![]() Gaspar beat his boy for such sacrilege.īy the time Bartolome was 11, both his parents had died and he was made a ward of his sister’s husband. To them, the picture like an icon, which made Bartolome’s vandalism tantamount to an act of desecration. That was the kind of Jesus young Bartolome would want to hang out with. The serious shepherd had become an energetic hiker in search of adventure. The shepherd boy’s crook was now a gnarled walking stick, and the limp, sad-looking lamb at his feet was now a troublesome puppy. The halo had become a battered straw hat, and the plastered-down hair had been made tousled and unruly. The eyes had been made alive with mischief. The stern unflinching face now bore a lively grin. When they returned home, the Estebans were aghast to see their Lord had been completely transformed. His youthful brilliance already evident, he was able to renovate the painting into a new picture of Christ. So one day, while his parents were out of the home, the precocious child took the picture down from the wall and set to work with his paint set. Young Bartolome detested the spooky image. Depicted in the darkened tones that were popular in religious art at the time, the shepherd boy stood straight and tall, his crook planted firmly in the ground like a sentinel’s bayonet, his head crowned in a glowing halo, his eyes staring vacantly out from the canvas. In the Estebans’ family home hung an austere painting of Jesus as a shepherd boy. He was also inclined to goof off and get into trouble. He wanted to be a painter like his uncle. But young Bartolome was too playful and too creative for that kind of work. ![]() ![]() His father was a barber and wanted his son to pursue a career in banking or law. There’s story about the Spanish Baroque painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo, who grew up the youngest son in a family of fourteen.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |