Entre lo humano y lo divino: Music and Theatre for Murillo’s Prodigal Son

Concert
National Gallery of Art, Dublin

This musical journey evokes the varied sound world surrounding Murillo’s Prodigal Son paintings through a series of paired themes: sacred devotion and penitence; secular desire and theatrical song; street and courtly dance; domestic order and prodigal freedom; and the musical traffic connecting Seville, Madrid, Naples and the wider Spanish world. Woven discreetly through the evening is an Irish presence, traced through the movement of clergy and scholars, and the religious and cultural networks linking Ireland and Spain.

The concert takes its dramatic inspiration from Murillo’s six-part narrative. Rather than pairing individual compositions with each painting, however, the music provides signposts along a continuous theatrical journey through contrasting musical worlds.

In setting the Gospel story within seventeenth-century Seville, Murillo faced the challenge of depicting episodes that had not previously been represented in Spanish art. He drew upon theatrical scripts and continental prints, reshaping these sources through his own distinctive narrative imagination. Like the concert, the painting cycle is therefore an act of adaptation, staging and cultural exchange.

Wolodymyr Smishkewych, voice, percussion
Leonie Curtin, baroque violin
Eamon Sweeney, lute, guitar
Yonit Kosovske, harpsichord

In collaboration with the Cervantes Institute and the Embassy of Spain in Ireland, this event is a part of the Dublin by Dusk initiative in support of the Night-Time Economy After Hours at the Museum scheme.