Andalusian School; XVIII century.

Andalusian School; XVIII century.
"Immaculate".
Carved and polychrome wood.
Presents faults and restorations.
Measurements: 48 x 14 x 14 cm.
Round carving representing the Virgin in her invocation of Immaculate. Mary is shown standing on a large golden orb from which emerges the usual snake representative of sin. Dressed in a tunic and with a blue mantle edged in gold, she joins her hands in prayerful attitude, which prints a naturalistic game of folds to the mantle. Her hair falls loosely down her back, and the features of her fine face and long neck add a remarkable elegance, stylizing her bearing. Stylistically, it is inserted in the Andalusian school, which can be appreciated not only in the iconography, but also in the model chosen as an influence for it, in the decoration of the clothes, in the coloring, in the features of the face, etc.
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.