Workshop of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

By the 1660s Murillo was the most sought-after painter in Seville, and much of what the city wanted from him was small and devotional, the Christ Child as a shepherd, the infant Saint John with his lamb, the Virgin holding her son. Pictures like these were wanted in more versions than one man could paint.

Workshop of is the catalogue's name for the versions that came out of his own studio. The design is Murillo's, usually a composition he had already painted himself, and the repetition was made under his roof by an assistant or an apprentice, the people who learned the trade by copying the master's canvases. The museum is saying that the idea and the model are his, while the brushwork belongs to someone else.

Two neighbouring labels draw the line in other places. Copy after can describe a reproduction made by anyone, anywhere, at any later date. Follower of means a painter working in Murillo's manner on compositions that are not his own.