Attributed to Bernardo Lorente

Attributed to BERNARDO LORENTE GERMÁN (Seville, 1685 - 1757).
"Divine shepherdess".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Measurements: 83 x 72 cm; 101 x 78 cm (frame).
The singular invocation of the Virgin Mary as Divine Shepherdess was a genre that was born in Andalusia at the beginning of the XVIII century, and from there it spread to other countries, being precisely Bernardo Lorente Germán one of its most outstanding exponents. In Seville he was known as "the painter of the Pastoras" of as many versions as he made and of such good fortune they reached. Here we find an archetypal representation of the theme. Characteristic of this late-baroque painter is the combination of this ability to transport us to the miracle at the same time as a naturalistic attention in the capture of details of the vegetation and in the almost human expressions of the animals, with slanted and touching looks, knowing themselves to be vulnerable.
Bernardo Lorente Germán began his training with his father, also a painter, and later 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. He was also the main portraitist of the aristocracy of Seville, with works that show the prevailing French taste then, which coexist with others clearly indebted to Murillo, whose cottony forms and pastel colors, otherwise beautiful, agreed perfectly with the subject of Ceán Bermúdez makes creator Lorente Germán, that of the Divina Pastora. 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.