The Immaculate Conception

The Immaculate Conception, painted around 1618 during Velázquez's Seville period and now in the National Gallery London, was made at a moment when the Immaculist controversy — whether the Virgin had been conceived free from original sin — was dividing Spain. Seville was a strongly Immaculist city, and Velázquez's early master Francisco Pacheco was among the doctrine's most passionate defenders. The young Velázquez depicts the Virgin as described in the Book of Revelation — clothed with the sun, standing on the moon, crowned with twelve stars — with the fresh observation of early work before Italian influence transformed his manner. The painting demonstrates his early mastery of large-scale religious composition alongside the bodegón still-life work for which he was initially famous.

The youthful Velazquez employs a darker, more tenebristic palette than his mature works would display. The Virgin stands on a crescent moon against a luminous sky, her blue mantle painted with the thick, descriptive brushwork characteristic of his Seville period.