Lot 299
  • 299

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo Seville 1618 - 1682

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Description

  • Bartolomé Estebán Murillo
  • Head of Christ
  • oil on canvas, within a painted oval

Catalogue Note

We are grateful to Professor Enrique Valdivieso who, based on photographs, has identified this painting as a work by Murillo, dateable to circa 1655.  He compares it to the head of the full-length figure of Christ in Murillo's Saint John the Baptist Pointing to Christ, now in The Art Institute of Chicago (oil on canvas, 270.2 x 184.5 cm. see Fig. 1).  That painting, also dateable to 1655, was originally one of four scenes from the life of Saint John the Baptist painted for the Shod Nuns of Saint Augustine in the convent of San Leandro in Seville.

A smaller scale bust length image of Christ would most likely have been produced for an individual for private devotion and might originally have been paired with an image of the Virgin.