Hospital de los Venerables: Velázquez and Murillo's Wandering Virgin
Why is it significant?
In front of you rises a long, dignified Baroque facade in ochre and white, with a doorway that seems almost too grand for the little square it faces. If the gate is open, glance through: you will see a patio with a sunken fountain, a few steps below the level of the street.
Key Facts
| Place | Hospital de los Venerables: Velázquez and Murillo's Wandering Virgin |
|---|---|
| Address | Plaza de los Venerables 8, 41004 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.38520, -5.99020 |
| Part of Walk | The Lost Judería of Seville: Santa Cruz, Susona and the Synagogues That Became Churches |
| Generated | Generated |
In front of you rises a long, dignified Baroque facade in ochre and white, with a doorway that seems almost too grand for the little square it faces. If the gate is open, glance through: you will see a patio with a sunken fountain, a few steps below the level of the street.
This is the Hospital de los Venerables Sacerdotes, founded in 1675 as a home for elderly and poor priests. The man behind it was Justino de Neve, a canon of the Cathedral, a collector of art and, above all, a close friend of Murillo. Murillo painted his portrait, a gentle man in black with a little dog at his feet and a clock on the table. That portrait now hangs in the National Gallery in London.
Neve also commissioned from Murillo an Immaculate Conception for this building, one of his most radiant: the Virgin floating in gold and blue, surrounded by tumbling angels. During the French occupation, Marshal Soult took it. In 1852 the Louvre bought it from his heirs for a sum that was then a world record for a painting. It only came back to Spain in 1941, in an exchange with France, and today it is in the Prado. Sevillians still call it the Immaculate of Soult, naming it after the man who stole it.
Today the building is a cultural centre devoted to the other great painter of Seville, Diego Velázquez, who was born in this city in 1599 and trained here before leaving for Madrid and the court. His Santa Rufina, a young Sevillian saint holding clay pots, came home to the city in 2007 and is shown here. Inside, the hospital church is covered in frescoes by Juan de Valdés Leal and his son Lucas Valdés, painted illusions of architecture that make the walls seem to open.
There is something touching about it: old priests once spent their last years in a house built by Murillo's best friend, and now the house watches over the work of Velázquez. Walk south down the lane towards the Alcázar wall and step into the white tunnel of the Callejón del Agua.