Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga, ca. 1655
Oil on canvas
44 1/2 x 37 in. (113 x 94 cm)
Private collection, United Kingdom
Image Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Long believed to be a copy after a lost Murillo (and described as such in the exhibition catalogue), this portrait has very recently been restored and discovered to be the original. A celebrated aristocrat in Seville, Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga (1633–1680) was also a historian who charted the history of the city from the Middle Ages to 1671 in his Annales eclesiásticos y seculares de la ciudad de Sevilla. His coat of arms appears at the top of the frame and the cross of the Order of Santiago on his left shoulder. The portrait is listed among Ortiz de Zúñiga’s possessions at the time of his death, in 1680. The elaborate stone frame with putti is similar to the one in the portrait of Juan Arias de Saavedra.