The Immaculate Conception

In 1836 the Spanish state dissolved most of its monasteries and convents, and the paintings that came out of the Madrid houses were gathered into a new public collection called the Museo de la Trinidad. This Immaculate Conception arrived there from the convent of San Pascual, and passed to the Prado when the Trinidad holdings were absorbed in 1872. Ribera signed it in 1647, five years before his death in Naples, and reused a scheme for the subject he had already painted more than once. Other hands took the composition up as well. One copy hangs with the Carmelite nuns of Boadilla del Monte outside Madrid, and a slightly larger one in the church of San Andrés at Calahorra, in La Rioja. The canvas is over two and a half metres tall, and the Prado currently keeps it in store rather than on a gallery wall.