Immaculate Conception of El Escorial

By the mid-1600s no idea gripped Spanish devotion more than the Immaculate Conception, the belief that the Virgin Mary was herself conceived free of original sin. Rome had not yet made it official doctrine, but Spanish cities swore oaths to defend it, and in Seville Bartolome Esteban Murillo painted the subject more than 20 times. This is among the finest. Mary stands on a crescent moon in a rush of white and blue, borne up on cloud and cherubs, young and turning her eyes upward. Murillo softened the older, sterner formulas for the theme into something airy and warm, and it became the version later Spanish painters copied. The canvas takes its name from the monastery of El Escorial, north of Madrid, where it hung before entering the Prado.