Oil on canvas, canvas measures: 83 x 63, framed measures: 100 x80 cm. Antonio del Castillo y Saavedra, in addition to standing out as a landscape painter and draftsman, a facet in which he can be counted among the most important painters of the Spanish Golden Age. Born in Córdoba, he was the son of the painter Agustín del Castillo, about whom hardly anything is known but whom Palomino calls an "excellent painter" and Ana de Guerra. Initially trained in his father's workshop, he was orphaned at the age of fifteen; Being the eldest of four brothers, on November 24, 1631, he appeared before a magistrate in Córdoba asking for a tutor due to his minority. Murillo's teachings would be manifested in his last works, according to Palomino, singularly in a half-length San Francisco that he painted for the merchant Lorenzo Mateo, who "exceeds in good taste, and sweetness in the head, and hands to everything that Castillo did in his life, because the truth lacked a certain grace, and good taste in colouring». He died on February 2, 1668, in the house on Muñeses street without issue. Reference bibliography: Navarrete Prieto, Benito. Garcia de la Torre, Fuensanta (2008). Antonio del Castillo (1616-1668) Drawings. Santander: Marcelino Botín Pedrueca Foundation. ISBN 978-84-96655-19-5; Palomino, Antonio (1986). Lives. Madrid: Form Alliance. ISBN 84-206-7056-1; Palomino, Antonio (1988).
