Circle of PEDRO NUÑEZ DE VILLAVICENCIO (Seville, 1644 - Madrid, 1695), 17th century.
"Popular children".
Oil on canvas.
It has a broken stretcher, some jumps in the painting and original canvas.
Measurements: 134 x 103 cm.
The artist offers us a work worked with the delicacy with which Murillo worked his feminine figures and children, making special emphasis on their poor and naive character in the case of the last ones. In this work we see a scene framed within 17th-century costumbrismo, worked with a realistic language in which a balanced and well-established composition stands out, as well as the almost pearly quality of the children's flesh tones. This composition and the subject matter, typical of scenes from the reality of Golden Age Spain and the picaresque literature of the period, bring the work close to the naturalist trend. Costumbrismo is a genre in which popular types and attitudes, behaviour, values and habits common to a specific group of the population, region or class are described by means of a satirical, nostalgic or narrative description of the environments, customs, dress, festivals and entertainments, traditions, trades and types representative of a society. The idea of costumbrismo arose from an attempt to understand reality, or more precisely, reality understood in a particular way, from a specific point of view.
Born in Seville, Pedro Nuñez participated in the founding of the Seville Academy of Fine Arts, founded by Murillo and Herrera el Mozo. Murillo directed this workshop with numerous assistants and apprentices whose main aim was to complete the training of young painters who were considered insufficient in drawing. Pédro Núñez's participation was certainly exceptional for his age, and he made some of the additions in the Seville market hall where the art institution was located. He himself became a member of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem in 1661 and had to settle in Malta, alternating with trips to Seville, possibly Rome, and southern Italy, where he worked as a painter and met the Calabrian Mattia Preti. In 1675, owing to the plague that broke out in Malta, he returned permanently to Seville, where he became the Order's point of reference in administrative matters for the priory in Castile.
In 1693 and 1694 he went to Madrid to participate in the commission that was to appoint the Order's ambassador to the Court of Madrid. It was on this occasion that he offered the painting Juegos infantiles a Carlos II (Children's Games to Charles II) on his return from one of his trips to Seville. He is known for being Murillo's friend and executor on the death of the master of Seville in 1682.