The Immaculate Conception

In 1744 Elizabeth of Farnese, the widowed queen of Spain, bought a group of pictures in Madrid that had belonged to Gaspar de Molina y Oviedo, a cardinal and archbishop from Seville. This canvas came with them.

It is a modest 91 centimetres by 70, and it was hung as a private devotional picture rather than an altarpiece. The Prado's inventories follow it from the tribune room at La Granja de San Ildefonso, the queen's summer palace in the hills above Segovia, to the royal bedchamber at Aranjuez in the 1794 list. A painting of this subject was a thing you slept beside.

The signs are all present. Blue and white robes, loose hair, hands crossed on the breast, the gaze lifted, and the moon, which in this iconography belongs at the Virgin's feet. The Prado dates it to about 1665.