The Good Shepherd as a Child in a Landscape was first attributed to Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's workshop and later considered an original work by the painter, or even a preparatory drawing for his canvas with the same composition (Brown 1976). The latter was commissioned around 1665 by Justino de Neve, a canon from Seville who intended it to be part of a temporary monument to be erected in front of that city's church of Santa María la Blanca for its reopening celebration.[1] The original painting, now at the Lane Collection in Ashton Wold, Petersborough,[2] was a pendant to the Saint John the Baptist as a Child at the National Gallery of London,[3] of which a drawing with very similar characteristics is preserved at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia (inv. 50.49.18). Jonathan Brown (1976) considered the Hamburg drawing an original by Murillo from the collection of the Baron of St. Helens, sold by Christie's of London in 1842, until an identical version was discovered in a private collection from New York. To his eye, the latter was of better quality and unquestionably by Murillo (Brown 1983, 2012). The Hamburg drawing's exactitude with respect to the painting led Diego Angulo Iñiguez (1977) to consider it a copy of the canvas rather than a preparatory sketch, and thus, a workshop production. Manuela Mena Marqués (1982) followed that proposal, although, in light of its exceptional quality, she has recently included it as an original Murillo in the catalogue raisonné of his drawings (2014), defining it as a replica of the painting. The technical characteristics, paper, and inscriptions led Francis Russell (1977) to conclude that the drawing from St. Helens was the one in the private New York collection, and Brown accepted this (1983, 2012). It, too, would be a copy of a painting, just like the London drawing of Saint John the Baptist as a Child mentioned above, but it would have been part of an album of copies of Murillo's compositions—some by his own hand, others from his workshop-that belonged to Flemish merchant Nicolás de Omazur in the late seventeenth century and to the second Count of Águila in the eighteenth century before entering the St. Helens collection at an unknown date (Mena Marqués 2014).
The refined execution of the Hamburg drawing as well as its differences with respect to the one in a private collection indicate that it is not a literal copy of the latter, although the size of the figures, their exact dimensions, and the anatomical relations indicate that an unidentified method of transfer was employed-possibly tracing. The Hamburg drawing may have been excluded from the album of copies mentioned above because it was accidentally stained with oil and pigments, calling for its repetition. The two or three vertical lines made with the same red chalk as the drawing and crossing the child's face, one of which runs through his bust almost as far as his knees, could indicate that it was rejected. And yet, this drawing is especially delicate in its modeling of the figures and includes completed zones that are barely defined in the private collection work. Here, the high technical quality reveals the hand of a master rather than that of an advanced copyist. For example, the different materials are clearly reflected, from the tunic to the child's lambskin jacket, the wool of the ewe, the tree trunk, and the delicate and convincingly rendered branches and leaves. There are also numerous differences between the two drawings, and from a technical standpoint, this work is exquisite in its extremely fine contour lines and soft sfumato modeling. The mixture of black pencil and red chalk in the child's hair, the seated ewe, and the crook also differentiate this version. Along with the rest of the technical details, it helps to define the planes of perspective and the tonal balance of the entire composition, both of which were rarely surpassed in other drawings by Murillo in this genre. Finally, the modeling of the child's body differs in the two drawings. The one in a private collection is closer to the painting, while this rendering is more personal and interesting, as the child's hair has more volume, and his curls show less movement, endowing him with a sweet, relaxed appearance and reinforcing his concentrated expression of fervor.

Manuela B. Mena Marqués


1 Finaldi (dir.) 2012, 118-21.
2 The Good Shepherd, oil on canvas, 64 15/16 x 42 15/16 in. (165 x 109 cm), Peterborough, Ashton Wold, G. Lane Collection, on loan to the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. See Valdivieso 2010, 166, 168, and 382, no. 170.
3 Oil on canvas, 64 15/16 x 42 15/16 in. (165 x 106 cm), London, National Gallery, NG 176. See Valdivieso, 171-72 and 382, no. 169.

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