Page of St Joseph and the Christ Child by HERRERA, Francisco de, the Elder in the Web Gallery of Art, a searchable image collection and database of European paintings and sculptures (1100-1850)

Pixel Size(554,820)

St Joseph and the Christ Child

1648
Oil on canvas, 116 x 112 cm
Museo Lzaro Galdiano, Madrid

In the 1640s Herrera's production went into a decline, although he is known to have received the occasional commission from a religious order. St Joseph and the Christ Child, done for the monastery of San Jos (Mercedarios Descalzos) in Seville in 1645, illustrates how the new devotional spirit was affecting Seville's monastic communities. Herrera made the necessary modifications to accommodate the new taste for quiet, sentimental art, but at the cost of the original rough-hewn realism that made him a distinctive painter.

An earlier variant of the composition, signed and dated 1645, is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.