The motif of the sleeping Christ Child is a traditional image that prefigures his death. He is watched by Joseph and Mary, who is surrounded by the roses that symbolise her. She restrains the Infant Saint John the Baptist to prevent him from waking her son. When it entered the Museum’s collection this canvas was attributed to the still-life painter Luis Meléndez, but it was subsequently catalogued as a late work by his uncle, Miguel Jacinto, court painter to Philip V.