Andalusian School; XVIII century.

Andalusian School; XVIII century.
"Divine shepherdess".
Oil on canvas. Relined old.
It has punctures, faults and restorations.
It has a frame of the nineteenth century.
Measurements: 74 x 55 cm; 90 x 70 cm (frame).
The origins of the devotion to the Divine Shepherdess are vague until the 18th century: there are references to Mary as a shepherdess in the writings of John the Geometer, St. John of God, St. Peter of Alcantara, the Venerable Mary Jesus of Agreda and St. Mary of the Five Wounds, although its widespread diffusion is due to a Capuchin priest of great Marian devotion, Fray Isidoro de Sevilla, who in 1703 commissioned a canvas with this theme to Alonso Miguel de Tovar (today we can contemplate a similar work, of the same theme and also made by Tovar, in the Carmen Thyssen Museum in Malaga). Likewise, in 1705 he wrote "La Pastora Coronada", a work in which he exposed his predictable idea of the Virgin as a shepherdess. The father describes her as follows: "in the center and under the shade of a tree, the Blessed Virgin seated on a rock, radiating from her face divine love and tenderness, the red tunic but covered the bust to the knees of white pellico tight to the waist, a blue cloak tertiary to the left shoulder, she will wrap pastoral and next to the right hand will appear the staff of her power. In her left hand she will hold the Child, and her right hand will rest on a lamb that she is holding in her lap. Some sheep will surround the Virgin, forming her flock, and all of them will carry roses in their mouths, symbolic of the Hail Mary with which they venerate her. In the distance, a lost sheep was pursued by the wolf, but pronouncing the Hail Mary, St. Michael appeared with the arrow that plunged into the testicle of the cursed wolf.