Unbefleckte Empfängnis von Esquilache

No subject was closer to 17th-century Seville than this one. The idea that the Virgin Mary was conceived free of original sin was not yet official Church dogma, but Spain campaigned for it harder than anywhere else, and the city's painters were asked for the image again and again. Murillo made it almost his signature: Mary young, rising on a bank of cloud and cherubs against a golden light, hands at her breast, the moon under her feet. This early version takes its name from a later owner, the Marquess of Esquilache, a Spanish official in Venice who bought it. From there it passed through a cardinal and a pope before reaching Russia. Murillo would paint the same ascending girl many more times across his career.