Madonna Nursing the Christ Child (c. 1670–72): Art, History and Details

Madonna Nursing the Christ Child (c. 1670–72) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Spanish, 1617–1682).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

One of the finest of the rare drawings by Murillo, this sheet is a study for Virgin and Child, commissioned for the family chapel of the Marques de Santiago in Madrid and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Prized today for their dynamism, Murillo’s drawings served the practical purpose of working out the positions of the figures. Here, the artist suggested the tender bond between mother and child with the poignant connection of their gazes. His animated line and zigzag hatching create the feeling of incessant motion while the addition of ink wash creates deep shadows across the forms.

Object facts

• Title: Madonna Nursing the Christ Child
• Date: c. 1670–72
• Creator attribution: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Spanish, 1617–1682)
• Culture: Spain
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over red and black chalk, with traces of white; framing lines in pen and brown ink
• Dimensions: Sheet: 21.4 x 15.4 cm (8 7/16 x 6 1/16 in.); Secondary Support: 24.1 x 18.5 cm (9 1/2 x 7 5/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Spanish
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1968.66

A detail from the museum

The inscription Morillo on this drawing is not the artist's signature but rather a notation likely made by a 17th-century owner of the drawing.

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Prasse Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Brown, Jonathan. Murillo & His Drawings. Princeton, N.J.: Art Museum, Princeton University, 1976.
• "Accessions of American and Canadian Museums, April-June, 1968," Art Quarterly XXXI (Winter 1968).
• Richards, Louise S. “Bartolomé Esteban Murillo: A Drawing Study for a Virgin and Child.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 55, no. 7 (September 1968): 235–238.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.