The basket of seasonal fruit and vegetables and the ears of barley tucked into his turban help identify this young man with Summer (some reference to the grape harvest would have been included for Autumn). His features and colouring suggest that Murillo used a real model for this painting but his athletic torso and the swirl of drapery over his shoulder link him with ideal figures from classical antiquity. Series of paintings representing the seasons and the senses were popular in the seventeenth century, but this is an unusual subject for Murillo. He may have painted it for his patron Justino de Neve.