The Purification of the Virgin or The Presentation in the Temple

The Purification of the Virgin — alternatively titled the Presentation of Christ in the Temple — commemorates two overlapping events described in Luke 2:22-39: Mary's ritual purification forty days after childbirth according to Mosaic law, and the simultaneous presentation of the child Jesus to God in the temple, where Simeon and the prophetess Anna recognise the infant Messiah. For Morales the subject combined the ritual world of the Old Testament with the dawn of the New, and the aged Simeon's prophecy — including the famous sword that would pierce Mary's soul — connected the joyful presentation directly to the Passion theme that dominated his work. This 1562 panel in the Prado is one of his more compositionally ambitious works, requiring multiple figures, an architectural setting, and a sense of ceremonial occasion that his typical close-focus devotional images did not demand.

The multiple figures and temple setting require Morales to engage compositional resources he deployed less frequently than in his single- or two-figure devotional images. The architectural elements are rendered in his characteristic smooth manner but suggest a measured spatial depth. Figure groupings follow the hieratic arrangement of religious ceremony rather than the naturalistic spontaneity of genre painting.