Spanish school of the 16th century. Circle of FRANCISCO DE ZURBARÁN (Fuente de Cantos, Badajoz, 1598 - Madrid, 1664). "Virgin and Child Salvator Mundi". Oil on canvas. Re-drawn at the end of the 18th century. Size: 111 x 85 cm; 120 x 93 cm (frame). The wake of the Marian painting of Zurbarán is manifested in this work of Christ as "Salvator Mundi", an iconography that represents the Christological concept of Jesus Christ as universal saviour, in relation to his role as judge in the Final Judgement and to his character of Redeemer. The monumental canon of the Virgin and child, their sculptural presence, has been achieved through subtle light modelling. The melancholic tenderness of the faces and the way in which the figures emerge emphatically from a misty background reveal the influence of Zurbarán. Francisco de Zurbarán trained in Seville, where he was a pupil of Pedro Díaz de Villanueva between 1614 and 1617. During this period he had the opportunity to meet Pachecho and Herrera and to establish contacts with his contemporaries Velázquez and Cano, apprentices like himself in Seville at the time. After several years of diverse apprenticeship, Zurbarán returned to Badajoz without undergoing the Sevillian guild examination. He settled in Llerena between 1617 and 1628, where he received commissions both from the municipality and from various convents and churches in Extremadura. In 1629, at the unusual suggestion of the Municipal Council, Zurbarán settled permanently in Seville, marking the beginning of the most prestigious decade of his career. He received commissions from all the religious orders present in Andalusia and Extremadura, and was finally invited to the court in 1934, perhaps at Velázquez s suggestion, to take part in the decoration of the great hall of the Buen Retiro. On returning to Seville, Zurbarán continued to work for the court and for various monastic orders. In 1958, probably prompted by the difficulties of the Sevillian market, he moved to Madrid. During this last period of his output he produced small-format private devotional canvases of refined execution. Zurbarán was a painter of simple realism, excluding grandiloquence and theatricality from his work, and we can even find some clumsiness when solving the technical problems of geometric perspective, despite the perfection of his drawing of anatomies, faces and objects. His severe, rigorously ordered compositions reach an exceptional level of pious emotion. With regard to tenebrism, the painter practised it above all in his early Sevillian period. No one surpasses him in his way of expressing the tenderness and candour of children, young virgins and adolescent saints. His exceptional technique also enabled him to depict the tactile values of canvases and objects, making him an exceptional still life painter.