Exhibition of the week Murillo: The Self-portraits

National Gallery, London WC2 (020-7747 2885, www.nationalgallery.org.uk). Until 21 May

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-82) was “the most famous artist in golden-age Seville”, said Ben Luke in the London Evening Standard. Best known in his lifetime for his “fervent religious paintings”, he remained fashionable long after his death: in the 18th and 19th centuries, his cheerful pictures of “street urchins” made him “the most celebrated Spanish artist” in Europe. Since then, however, Murillo’s reputation has “plummeted”, his achievements eclipsed by those of his near-contemporary Velázquez. Yet as this new exhibition dedicated to his portraiture demonstrates, his work has been “too easily dismissed”. In a curatorial coup, the show brings together the only two self-portraits Murillo is known to have painted, reuniting them for the first time in centuries. They are complemented by about ten other portraits, prints and related works – which together make for a “fascinating” display.

True, Murillo created some wonderful paintings, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. Nevertheless, he has not traditionally been “prized for his portraiture” – and unfortunately this show is “no crowd-pleaser”. On entering, we are confronted with a “monotonous” row of formal portraits depicting various male subjects against “gloomy” backgrounds. The prevailing atmosphere is “sepulchral” and, “frankly, a bit stiff”. There are technical flaws, too: in one likeness of a Seville nobleman the skin appears “waxy” and “flat”, the white of the subject’s eye seeping across the lid. What’s more, one of the best pictures here – a “brilliantly arresting” depiction of a pair of maids (or possibly prostitutes) – isn’t really “a ‘portrait’ in the orthodox sense”, but a genre scene. Its appearance here seems “incongruous”.

But the self-portraits themselves don’t disappoint, said Rachel Campbell-johnston in The Times. Painted about 20 years apart, they present two radically different versions of the same man. In the first, created when Murillo was in his 30s, he depicts himself as a “gentleman” in “the prime of his life”, gazing out at the viewer with a “haughty arch of the brow”. His second attempt at self-portraiture, painted after he had lost five of his nine children, depicts a man with sadness “etched” into his features. The self-aggrandising swagger of the earlier picture is nowhere to be seen; instead, “Murillo is visibly older”, his hair receding and his jawline “slackened”. Together, these works offer a “poignant study of ageing”, and a fine climax to this “small but significant” exhibition.