The Infant Jesus Asleep on the Cross

A sleeping child lies across a wooden cross, a purple cloth under him, his right hand resting on a skull. Nothing in the Gospels describes this. It is an invented image, and by the middle of the 17th century the Church was supposed to be suspicious of invented images, since the Council of Trent had pressed painters towards subjects that could be found in scripture.

This one survived the scrutiny and became a favourite for private meditation. Its ancestor is an early 16th-century engraving by Giacomo Francia, printed with a line from the Song of Songs, I sleep, but my heart waketh. Guido Reni took up the theme in Bologna and his versions travelled widely. Murillo could see prints of them in Seville, and at least one painted copy hung in the archbishop's palace there.

The canvas is 64 centimetres high and 88 and a half wide, and the Prado dates it to about 1660.