Spanish School; circa 1700."Immaculate Conception".Oil on canvas.Presents losses, patches, losses of pictorial layer and hole in the canvas.Size: 106 x 80 cm.The theme of the Immaculate Conception, very frequent in the Spanish art, came to constitute one of the signs of national identity of Spain as a Catholic country. It is one of the most genuinely local themes of Spanish Baroque painting, since our country was the main defender of this mystery, and the one that fought most insistently to make it a dogma of faith. In this context, numerous artists and intellectuals worked to build a clear iconography that would help spread the Immaculate Conception, bringing together symbolism and popular fervor. Due to its stylistic characteristics, the work in question can be inscribed within the Andalusian school of the late second half of the eighteenth century. It is a direct heir to the Baroque models of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, both in composition and iconography. Thus, we see Mary dressed in a white tunic, wearing a blue mantle that floats around her. The figures of the child angels also derive directly from Murillo's models, both in their conception and in their placement, distributed between the lower area of the painting, under the pedestal of clouds, and the upper one, as cherub heads surrounding the breaking of Glory. As we have already pointed out, the composition faithfully follows the models established in the Baroque period: Mary full-length in the center, dressed in white and blue, with her hair loose in soft undulations, with the crescent moon at her feet, surrounded by angels and clouds, with the open sky behind her figure, flooded by the golden light of the Gloria.The work has similarities with the painting of Acisclo Antonio Palomino, a painter and one of the most prominent baroque art treatises. Palomino trained in Córdoba under the direction of Juan de Valdés Leal. He traveled to Madrid in 1678, and there he was introduced into the circle of Carreño de Miranda and Claudio Coello, who brought him into contact with the royal collections and gave him the opportunity to produce his first works for the court, which allowed him to obtain the title of painter to the king in 1688. The arrival of Lucas Jordán in Madrid in 1692 made him interested in the fresco technique, becoming one of the most important Spanish fresco painters of the second half of the 17th century. Between 1697 and 1701 he worked in Valencia, and in 1705 he traveled to Salamanca to carry out a religious commission. Between 1712 and 1713 he painted a series of canvases with scenes and saints related to the history of Cordoba for the cathedral, and between 1723 and 1725 he worked on what would be his last work, the decoration of the tabernacle of the Carthusian monastery of El Paular in Granada. Ordained a priest when he was widowed in 1725, he is now especially known as a writer and art theorist, thanks to his work "El museo pictórico y escala óptica" (1715-24). Palomino is widely represented in the Prado Museum, as well as in numerous Spanish churches and museums throughout Spain.