The Immaculate Conception
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Spanish, 1617–1682)
c. 1680
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 246.3 x 152.7 x 8 cm (96 15/16 x 60 1/8 x 3 1/8 in.); Unframed: 220.5 x 127.5 cm (86 13/16 x 50 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- Spain
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception maintains that the Virgin Mary was conceived free from sin, therefore ready to be the pure vessel for Christ’s birth. The Immaculate Conception enjoyed intense devotion in Spain during the 1600s, although it was only accepted as official doctrine in 1854. The abstract subject required artists to develop appropriate imagery. The crescent moon, for example, comes from the New Testament vision of Saint John the Evangelist (Revelation 12:1) of “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet.”
