Provenance: Dona Paz Resurreccion Angco Lucero Maria Beatriz Morales Lucero

ABOUT THE WORK

One of the four dogmas of the Catholic Church, that of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary was promulgated by Pope Pius IX in 1854. It held that when she was conceived by St. Joachim and St. Anne, her parents, she did not have the stain (macula in Latin) of Original Sin. Being without sin, she was immaculate, hence the title. Starting from the Renaissance, many artists tried to show Mary with this attribute but without much success. It was only when Francisco Pacheco, the father-in-law of Diego Velazquez, artistically represented the virgin as floating in heaven with her head surrounded by a halo of twelve stars did it take hold in Spain. This artistic representation was imitated by great artists like Zurbaran and Murillo and spread throughout the world. Prior to the Dogma the Blessed Virgin was depicted in varicolored vestments, often in blue and pink. The dogma decreed that, henceforth, the Virgin be depicted in a white tunic and a blue mantle. According to old Philippine santeros, these colors were chosen because the Virgin was naked when she was assumed into heaven and, to hide her nakedness, the sun and the moon shone brightly on her. The dazzling whiteness of the sun, coupled with the blue of the moon fulfilled the verse in the bible about ‘the woman clothed with the sun’ and is the reason why the sun and the moon often appear in iconography of the Virgin. This statue of the Inmaculada was made in the 18th century and was meant to be a placed in a church altar or used in a religious procession. It has an ivory face and hands attached to a wooden mannequin mounted on an oval peana or base carved with stylized clouds with an octagonal foot. The gilding of the clouds is still the original gold leaf. The face of the Virgin has a decidedly oriental cast with a stance that is both serene yet aristocratic. The image is clothed in gold-embroidered robes and wears a wig made of jusi or silk. -Martin I. Tinio, Jr