Atribuido to Miguel Cabrera (Antequera de Oaxaca, México, 1715 / 1720 - México, 1768) 'The Divine Shepherdess' Oil on canvas. 92 x 74 cm.   Our painting appears to have been slightly trimmed to fit a nineteenth-century frame. The painter’s signature may have been on the lower edge, which is no longer preserved, or it may have been damaged, hence the adjustment in size. In our opinion, the comparison with other Divine Shepherdesses signed by Cabrera leaves no doubt about his authorship. It has, for example, a striking resemblance to the one executed on copper by Miguel Cabrera, kept at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (inv. M.2008.31). Curator Ilona Katzew explains the following on the LACMA website: 'The advocation of the Divine Shepherdess originated in Seville in 1703 and quickly spread to Spanish America. After the Capuchin friar Isidore of Seville (1622–1750) had a vision of the Virgin, he commissioned a painting, giving precise instructions to the artist: Mary, wearing a red gown, blue mantle, and shepherdess hat, was to be seated on a rock and feeding roses to her flock, while a strayed sheep ensnared by the Devil would be saved by Saint Michael. Coinciding with the cult’s rising popularity in Mexico, Miguel Cabrera created a number of versions—large and small'.   Cabrera is considered to be the greatest exponent of 18th-century Viceroyalty painting in New Spain, with an output that the Dallas Museum of Art defines as ‘legendary: more than 309 works from his large studio have been documented’. Miguel Mateo Maldonado y Cabrera was born on 27 February 1695 in Antequera, present-day Oaxaca, Mexico, a fact known from the painter's will from 1768. He was the son of unknown parents and the godson of a mulatto couple. He moved to Mexico City in 1719, where he began his artistic training in the studio of Juan Correa in the capital of the Viceroyalty. Cabrera painted altarpieces in the Jesuit church of Tepotzotlán, in the State of Mexico, in the church of Santa Prisca in Taxco, Guerrero, and in the cathedrals of Mexico City and Puebla. Cabrera was not only a painter, but was also involved in the attempt to found an academy of arts in 1753, and in 1756 he established himself as an intellectual, not only as an artist, as he published an account of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1756 entitled ‘Maravilla americana y conjunto de raras maravillas observadas con la dirección de las reglas del arte de la pintura’, an account of the image of the Virgin Guadalupe published by the printing press of the Jesuit college of San Ildefonso. In addition to easel painting, his output includes altarpiece designs, large-format paintings, as well as small ones on copper and nun's shields. Cabrera produced figures of remarkable beauty in his religious painting, a beauty understood through the ideological assumptions of the worship of the period. It is refined art with well-arranged chromatic richness, sustained by great compositional work and, no less important, subtle and expressive drawing. Of all the painters of that period, Cabrera was the one with the greatest personality; the conventional treatment of his figures undoubtedly formed the basis of his style of painting, as he placed in his paintings models that were not ideal, but who were people he knew and dealt with, such as when he incorporated portraits of donors or the so-called ‘prelates’ in some paintings.  He had the need to observe directly and copy from nature. He was appointed chamber painter to Archbishop Manuel Rubio y Salinas, who commissioned him to study and paint the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, an image made from 'ayate' - a material made from local plants. Cabrera's version was sent to Pope Benedict XIV, from whom he received the highest recognition as a painter of Guadalupe. Outstanding portraits he painted include the one of Sor JuanaInés de la Cruz, kept in the National Museum of History, and the portrait of Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, located in the Museum of Colonial Art in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico. He was also a painter for the Society of Jesus, producing numerous artworks for their churches. In 1753 he was appointed president for life of the Academy of San Carlos. His work is kept in many churches and convents in Mexico. Two of his images of the Virgin of Guadalupe are in the Vatican Museum. Another, painted in 1756 for the church of San Francisco Javier, is in the Museo Nacional del Virreinato. The Museum of Art in Dallas has a Saint Gertrude the Great by Miguel Cabrera and another painting of Saint Gertrude, also by Cabrera and dated 1768, is part of the collection of the José Luis Bello y Zetina Museum in Puebla, Mexico. Also of note is an important series of Caste paintings from 1763 in the collection of the Museo de América in Madrid. These depict families, father, mother and child of the various castes and social strata, in everyday situations.   Bibliographic reference: - Museo Andrés Blaisten. (n.d.). 'Miguel Cabrera, 1695-1768'. https://museoblaisten.com/Artista/79/Miguel-Cabrera - Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (s.f.). 'The Divine Shepherdess (La Divina Pastora)'. https://collections.lacma.org/node/215553