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The Youthful Saint John the Baptist Seated in a Landscape (recto); Unidentified Figure Composition (Dido and Aeneas?) (verso)

Creator

Spanish Artist · 1617–1682

The market for Bartolomé Estebán Murillo's pictures was so large and lucrative that the king refused to allow their export from the country. Murillo himself never left Spain. Living with his uncle after his parents died, the young Murillo made devotional pictures to sell at Seville fairs. Later, he was apprenticed to local painters. Like all Spanish painters of his time working outside the court,

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Date: about 1655
Medium: Pen and reddish brown ink over black chalk (recto); pen and brown ink (verso), on a separate sheet of paper (verso), on which the recto sheet has been laid down
Culture: Spanish
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum

Saint John the Baptist appears as an idealized youth rather than as a young child, his more traditional representation. He sits in the wilderness, holding his reed cross with his left hand and the Paschal Lamb with his right. The subject derives from a passage in the Gospel, "John looked towards Jesus and said, 'Behold the Lamb of God.'"(John 1:36) Bartolomé Esteban Murrillo communicated the same message here through John's direct visual engagement of the viewer's attention. Executed in Murillo's early pen style, the drawing displays his distinctive use of chiaroscuro and structured hatching.

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