Virgin and Child, with rosary

The gallery dates this canvas before 1650, near the start of the run of full-length Virgins that became Murillo's most requested format. He painted the composition more than once. Versions accepted as his own hand hang in the Prado in Madrid, in the Goya museum at Castres in southern France, and at Dulwich in London, which says something about how well it sold. The Virgin holds the Child and a rosary, the string of beads the Dominican order had promoted for centuries as a way of keeping a long sequence of prayers in order, and Seville in those years was full of rosary confraternities. The picture reached Florence late and through the trade. A painter and restorer called Felice Acciai bought it from a Roman dealer named Cartoni, and in 1822 sold it on to Grand Duke Ferdinando III of Lorraine for 900 florins.