17th century Spanish or Italian school

17th century Spanish or Italian school.
"Immaculate".
Alabaster carved partially gilded and polychrome.
Measurements: 27 x 21 x 7 cm.

Alabaster high relief representing the Immaculate Virgin surrounded by angels. The dogma of the Immaculate defends that the Virgin was conceived without Original Sin, and was defined and accepted by the Vatican in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854. However, Spain and all the kingdoms under its political dominion defended this belief before. Iconographically, the representation takes texts both from the Apocalypse (12: "A great sign appeared in heaven, a woman wrapped in the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars") and from the Lauretan Litany prayed after the rosary and containing epithets of Mary taken from the Song of Songs of King David. Joining both texts and after an evolution that already begins at the end of the Gothic period, we arrive at a very simple and recognizable typology that presents the Virgin on the lunar quarter, with the stars on her head and dressed in light (with a halo on the head only or on the whole body), normally dressed in white and blue in allusion to purity and eternity (although she can also appear in red and blue, in relation then with the Passion), her hands on her chest almost always and represented young as a general rule.