murillo makes the boundary between dream and waking visible.
- ◆Look at how the Virgin appears in the upper zone surrounded by soft, dissolving light quite different from the naturalistic domestic setting below.
- ◆Find the contrast between the sleeping couple's warm, earthly tones and the cooler, more ethereal palette of the celestial vision.
- ◆Observe that the companion piece to this work — depicting the patrician recounting his dream to the Pope — was painted for the same church of Santa María la Blanca in Seville.
