Children Eating a Pie 1675

Bartolomé Estebán Murillo painted "Children Eating a Pie" with oils on canvas, sometime in the mid-17th century. The painting depicts a slice of life, seemingly casual but carefully arranged. The materiality of the scene is quite palpable. Look at the roughspun clothing of the children, and the basket laden with bread and fruit. It's all rendered with a painterly technique that emphasizes texture, as are the children's dusty feet, conveying their poverty. Murillo was active in Seville, a major port city in Spain, and would have been keenly aware of social divides. The labor required to produce even simple items like bread would have been apparent to all. Murillo seems to ennoble the lives of these children with his skilled attention to detail and composition, elevating their status through the very act of painting. Ultimately, Murillo encourages us to consider the social context of materials and making. He asks us to look beyond the surface of the painting, and recognize the human labor embedded within the image.