The Infant Christ Distributing Bread to the Pilgrims, Bartolomé Murillo (1678)
To this day there still hangs a copy of the Budapest Jesus distributing Bread in its original location, a former rest-home for elderly priests in Seville. Murillo's masterpiece enjoys their admiration not merely for its captivating, gentle charm, but also because it would hardly be possible to express more perfectly the mission of the institution. The vision of Jesus distributing bread reminds us of the Christian's duty to care for those who fall by the wayside, a duty that originates with Christ himself. Yet it affirms this with a self-evident naturalness free of any didactic overtones. The viewers thus experience the not as a chore, but as an inner spiritual compulsion which they willingly obey.
