Alte Frau laust einen Jungen

Alte Frau laust einen Jungen (Old Woman Delousing a Boy), painted around 1650 and now in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, depicts a domestic scene of maternal care among the urban poor of Seville. Delousing was a common and necessary hygiene practice depicted frequently in Spanish and Dutch genre painting. Murillo renders the scene with the warm empathy characteristic of his genre works, avoiding both sentimentality and harsh social commentary. The intimate interaction between the focused old woman and the patient child captures a moment of genuine domestic tenderness amid poverty. The painting belongs to Murillo's celebrated genre series that made him internationally famous as a painter of everyday Sevillian life.

The tight composition creates an intimate domestic scene, with warm light falling on the boy's resigned posture and the woman's focused attention. Murillo's naturalistic rendering of both figures demonstrates his observational acuity and empathetic approach to humble subjects.