Zurbarán
7 October 2026 – 25 January 2027
Little SheepFrancisco de Zurbarán
Borreguillo (Little Sheep)
Oil on canvas, 1635–1640
37.3 x 62
Museo del Prado, Madrid, P007293
A lamb, its legs bound by a thin cord, lies on a grey table. Isolated against a dark background, it is the painting’s only subject. The starkness of the composition evokes the still-life genre. Although the animal is still alive, all the codes of representation typical of bodegones are present. Long analysed through the prism of a purely religious exegesis, these silent compositions are now subject to other interpretations, drawn from a global awareness of studio practices, the art market and collectors in 17th-century Spain.
A lamb similar to that of the Prado appears in the Adoration of the Shepherds painted for the altarpiece of the church of the Jerez de la Frontera Charterhouse. It is one of the gifts offered by the shepherds to the Christ Child. Besides the repetition of this iconographic element in other works by the artist, five other known versions of the isolated motif – each presenting slight variations – attest to its favourable reception, probably among private collectors.
Two distinct groups exist among these representations, according to the morphology of the animal and the rhetorical context in which it is placed. The first, to which the Prado lamb belongs, includes animals depicted with horns, devoid of religious allusion. The second features lambs without horns, the head surmounted by a halo. An inscription referring to the Lamb of God underscores the religious nature of these effigies.
The theme of the lamb appears in the first centuries of Christianity, particularly in a funerary context, expressing a sacrificial dimension drawn from the traditions of Judaism (the sacrifice of Isaac) or, more broadly, the Mediterranean (Hermes Kriophorus). Widely disseminated from the Middle Ages through the modern era, the image evokes Christ, described in the liturgy as ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’.
Thus, a 17th-century viewer seeing the depiction of a bound lamb would immediately understand the reference to the Agnus Dei, without needing explicitly religious iconographic elements. In the case of the Prado’s Little Sheep, Zurbarán’s technical virtuosity in the painstaking depiction of the animal’s fleece, together with the expressive power concentrated in its gaze, gives the image an intense emotional charge. This atmosphere explains why the title Agnus Dei was long attributed to the painting. Borreguillo (Little Sheep) is now preferred, a designation without religious reference selected by the painter and art historian Antonio Palomino in the early 18th century.
Francisco de Zurbarán, Borreguillo (Little Sheep, formerly Agnus Dei), about 1635–1640, oil on canvas, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
Francisco de Zurbarán, The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1638, oil on canvas, Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble
Attributed to Francisco de Zurbarán, Agnus Dei, about 1635-1640, oil on canvas, San Diego, The San Diego Museum of Art
Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, Ghent Altarpiece, 1432, oil on wood, Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent
Evangelia Quattuor (Gospels of Saint-Médard de Soissons), before 814, parchment, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscript Department