The Immaculate Conception

This Immaculate Conception is a work of great interest because it is the best of the many similar versions from the studio of the Macips or of others done by imitators. Among the latter is the famous Immaculate Conception by Joan de Joanes (ca. 1560) in the church of the Company of Jesus of Valencia, considered to be a vera efigies of the Virgin Mary.

The aesthetic qualities of this painting are obvious and the gold-covered background responds to its importance as a sacred icon within the context of an altarpiece. As mentioned above, it must have been painted during the decade of 1530-1540 when, after completing the altarpiece at Segorbe, with whose robust and solid style it has much in common, the elder Macip and his son Joanes continued to work together. The Virgin’s face is somewhat a reminder of the female model used in the St. Appolonia of the altarpiece in Segorbe Cathedral. That of Christ, with its background in the style of Sebastiano del Piombo, and of God the Father, are connected with those of the Bautismo (Baptism) in Valencia Cathedral, in the same way as the heads of cherubims that are looking out through the clouds. These are certainly the parts of the picture painted by Joan de Joanes. On the other hand, the Virgin Mary’s tunic, with its linear, non-voluminous folds, and other secondary parts such as the phylacteries, the Marian symbols and the application of gold leaf, could have been the work done by the elder Macip.

This was probably the Immaculate Conception that dominated the former main altarpiece in the San Bartolomé parish church in Valencia. This Immaculate Conception was made known by Buonarroti in 1929 as a work by Joan de Joanes, when he said that a prince of the Royal House expressed a wish to enrich his picture gallery at the court with it, and that the clergy at San Bartolomé agreed to give him this present. Several owners came after that and today it is part of the Colección Santander.