17th century

Two cousins share in a moment of mutual happiness in this scene of rejoicing. The Virgin Mary rushes up the steps to congratulate her elderly cousin Saint Elizabeth, placing her left hand on Elizabeth's shoulder and clasping the other. Both women celebrate their respective pregnancies, the Virgin with the infant Jesus and Elizabeth with John the Baptist. Elizabeth had particular cause for celebration as she had conceived in old age, after a lifetime of barrenness.

Juan Carreño de Miranda conveyed the scene thorough energetic motion and nervous handling of the pen. Vigorous strokes describe the flowing outline of the Virgin's cloak, while summary passages of wash in gray-brown define Elizabeth's head and back. Amid the swirling mass of lines on the left several indistinct heads are visible. Another mother crouches at the foot of the steps, holding a baby in her arms.

Attributed to: Antonio Pereda y Salgado

A highly successful and ruthless general, Don Juan José of Austria suppressed an anti-Spanish uprising in Naples when he was only eighteen years old. This scene shows his triumphal entry following the suppression of the revolt. A young fisherman had led a protest against a new tax on fruit imposed by the aristocracy; the protest later turned into an insurrection aiming at slaughtering the nobility. As the general leads his cavalry into the city, trampling a child underfoot, he receives the homage of the population in the person of the bearded man kneeling to the left, who offers a platter containing three utensils, perhaps representing the keys of the city.

José Ximénez Donoso copied the equestrian figure from a well-known etching by Jusepe de Ribera but added soldiers and spectators to the background. The artist drew the whole scene in black chalk but reinforced the forms of Don José and his horse, copied from the print, in pen and brown ink. The drawing is squared for transfer, implying that the composition was intended for a painting or perhaps a print.