Allegory of the Immaculate Conception

Vasari first worked out this crowded composition around 1540, and it pleased people so much that he painted it again and again over the following years, in large formats and small. This tempera version dates from 1550. The whole scene hangs on a single tree, the one from the garden of Eden whose fruit brought about the fall. Bound to its trunk are Adam and Eve and a company of Old Testament figures, the patriarchs and prophets who lived and died under the weight of that first sin. Look for the two figures tied by just one hand rather than two: Samuel and John the Baptist, singled out because they were believed to have been made holy while still in the womb. At the top, above the tangle of bodies and the coiling serpent, the Virgin rises in light with the crescent moon beneath her feet. The Latin verses carried by the angels spell out the point of it all, that the grace granted through Mary undoes the fault inherited from Eve.