A hitherto unrecorded small version of a composition repeated by the artist with only minor variations in a series of large canvasses over a period of nearly two decades. The earliest dated example is the altarpiece of 1666 in the Cathedral of Santa Maria, Vitoria (A. E. Pérez Sánchez, Juan Carreño de Miranda, 1985, p.57 and pl.35; idem, catalogue of the exhibition, Carreño, Rizi, Herrera y la Pintura Madrileña de su Tiempo 1650-1700, Palacio de Villahermosa, Madrid, Jan.-March 1986, p.207, no.23, illustrated) and the latest that of 1683 in the Monasterio de la Encarnación, Madrid (Pérez Sánchez, op. cit., 1985, p.58 and pl.109, and catalogue of the 1986 exhibition, p.236, no.59, illustrated in colour p.144). Another dated version is that of 1667 in the Convento de la Victoria at Serradilla (Cáceres) and unsigned examples are in a Houston private collection (W. A. Vergara, Una Immaculada Concepción de Carreño, Archivo Español de Arte, LXIII, no.252, Oct.-Dec. 1990, pp.656-8 and fig.18) and (formerly?) in the Alesón Collection, Madrid. Miguel Jacinto Meléndez followed the composition closely in his altarpiece of 1734 in the Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, Oviedo (catalogue of the 1986 exhibition, p.331, no.156, illustrated; catalogue of the exhibition, Miguel Jacinto Meléndez, Museo Municipal de Madrid, 1990, p.69, no.39, illustrated in colour).

It has been suggested that the present painting is more likely to be a boceto than a repetition, as the technique and colouring are similar to those in the artist's boceto in the Akademie der bildende Künste, Vienna (see, for instance, the catalogue of the 1986 exhibition, p.208, no.24, illustrated in colour p.122) for his huge 'Mass of Saint John of Matha' of 1666 in the Louvre (ibid., illustrated in colour p.43)