The Immaculate Conception

When this canvas was painted, the Immaculate Conception was not yet Catholic doctrine. It was a Spanish cause. Spanish kings sent embassy after embassy to Rome to have it declared, cities and universities swore oaths to defend it, and painters were asked for the image again and again. The formula had settled by then: the Virgin lifted on clouds, angels around her, the emblems given to her in the litanies, the beast under her feet. The Prado dates this large canvas no more closely than the first half of the 17th century. It reached the royal collection late, in 1833, when Fernando VII bought it from the collection of the Marqués de Alcántara, in the last year of his reign.