io Mono, and dated from Gaeta, 1849.]

* * * * *

I cannot find the date of the earliest picture of the Immaculate
Conception; but the first writer on the art who makes allusion to the
subject, and lays down specific rules from ecclesiastical authority
for its proper treatment, is the Spaniard Pacheco, who must have been
about forty years of age when the bull was published at Seville in
1618. It is soon after this time that we first hear of pictures of the
Immaculate Conception. Pacheco subsequently became a familiar of the
Inquisition, and wielded the authority of the holy office as inspector
of sacred pictures; and in his "Arte de la Pintura," published in
1649, he laid down those rules for the representation which had been
generally, though not always, exactly followed.

It is evident that the idea is taken from the woman in the Apocalypse,
"clothed with the sun, having the moon under her feet, and on her head
a crown of twelve stars." The Virgin is to be portrayed in the first
spring and bloom of youth as a maiden of about twelve or thirteen
years of age; with "grave sweet eyes;" her hair golden; her features
"with all the beauty painting can express;" her hands are to be folded
on her bosom or joined in prayer. The sun is to be expressed by a
flood of light around her. The moon under her feet is to have the
horns pointing downwards, because illuminated from above, and the
twelve stars are to form a crown over her head. The robe must be
of spotless white; the mantle or scarf blue. Round her are to hover
cherubim bearing roses, palms, and lilies; the head of the bruised and
vanquished dragon is to be under her feet. She ought to have the cord
of St. Francis as a girdle, because in this guise she appeared to
Beatriz de Silva, a noble Franciscan nun, who was favoured by a
celestial vision of the Madonna in her beatitude. Perhaps the good
services of the Franciscans as champions of the Immaculate Conception
procured them the honour of being thus commemorated.

All these accessories are not absolutely and rigidly required;
and Murillo, who is entitled _par excellence_ the painter of the
Conception, sometimes departed from the letter of the law without
being considered as less orthodox. With him the crescent moon, is
sometimes the full moon, or when a crescent the horns point upwards
instead of downwards. He usually omits the starry crown, and, in spite
of his predilection for the Capuch