The Immaculate Conception

After arriving in Seville in his early teenage years, Alonso Cano began his apprenticeship in the workshop of Francisco Pacheco in August 1616, where Diego Velázquez was at that moment completing his own training.

Although not codified by the Catholic church until 1854, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (namely, that the Virgin was without sin from conception) was profoundly significant to the Spanish cult of the Virgin Mary, and unsurprisingly, Cano returned to the subject on many occasions. Pacheco's seminal treatise on painting, Arte de la pintura (Seville, 1649) laid out exacting guidelines on its depiction, to which the artist and his contemporaries closely adhered: the Virgin Mary should be 'pretty, in the flower of her youth, dainty, with a perfect nose and mouth, and blushing cheeks, with beautiful long tresses, wearing a white tunic and blue cloak, crowned with stars...'.

This painting is an autograph version, with studio assistance, of the Immaculate Conception in the collection of the marqués de Cartagena, Granada, dated by Wethey to circa 1653-7 (see H. Wethey, Alonso Cano, Madrid, 1983, p. 125, no. 37).