Joan de Joanes

Joan de Joanes 1507 - 1579

The Immaculate Conception

1535 - 1540

Oil on panel

215 x 184 cm

Fundación Banco Santander, Spain

This is one of the earliest depictions of the Immaculate Conception in Spanish religious art

It is by one of the most important painters in the Spanish Renaissance, and one of the great religious artists

The influence of Italian art is clear. However it is not certain if he did travel to Italy. He may have imbibed this influence through Italian artists in Spain and/or through works of Italian art which made their way to Spain

His work on the Immaculate Conception  had a profound influence on the Seville school (Pacheco, Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán) who refined, simplified, humanised, popularised  and internationalised the image of the Immaculate Conception with which we are probably more familiar with today

He and his father were from the city of Valencia

Juan`s father, the artist Vicente Juan Masip (1475– 1545) had painted an earlier Immaculate Conception  for the Jesuit church in  Valencia. That picture was apparently  inspired by a revelation undergone by the painter's confessor, the Jesuit Father Martin Alberto. 

This veneration of the Immaculada was a precursor to the great veneration accorded to the Immaculate Conception in seventeenth century Spain which was the hallmark of Spanish life at the time

The iconography in Juan`s work is a composite of complex symbols and litanies celebrating the life of the Virgin and her role in the church, starting at conception and  culminating in her  coronation as Queen of Heaven

Throughout all stages of her life she is shown as the closest to God and a prized treasure of the creation of the Trinity