MURILLO’S WORKS.

The works of Murillo are numerous, and widely scattered over the world. Most of his greatest works are in the churches of Spain; some are in the Royal collections at Madrid, some in France and Flanders, many in England, and a few in the United States. They now command enormous prices. The National Gallery of London paid four thousand guineas for a picture of the Holy Family, and two thousand for one of St. John with the Lamb. The late Marshal Soult’s collection was very rich in Murillos—the fruits of his campaigns in Spain. The famous Assumption of the Virgin, considered the chef d’œuvre of the master, brought the enormous sum of five hundred and eighty-six thousand francs, and was bought by the French government to adorn the Louvre; but it should be recollected that the heads of three governments—those of France, Russia, and Spain—and an English Marquis, competed for it. Such works, too, are esteemed above all price, as models of art, in a national collection of pictures. Of the other Murillos in the Soult collection, the principal brought the following prices: “The Ravages of the Plague,” twenty thousand francs; “The Miracle of St. Diego,” eighty-five thousand francs; “The Flight into Egypt,” fifty-one thousand francs; “The Nativity of the Virgin,” ninety thousand francs; “The Repentance of St. Peter,” fifty-five thousand francs; “Christ on the Cross,” thirty-one thousand francs; “St. Peter in Prison,” one hundred and fifty-one thousand francs; “Jesus and St. John—children,” fifty-one thousand seven hundred and fifty francs. The two last were purchased for the Emperor of Russia. The collection was sold in May, 1852.

The works of Murillo have been largely copied and imitated, and so successfully as to deceive even connoisseurs.