Peruvian Viceroyalty School; first half of the XVIII century.

Peruvian Viceroyalty School; first half of the XVIII century.
"Purísima Concepción".
Huamanga polychrome stone. It presents restorations and faults.
Measurements: 45 x 19 x 14 cm.
Sculpture made in a type of alabaster from Peru, the Huamanga stone. In viceregal times the devotional sculptures proliferated in this material, which substituted the western marble. Huamanga stone carving was a characteristic artistic manifestation of Ayacucho. In this case the Virgin as Purisima has been carved, in a figure of half bulk, destined to a frontal vision. It rises on a richly worked base. The cloths flutter around the figure, giving it a certain dynamism. In the 17th century, Peruvian sculpture underwent a special development when it began a native tradition based on the free reinterpretation of European models imported by the Jesuit missions. The Italian and Spanish influence of the Baroque resulted in its own imagery. Quito was one of the main artistic centers.
Medieval Christianity passionately debated the belief that Mary had been conceived without stain of original sin. Some universities and corporations swore to defend this privilege of the Mother of God, several centuries before the First Vatican Council defined the dogma of faith in 1854. At the end of the Middle Ages the need to give iconographic form to this idea was born, and the model of the Apocalyptic Woman of St. John was taken, maintaining some elements and modifying others (the Apocalyptic Woman is pregnant, but not the Immaculate). The definitive image came to fruition in the 16th century, apparently in Spain. Following a Valencian tradition, the Jesuit Father Alberro had a vision of the Immaculate Conception and described it to the painter Juan de Juanes so that he could capture it as faithfully as possible.