Self-Portrait

Painted when he was in his mid-thirties, Murillo’s first self-portrait shows him as an upper-class Spaniard, sporting an elegant black outfit with a golilla (a stiff white collar, typical of Spanish fashion). It was probably a private work, painted for his own family. The image of the artist is set in a fictive stone block, chipped and battered by time, that rests on a stone ledge in a realistic manner. The Latin inscription at the bottom of the canvas, describing Murillo as a famous painter and providing biographical information — including the wrong birthdate of 1618 — was added to the painting after his death.