Attributed to Bartolomé Esteba Murillo and Workshop

Attributed to BARTOLOMÉ ESTEBAN MURILLO (Seville, 1617 - 1682) and Workshop.

"Dolorosa".

Oil on canvas.
Attached report of Don Enrique Valdivieso.
Measurements: 104 x 81 x 2 cm.
Following the words of Don Enrique Valdivieso regarding this painting "It represents a Dolorosa, whose style characteristics can be clearly classified as belonging to the Sevillian School of the second half of the seventeenth century and at the same time as a work linked to the production of Murillo.
In this case it should be noted that Murillo must have made an original prototype of this Dolorosa, although like many other works of this artist it has not reached our days or is in unknown whereabouts. This original must have attracted the attention of the Sevillian clientele, devotee of this type of themes and therefore, there must have been several times when some customers approached the artist to make repetitions of this work.
This painting of which we report must be, therefore, one of the repetitions or replicas that were requested of Murillo, which were very often made with the help of his workshop, what is formerly called his workshop. In this canvas it can be seen that Murillo has repeated the original that he conceived in his day and at the same time authorized the members of his workshop to intervene in it, so the cataloguing of this Dolorosa has to be done as a work of Murillo with the collaboration and participation of his workshop.
In other occasions, it was the officers and assistants of this artist who, following the models of the master, made the replicas entirely, but this is not the case of the Dolorosa we are reporting. To this aspect we attach an identical Dolorosa belonging to a private collection in Madrid that is clearly a realization of Murillo's workshop, so its quality is inferior to the one we catalog in this report.
It stands out in this work the disposition of the figure of the Virgin as sorrowful in a model in which she has been captured in three parts of her body and is represented with a sorrowful but serene and collected expression. She shows her hands crossed on her chest while contemplating the body of Christ in the representation of the Ecce Homo, a painting that always accompanied these sorrowful women on another canvas. The original of this Ecce Homo is also unknown in our days.
Enveloped in the half-light, the beauty of the figure of the virgin stands out, somewhat mortified by the pain she feels in the pathetic contemplation of the body of her son. The soft dramatism with which this figure is imbued is reinforced by the harmonious contrast of the blue-red tones that correspond to her tunic and mantle."