His beginning are murky. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo was born in 1617, but the location of his birth was either Seville or the smaller Andalusian town of Pilas. Documentation does show that he started his studies in Seville, around 1633, in the workshop of Juan del Castillo. It was there that he came to love the works of Jusepe de Ribera and Alonso Cano, whose realist approach he shared. Murillo became renowned for his religious paintings, which he executed in a soft and luminous style. Yet he also painted captivating images of daily life—flower girls, urchins, beggars, and other street folk. This exhibition looks at 50 paintings of secular subjects in 17th-century Seville. —Elena Clavarino