The Immaculate Virgin

Naples in the 1640s was governed from Madrid, and Spain had made the Immaculate Conception its own cause, pressing Rome for years to declare that Mary had been conceived free of original sin. Rome would not settle that until 1854. What Spain did settle was how the subject should look. The Sevillian painter Francisco Pacheco, who also vetted religious images for the Inquisition, fixed the formula, a young girl in a white gown and a blue mantle with her hands joined at her breast, and Neapolitan painters took it up. Cavallino worked on this version in the second half of the 1640s; the exact year is still argued over. A smaller one of the same composition is at Capodimonte in Naples. Brera acquired this canvas in 1955, using the state's right of pre-emption on a sale.