Virgin with Child Jesus and Child Saint John

Zurbarán arrived in Madrid in the spring of 1658, at 59, with his Seville workshop finished. He had lost the Andalusian market to the younger Murillo, and the shipping trade that had carried his religious canvases to the Americas had dried up. In December of that year he was called as a witness in the inquiry into whether Velázquez was noble enough to enter the Order of Santiago. The sticking point was money. Painting for pay counted as a manual trade and would have disqualified him, so Zurbarán, the 86th witness to be questioned, swore that Velázquez painted only for his own pleasure and for the king. He himself was living the other way round, turning out small devotional pictures like this one for private buyers in Madrid, where they sold steadily through the last six years of his life.