Christ Healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda


Christ Healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda is a 1667-1670 oil on canvas painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, now in the National Gallery, London, to which it was presented by the Art Fund, which had bought it for £8,000 the body had been given by Graham Robertson's executors. It had been in Paris by 1812 before being acquired by Colonel George Tomline and remaining in British private collections until 1950.
The work is one of eight paintings commissioned for Seville's Hermandad de la Caridad, to which the artist himself belonged and one of whose commandments was to clothe the naked. Four of those eight works remain in Seville, whereas the London work and the other three were looted by Napoleon's army in 1810.