Andalusian school; 18th century.

Andalusian school, following models BARTOLOMÉ ESTEBAN MURILLO (Seville, 1617 - Cadiz, 1682), 18th century.
"Purísima".
Oil on canvas.
It preserves its original canvas.
It has some leaps in the painting.
It has damages in the frame.
Measurements: 84 x 54 cm; 130 x 110 cm (frame).
Medieval Christianity passionately debated the belief that Mary had been conceived without the stain of original sin. Some universities and corporations swore to defend this privilege of the Mother of God, several centuries before the First Vatican Council defined the dogma of faith in 1854. At the end of the Middle Ages the need arose to give iconographic form to this idea, and the model of the Apocalyptic Woman of Saint John was taken, maintaining some elements and modifying others (the Apocalyptic Woman is pregnant, but not the Immaculate). The definitive image came to fruition in the 16th century, apparently in Spain. Following a Valencian tradition, the Jesuit Father Alberro had a vision of the Immaculate Conception and described it to the painter Juan de Juanes so that he could depict it as faithfully as possible. It is an evolved iconographic concept, sometimes associated with the theme of the Coronation of the Virgin. Mary is shown standing, dressed in a white tunic and blue cloak, her hands crossed on her chest, with the moon at her feet (in memory of Diana's chastity) and treading on the infernal serpent (symbol of her victory over Original Sin). Around his head, like a halo, he wears the twelve stars, symbolic of fullness and alluding to the twelve tribes of Israel. Most of these images are accompanied in the painting by the Marian symbols of the litanies and psalms, such as the mystical rose, the palm tree, the cypress, the enclosed garden, the ark of Faith, the gate of Heaven, the ivory tower, the sun and moon, the sealed fountain, the cedar of Lebanon, the spotless mirror, the morning star, and so on. In Baroque painting, the background is usually celestial and populated with angels, as 17th-century artists faithfully maintained the iconographic type but dispensed with the symbols of the litanies or reduced them, incorporating them into the composition in a naturalistic manner, and sought greater dynamism and a sense of theatricality.