This seventeenth-to-eighteenth-century devotional painting depicts a tender encounter between the infant Jesus Christ and the young Saint John the Baptist. St. John kneels receiving water offered from a seashell held by the Christ Child, who holds a cross draped with a Latin banner reading "Ecce Agnus Dei" ("Behold the Lamb of God").The composition is a classic period copy after Bartolomé Esteban Murillo's famous masterwork Los Niños de la Concha (The Children of the Shell), painted c. 1670–1675 and housed in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Celebrated as one of the defining masters of the Spanish Golden Age, Murillo transformed complex Baroque theological symbolism into intimate, emotionally accessible scenes of childlike innocence.
The Christ Child and the Infant John the Baptist with a Shell or The Holy Children with a Shell (Spanish - Los Niños de la concha) is a 1670-1675 oil on canvas painting by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid.
One of the artist's most popular works, it was widely reproduced in prints and on plates. It first appeared in the written record in 1746, when it was recorded in Elisabeth Farnese's collection in the Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso in Segovia, moving to infante Luis's bedroom in the same palace by 1766. It was next recorded in the kings' bedroom in the Palacio de Aranjuez in Madrid in 1794, then the Palacio Real in Madrid from 1814 to 1818.
The Holy Children with a Shell by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) — considered to be the last great painter of the Spanish Golden Age. Painted circa 1670, this piece currently is on display at Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, Spain. In this painting, Murillo portrays complex theological concepts in easily understandable and sincere images that appeal immediately to the human emotions. Even though in Holy Scripture, Jesus and Saint John the Baptist did not meet until they were both adults when Jesus was baptized by St. John in the river Jordan, the artist depicts them here as children foreshadowing what is to come. On St. John’s cross is a banner that reads: “ecce agnus dei”, proclaiming the Christ Child as the Lamb of God.
