Spanish school, Follower of BARTOLOMÉ ESTEBAN MURILLO (Seville, 1617 - Cadiz, 1682); 17th century.
"Adoration of the Shepherds".
Oil on canvas. Re-drawn.
Size: 157 x 130 cm; 179 x 152 cm (frame).
This painting in which the Adoration of the Shepherds is represented, follows the aesthetic models established by Murillo, in the work of the same subject that was painted between 1668 and 1669 for the convent of the Capuchins and that nowadays belongs to the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville.
Considered by some to be the painter who best defines the Spanish Baroque, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo exerted a notable influence on his Sevillian contemporaries and, after his death, his influence can be found in other schools even to the present day, particularly in religious art. In the 18th century his language and iconographic formulas were widely followed and repeated, and during the Romantic period numerous copies of his works were made. However, it was in the Baroque period of the 18th century that the importance of his influence, spread by his numerous disciples and followers, was most evident. In fact, in that century he was the best known and most appreciated Spanish painter outside Spain, the only one of whom Sandrart includes a biography in his "Academia picturae eruditae", a work dating from the end of the 17th century. In the last decades of the 17th century, Murillo's emotional, sweet and delicate sentimentality prevailed in Seville over the more dramatic one of Valdés Leal, hence the predominance of his influence in the following century. As time went on, however, we find an increasingly superficial influence, focused on imitating models and compositions but leaving aside his plastic language in favour of formulas more typical of the new century.