Two Boys with Pumpkins

Villavicencio was a friend of Murillo and co-founder of the Painting Academy in Seville. This canvas depicts two street boys sitting by a Roman ruin on the bank of the Guadalquivir. Once the largest and most prosperous city in Spain, Seville had been ravaged by economic crisis and the bubonic plague during the seventeenth century. Poverty was an everyday reality, captured here by Villavicencio. Pumpkins were among the cheapest and lowliest of foodstuffs, but these boys dressed in tattered clothes seem content with them as they play morra, a popular hand game.