1178 - JUAN RUIZ SORIANO (Higuera de Aracena, 1701–Seville, 1763). The 1730s

JUAN RUIZ SORIANO (Higuera de Aracena, 1701–Seville, 1763). The 1730s "Saint Anne, the Virgin Mary, and the Child." Oil on canvas In his magnificent article on the Murillian iconography of a painting by Juan Ruiz Soriano—a work from the Granados collection, *Saint Anne with the Virgin and the Child* by Ruiz Soriano—the art historian, and without knowledge of it, states that the Granados work derives from Murillo’s painting, *Saint Anne, the Virgin, and the Child*, located in the parish church of Adanero (Ávila). This painting has been little studied, and Professor Enrique Valdivieso, in his catalog raisonné on Murillo, raises the hypothesis that the painting may have been produced by a workshop or that it is a copy of a lost original by the Sevillian master. Angulo points out that the inventory of the estate of Don Antonio Núñez de Prado, Count of Adanero, drawn up in Madrid on May 20, 1699, mentions a *Saint Anne and the Child* by Murillo, measuring “three varas in height” (250.5 cm). As Muñoz Nieto rightly points out, the measurements provided in that inventory do not match those of the work in the parish church. The condition of the painting in the town of Adanero is quite poor. In fact, the painting was not included in any of the exhibitions held during the “Year of Murillo.” It was last restored in 1967. The work by Soriano mentioned by Muñoz Nieto exactly replicates the lower portion of Murillo’s painting, but Nieto doubts that the painting in Adanero was the direct source from which Soriano created his version of Murillo’s canvas, since the direct copy Soriano had to make was not the one from the Granados collection, but rather the one exhibited here, whose dimensions are approximately the same as those of the original and whose composition aligns quite closely with that of the two paintings. Another copy of Murillo’s work, of inferior quality, is preserved at the Convent of the Comendadoras de Santiago; it was seized for safekeeping in 1937, by the Junta del Tesoro Artístico, deposited at the Museo Nacional del Prado, and returned after the Civil War by the SDPAN (Return File No. SPPAN 130/40). Other copies are found in the Francisco Hahn Collection at Tatton Park, Cheshire; the Ellesmere Collection; and, finally, the copy of the two little angels at the top, preserved at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, by an anonymous 17th-century Spanish painter. In conclusion, the work presented here is a canvas by the Huelva-born painter Juan Ruiz Soriano, a late follower of Bartolomé Murillo’s style. He was initially trained in the workshop of his cousin Alonso Miguel de Tovar. Among his prolific output are works very closely linked to the world of Murillo, such as the one presented here. Bibliography: Enrique Muñoz Nieto, “A Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child by Ruiz Soriano. On the Endurance of Murillo’s Models,” *Archivo Hispalense*, no. 309–311, vol. CII, 2019, University of Seville, pp. 397–403. Dimensions: 220 x 163 cm.