Boy with a Dog by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

In his seminal work, 'The Story of Art', art historian E. H. Gombrich invites the reader to 'discover that the beauty of a picture does not really lie in the beauty of its subject-matter'. To illustrate his point he mentions Merillo, a Spanish Baroque painter who both mastered religious paintings, but also paintings from everyday life, especially among the lower classes. Here in the form of a sympathetic portrayal of a poor boy and his dog.