TOVAR, Alonso Miguel de - b. 1678 Higuera de la Sierra, d. 1758 Madrid

Spanish painter. He trained in Seville under Juan Antonio Ossorio and executed numerous religious paintings, including Our Lady of Consolation with SS Francis, James and a Clerical Donor (1720; Seville Cathedral) and St Francis Receiving the Stigmata (c. 1720; Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid). In both of these the influence of Murillo is discernible: the colouring is vivid and the drawing precise, if slightly rigid, and both works show a gentle and uncomplicated piety.

Tovar was appointed court painter in 1729, when the Spanish court moved to Seville, and he collaborated with Jean Ranc, probably painting replicas of the latter’s portraits. His own portraits include Portrait of a Young Girl (1732; Schloss Elisabethenburg, Meiningen). In 1733 he travelled with the court when it returned to Madrid, and he may have worked as an assistant to Louis-Michel van Loo. Tovar also probably painted the theme of the Holy Shepherd, popular with Sevillian artists of his time. Of the paintings of the subject attributed to him, however, only the one in the church at Cortelazor, near Aracena, signed in 1748, is considered authentic.

Divine Shepherdess

This small painting on canvas, which is neither signed nor dated, appears to be one of the works produced by the artist’s studio in response to widespread demand for an iconography that became very popular in Seville at the beginning of the 18th century. The theme of the Divine Shepherdess is one of the few truly 18th-century contributions to the iconography. It was Tovar himself who defined it in 1703, on the instructions of the Capuchin monk Brother Isidoro of Seville (1662-1750). It is likely that this new devotional figure stemmed from the wish to create a Marian image that was suited to processional worship and easily related to the mentality of the day.

In accordance with Brother Isidoro’s description, the Virgin is seated on a rock wearing a veil and a straw hat. Dressed in a red tunic and blue mantle - a clear allusion to the clothing of the images of the Immaculate Conception - she sports a white sheepskin typical of a shepherd’s attire secured with a knot at her waist and carries a staff; these two attributes are both linked to the prevailing bucolic atmosphere of the scene. A group of sheep, representing believers, surround her and eat from her hand the roses that symbolise the prayer of the Holy Rosary. In the background one of them, which has strayed from the flock, is threatened by a fierce animal, an image of evil and sin, at which it brandishes a cartouche bearing the inscription “AVE MARIA” in order to invoke the help of the Virgin. She sends divine protection in the form of the archangel St Michael, who is armed. Brother Isidoro of Seville also asked the painter to incorporate into this iconography the image of the two angels holding a rich crown above the Virgin’s head, indicating her status of Universal Queen.

The style of Tovar’s religious compositions, which underwent little evolution, remained closely linked to the art of Murillo, whom he followed, imitated and copied.