Walpole Immaculate Conception

This Murillo once hung in an English country house. Sir Robert Walpole, remembered as Britain's first prime minister, built a spectacular picture collection at Houghton Hall in Norfolk in the early 18th century. His grandson, deep in debt, sold the best of it in 1779 to Catherine the Great of Russia. That is how a Spanish vision of the Virgin, painted in Seville around 1680, came to St. Petersburg and the Hermitage, where it still is. Murillo painted the Immaculate Conception many times over his career, the young Mary rising on a crescent moon among clouds and small angels. Selling the Walpole pictures abroad caused an uproar in England at the time, and in 2013 many of them briefly came home, rehung at Houghton for a single season.