These lively realistic portraits of flower girls, street urchins, and beggars constitute an extensive record of the everyday life of his times.

After his parents died in 1627 and 1628, he became a ward of his older sister Ana and her husband, Juan Agustín Lagares, who coincidentally also happened to be a barber.

He became familiar with Flemish painting and the "Treatise on Sacred Images" of Molanus (Ian van der Meulen or Molano).

According to fellow painter and art historian Antonio Palomino, Murillo left Castillo's workshop after feeling he had grown sufficiently skilled in his painting.

Similar claims, attributed by Joachim von Sandrart, a German historian of the time, argue that Murillo also travelled to Italy during the same period.

When selecting subjects, Murillo placed an emphasis on praising lives of contemplation and prayer as represented in paintings like Saint Francis Comforted by an Angel.

Alte Meister), the characteristic elements of Murillo’s work are already evident: the elegance and beauty of the female figures and the angels, the realism of the still-life details and the fusion of reality with the spiritual world, which is extraordinarily well developed in some of the compositions.

"[3] Similarly in Saint Diego Giving Alms, Murillo carefully places the subjects on parallel planes over black background, and its center, surrounding a boiling pot, are a group of children seemingly bathed in a heavenly glow.

[3] Following the completion of a pair of pictures for the Seville Cathedral, he began to specialize in the themes that brought him his greatest successes: the Virgin and Child and the Immaculate Conception.

This was his period of greatest activity, and he received numerous important commissions, among them the altarpieces for the Augustinian monastery, the paintings for Santa María la Blanca[10] (completed in 1665), and others.

The prolific imitation of his paintings ensured his reputation in Spain and fame throughout Europe, and before the 19th century his work was more widely known than that of any other Spanish artist.