Christ as the Good Shepherd (after Murillo)

Rebecca Dulcibella Orpen's 1886 copy of Murillo's Christ as the Good Shepherd is another of the devotional copies she made for the Catholic household at Baddesley Clinton. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's tender, warm images of the Christ child were among the most widely reproduced religious works in 19th-century Catholic devotion, and his Good Shepherd — the young Christ as a gentle shepherd boy with a lamb — was a particularly beloved subject. Murillo's emotional accessibility and warm palette made his work a natural choice for devotional copies, and Orpen's version served the spiritual life of the household.

Orpen captures Murillo's characteristic warm, soft palette — the golden flesh tones, the soft drapery, and the lamb — with competent attention to the original's emotional warmth. The technique is gentler and more blended than her own original portraits, adapted to the sfumato-adjacent quality of Murillo's brushwork.