After Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

18th Century

The Infant Saint John the Baptist with a lamb

Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired by William King, 4th Lord King, Baron of Ockham, in 1734, purportedly on his marriage to the heiress, Miss Frye of Brabant (according to Charles Boyd Curtis and Diego Angulo Iñiguez - see Literature below)
His brother, Thomas King, 5th Lord King, 1768, and thence by descent to the Earls of Lovelace, East Horsley Tower (as by Murillo)

Engraved
Mezzotint by Valentine Green prior by 1768 (according to the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste, Leipzig, 1768, p. 167)

Literature
J. Burke, A Visitation of The Seats and Arms of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain, London, 1853, vol. II, p. 111 ('a masterpiece of Murillo').
C. Boyd Curtis, Velazquez and Murillo, New York and London, 1883, no. 323, p. 246 (as by Murillo)
P. Lefort, Murillo et Ses Élèves', Paris, 1892, no. 320, p. 89 (as by Murillo)
Sir W. Stirling Maxwell, Annals of the Artists of Spain, London, 1891, vol. III, p. 1084 (as by Murillo: 'a fine repetition').
D. Angulo Iñiguez, Murillo, Madrid, 1981, vol. II, p. 270


The present work is a full-size copy of the original by Murillo which now hangs in the National Gallery in London (oil on canvas, 164.5 x 106 cm.). During the 19th century it was regularly published as an original by Murillo. Interestingly Alexis Grimou (1678-1733) is recorded as copying Murillo's original companion to Saint John, which is now in the National Gallery of Ireland, when the two paintings were together in the same collection in France from the early 18th century. A comparable version of Murillo's Good Shepherd, on canvas, 158 x 103 cm., which was sold at Sotheby's New York, 1 February 2013, lot 508, when previously sold at Christie's in 1946 was catalogued as 'by A. Grimou' and had been consistently published as by the French artist in 11 separate academic works between 1808 and 1987. That picture too was published in London in a print (by Thomas Major in 1772) as a Murillo, and was copied by Gainsborough as a Murillo. When the undoubted original Murillos, however, were sold in Paris in 1801, the catalogue note stated that the engraved London picture was in fact by Grimou. Owing to the history of the present painting alongside its very high quality the suggestion that this may be Grimou's companion to his Good Shepherd cannot be ruled out.