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Murillo finished the paintings commissioned for Santa María Blanca in Seville in 1665. The commission consisted of four paintings, two in the arched spaces beneath the small dome of the nave and two more in the same format placed at the head of the aisles. The nave paintings represent the pious legend of the founding of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, the mother church of Santa María Blanca. According to this story, a Roman patrician, John, and his wife had pledged their wealth to the Virgin. She rewarded their piety by appearing in a dream and instructed them to build a church in her name on the Esquiline Hill, in accordance with a plan that would be traced on the surface of a miraculous summertime snowfall. The couple rushed to report their vision to Pope Liberius (352-366), who had also been visited by the Virgin, and all proceeded to the designated place, where they witnessed the miraculous fall of snow. Following the heaven-sent plan, they built the church and named it Santa Maria della Neve, the Italian word for "snow," which coincides with the name of the Sevillian canon, Justino de Neve (1625-1685), who was one of Murillo's principal patrons and who commissioned the redecoration of the Santa María Blanca, originally a synagogue and later converted into a church.
In the two lunettes dedicated to this story (Dream of Patrician John and Patrician John Reveals his Dream to Pope Liberius, both in the Prado, Madrid), Murillo intensified the sketchy, sfumato technique first used in the Birth of the Virgin (Louvre, Paris). The consonance between the gentle narrative and the warm, intimate style seems effortless, so much so that it is easy to overlook the confident artistry of the complicated poses and the dextrous brushwork in the background.
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