Bernardo Lorente Germán

Murillo School of the eighteenth century. Attributed to BERNARDO LORENTE GERMÁN (Seville, 1685 - 1757).
"Virgin and Child.
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It has Repainting. Needs restoration.
Measurements: 87 x 70 cm; 97 x 80 cm (frame).

Bernardo Lorente Germán began his training with his father, also a painter, and then studied with Cristóbal López. When he finished his apprenticeship, he was so far ahead of his teachers and became so well known that when he traveled to Madrid, he was commissioned to paint a portrait of the infant Don Felipe. This work was so well received that Queen Isabel de Farnesio gave him a series of prints by the French painter Charles Le Brun as a token of her gratitude. He was then proposed to be the king's painter but Lorente refused the position because he did not want to leave Seville.
He was named an individual of merit by the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1756. In Seville he was known as "the painter of the Pastoras", since he painted numerous times the theme of the Divine Shepherdess. He was also the main portraitist of the aristocracy of Seville, with works that show the French taste prevailing at the time, which coexist with others clearly indebted to Murillo, whose cottony forms and pastel colors, on the other hand beautiful, agreed perfectly with the subject of which Ceán Bermúdez makes Lorente Germán the creator, that of the Divine Shepherdess.
His best known works are kept in the Carthusian monastery of Jerez de la Frontera, and are spread throughout many churches in Úbeda and Baeza, as well as in the cathedral of Jaén, in the Louvre Museum in Paris and in the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville. He also painted still lifes and genre scenes, and became an accomplished master of the trompe l'oeil genre.