This relatively large and highly finished sheet depicting young John with the lamb entered the Hamburger Kunsthalle's Kupferstichkabinett as one of numerous drawings attributed to the “School of Murillo," and was listed in the inventory as an “obvious copy” by an imitator of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. In 1976, Jonathan Brown characterized it as a “consummate work” by Murillo himself, and it appeared as such in the 2001 Hamburg catalogue (Roettig, Stefes, and Stolzenburg 2001). In his 2012 catalogue, Brown repeated the attribution, but added that the sheet leaves the impression of a copy or a school piece," despite the fact that “the quality is superb and worthy of Murillo.”[1] Diego Angulo Íñiguez did not adopt Brown's appraisal, and Manuela Mena Marqués saw the drawing as rather a copy after a lost original.
The term “school of Murillo” as employed in the Hamburg collection referred, as has become clear, to drawings produced in association with the Academy in Seville founded by Murillo in 1660 and directed by him in its first few years. In that institution dedicated mainly to the teaching of drawing (Academia de dibujo), artists like Francisco de Herrera the Younger, Cornelis Schut III, and Juan de Valdés Leal worked alongside Murillo. In fact, as Mena determined after a recent re-analysis, this sheet is quite similar to drawings in the same technique by Valdés Leal. The simultaneous use of red chalk and black pencil for the flesh tones and the clothing with the exception of the wholly red cloth-of the young John, as well as the lamb's coat, corresponds considerably more to drawings by Valdés Leal than to those of Murillo, who more clearly separated the use of the two media. In this respect, the present sheet compares most favorably with the drawings Saint Catherine (inv. no. 38624, cat. no. 166) and The Vision of Saint Anthony (inv. no. 38627, cat. no. 168), as well as The Apparition of Christ to Saint Ignatius on his way to Rome[2] at the Meadows Museum in Dallas. A further connection between these drawings are the pointed fingers of the young Baptist's left hand, which are almost identical to Saint Catherine's and those of The Infant John the Baptist with the Lamb (inv. no. 38585, cat. no. 167).
The sheet has been very closely cropped (at the upper left edge, a short fragment of a border line is still visible) and folded both horizontally and vertically. Although the drawing was highly finished, it has as yet been impossible to relate it to any known painting, unlike most of the drawings cited here, by way of comparison.
Brown pointed out that this drawing probably comes from the library of Seville Cathedral, where it was acquired by A. Fitzherbert, Baron of St. Helens, whose collection was sold to W. Buchanan by Christie's (May 26, 1840, lot 116). Brown does not explain, however, how the drawing then entered José Atanasio Echeverría's collection.

Jens Hoffmann-Samland


1. Brown 2012, 112.
2. This drawing is closely related to The Vision of Ignatius Loyola on the Road to Rome, ca. 1660-64, 854 x 63 in. (217 x 160 cm), Seville, Museo de Bellas Artes, inv. CE0192P. See Valdivieso 1988, 113, pl. 86, and 246, no. 90.

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