The Immaculate Conception

In 17th-century Spain the Immaculate Conception was close to a national cause. The idea that Mary was conceived free of original sin was not yet Church dogma. Rome would not settle it until 1854. Spanish cities and universities swore oaths to defend it anyway, the crown pressed the Pope, and in Seville, where Zurbaran worked, painters made the subject a local specialty and returned to it again and again. He treated it with striking plainness. The Virgin stands as an ordinary young woman, her face closer to a real portrait than to an ideal type, in a pink tunic and deep blue mantle. Around her the old symbols are still there if you look, the crescent moon under her feet and, below, the serpent with an apple in its mouth for Eve and the first sin. The painting later passed through a Paris auction to the Marquis of Cerralbo, whose Madrid house is now the museum that holds it.