The Charity of Saint Thomas of Villanueva

Murillo's Charity of Saint Thomas of Villanueva at the Wallace Collection, painted around 1670, belongs to his extensive series celebrating the newly canonized bishop-saint whose extraordinary generosity to the poor had made him a model of the active Christian charity that Counter-Reformation theology placed alongside contemplative devotion. Thomas of Villanueva, canonized in 1658, was an Augustinian bishop of Valencia who gave away his personal possessions to the poor — his clothing, furniture, and episcopal income — earning the title 'Almsgiver of the Poor' and becoming one of the Counter-Reformation's most compelling models of sanctified charity. Murillo painted him multiple times for Sevillian religious institutions, and the subject's combination of social observation — the bishop distributing alms to the recognisably poor citizens of an Andalusian city — with devotional content made these paintings among his most socially engaged works. The Wallace Collection in London holds this as part of its significant Spanish Baroque holdings, assembled by the Marquesses of Hertford in the nineteenth century when Spanish painting was at the height of its European reputation.

The saint distributes alms to a group of poor supplicants rendered with Murillo's characteristic combination of warmth and realism. The ragged figures of the poor are painted with the same sympathetic attention as the saintly bishop, and warm golden light unifies the composition.