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From the outset of his career this prolific Sevillian artist established an intensive relationship between painting and literature, which continued throughout much of his production.1 This can undoubtedly be explained by the fact that he belonged to a period in which literary themes were appreciated at the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts as a result of the success of the history painting from which they were derived to an extent.
Drawing and its variants were the techniques he used confidently and skillfully in his various illustrations of literary works. Jiménez Aranda's illustrations are halfway between Romantic and realistic and may therefore be described as both post-Romantic and eclectic. The present illustration is based on an episode from Cervantes's novel entitled "Don Quixote and Sancho at the inn" and is found in Part I, section 3 and chapter XVII: "Then Don Quixote recited over the cruet more than eighty Our Fathers and the same number of Hail Marys, Salve Reginas, credos, and with every word he crossed himself by way of a blessing. Sancho, the innkeeper and the officer witnessed all this."
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