This small drawing's density relates it to the context of pen drawings grouped around inv. no. 38672, cat. no. 147.
Saint John the Baptist and the Christ Child appear in a landscape that recalls the desert where, according to the Gospel, John lived since childhood. The Christ Child sits on a boulder, and young Saint John kisses his feet. In his right hand Jesus holds the cross with a banner, one of the customary attributes of the Precursor.
This work was made in the wake of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's late devotional paintings. It is well known that, in his final years, that master from Seville gave pride of place to images of infants in both his genre paintings and religious scenes. In the latter, subject matter varies from the creation of highly original works based on images recovered from Antiquity (The Good Shepherd), to scenes with considerable emotional weight (Children with Shell), as well as premonitions of Christ's Passion. This reappraisal of infancy in religious settings has Italian roots, but Murillo himself invented many of the subjects, and it was he who defined their place in seventeenth-century Spanish painting.
The present drawing by Cornelis Schut III undoubtedly belongs to that context without being directly related to any specific work by Murillo. It is, however, related to later works, including a sculpture by Neapolitan artist Pietro Patalano (ca. 1664-ca. 1737), made in 1723, at the church of Nuestra Señora de la Palma in Cádiz.


Maria Cruz de Carlos Varona