Author Description

The Immaculate Conception in Spanish Art documents the evolution of a definitive iconographic form for one of the most important doctrines of the Catholic Church. From the late Middle Ages, the Immaculate Conception inspired fierce debate among, primarily, Franciscans and Dominicans, with Spanish theologians playing a major role in the controversy. Suzanne L. Stratton traces the historical background of these debates and also provides a summary of the importance of the Immaculate Conception to the Spanish kings, for whom it served as a personal devotion and, by the seventeenth century, became a matter of considerable political importance. This study reveals that the cult of the Immaculate Conception received its impetus from the royal court and from numerous representations by such masterful artists as Velazquez, Zurbaran, and Murillo. These works, reproduced here, played an important role in a successful propaganda campaign to spread the doctrine and raise it to dogma.