Two Children among Birds

This drawing can be associated with the artist’s production during the time in which he was as an assistant to Carreño de Miranda. In terms of technique, the employment of soft black chalk and shading with parallel strokes of varying intensity used by Carreño and Rizi is still present in this work. Nevertheless, the figures of the children foreshadow those he would use in later works. Among these are the little angels in the unpublished work on the Immaculate Conception – the existence of which is known from a photograph (Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute, Moreno Archive, inv. no. 19417-B) – which share similarities with those depicting in this drawing.

As for the subject matter, the presence of two eggs on the ground, to the right part of the composition, suggests that they represent Castor and Pollux as children, the Dioscuri. They were sons of Zeus who were born from two eggs laid by Leda after said god, metamorphosed into a swan, and became one with her on the same night that her husband, the Spartan Tyndareus, did as well (Apollodorus, III, 7). The Dioscuri theme, whose mythology records no anecdotes from their infancy, is unusual in mythological painting in general, let alone in Spanish painting, of which it would be the only known example. In fact, the image seems to suggest that it is a genre scene, with an overturned basket in the lower right corner from which the eggs have fallen after the attack of the swan or goose on the left. The bird – in an aggressive pose, looking threateningly and flapping its wings – provokes a reaction from the boy with the stick. The one lying on the ground is trying to bring peace. Although unusual in Spanish painting of the time, this drawing could represent a mythological scene treated as a genre scene.

Zapata Fernández de la Hoz, Teresa, Francisco Ignacio Ruiz de la Iglesia (1649-1703) en el Museo del Prado: revisión y nuevas atribuciones. Boletín del Museo del Prado, Museo del Prado, 2013, p.82-95 [92 f.19]