The Infant Saint John the Baptist

By about 1670 Murillo was the most sought-after painter in Seville, a city still thinned by the plague of 1649 that had carried off close to half its people. To a shaken, devout public he gave gentle holy children they could take to heart. Here a barefoot boy leans against a lamb, one hand to his chest, his upturned face caught in a shaft of light. The slender reed cross and the scroll reading Ecce Agnus Dei, Behold the Lamb of God, mark him as the young John the Baptist, already pointing to Christ. Murillo painted this tender type of the child saint many times over for the churches and homes of the city.