The Immaculate Conception
- unknown artist
Unknown artist, The Immaculate Conception, early 1800s. Paint and gold leaf on alabaster; 11 × 8 in. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morris A. Long, 1983.397.
The city of Huamanga (now known as Ayacucho) in Peru became an important center of stone carving beginning in the 1600s. Artists there made use of alabaster (gypsum) deposits in the region, and the stone was correspondingly known as piedra huamanga. Carvers produced largely religious images from the semitransparent stone, which were often polychromed and gilded to enhance their beauty. This piece likely dates to the early 1800s, at the end of the colonial era, as religious images began to give way to more secular subjects such as allegorical figures.
Like many other huamanaga works, this bas relief is based on an engraving. The piece shows the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception standing on an inverted crescent moon atop the devil, surrounded by various attributes derived from Old Testament books, such as Wisdom and Song of Solomon. Among them are the spotless mirror, tower of ivory, and gate of heaven, each of which has a corresponding phylactery (ribbon scroll), which may have originally been labeled with text (as is a similar example at the Museo Pedro de Osma in Lima). There is another scroll above the Virgin, which was probably labeled with the phrase “tota pulchra es amica mea, et macula non est in te” (Song of Songs 4:7), which was found on various early modern engravings.
– Kathryn Santner, Frederick and Jan Mayer Fellow of Spanish Colonial Art, 2023
