The Good Shepherd - Technique and Styles
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The Good Shepherd
ca. 1676-1680
Francisco AntoLíNez y Sarabia
Sarabia was both lawyer and painter and worked mainly in Seville and Madrid, his work is greatly under the influence of Murillo, as this idealized and romantic painting of a shepherd and the landscape behind him shows. The appearance and distribution of the sheep are directly modelled on some of Murillo's paintings.
There are also traces of a symbiosis of Murillo's early tenebrism phase with his later style marked by influences from Bologna and Flanders. The subject of Christ as the Good Shepherd symbolising his love of mankind had a long tradition in Christian art, based on biblical parables (Luke: 15, 3-7, John: 10, 1-18). It was not so common after the end of the Middle Ages but Murillo painted it several times showing Christ as a child.