The little room of this hovel is poor indeed: only the sunlight makes it a little less inhuman. And that light embraces a body that must have known far too few embraces: it is a child, a boy not even ten years old.
An outcast, one of the forgotten, a loser. He is alone: he no longer has a family, if he ever had one at all. He is barefoot, dressed in rags. He is a beggar, homeless: he is tired and has sought shelter from the summer heat. He rests while picking lice from himself.
On the ground lies his meagre bag, with a few bruised apples. A water jug: perhaps the very thing he sells to earn a few coins. And a scorpion torn to pieces: at least that problem has been solved.
Its creator, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, paints with power and truth, and amid the splendour and gold of the Baroque, the artist drove home the subtle blade of truth.