An adolescent boy cradles a bottle, presumably full of wine, and drinks from a fluted glass. Vine leaves, a symbol traditionally associated with Bacchus, the mischievous god of wine, are wound around his head. He looks towards us, faintly amused, and though he might appear to be encouraging us to join him, the possessive way in which he guards the bottle suggests that he intends to keep its contents all to himself.

Genre paintings are rare in the work of Murillo, and the subject of this picture remains enigmatic. The boy may be drinking wine, but he is doing so with dignity and grace, carefully holding the glass, and the reference to Bacchus seems anachronistic with the boy’s modern clothes. The boy may be a waiter or server at an inn – the cloth draped nonchalantly over his shoulder seems to suggest this – which might explain his mischievous expression.

This painting was long thought to be by Murillo, though it is now considered to be by an imitator, perhaps a Frenchman working in the first half of the eighteenth century. Its subject may be inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish scenes of everyday life, particularly those of peasants drinking in rowdy taverns – some examples in our collection include Adriaen Brouwer’s Tavern Scene and Adriaen van Ostade’s The Interior of an Inn with Nine Peasants and a Hurdy-Gurdy Player. The framing of the composition, however, with a life-size figure leaning on a stone ledge finds parallels in Murillo’s A Peasant Boy leaning on a Sill.