Girl with a coin (Galicia Girl), Bartolome Esteban Murillo
- Posted by Bartolome Esteban Murillo
- Museum: Prado Museum
- Year: 1645-1650
Overview of the painting :
Girl with a coin (Galicia Girl) – Bartolome Esteban Murillo. 1645-1650. Oil on canvas. 63 x 43 cm
This small canvas belongs to the category of genre paintings by a great artist. It is quite different from its somewhat fanciful and mannered work in the Baroque style, created for churches and monasteries. In contrast to church paintings, here you will not find unnatural postures and rich lush robes.
A simple girl from the Spanish province of Galicia was forever captured on the canvas. She holds a coin in her hand and is clearly happy to receive it. Perhaps the artist himself gave it to the girl for posing for him to paint.
The girl has a simple linen robe, which clearly classifies her as the lower classes of the then society, who preferred silk and brocade. The head of the Spanish is covered with a large piece of light fabric, draped by beautiful expressive folds. Here, the skill of the painter was fully manifested, because we can literally feel the texture of this material.
The girl is depicted on a modest dark background, neutral, absolutely without details. This gives us the opportunity to focus on the face – young, smiling, but with hidden sadness in the eyes. The girl’s expressive black eyes do not smile, they don’t even look directly at the artist, but are slightly set aside. What a thought owned it at that moment? We will never know this, but everyone has a chance to come up with their story as a girl with a coin.