Les Enfants à la coquille

Murillo painted this in Seville around 1670, at the height of his fame for exactly this kind of tender religious scene. Two small boys play together in a landscape. One, in a soft red robe, is the Christ Child, and he leans down to give a scallop shell of water to the other, the infant John the Baptist, dressed in rough brown. The lamb beside them and the little reed cross mark John out, and a ribbon on the cross carries the words ecce agnus dei, behold the lamb of God. Murillo's whole idea is to fold a solemn Christian message into something any parent would recognize, two children sharing a drink with a pet nearby. The picture was so loved that it was copied endlessly onto prints and plates.