After Bartolome Esteban Murillo (1618-1682), Spanish
Immaculate Conception, undated copy
Porcelain, 13 x 10 ½ inches
Gift of Mrs. Theodora Willard Best

The Spanish Baroque master Bartolome Esteban Murillo painted numerous versions of the Immaculate Conception, and was known in his own lifetime as "the painter of the Conception." This painting's imagery derives from the biblical Book of Revelation: "A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head." Murillo's formula of a beautiful, young girl standing atop the moon and escorted by a phalanx of young angels, or putti, became the canonical representation at the Span­ish court after he painted the first version in 1650. The Conceptions were still enormously popular twenty-eight years later, when Murillo created the work (now in the Prado Museum in Madrid) upon which this porcelain copy is based.