The Aranjuez Immaculate Conception

The Aranjuez Immaculate Conception of 1675, named for the Spanish royal palace where it once hung, is one of Murillo's grandest late treatments of his defining subject — the Virgin ascending in celestial light above the crescent moon, the composition refined over four decades to its most authoritative form. The royal association gives this version exceptional status: Aranjuez was one of the principal royal residences, and a painting hanging there had received the most prestigious institutional sanction in Spain. By 1675 Murillo was sixty years old and at the height of his powers and reputation, having founded and presided over the Seville Academy of Painting and executed major commissions for the city's most important religious institutions. His late Immaculatas achieve a quality of luminous elevation that earlier versions, however beautiful, do not quite attain — the composition completely internalised after decades of practice, the execution free and assured. The Prado's holding of the Aranjuez version makes it one of the most accessible of the late series.

The Virgin rises on a crescent moon surrounded by cherubs in an explosion of celestial golden light. Murillo's vaporoso technique reaches its most refined expression, with dissolving edges and luminous atmospheric effects creating a vision of immaterial beauty.